Conqueror's Haki Awakens

Thud! Thud! Thud!

The sound of steel boot soles stomping across the deck rang out, one step after another...

"Captain Peter is here!"

"Great! Those bastards are dead for sure."

"Captain Peter, you have to avenge my little brother Kevin!"

Under the delighted gazes of the three slave traders, a man over two meters tall, clad in full medieval knight's armor, with a shield in his left hand and a longsword in his right, emerged from the corridor below deck.

Behind him followed another man carrying a saber, with a pistol tucked at his waist.

Putting on a full suit of armor was extremely time-consuming, and it was difficult for one person to do alone. The two had been busy for quite a while before arriving late.

Captain Peter's heavy armor covered him from the top of his head to the soles of his feet.

A full suit of armor weighing over thirty kilograms would make it hard for an ordinary person even to move properly, but Captain Peter was different. His strength and endurance far surpassed those of ordinary people, so the armor did not hinder him much.

Besides, clad head to toe in armor, he could directly ignore bullets from ordinary firearms, as well as slashes from blades!

Captain Peter scanned the area through the eye slits in his metal visor and spotted the young man lying on the ground.

"Damn it! Kevin got taken out too? Those bastards... I'll butcher them!"

He furiously smashed his shield against the wall to vent his emotions before stepping into the cabin where the four were.

Hearing the unusual footsteps, Sephiroth quickly poked his head out for a glance.

"Damn! One of them is wearing full armor and heading for our cabin!"

At those words, Hancock's lovely brows drew together slightly as she said in a low voice,

"First, find a way to knock him to the ground!

Then, while he can't get back up, we can strike through the gaps in his armor and deal him a fatal blow."

Sandersonia and Marigold nodded slightly, listening carefully to the approaching footsteps.

Soon, the towering figure in full armor appeared before the four of them.

The three Boa sisters each lifted a water-filled wooden bucket with both hands and hurled them at Captain Peter's head.

But...

The armored man had been prepared. He swiftly sidestepped, dodging two buckets while swinging the longsword in his right hand.

A flash of cold light streaked through the air, and the bucket was cut cleanly into two, falling onto the deck.

At the same time, Sephiroth seized the opportunity and charged fiercely at Captain Peter, intending to tackle him to the ground.

However...

The next moment.

An armored arm slammed brutally into Sephiroth's chest, sending his entire body flying backward into the cabin wall with a dull bang.

The intense pain in his chest nearly made Sephiroth pass out. He could clearly feel that several of his ribs seemed to have broken...

The terrifying force of Peter's fist against his chest made him feel as though he had just been stepped on by an elephant!

For the moment, he lacked the strength to rise and had lost the ability to keep fighting.

Seeing this, Captain Peter immediately raised his longsword and prepared to slash at the boy's throat.

The clang of steel rang out as Hancock hurriedly swung her saber. She barely managed to block the strike, saving Sephiroth.

Marigold took the opportunity to swing her saber and rush toward Captain Peter, intending to stab through a joint in his armor.

But...

Relying on the armor covering his entire body, he quickly adjusted his stance and violently shoved the orange-haired girl with the shield in his left hand, knocking her to the ground.

From farther away, Sandersonia raised her pistol and repeatedly pulled the trigger at Captain Peter.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Bullets struck the armor in rapid succession, scattering several showers of sparks, but Captain Peter, clad in full armor, did not budge at all. He simply ignored the green-haired girl's gunfire.

After using his sword to suppress Hancock's saber, he swung his shield backhandedly and smashed it into the right side of the girl's head.

By then, it was too late for Hancock to dodge. She could only desperately mobilize the small amount of Armament Haki within her body and concentrate it on her forehead, hoping to minimize the damage.

Thud!

The blow knocked Hancock onto the deck, and a streak of crimson blood ran down her forehead.

Captain Peter's fighting techniques were not particularly refined, even somewhat clumsy. Yet with the defense provided by his armor and physical strength far beyond that of an ordinary adult, he suppressed all four of them so thoroughly that they could not resist.

"Die!"

Captain Peter gripped his longsword in reverse, aimed it at the black-haired girl's chest, and prepared to drive it straight down.

Nearby, Sephiroth, half leaning against the wall with his right hand pressed to his chest, suddenly widened his eyes as he watched the blade descend through the air...

Actually, when facing Captain Peter's attack, he could have actively transformed into bats to evade it. Even though his bats were still rather slow and could not negate all the damage, he would not have suffered such a heavy blow!

But...

Deep down, he simply had not adapted to the fact that he had become a Devil Fruit user.

That was why he had made such a mistake...

If not for being dragged down by him, Hancock would never have had to fight so hastily. She would not have been instantly suppressed by the enemy and placed in such danger.

If the girl died, it would all be because of him!

