A Lucky Break! Beating Buggy Senseless!

"Victor!!"

Nami watched Victor stride right past her, his practiced movements making him look like a repeat offender, and an inexplicable irritation rose in her heart.

"Hmph! You want to compete in speed? I'm a thief who specializes in stealing from pirates!"

Nami forcibly calmed herself, unwilling to be outdone as she pulled out her cloth sack and plunged headfirst into the pile of gold coins, stuffing it like mad.

However, reality was cruel.

As a ninja, Victor's hands moved so fast they left only afterimages.

In less than three minutes, the mountain of treasure had been divided up between them.

But there were three bulging bags at Victor's feet, holding nearly seventy percent of the loot, while Nami only had one half-filled sack.

"Done."

Victor clapped his hands, ignoring Nami's murderous glare as he walked straight toward the most conspicuous treasure chest.

"Hmm? It needs a key..."

Then he tore a key from the neck of the pirate he had taken down earlier and opened the lock with a click.

A parchment scroll lay quietly inside.

"A map of the Grand Line."

The corner of Victor's mouth lifted slightly as he casually tucked it against his chest.

After finishing all that, he turned around and extended his slender right hand toward Nami.

Nami froze for a moment.

She looked at the hand reaching toward her.

After hesitating for a while, her cheeks flushed faintly. In the end, she awkwardly reached out her own hand, turning her head aside as she muttered softly,

"Um... although I really hate pirates, since you saved me, making peace with a handshake isn't exactly..."

"Hmm?"

Victor looked at her strangely. "What are you doing? I mean—give me your treasure."

"..."

The air froze for three seconds.

Nami abruptly pulled her hand back as though she had been burned.

Then she hugged the money bag in her arms tightly, bared her teeth at Victor, and roared through gritted teeth,

"This is mine!! Don't even think about it!!"

"Tch, what a miser."

Victor did not insist. He merely shook his head regretfully. "Fine, fine, Miss Navigator."

"I told you, I..."

Nami had just been about to retort, I'm not your navigator, when Victor's eyes sharpened and he made as if to reach out and snatch it again.

"Ah! Ah! Got it!!"

Nami stumbled back in fright, completely conceding defeat to this shameless red-eyed bandit.

"I can still make money with you guys, and you have the map... Fine, I'll join you!

"But let's make this clear first. I absolutely will not become an official member of your pirate crew. We're just partners! Partners!"

"Deal."

Victor withdrew his hand with a smile, picked up the three huge bags of treasure, and walked outside as easily as if he were carrying feathers.

Just as he reached the doorway, he suddenly stopped and glanced back at Nami.

"Nami."

"Hmm? What?" Nami clutched her money bag warily.

"Counting this time, I've saved you three times."

Victor raised three fingers and began calculating with a serious expression.

"My appearance fee is very expensive. Hmm... since I'm giving you a discount, let's call it one hundred million Beli per time. That means... you owe me three hundred million Beli now."

"Huh?!"

Nami frowned at the astronomical sum. What did he know?

She shook her head and shouted, "Three hundred million? Why don't you just rob me?"

Victor did not explain. He simply smiled meaningfully.

What did he know? He knew that this girl carried a full one hundred million Beli in "ransom money" on her shoulders.

"Isn't that exactly what I'm doing? Please cooperate."

"Give it up! Then I'll just owe you forever!" Nami yelled at his retreating back. "I don't have any money anyway! I'll never pay you in this lifetime!"

The two walked out of the treasure vault, where the battle outside had already reached a fever pitch.

Up ahead, Luffy and Zoro were fighting Buggy and Cabaji respectively.

"Chop-Chop—Blades!!"

With a bizarre cry from Buggy, his hands actually detached from his body, each gripping four daggers as they flew through the air like tracking missiles, shooting at Luffy from every direction without a single blind spot.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! His hands are flying at me!"

Luffy desperately grabbed a nearby tree trunk and used the elasticity of his rubber body to spring up and down, evading one lethal slash after another.

Nami watched the scene, then looked at Buggy, whose body was constantly breaking apart and reassembling in midair.

Her eyes widened like saucers, and she could not stop herself from crying out,

"W-What kind of monsters are these?!"

"Gum-Gum—"

After dodging a round of attacks, Luffy seized an opening.

His arms suddenly stretched dozens of meters behind him. Using the immense recoil, his entire body shot toward Buggy like a cannonball.

