The Price of Desertion, Building a Jingguan

Those five hundred headquarters soldiers who had been driven mad now had bloodshot eyes, like a pack of wolves that had starved in the desert for three days and nights before suddenly spotting a chunk of meat!

Before the warship could even pull alongside,

the headquarters elites wildly hurled grappling hooks, howling as they swung along the ropes onto the pirate ship like zombies swarming a city!

"Mine! That pirate with the three-million bounty is mine! Nobody touch him!"

"Don't shoot! Leave them alive so I can hack them down with my blade—the military merit is mine!"

The poor pirates had not even figured out what was happening before they were swallowed by the human-wave assault of these ferocious Marines, who were terrified their superior would steal their kills. The sight was downright absurd.

Rochi stood on a high mast with his arms folded, watching his subordinates scramble for kills to the point they were nearly about to fight each other. Rather than getting angry, he laughed.

After all, killing this trash that did not even qualify as Soldier Level yielded zero experience. He might as well treat it as a little perk for his men.

The night was deep, and fierce winds howled.

After enduring Rochi's inhumane physical training, the branch's recruit barracks had fallen deathly silent.

Several dozen veteran branch soldiers who had taken the lead gathered furtively in the darkest corner at the very back.

"This can't go on! Look at today's training—two more people were tortured by that madman until they vomited blood and passed out!"

A bald veteran lowered his voice, his eyes filled with utter terror and despair.

"With that Chinese military training regimen that drills people to death, in less than ten days, all of us will have buried our lives on that training ground!"

"Run! We have to run!"

Another soldier trembled as he agreed:

"I contacted brothers from several barracks today. Everyone's had enough! We've gathered more than two hundred and forty men now! As long as we seize the patrol ship at the rear harbor tonight, we can escape this hell for good!"

"Let's do it! We're dead either way, so let's gamble!"

Driven by extreme fear, the escape plan was quickly set into motion.

Two in the morning, beneath the high walls behind the fortress.

Under cover of darkness, more than two hundred branch soldiers even took down two drowsy sentries, making their way without incident to a stack of cargo crates only fifty meters from the rear harbor dock.

"Excellent! No one's guarding the patrol ship ahead!"

The bald veteran was ecstatic, believing freedom was right before his eyes.

However.

Just as they stepped out of the shadows and prepared to sprint toward the ship—

"Clap! Clap! Clap!"

Three searchlights the size of water vats lit up in perfect unison from high above the dock!

Like swords tearing through the night, the blinding beams turned the more than two hundred and forty deserting soldiers stark white, leaving them nowhere to hide!

And at the center of that light,

Rochi sat boldly in a lounge chair, casually swirling a goblet of crimson wine in his hand.

Behind him stood Major Lace, her expression icy.

Five hundred fully armed headquarters elites had loaded their guns. Their black muzzles, like the scythes of death, were locked firmly onto those desperate deserters!

"I thought that on this meat grinder of a Grand Line, you would at least retain the last shred of a man's fighting spirit."

Rochi slowly rose to his feet and looked down from above at the soldiers kneeling on the ground like livestock awaiting slaughter.

He could not even be bothered to activate his Observation Haki. His deep black eyes held nothing but endless contempt.

"C-Colonel! Spare us! Please spare us!"

The bald veteran frantically kowtowed, smashing his forehead against the stone slabs until blood streamed down his face.

"Too weak. So weak that I have no interest in personally wiping you out."

Rochi drained the wine in his glass and casually smashed the goblet to pieces.

These people were not even worth experience points according to the system. They were purely a waste of his time.

Rochi turned to the headquarters elites behind him, who had failed to claim many kills during the day and were already simmering with anger. A bloodthirsty sneer curled across his lips.

"Haven't you always complained that I never leave military merit for you?"

"Now, the opportunity is here."

"Armed desertion is punishable by death."

Rochi's voice was as cold as a gale from the depths of hell, devoid of all human emotion. "Clear out every last piece of this trash."

"Yes, sir!!!"

The five hundred headquarters soldiers instantly erupted in a thunderous roar of bloodlust!

"Fire!" Major Lace sharply swung down her arm.

"Bang bang bang bang—!!!"

The deafening roar of gunfire instantly tore through the tranquil night sky above the G-8 Branch.

Blazing muzzle flashes erupted wildly across the dock, weaving a deadly net of fire without a single blind spot!

"Don't! Help—!"

"We won't run! We surrender, we surrender!"

The desperate screams sounded so feeble beneath the rain of bullets.

To those elite headquarters soldiers, slaughtering these branch rabble who did not even qualify as Soldier Level and normally only knew how to bully others behind borrowed authority was easier than killing chickens.

The front row of deserters fell in unison like wheat before a scythe.

Warm blood flowed through the cracks between the dock's blue stone slabs like dark crimson venomous snakes, winding into the sea and staining the coastal waters a complete, bloody red.

The massacre lasted less than five minutes.

More than two hundred and forty soldiers who had tried to desert had all become a field of mangled corpses. Thick gunpowder smoke mixed with nauseating blood stench, lingering in the night wind for a long time.

The five hundred headquarters soldiers held their guns as they coldly stepped over the bodies, delivering fatal stabs to every twitching form.

Not one of them felt any pity.

Under World Government military law, desertion in the face of battle was already a capital offense.

Especially when they faced a superior whose methods were as cruel as an Asura's.

Major Lace stood at a high point, took a deep breath, suppressed the churning in her stomach, and walked behind Rochi.

"Colonel. The deserters have all been eliminated. None escaped."

Lace's voice carried a trace of barely perceptible awe and trembling.

Rochi coldly watched the scene before him, like a hell of Asuras. There was not the slightest ripple in his black eyes.

"Major Lace."

"Here!"

"Cut off every one of these scum's heads."

Rochi's calm voice sent chills down the spine. "Build a Jingguan on the raised platform in the central training ground. I want to see it before the sun rises."

Lace's entire body trembled, and her pupils suddenly contracted uncontrollably!

Build a Jingguan out of the heads of Marines under his own command?!

Such cruel and tyrannical methods were rarely seen even among the most vicious pirate crews!

"Yes... I'll see to it immediately!"

Lace did not dare hesitate in the slightest. She immediately turned and directed the headquarters soldiers to begin clearing the battlefield.

She knew this young colonel's style all too well.

In his dictionary, there was no such thing as mercy—only absolute fear and ultimate efficiency!