"Pack them up."
Lei En's emotionless yet maliciously playful command made Kuro, the former "Hundred Plans" pirate captain who had slaughtered countless people across the seas, shudder involuntarily.
He looked at the defeated remnants of the Krieg Pirates sprawled across the ground, their fighting spirit utterly gone, limp like lambs awaiting slaughter.
Especially Don Krieg, the East Blue overlord whose Golden Armor had been crushed beneath a single foot. His eyes were vacant as he kept muttering, "Impossible."
Kuro forced an impeccably professional, textbook butler's smile onto his face and habitually adjusted the new reflective glasses on the bridge of his nose.
"At once, Boss."
Kuro's tone was exceedingly respectful, even carrying a trace of flattery.
He did not dare slack off in the slightest.
What a joke. He had heard all about that red-nosed Buggy's miserable experience on Mine Island, which Enel broadcast over the Den Den Mushi every day as though telling a lively joke.
"If you can't mine ten tons of coal a day, dinner is the Ten Thousand Volts: Electrotherapy set meal."
Kuro would rather die than experience such deranged employee benefits even once!
He swiftly pulled several thick coils of rope from his clothes and, like tying up piglets, expertly and brutally bound those former fellow pirates one after another.
"Move faster. Don't dirty the restaurant's deck."
Lei En gave the foul-smelling pirates a disgusted glance and turned to head back inside the restaurant, intending to ask Sanji for another post-meal dessert.
Just as Kuro kicked the last pirate into the pile and prepared to report back to Lei En—
Suddenly!
An incomparably sharp, utterly frigid, terrifying sword aura that seemed capable of freezing one's soul instantly swept over from the calm horizon without warning!
That sword aura was so pure, so tyrannical!
It was not deliberately unleashed, yet it resembled an invisible storm that instantly engulfed the entire Baratie!
In that instant.
Everyone in the restaurant, whether they knew swordsmanship or not, whether they were pirates or not, felt at the same time as if an invisible peerless blade had been placed against their throats, ready to slit them at any moment!
The surrounding air seemed to have been sucked dry by that sword aura, making even breathing incredibly difficult!
"W-What kind of monstrous presence is that?!"
Sanji, who had been peeking out from the kitchen, went pale at once. The cigarette between his lips fell straight to the floor as his jaw trembled violently.
Zeff's right leg, which Lei En had just restored through a miracle, instinctively tensed every muscle.
His old eyes, which had weathered countless storms on the Grand Line, widened abruptly, and an unprecedentedly solemn expression of facing a great enemy appeared on his face.
"What terrifying sword aura... This is absolutely not a level that should exist in a peaceful sea like the East Blue! Did some monster from the New World come here?!"
Under everyone's horrified gazes, they all turned toward the direction from which the sword aura had come.
On the previously calm, azure sea in the distance, an intensely dazzling green light suddenly burst forth without warning, so bright it even stung their retinas!
"Slash—!!!"
Accompanied by a piercing boom that seemed ready to tear apart the sky!
A massive green slash hundreds of meters long, shaped like a perfect crescent and seemingly capable of splitting the entire world in two, tore through wave after wave with an unstoppable, destructive fury as it came screaming toward them!
That slash was not aimed at the Baratie.
It was aimed at the enormous flagship of the Krieg Pirates Grand Fleet, docked beside the Baratie—though battered and broken, it was still massive!
"Boom—!!!"
Before everyone's utterly terrified eyes, so stunned that they forgot even to breathe.
The enormous three-masted sailing ship was cut apart the instant it touched that green slash, like butter sliced by a red-hot knife in the heat of summer!
There was no violent explosion.
Only the impossibly smooth, clean sound of metal and wood splitting apart!
The entire massive pirate ship was precisely cleaved in two from bow to stern by that unbelievable slash!
The broken main mast and enormous hull let out grating groans as they slowly collapsed to either side. In the end, they raised two huge splashes and sank completely into the bottomless sea!
One strike!
Just that casually delivered strike had completely sunk a gigantic pirate ship capable of carrying hundreds of people!
What kind of terrifying, unreasonable destructive power was that?!
"Gulp."
Someone in the restaurant swallowed with difficulty. The faint sound seemed exceptionally clear amid the deathly silence.
Under the blank stares of the crowd, as though they were witnessing divine punishment descending from the gods.
A small boat with an extremely bizarre design slowly emerged from the sea mist cleaved apart by the slash in the distance. It looked like an open coffin floating across the sea.
Two eerie green candles burned at the boat's bow and stern, looking especially eye-catching and chilling against the daytime sea.
And seated quietly upon that little boat was a man.
