"Boss, how about this pose?" Chiu Chiu struck a pose at the bow, chest raised and head held high, wings spread as though about to soar into the sky, gazing up at the heavens.
Mark waved the little axe in his hand. "Sure, that's a great pose!"
"Then make sure you carve me extra handsome, Boss!"
"No problem..."
Mark held a wooden board in his hands. Carved upon it was a Golden Eagle about to take flight, its gaze exceptionally sharp and lifelike.
While sailing across the sea, after practicing Silent Step and Mountain-Splitting Axe, Mark would pass the time by carving.
After learning that her captain possessed such a skill, Chiu Chiu had constantly pestered Mark to carve an image of her spreading her wings and soaring. Today, her wish had finally come true.
"Eh, Boss, there are so many ships ahead..." Chiu Chiu spotted a large group of vessels sailing in their direction from the bow.
Hearing this, Mark stopped carving and walked to the bow, looking in the direction Chiu Chiu pointed.
There were... more than a dozen large ships sailing toward them.
The lead vessel was enormous, a relatively large medium-sized ship, roughly half again as large as the Moss.
A huge pirate flag hung from its rail.
It bore the standard skull design, except the two red hourglasses on either side of the flag were especially conspicuous.
"It's the Krieg Pirates!!!" Mark said, narrowing his eyes.
Judging from their course, they seemed to be coming straight for him...
"Chief Krieg, your guess was right. This Mark really did head toward Loguetown."
Gin stood beside the armored Krieg and spoke admiringly.
Krieg grinned at his words. "For conceited newcomers like him, he must think he's already conquered the East Blue and is preparing to venture into the Grand Line. That's why we laid an ambush on this route to Loguetown. Sooner or later, we were bound to catch him."
He looked at the pirate ship not far across the sea, a bloodthirsty smile appearing on his face.
"A rookie with a seventy-million-Beli bounty? Has the World Government gone blind?"
As a pirate commodore commanding a massive fleet of thousands, his bounty was only a little over twenty million.
A sixteen-year-old rookie had received a sixty-million bounty the moment he set sail. Wasn't that practically saying that Krieg was far inferior to him? How could a man known as the pirate commodore possibly tolerate that?
The two pirate ships drew closer and closer, and Krieg's gaze settled on Mark.
"Krieg! Did you come looking for me specifically?" Mark stood at the bow and shouted at Krieg, who was staring back at him from afar.
No matter how foolish Mark was, he could tell that the other side had come straight for him.
"Mark, of the Moss Pirates?"
Krieg snorted.
"I came today to tell those Marines that a rookie like you doesn't deserve a seventy-million bounty. In the East Blue, only I, Krieg, deserve such a high bounty."
Krieg had originally planned to destroy a Marine branch, but the Marine branch had not been as simple as he expected.
After one battle, he had lost quite a few men, yet the Marine branch had not been destroyed. Both sides had suffered considerable losses.
As a man with no bottom line, Krieg's schemes could not accomplish much in such a direct confrontation. The East Blue Marines knew him too well.
In the end, he could only retreat in defeat. But he refused to believe that anyone in the East Blue could be stronger than him, so he came directly for Mark.
Still, to be safe, he had stocked his entire fleet with an enormous supply of weapons and ammunition.
"What a childish idea!" Mark sneered. This Krieg had actually come to cause trouble for him over such a simple reason.
Was he... not afraid of death?
The two pirate ships drew ever closer. Krieg ordered Gin, "Fire at full force! Blast that bastard into scraps!"
"Yes, Chief Krieg!" Gin turned and entered the cabin.
Krieg looked back. There were more than a dozen pirate ships of all sizes following behind his own vessel. A cold smile appeared on his face. With so many pirate ships concentrating their firepower... Mark would surely die without even a corpse left behind.
A moment later...
BOOM!
Cannons roared one after another. After more than a dozen Krieg pirate ships surrounded the Moss, their cannons fired in unison, black cannonballs hurtling toward the Moss.
"Chiu Chiu, Daisy... stop those cannonballs!"
Mark shouted, pulling the Mountain-Splitting Axe from his back. Veins bulged across his arms as the axe blade swept like the wind. With slashes to either side, cannonballs fell into the sea one after another.
Daisy drew the flintlock pistol at her waist and fired at the incoming cannonballs. Her marksmanship was quite good; the cannonballs exploded directly in midair after being struck by her shots.
Chiu Chiu's method was even simpler and more brutal. Golden lightning crackled around her body as she flew through the air. Her wings sliced through the cannonballs, and under the force of the electricity, clusters of cannonballs exploded instantly.
At this moment...
The advantage of having numbers became apparent.
The Krieg Pirates had many people. Cannonballs kept firing and falling in waves, leaving Mark and the other two too busy destroying them to launch a timely counterattack.
But having fewer people had its advantages as well. After Mark slashed apart three cannonballs with a backhand swing, black energy appeared around his right hand. He aimed it at the incoming cannonballs!
"Dark Water!!!"
Waves of cannonballs were pulled toward Mark.
At that moment, Mark stuck the Mountain-Splitting Axe behind his back. Black mist began to rise from his left hand as well, aimed at Krieg's pirate ship. A strange gravitational force erupted from Mark's left hand.
Attraction Force—a power Mark had developed by using himself as a conduit and other objects as the primary target.
It was an ability inspired by Luffy's Gum-Gum Fruit, though it manifested differently.
In the anime, Luffy was often knocked off his ship, then relied on the inhuman elasticity of rubber to grab the vessel from far away and fly back onto the pirate ship.
Mark had borrowed that idea and developed this power through the gravitational force of the Dark-Dark Fruit.
It allowed huge objects to serve as targets, letting him use suction to rapidly close the distance to them. On the sea, this power was extremely important.
The distance between them was currently a little over two hundred meters, which was limited.
But Krieg's pirate ship was now conveniently within two hundred meters of him.
As this Attraction Force appeared, Mark strangely rose into the air, then flew rapidly toward Krieg's pirate ship.
Krieg stared blankly at Mark flying toward him at high speed. When he saw the massive number of explosives cradled in Mark's right hand, he became even more bewildered.
It was not just him. Even the pirates around him were somewhat dumbfounded.
"Quick! Shoot the bastard down!"
Although he had no idea why Mark had suddenly begun flying, if the explosives in his right hand detonated, they would definitely inflict massive damage on his pirate ship.
Krieg raised both arms, and combination firearms emerged from his armor.
Under Krieg's command, the pirates around him immediately snapped out of it, pulled out their guns, and pulled the triggers at Mark!