Van Augur's Astonishment

The sharp edge of the kunai precisely sliced through his windpipe and carotid artery. The instant warm blood gushed out, he had not even seen his opponent's movement before collapsing stiffly onto the deck.

Several pirates nearby raised their flintlock rifles and pulled the triggers wildly. Lead bullets streaked out amid flashes of fire, but under the Sharingan's foresight, their trajectories were as clear as the lines on a palm.

The ninjas merely shifted aside and evaded every shot as casually as if taking a stroll. The kunai they flung back whistled through the air and struck precisely into the shooters' brows.

More than a dozen guns fell silent at once. The armed pirates collapsed into pools of blood without even managing a scream.

There was no earth-shaking clash, no prolonged back-and-forth battle—only a one-sided slaughter.

The weakest of these Uchiha ninjas were genuine Jonin. Even on these seas, they could rival great pirates with bounties of over 150 million Beli, or elite colonels from Marine Headquarters.

Most of the pirates under Kuro were merely a rabble who had run rampant through nearby waters on sheer ferocity. They had not even touched the threshold of Haki. Before Uchiha ninjas hardened by countless battles and proficient in taijutsu and the Instant-Kill Technique, they were no different from ants.

Every swing of their blades and every shot they fired was thoroughly predicted by the Sharingan in advance. Their desperate resistance looked no different from children throwing punches.

More often than not, a pirate's weapon had only just been raised when his throat was already slit by a katana. Before he could finish half a charge cry, a kunai had already pierced his heart.

Screams rose and fell across the deck, only to abruptly cease moments later. In just over ten seconds, the foredeck was covered in corpses. Thick blood soaked through the wooden planks and ran into the sea through the cracks, drawing swarms of sharks to circle the ship.

"You bunch of trash! Get the hell out of my way!"

Watching the pirates under his command fall in rows like harvested wheat, Kuro's eyes turned so red they seemed ready to bleed. His single eye was filled with terror and fury.

With a roar, he swung the massive axe taller than a man. His muscles bulged as he put all his strength into chopping down at Uchiha Yashiro, who stood closest to him.

The axe blade howled through the air, seeming to split even the atmosphere itself. This was a killing move honed through countless battles, one that had once shattered the deck of a Marine patrol ship with a single blow.

But Yashiro simply stood where he was without even lifting an eyelid.

Only when the giant axe was about to split his head did he slightly turn aside and lightly block it with the kunai in his hand.

"Clang—!"

A deafening clash of metal erupted. Kuro felt an overwhelming force surge through the axe handle, instantly tearing open the web between his thumb and forefinger and sending blood streaming down. The giant axe he had used for more than a decade flew from his grip and slammed into the mast with a loud crash, leaving a deep crack in the thick timber.

Before he could recover from that tremendous force, Yashiro raised his foot and kicked him viciously in the chest.

A crisp crack rang out—the sound of his ribs breaking all at once.

Kuro flew backward like a torn sack and crashed heavily into the helm. He spat out a mouthful of blood mixed with fragments of internal organs, and his single eye was left with nothing but overwhelming terror.

He finally understood that he had not provoked some pretentious rabble pretending to be mysterious, but a group of killing gods who had crawled out of hell.

Yashiro slowly walked up to him and pressed a cold kunai against his throat. His scarlet Sharingan looked down at him from above, his tone utterly calm, as if the pirate with a bounty of tens of millions beneath his feet was merely a bug he could crush at will.

"The route, the destination, the cargo on the ship, and everything you know about these waters. Tell me, and I'll leave you an intact corpse."

The dozen or so pirates at the stern who had not dared resist had long since collapsed on the ground, trembling uncontrollably. They could not even scream and could only watch this nightmare unfold before their eyes.

The morning mist finally dispersed, and the rising sun climbed above the sea. Golden light fell across the bloodstained deck, yet it could not penetrate the bottomless chill in the Uchiha ninjas' eyes.

From beginning to end, the battle had lasted less than a minute.

To the Uchiha Clan, this was merely another utterly ordinary purge, no different from the dozens of pirate crews they had dealt with over the past year.

Three nautical miles away, in a shaded cove completely concealed by morning mist and jagged reefs, an inconspicuous one-man sailboat rested quietly on the water. Its sail was not even raised, making it resemble a piece of rotten wood drifting with the waves.

Van Augur pressed himself tightly against the cold deck, his body drawn taut like a fully stretched bow. His right eye was fixed to the high-powered scope of his beloved rifle, "Senriku." Even his breathing had instinctively quieted to its faintest, afraid that the slightest movement might alert those demon-like beings three nautical miles away.

Only the cold sweat on his forehead continued to slide past the corner of his tightly pressed lips, dripping onto the rifle's engravings and spreading into small wet stains.

From the moment those black-clad figures had walked across the waves, his gaze had never left the scope. He had witnessed the entire slaughter, which had lasted less than a minute.

He had seen elite Marine Headquarters officers fight, Whitebeard Pirates division commanders battle, and countless notorious pirates on the Grand Line, but he had never seen such terrifying killing efficiency—

There were no unnecessary movements and not the slightest hesitation. Every attack landed precisely on the most fatal point of the human body. The paths traced by kunai and katanas seemed calculated millions of times over, without even the smallest deviation.

What made every hair on his body stand on end even more was the unfathomable strength of these people.

Through his scope, he could clearly see the scarlet Three Tomoe patterns spinning in their eyes. He could see the effortless composure with which they casually blocked cannonballs.

Blood Axe Kuro, with his 14 million Beli bounty in the West Blue, was already considered a formidable figure in these waters. Yet before the black-clad man leading them, he could not even withstand a single move. Even through a scope three nautical miles away, the force of that kick which shattered Kuro's ribs made Van Augur's chest feel tight.

Van Augur's fingers around the rifle grip had turned pale from gripping it too hard.

He knew Marine Headquarters' power hierarchy all too well.

The weakest of these black-clad fighters possessed speed, strength, and timing no less formidable than elite Marine Headquarters colonels. More than half of them even carried the battle-hardened killing intent and precise control over their power needed to stand toe-to-toe with Marine Headquarters rear admirals.