He wore a burgundy patterned shirt, open across his chest.
Strapped to his back was an extravagantly shaped black blade resembling a gigantic cross.
Most impossible to look directly at were his sharp hawk-like amber eyes, which seemed able to pierce through every falsehood in the world.
The world's greatest swordsman.
One of the Shichibukai.
Dracule Mihawk, known as "Hawkeye"!
The reason he had appeared in the East Blue, hailed as the weakest sea, was simply because he had grown too bored on the Grand Line. He had heard that Don Krieg, that fool who did not know his own limits, had actually taken his fleet for a trip around the Grand Line, so Mihawk chased him all the way here, hoping to find some amusement to pass the time.
That sword strike just now had merely been a casual swing, meant to wrap up the last bit of entertainment from his boredom.
At this moment.
On the other side of the restaurant's outer deck, a green-haired swordsman who had likewise been drawn out by that incomparably terrifying sword aura gripped the railing tightly, his entire body shaking violently with excitement.
"That's right... It's him! There's no mistake!"
Roronoa Zoro's eyes were bloodshot as he clenched the three famous blades at his waist, the weapons that had accompanied him through countless battles.
Within those beast-like eyes burned a nearly mad, blazing fighting spirit known as ambition!
"I set out to sea... I wandered all over these waters just to find him!"
"The world's greatest swordsman!"
Zoro felt every drop of blood in his body boiling. He could barely wait to draw his swords, charge forward, and challenge the man seated at the pinnacle of the world!
However.
Mihawk, seated on that coffin-like boat, did not even have the slightest interest in giving Zoro a sidelong glance.
There were simply too few swordsmen in this world capable of drawing his attention.
His hawk-sharp, icy gaze casually swept across the deck of the Baratie, as though searching for prey worth making him linger for even a moment.
When his eyes passed over the panicked chefs and guests huddled in the corners, they did not pause in the slightest, as if he were looking at a swarm of harmless ants.
When his eyes swept over the remnants of the Krieg Pirates tied up like dumplings on the ground, unconcealed disdain and boredom flashed through them.
"Seems this so-called East Blue overlord is nothing special after all. He does not even deserve to make me draw my blade..."
Mihawk sighed inwardly and was about to turn his boat around and leave this boring place.
Until...
His gaze passed through the crowded people and beyond the vigilant Zeff and Sanji.
Finally, as though seized by some powerful magnet, it locked firmly onto the black-haired young man sitting boldly in a chair, leisurely picking his teeth with a toothpick.
In that instant.
Time seemed to stop in Mihawk's eyes.
This man, who remained unruffled even if Mount Tai collapsed before him, had his eternally unchanged icy expression twitch violently for once!
An expression that could only be described as extraordinarily vivid, extraordinarily human, and even somewhat comical appeared on the world's greatest swordsman's face without warning!
First came astonishment.
As though he had seen something utterly unreasonable.
Then came shock.
His pupils suddenly shrank to the size of needlepoints.
Finally.
There was utter disbelief and horror, as though he had seen a ghost—or perhaps his deepest nightmare!
"Whoosh!"
Mihawk abruptly rose from the low stool!
His movement was too violent, too abrupt.
Even his right hand, which held a sword year-round and was steady as a rock, along with Yoru, the Supreme Grade Blade symbolizing the world's strongest power that he held in that hand, began trembling faintly beyond his control!
His knife-sharp amber eyes stared fixedly at the tooth-picking youth.
That face, slightly more mature than in his memories yet still as punchable as ever...
That terrifying aura, desperately restrained yet still enough to make his heart palpitate...
Almost ten years had passed!
But the humiliation and oppressive terror engraved deep into his soul—the childhood nightmare of being utterly crushed by a brat's absolute strength on the beach of Shimotsuki Village, when even Shanks had been kicked flying—was something he would never forget for the rest of his life, not even in death!
"H-How is this possible?!"
Mihawk roared wildly in his heart.
The composure and calm he took such pride in completely crumbled the instant he saw that youth!
"L-Lei En?!"
Mihawk cried out in shock!
That cry was not only filled with unprecedented shock and horror, but also...
Everyone present, including Zeff, Sanji, Kuro, and even Zoro, who had been eager to fight.
Could hear it clearly and incredulously in the world's greatest swordsman's slightly trembling voice—
Fear?!
"Y-You monster!!"
Mihawk pointed at Lei En, who was sitting there so leisurely. His normally aloof and proud face was twisted by extreme shock.
He practically shouted as he stammered out the question in everyone's hearts.
"How could a monster of your level appear in a beginner sea like the East Blue?!"
Before you continue