Second Victory

Leo coughed twice, and the pirates who had been celebrating fell silent at an astonishing speed.

Apparently, the past fifteen days of training had practically conditioned them. They no longer needed Leo to roar at them before they quieted down and obeyed his orders.

"Did I announce that you were dismissed?! After the battle, everyone will collect ten lashes!" Leo's words made the silent deck even quieter. In an instant, they were pulled from the excitement of victory back into reality. A chill ran down their backs; they knew those ten lashes would not be easy to endure.

Even so, their faces still brimmed with excitement and delight. Under the stimulus of victory, that intoxicating potion, punishment and pain were hardly worth mentioning.

They had defeated the Marines and proved themselves. It was as if they had shed their identities as mere grunts and been reborn as elites.

"Now, the first five rows will tie up those Marines. Everyone behind them will start treating the wounded! Prepare the medical supplies!" Leo ordered loudly and decisively.

"Yes!" The pirates swept away their previous excitement and shouted in response.

After they dispersed, only a small portion of them went to bind the Marines. In truth, however, the Marines' morale had already fallen to rock bottom. It was impressive if even one out of ten was willing to pick up a weapon and fight. Most of the rest had been scared out of their wits and no longer had the strength to resist.

This was the inevitable outcome for soldiers in the traditional feudal age of cold weapons. Although the Marines now possessed the beginnings of a modern navy, as Leo had said, their ideals were inherently conflicted. They had the very modern desire to protect ordinary civilians, yet local kings and nobles repeatedly stifled and destroyed that desire.

They considered themselves righteous, yet when hunting pirates, they had no choice but to deny their own justice again and again.

People like Fujitora, Aokiji, and Vice Admiral Sauro held high positions while harboring doubts. Further down the ranks, Smoker, Koby, and many others also doubted the Marines' justice.

Leo believed that the lower one went in the ranks, the more people doubted that justice.

Because the higher one climbed, the darker the deeds one had to do, the more ruthless one's hands had to become, and the more one had to act on things one would never normally even consider. Many people could not take that step. Even if they had ability and combat strength, they remained unable to advance.

The most typical example was undoubtedly Smoker.

He had been so lost between justice and the Marines' actions that he had been sent down to a small town in East Blue to clear his head.

There were many, many people in the Marines like Smoker...

Leo believed that most Marines held the same justice in their hearts as he did.

But before defeating them, he had never imagined he could persuade them, because his understanding of the One Piece World was very clear.

Before you defeated someone, they would not listen to a word you said.

At their core, this was not a conflict of ideals, but a struggle over positions and lives. Only the victor had the right to lecture the loser, while the loser had no right to say anything at all.

That was the order of the pirate world.

Just like how, after Luffy defeated Crocodile, Crocodile would at least consider whatever Luffy said during the Marineford War.

That was using virtue—power—to convince people. The rule of the pirate world.

"Masked, come help." Iska was naturally rather special. Ace carried her toward Masked. Among so many people, Masked's medical skills were clearly the best, so it was only natural for him to treat Iska.

The other Marines did not receive such favorable treatment.

Even though the pirates prepared medical supplies and dragged some of them aside to bandage them, many still bled to death.

Others had already had their internal organs or heads shattered by lead bullets and could not possibly be saved.

For the Marines who could still survive, penetrating wounds were manageable. The real trouble was with those whose lead bullets remained lodged inside their bodies.

Although Leo had taught them how to operate, how could they dare? Shooting someone or cutting them down was one thing; cutting open the bodies of people who could no longer resist was another.

No matter what, it was still far too terrifying for them.

What the pirates could do was follow the Battlefield First Aid Manual Leo had compiled: use clean strips of cloth to bind the person's blood vessels, seal the wound, replace the cloth every few hours, loosen the binding to restore circulation, and then repeat the process.

Though the procedure seemed simple, it could save quite a few lives on the battlefield.

Although the pirates had complete faith in Leo's words, they still felt confused and doubtful about this. Could something so simple really pull someone back from the brink of death?

Simple as it looked, this was the lesson paid for by countless deaths during Earth's First and Second World Wars. Combined with the absurdly strong physical constitutions of humans in One Piece, as long as the bleeding was stopped in time, not too many people should die afterward... probably.

Leo had no confidence in this, but he had to pretend that he did. No matter what, it had to be far better than their survival rate with no treatment at all.

As for those who had been shot in the body...

Leo had no choice but to do it himself.

However, as long as they were conscious, he would ask, "There's a chance you'll die if I operate, but if I don't, this leg will have to be amputated." Lead bullet toxicity was no simple matter. Once lodged in the body, it would soon kill a person. Leaving it in meant certain death as well. The only way to remove it now was amputation; as for lead bullets lodged in the torso, there was truly no solution at all.

Most Marines chose amputation. Just imagining the other side's knife cutting open their bodies made their scalps tingle. It was better to amputate directly.

The Marine military doctors could perform amputations themselves. They had no need for Leo.

The truly few people who had been shot in the torso could only choose to let Leo cut open their bodies and remove the lead bullets.

During this operation, everyone watched from beginning to end, including the prisoners. It could not be called a surgical environment at all, but when Leo dug out several lead bullets, thunderous applause erupted from everyone, as if they had achieved another victory.

Whether that Marine could survive or not, they had witnessed the birth of a miracle.

That was, a person would not die simply because their body had been cut open. Only damage to the internal organs could possibly kill them!

Leo tossed several blood-soaked strips of cloth onto the deck, then began sewing them shut with needle and thread.

No matter what, he had done his best...

Without absorbent cotton or hemostats, in this extremely primitive operation, he had avoided major blood vessels and vital areas and removed the lead bullets. Whether they could survive would ultimately depend on just how strong the vitality of people in this world truly was...

P.S.: Found it...