Buggy sneered and easily dodged. "Gya ha ha ha! Too slow!"

But Luffy's target was not Buggy. He grabbed a pillar in the ruins behind Buggy, his body tracing a massive arc through the air.

"Gum-Gum—Scythe!!"

Using centrifugal force, Luffy swept in with an attack powerful enough to break an ordinary person in half.

"Too naïve, rubber man!"

Buggy grinned viciously.

Just as Luffy's attack was about to land.

Buggy's head suddenly separated from his neck and soared high into the air, while his body split into several pieces.

"Swish!"

Luffy's attack missed completely and crashed into the collapsed building behind him, kicking up a cloud of dust.

"I... I'm not dreaming, am I..."

Nami rubbed her eyes. The sight before her dealt a massive blow to her common sense.

Victor tossed the treasure bags in his hands to Nami. "Hold these. Watch closely—this is what a battle looks like."

With that, his figure flashed and vanished from the spot.

On the battlefield.

"Gya ha ha ha! You can't hit me! You just can't hit me!"

Buggy looked at Luffy, who was stuck in the rubble, and laughed smugly.

Then his hands gripped the flying daggers again and circled through the air. "Die! Chop-Chop Blades!"

Just as his hands were about to stab the immobile Luffy.

A black shadow appeared like a ghost in front of his unguarded lower body.

"Who?!" Buggy was shocked.

Victor did not waste a word. Taking advantage of Buggy's full attention being on Luffy.

He raised his knee, grabbed Buggy's shoulders tightly with both hands, then erupted with chakra and drove a vicious knee strike precisely into Buggy's most vulnerable abdomen.

"Pff!!"

The blow was immensely powerful.

Buggy felt as though his organs had all shifted out of place. His eyes bulged as a mouthful of sour fluid sprayed from his mouth.

The agony instantly made his hands flying through the air lose control, and they dropped limply to the ground.

"It's not over yet."

Victor's gaze was icy. While Buggy was still dazed, he followed up with a spinning kick, viciously smashing it into Buggy's cheek.

"Bang!"

Buggy flew backward with a scream as if he had been hit by a speeding truck.

He rolled across the ground more than ten times before stopping, howling in pain, "Damn it... damn red-eyed brat..."

Before he could finish speaking, his pupils were filled with an orange-red glow.

Victor had already completed his hand seals, his chest swelling high.

If he killed this future Emperor of the Sea here, how much Ninja Way value would the system give him?

He did not dare imagine it!

Victor did not dare imagine it!

So he used his full strength without hesitation!

"Fire Style: Fireball Jutsu!!"

Whoosh—!!!

The enormous fireball roared toward the fallen Buggy like a sun that devoured everything.

"Fire?! No!!"

Buggy was horrified and instinctively tried to split his body apart and escape. With the ability of the Chop-Chop Fruit, as long as he scattered himself, the flames would have difficulty dealing him fatal damage.

However.

The moment he met Victor's scarlet eyes, it was already too late.

"Genjutsu: Hell Viewing Technique."

Bzz—!

Buggy's movements instantly froze.

In his vision, the enormous fireball became a red-haired man holding the treasure map he hated most, pointing at him and laughing wildly.

Fear, rage, and memories intertwined, causing his mind to suffer a fatal lapse.

It was that one second of hesitation.

"Boom—!!"

The Fireball Jutsu struck Buggy squarely!

The raging flames exploded and completely swallowed Buggy.

"Aaaaahhh—!!!"

A shrill scream echoed through the sky.

Buggy was blasted by that smooth little combo straight into the depths of the nearby ruins, his fate unknown.

The pirate underlings nearby, who had been cheering for their captain moments ago, were now all dumbfounded.

They looked at the red-eyed youth standing before the blazing fire with an indifferent expression, their weapons dropping from their hands one after another.

"W-Who the hell is that guy..."

"Even Captain Buggy couldn't fight back at all..."

"That's terrifying... Is he a demon?"

"Shut up, idiot!"

One quick-witted pirate immediately threw himself onto the ground and played dead, trembling as he whispered,

"If he finds us, we're dead for sure! Hurry up and faint! As long as we're corpses, he won't kill us!"

For a moment, the pirates at the edge of the battlefield seemed to have been hit by some kind of group spell. They dropped to the ground one after another, and snores soon filled the air.