Slaughter

Night gradually fell. Around ten o'clock, Werther checked his swords, straightened his clothes, and the three of them headed out.

Walking through the streets at night, even though it was already ten o'clock, this commercially developed city remained brightly lit. Some drunken pedestrians staggered home with help from others.

Werther was excited. This night, this bustling city, and the people before him.

Other people might come out at night to have fun, drink, and relax. But he was going out to kill people—many people. One of them was even an innocent, beautiful woman. It was truly irresistible.

Before long, he arrived at the entrance of the target manor. His senior brother and senior sister had already vanished somewhere, leaving only him standing before the guards at the gate.

"Good evening, gentlemen. So, please die." After saying those strange words, Werther crossed his arms, drew both swords, activated Lightning Mode, and charged straight at the gate guards.

Before the two guards at the entrance could react, several spots on their bodies first went numb, then cold, and finally they lost consciousness.

With several slashes, Werther chopped the guards into pieces. Blood sprayed everywhere, and organs littered the ground.

Yet Werther did not feel that anything was wrong. He only felt that killing people was no different from killing wild beasts. They merely said some meaningless things before dying.

After Werther chopped the two guards into pieces, a younger guard farther away was already scared stiff. When had he ever seen such a brutal sight? He did not even shout about enemies or raise the alarm. Instead, he turned and ran, screaming, "Help!"

This young man had fairly good nerves. An ordinary person might already have collapsed to the ground in terror.

The young man's shout also served as a warning, and a large number of guards rushed out from within the manor.

Werther held a sword in each hand, the blades hanging naturally at his sides. Looking at the crowd charging toward him, he grinned soundlessly before rushing forward.

After charging into the crowd, Werther first shattered a middle-aged man with several slashes. Then he used one sword to block a blade chopping toward him. When the weapons collided, sparks burst forth. Werther's sword was like a cutting saw, slicing through the enemy's blade and then casually cutting the enemy diagonally into two.

He continued charging through the enemies, chopping them apart one after another. Gradually, Werther realized that no one remained around him. There were only severed limbs all over the ground, along with two men who had been cut in half at the waist, wailing as they slowly crawled away.

The guards in the distance looked at Werther with eyes full of fear and hatred, but they no longer had the courage to step forward. Some of the more timid ones had already wet their pants, giving off an unpleasant smell. But the dark night and the blood stench filling the entire manor covered it up.

Just as Werther was about to slaughter those guards as well, a sense of danger came from his side. It was a feeling he had gained only after surviving countless brushes with death, one of the foundations of Observation Haki.

He immediately leaped backward, and an incomparably fast bullet flew past before his eyes.

"You all stand back. I'll handle this guy, but you'll have to pay me more afterward. He's too strong," said a young man in his twenties.

The young man had short ash-white hair and stood over two meters tall. He wore a leather jacket and pants covered in holsters. Both legs were filled with holsters from above the knees all the way to his waist, each holding a pistol. What drew the most attention, however, was the enormous wooden box on his back. It was half a meter wide and a meter tall, and no one knew what was inside.

This young man had fired the shot just now. Werther had seen guns from the pirate world before, and their bullets were not particularly fast. Yet the bullets fired by this young man were incredibly swift.

Looking carefully at the man's guns, they differed from the ordinary flintlock pistols of the pirate world. Their barrels were longer, and the place where gunpowder was loaded produced a greater amount of flame.

Was he sacrificing the guns themselves in exchange for bullet power? After one shot, the pistols were basically ruined.

After roughly assessing his opponent, Werther felt that this man was quite strong, so he no longer underestimated him. He charged forward, intending to close the distance.

Before he had even taken two steps closer, the young man fired again. He drew two guns from his legs, fired them, threw them away, and kept drawing more guns.

Werther sensed the bullets flying toward him. If he only dodged, he could avoid them, but then he would lose his chance to get closer. So, relying on his reflexes and swordsmanship, he slashed the bullets directly in half, making them lose their trajectory. He absolutely could not let the other side widen the distance.

In less than a minute, the young man had used up all the guns on his legs. But he did not panic. Instead, he slapped a mechanism on the wooden box behind him, and more than a dozen pistols identical to those on his legs sprang out from both sides of the box.

Werther looked at the man before him. That was simply too many guns. Although he could knock away the bullets, he still had to endure their force, and he was not feeling too good now. He could not drag this out any longer.

He directly pushed Lightning Mode to its maximum, both swords pointing straight at the ground.

