Chapter 242
His lips had been twitching since the first briefing, and by the twelfth, his expression was somewhere between "Is this for real?" and "When will this ever end?"
In just over a month, tens of thousands of pirates...
On average, there are thousands of people every day. This number, placed in any period of Fish-Man Island's history, would be enough to silence even the most optimistic mermaid king.
The Wood Clone left behind by Natsu patrolled all over Fish-Man Island from morning till night, leaving no blind spots and never resting.
No matter which direction the pirates infiltrate from, whether they dock at a port or secretly coat themselves and surface in uninhabited waters, as long as they step into Fish-Man Island, they will be greeted by countless wooden spikes bursting from the ground and that young figure dressed in plain robes.
A pirate crew attempted to gather all their main forces for a frontal breakthrough, with hundreds of men charging in formation. However, they were blocked at the port by a Wood Clone, and within the time it takes for an incense stick to burn, they all turned into corpses hanging in the thorny forest, swaying slightly.
A pirate crew attempted to infiltrate from multiple directions simultaneously, but at the end of each route stood a Wood Clone.
A pirate crew attempted to disguise themselves as a merchant ship and infiltrate the port. The captain's disguise was impeccable until he stepped onto the dock and saw a pair of scarlet Sharingan crouching on a cargo container, looking down at him.
"Well done. Change your profession in your next life." These were the last words the intelligence-gathering pirate with a bounty of over 100 million heard.
All the corpses were disposed of according to Natsu's instructions.
Neptune initially had his guards hang the bodies on both sides of the main channel of the harbor for public display. Later, when there was no more room on both sides of the channel, he specially built a display platform for the bodies at the entrance of the harbor using shipwreck wreckage and reefs.
Later, when the display stands couldn't hold all the items, they had to use wooden spikes to interlock and stack them layer upon layer.
The pirates died in all sorts of bizarre ways, but every face bore the frozen fear of their final moments.
Every day, new corpses are added to the island, and the ocean currents spread the stench of blood outward from the port, attracting sharks from dozens of nautical miles around, which then circle wildly around the perimeter of Fish-Man Island.
The effects were immediate.
The price of Fish-Men and Merfolk slaves on the black market increased more than twentyfold in a month, but the pirates who dared to raid Fish-Man Island completely disappeared.
Because the news had spread throughout the entire ocean—in the waters where those deep-sea giants flying the Uchiha Gunbai flag sailed, for over a month, not a single disobedient pirate had managed to leave alive.
The news brought back by the pirates who miraculously survived and escaped back to the Sabaody Archipelago was a hundred times more vivid than the battle reports from the Marine Headquarters.
In trembling voices, they described in the tavern the thorn forest that existed only in the deep sea, the corpses pierced by wooden spikes, hanging in mid-air, still dripping blood, and those scarlet eyes—
No matter where you infiltrate from, what route you take, or how many people you use, those eyes will always pinpoint you the moment you arrive at Fish-Man Island.
There are no blind spots, and there is no room for luck.
By the second month, the number of merchant ships at Fish-Man Island's port had tripled.
Merchants rushed to the scene and discovered that this deep-sea Paradise, once considered a hunting ground by pirates, had now become the safest transit point on the entire sea.
The port was orderly, the guards of the Ryugu Palace wore unusual ease, and Fish-Man and mermaid civilians casually dried their fishing nets on the dock.