Colonel Rolf

Colonel Rolf leaned back in his leather chair, pinching a freshly issued wanted poster between his fingers, his brows knotted tightly together.

The man on the poster had a scruffy black beard and bared a mouthful of white teeth in a grin. The bounty field was still blank—he was Marshall D. Teach, who had defected from the Whitebeard Pirates a month ago.

A division commander under one of the Four Emperors had been killed, and the defector was now roaming the waters near West Blue. Every Marine branch in West Blue had been on edge for the past month, doubling the frequency of routine patrols for fear of running into that lunatic who had dared stir up trouble on Whitebeard's turf.

Knock, knock, knock—

The hurried knocking interrupted Rolf's thoughts.

"Come in." He casually tossed the wanted poster onto the desk, picked up the cold coffee beside him, and took a sip, his tone laced with impatience.

The messenger pushed open the door and gave a standard military salute. Fine sand carried by the sea breeze still clung to the brim of his cap. "Reporting, Colonel! We just received a request for help from Mr. Vicks, a wealthy merchant from Laskamp Island. The Blue Sail, one of his merchant vessels, has been missing on its regular route for over three days. The crew, guards, and accompanying family members have all lost contact."

"A merchant ship missing?" Rolf raised a brow, his expression unmoved. Pirates ran rampant in West Blue, and merchant ships vanished all the time. Such matters were usually handled by subordinate patrol squads and did not need to be reported to him.

The messenger clearly understood what he was thinking and hurriedly added, "Mr. Vicks has offered a reward of ten million Beli. As long as we find out what happened to the Blue Sail, whether we find survivors or bodies, as long as we can confirm the final outcome, he will pay the full amount. He also had someone contact headquarters, demanding that our branch spare no effort in the investigation."

"How much?" Rolf's hand froze around his coffee cup. He looked up at the messenger, his eyes full of disbelief. "Ten million Beli? For an ordinary merchant ship?"

He had spent a full eight years at West Blue 74th Branch and had seen no fewer than eighty, if not a hundred, cases of missing merchant ships. Even for valuable cargo vessels loaded with gold and silver, their owners would at most offer two or three million Beli to have the Marines investigate.

Ten million Beli was more than enough not only to find a missing merchant ship, but to capture most pirates in the nearby waters with bounties under ten million.

"Was there anything unusual on the customs declaration? What exactly was this ship carrying?" Rolf immediately sat up straight, tapping the desk with his fingertips as he asked in a low voice.

"We checked. The declaration was very clear: silk, spices, grain, and a batch of handicrafts headed for Laskamp Island. There were no contraband goods, and the estimated total value of the cargo was only around three million Beli," the messenger quickly replied.

"There were forty-seven crew members and guards in total. The captain was an old sailor who had run West Blue routes for twenty years. He had no record of colluding with pirates, and his background was completely clean."

"Completely clean?" Rolf sneered and leaned back in his chair, though his frown deepened.

Something was wrong. Far too wrong.

No one would spend ten million Beli looking for a merchant ship whose cargo was worth only three million, unless that ship was hiding something more valuable than ten million Beli—something that could not see the light of day.

After pondering for several seconds, he raised a hand and gave the order. "Notify every patrol squad. Increase inspections along the Blue Sail's missing route immediately. Focus on pirate crews active on that route lately, especially that bastard Har 'Sawtooth.' His ship has been hanging around those waters recently. There is a ninety percent chance he did this. I want to see the ship alive or the bodies dead. Even if it sank, haul the wreckage back up for me!"

"Yes!" The messenger saluted, turned, and quickly withdrew.

The office fell silent again, leaving only the sound of the sea breeze riffling through the documents.

Rolf watched the churning sea beyond the window, unconsciously rubbing his chin as the doubts in his heart refused to fade.

No matter how hard he thought, he could not guess what had been hidden aboard that ordinary merchant ship to make Vicks willing to spend an astronomical ten million Beli.

He would never know that what the ship carried was a Logia Devil Fruit that had passed through the black market.

Vicks had spent three whole years and nearly five hundred million Beli to acquire that treasure at auction.

He had originally planned to use the ordinary merchant ship as cover and secretly transport the fruit to Laskamp Island, presenting it to the mafia boss who controlled more than half of West Blue's underground business in exchange for a trade route monopolizing West Blue's spice trade.

From beginning to end, only two people knew about this. One was Vicks himself, and the other was the old captain of the Blue Sail.

The moment Har and his pirates stormed onto the deck, the old captain used his last breath to hide the sealed metal box containing the Devil Fruit in a hidden compartment deep within the cargo hold, a compartment even the crew did not know existed.

Even when Har cut him down with a single slash, he did not reveal a single word to anyone.

And now, this merchant ship carrying a world-shaking secret was quietly moored by the shore of a deserted island. Every item in its cargo hold was being inventoried one by one by Uchiha's ninjas, while the metal box hidden in the compartment remained in the darkness, waiting for the day it would be discovered.

The patrol squads Rolf sent out were destined to find nothing but an empty route across the vast sea.

The instant Natsu activated the [Time Traveler] trait, he clearly sensed the changes in his body.

He instinctively clenched his fists, his knuckles cracking crisply. His muscle fibers, bone density, and even the smoothness of chakra flowing through his meridians had all improved by nearly ten percent.

That change was not particularly noticeable on him, but when he looked at Fugaku beside him, he could clearly sense that the physical strength of his uncle-in-law, who had long been stuck at the peak of Elite Jonin, had nearly doubled.

The reason was simple.

He was only eleven this year. It would be another full decade or so before his body fully matured and entered its peak.

The trait's rule adaptation had done more to unlock the limits of his body's potential than directly stack his strength to its peak.

He could clearly feel that the invisible ceiling within his body had been completely shattered.

Previously, if he had matured step by step into adulthood, his physical strength could at most have caught up to the top Jonin in the ninja world who specialized in taijutsu, barely reaching a limit of 10.

But now, even if he did no extra grueling training and relied solely on normal growth, the foundation of his physical strength in adulthood would be guaranteed to increase tenfold, firmly crossing the threshold of 100.