Seeing Werther's stance, the young man felt his scalp tingle for no apparent reason. He slapped another spot on the wooden box, and this time a long-barreled rifle appeared. Above the stock was an iron sphere shaped like a cannonball. It was obvious just how much gunpowder the man had packed into that gun. He placed the wooden box made of special material before himself and propped up the rifle.

Werther paid no attention to the young man's actions and merely spoke in a low voice.

"Secret Sword, Tsubame Gaeshi."

The young man felt as though everything before his eyes had vanished. All his attention focused ahead, where two purple sword energies formed a cross.

Without hesitation, he fired. With a bang, the bullet left the barrel.

The bullet that had always been unstoppable before now failed to stop the sword energy before him. At a speed the young man could not react to, the sword energy first shattered the bullet, then struck the wooden box. The sword energy met great resistance, then cut the wooden box into four pieces before finally hitting the young man's left hand. His left arm was directly shredded. Even the left side of his chest near his hand was carved with several sword wounds that pierced straight through.

Enduring the agonizing pain to keep himself conscious, the young man swiftly ran toward a section of the wall. Once there, he took out a strange device from atop it. It looked like a cannon, except there was actually a seat at the rear of the cannon.

The young man activated the cannon directly. With a thump, no cannonball was fired. Instead, the cannon itself flew away, along with the young man sitting on it.

Werther was speechless. After using his ultimate move, he had a period of weakness, so he generally avoided using Tsubame Gaeshi whenever possible. He had thought that man could not run far, but he had not expected him to have hidden such a device. He really fired off a big move and ran.

"That guy is a real madman. But with injuries like those, I probably cut off both his arm and ribs. He likely won't survive. Even if he does, it wouldn't be bad if he came back for revenge." Werther did not care about the enemy's escape, because he knew that gun users were not particularly strong in the later stages. There were only a few powerful ones.

Still, Werther was very interested in wood that could withstand the cutting of Tsubame Gaeshi. Picking up a chunk of wood the size of two fists, he examined it and found nothing particularly special. He slashed at it, only to find it incredibly hard. Even with Lightning Mode active, he could not cut through it. Could this wood be Adam?

After putting away the chunk of wood, Werther looked toward the manor's three-story building. He saw a middle-aged man watching him from a second-floor window, looking remarkably calm.

With several quick strides, he leaped into the room where the middle-aged man was. He glanced at the man, took out a photograph for comparison, and confirmed it. He was Steve Louis.

"I foresaw that there would come a day like this. I wanted to stop long ago, but Doris disagreed. She had become obsessed with selling slaves and the feeling of casually deciding other people's lives. Agree to one request of mine, and I'll give you all my property." Steve Louis looked at Werther with a face full of despair.

Werther did not waste words with Steve Louis. He directly cut him in two with one slash and walked toward the door. Property? Ridiculous. It was all real estate—what use did he have for it? Was he supposed to sell it? The owner's entire family had just died, and someone was already selling his real estate. The World Government would never sit by and watch. No matter how incompetent it was, it was still the largest organization in the world. As for cash, he could search for it himself. Whether he found any depended on luck. In short, Werther simply disliked the man, so he cut him down.

Werther had only taken two steps when he felt his pant leg tighten. He discovered that Steve Louis, already split into two, was clutching his pant leg tightly and speaking with difficulty.

"Spare my daughter. She knows nothing. She can even become your wife. She's very beautiful. Let her live." After saying that, Steve Louis spat out a mouthful of blood, supported entirely by his will.

"Sorry, the mission I received was to kill your entire family. So please die in peace. Take good care of your daughter below. I won't do it for you." After saying that, he kicked Steve Louis away and headed toward the third floor of the manor.

"You devil! You won't die well! Even if I, Steve Louis, go to hell, I won't let you off! I curse you—one day, you'll end up just like me!" Steve Louis's voice, like that of an evil ghost, came from behind him.

"Hehehe, hehehe. Hate me, you pig. Even if I end up like you, I'll still live gloriously." After saying that, he turned and left, leaving behind Steve Louis, whose eyes no longer held any anxiety.

Before dying, Steve Louis looked at a ring on his hand. His expression was no longer so vicious, but filled with affection and reluctance.

It was a platinum ring set with a green diamond, worn on his thumb. It had been a gift from his daughter for his fiftieth birthday, specially bought on an island famous for producing gemstones. To buy it, his daughter had spent nearly a month at sea. She had even almost been captured by pirates.

Now, his daughter might die as well.