At that thought, Sephiroth was overwhelmed by remorse and rage. His eyes nearly split open as he roared,

"Stop!!!"

A vast, overwhelming aura burst from Sephiroth's body, and faint dark-red lightning flashed through the cabin before vanishing.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

Other than Sephiroth and Hancock, everyone aboard the ship—including Marigold and Sandersonia—lost consciousness and collapsed onto the deck.

"Con... Conqueror's Haki...? The qualities of a king, one in a million..."

Hancock slowly rose to her feet and wiped away the blood flowing from her forehead. Her gaze toward Sephiroth was filled with astonishment.

On Nine Serpent Island, quite a few people knew Observation Haki and Armament Haki. They had even developed a relatively simple method for training Armament Haki.

But...

This legendary power known as Conqueror's Haki was something she was seeing for the first time!

Meanwhile, under the power of the Vampire Fruit, Sephiroth's cracked ribs rapidly healed back to normal. As the pain faded, he finally regained the strength to stand.

"So this is Conqueror's Haki...?"

He blankly clenched his hands, his eyes still somewhat bewildered.

Just now, amid his overwhelming remorse and rage, he had felt as if something in his mind had burst forth, completely beyond his control...

Immediately afterward, a wave of exhaustion washed over him.

When he tried to recapture that feeling, however, he found nothing at all.

If not for the people sprawled unconscious all over the cabin, he would not have dared believe that he had truly unleashed Conqueror's Haki!

After failing to figure it out, Sephiroth decided to study it again later.

He and Hancock first worked together to tie up all the slave ship's crewmen with ropes before going to wake Marigold and Sandersonia.

The slave ship was a fast sailing vessel about twenty meters long, with three decks. It was only a small ship, and its prow was shaped like a wolf's head.

On the deck, the six unconscious slave traders had been thrown together.

"What should we do with these six?"

Sephiroth turned to Hancock beside him.

Because the right side of the girl's head had been struck by the shield and was bleeding, she had wrapped several layers of white bandages around her forehead. Her wound still seemed to ache faintly, and she would occasionally frown and rub her forehead.

At his question, the black-haired girl snorted coldly before saying,

"These hateful bastards... We should just throw them into the sea to feed the fish."

"Yeah! If we hadn't been lucky enough to win, we might have been killed already."

Marigold nodded repeatedly in agreement, fully supporting Hancock's suggestion.

"But if we throw them all into the sea, there'll be no one left to help us sail the ship.

Can the four of us get it to the next island?" the boy asked with a frown.

Hearing this, Sandersonia, the green-haired girl, patted her already well-developed chest and smiled confidently.

"Don't worry!

I'm still confident in my navigation skills...

After all, the Kuja Pirates raised me as a navigator from childhood. The four of us are enough to sail this vessel."

Sephiroth looked at the six traffickers and thought that if he had not luckily eaten the Vampire Fruit, he and the three girls would likely have been sold as slaves, stripped of all dignity, subjected to all kinds of inhuman torture every day, and turned into other people's playthings...

It reminded him of those people in the original story who had survived enslavement by the Celestial Dragons. Almost all of them suffered severe psychological trauma. Some, like Gild Tesoro and Boa Hancock, had even become warped in personality...

At that thought, a vicious glint flashed in Sephiroth's eyes, and the last trace of hesitation in his heart vanished instantly.

This was the Pirate King world, where human lives were as cheap as grass. It was no longer the peaceful country where he had lived in his previous life!

If he still considered the human rights of scum like these, that would be utterly ridiculous!

Having made up his mind, Sephiroth no longer felt the slightest hesitation when he acted.

At his request, the three girls left the task of dealing with the six slave traders to him, while they went below deck to move the bodies and clean up the traces of battle...

He dragged the six slave traders one by one to the edge of the ship.

His rough movements caused several of them to wake from unconsciousness.

"Wait! What are you doing?"

"I'm sorry, I was wrong! Please spare me!"

Sephiroth remained completely unmoved by the scum's pleas.

He stretched out his slender, fair right hand and placed it on each of the six men in turn.

Under the Vampire Fruit's power, he directly drained all six of their life force, turning them into a group of white-haired old men. Meanwhile, the amount of life force he could store reached its limit.

If that life force were converted into lifespan, it was probably worth more than three hundred years...

Splash! Splash! Splash!

Each time Sephiroth threw someone over the side, a huge splash rose from the sea.

These six pieces of scum had already had their life force drained dry, and their hands were bound. Unless a miracle happened, they were certainly dead!

The afternoon sunlight shone upon Sephiroth, warming his body, but his heart was cold...

(

Still, seeing so many readers criticizing this issue, I can only explain it here...

(¬‿¬)

If you can't find it by searching the book title, try searching the author instead. Maybe it was just renamed!