Leo almost laughed, but he kept a straight face and held it in.
He was a little like some kind of *** officer, holding a baton and whacking anyone whose posture was incorrect. He did not hold back; he struck them hard for real, and everyone who got hit shuddered violently.
They flew into a rage and wanted to fight back, but when they saw the snake-like hair beside Leo, they obediently and quietly began standing as Leo demanded.
Some of them thought, It's just standing around. What's there to be afraid of?
Ten minutes later, every one of them wanted to slap themselves a few times. How had this man come up with such a torturous method? He was practically a devil.
"Isn't it just standing? Why are they suffering this much?" Ran had snakes wrapped around her body and a puzzled expression on her face as she asked Leo, who happened to be passing by on an inspection.
"If you want to know, try it yourself." Leo chuckled, not telling her the reason directly and maliciously urging Ran to give it a try.
Seeing the wicked grin on his face, Ran refused to accept it. She was one of the Amazon warrior women—how could she possibly fail at something as simple as standing?
She indignantly moved away from the railing she had been leaning against. After just five minutes, she had already experienced the sailors' suffering for herself.
"Violence can make you submit, but only discipline can make you strong." Leo did not pay Ran any further attention.
Instead, he lightly tapped his palm with the baton as he patrolled through the ranks.
Fifteen minutes under the blazing sun had already left every one of them drenched in sweat.
If they had not been in the Calm Belt, where even sizable waves were rare, they would not have been able to stand in such neat formation.
Now, Leo walked through the orderly ranks and asked, "Do you know why I made you line up?"
Isn't it because you want to torture us?
The pirates grumbled with complaints in their hearts, but they did not dare say much.
"Report!" Barbaro shouted. This was a rule Leo had set: no matter who wanted to speak, they had to receive his permission.
He had made up his mind to impose modern military concepts on them. The army was a great furnace that forged steel through countless trials. Either they became steel or they turned to slag—no one was getting away.
High-pressure methods and violence were not ideal, but for this group of pirates, they were indeed the most practical approach.
"Speak!" Leo kept a stern face and did not go easy on Barbaro just because it was him.
"To train our physical strength." Barbaro stepped forward and shouted loudly.
"Correct!" Leo nodded, and Barbaro stepped back into the ranks.
"Deep within the Grand Line, there is an advanced combat technique called Haki. It requires a strong body and a resolute spirit to learn, and you pieces of trash are still a hundred thousand miles away from Haki!"
Did I just insult myself too? Forget it, whatever.
"And Sandersonia's hair is an advanced application of this kind of Haki. (Not really. Not just anyone could learn something like Life Return.)" Sandersonia's hair had remained by Leo's side the whole time.
Her hair nearly reached her calves. Though she stood four meters tall, hair that long was not unusual. What was strange was that as Leo moved through the crowd, her hair seemed endlessly long, following his footsteps and accompanying him as though it were a living creature while he inspected the ranks.
In truth, it only looked so effortless because she had developed an advanced application of her Devil Fruit and combined it with Haki.
"The Armament Haki that can make your bodies incomparably hard, and the Observation Haki that can clearly hear the location of an enemy's attack, are both things far beyond your reach."
"Report!" someone called out loudly.
Leo focused his gaze and saw that it was Todlin.
"Speak!"
"Then what is the point of us training our bodies like this?" He shot Leo a sidelong glance, having no favorable impression whatsoever of the man who had defeated him. He was not some supporting character in a story who would immediately bow in submission, nor did he think there was anything special about this lucky man who had latched onto the Kuja Pirates.
This was the mentality of "I could do it too." Since he thought that way, he found Leo's act of borrowing others' power even more unpleasant. On top of that, Leo was "meaninglessly" torturing them, which made him even more annoyed.
Though he could not resist, he was quite willing to gain a little verbal advantage and expose Leo's hypocrisy.
His words represented the thoughts of a large portion of the crew.
Forget high-level stuff like Haki—even if they trained like this for a lifetime, they probably still would not be able to defeat their captain, William.
And there was no doubt that their captain did not know Haki.
"You're right. This amount of training is indeed very low-intensity, and it has absolutely nothing to do with Haki."
Leo's words filled every pirate's face with anger. Fortunately, after fifteen minutes, he had already corrected them so thoroughly that they did not dare interrupt or speak out of turn.
"But you idiots, use those little brains of yours that haven't moved in decades and think carefully: with this formation, and one musket per person, just how much destructive power can you unleash?"
"Your individual strength is weak. Even with swords in hand, it takes the strength of several hundred of you just to barely contend with a Devil Fruit user. But with this formation, even your captain William would not be able to withstand a volley from you."
The entire ship fell silent. Other than the cries of the seagulls following the ship, everyone's breathing slowed. Sweat trickled slowly down from their temples, beards, and cheeks.
Sweating alongside them was their captain, William.
They were a dirt-poor pirate crew and had never imagined a situation where everyone could have a musket. In truth, that was indeed the case. Other than "Gang" Capone, most pirates in One Piece had severely inadequate firepower. When the firepower was sufficient, even a powerful Mink Tribe fighter like Borsalino could be shot dead on the spot, and most pirates with bounties below one hundred million simply could not withstand a concentrated musket volley.
And so, Leo's reason for making them practice formations was obvious.
That was right. The secret weapon Leo had prepared for them was a tactic born in the Age of Sail to compensate for the poor accuracy of muskets.
Three-stage firing.
This firing method naturally relied on the formation and discipline of the entire army. As long as they maintained their formation, they would practically remain invincible during boarding battles.
PS: Let's talk about yesterday's market-watching. The S&P 500 triggered a circuit breaker right at the opening. It dropped more than 8% in the first thirty minutes, directly triggering a fifteen-minute trading halt. After those fifteen minutes, it kept falling. It seemed like state capital stepped in, and then it became a prolonged tug-of-war. It fell 1,880 points before being dragged back and forth around 1,300. But after midnight, at 3 p.m. American time, the last bit of state funding ran out, and it plunged wildly from 1,300 to 2,016—a single-day drop of 2,016 points. Of course, it was not just America; every country except China was falling. The most direct result was that China's stock market surged today. Large amounts of international speculative capital cut their losses and fled to avoid risk, then rushed straight into the Chinese stock market... So satisfying~
PS1: But as America's lifeblood, the stock market actually rebounded sharply today after falling like that. A rotten ship still has three pounds of nails. They cannot be brought down in one blow. The miracle of '91 I had hoped for did not happen, but we still witnessed history. Perhaps this might be the beginning. People in my line of work are always more sensitive to the course of history, and yesterday absolutely counted as a day that would go down in history.
PS2: There's one more update. I'm still writing it.
Before you continue