Capture the Governor Alive

The desert night wind carried a biting chill, making the weak campfire flicker in and out.

Within the ruins of a dried-up oasis, the atmosphere had sunk into a suffocating silence. Farl and over a dozen rebels gripped their weapons tightly, their expressions conflicted as they watched the man in the black trench coat before them.

"Benefactor... no, Lord Rain." Farl swallowed hard, his voice trembling. "Our goal is to overthrow the corrupt royal family and build a new nation where everyone can survive. If... if we assassinate those officials without a trial, then what makes us different from those brutal pirates? The people will see us as terrorists!"

"We can't kill them!" another young rebel chimed in, his eyes red. "Those officials may be greedy, and they may sell water at outrageous prices, but they haven't actually killed anyone. Their crimes don't warrant death!"

Rain could not help laughing when he heard that.

"They don't deserve death because they haven't killed anyone directly?" Rain rose to his feet and slowly walked up to the young rebel, looking down at him. "Your political naivety is more hopeless than this desert."

Rain raised a hand and pointed at the barren land outside the oasis, half-buried beneath windblown sand.

"When an official cuts off the entire city's drinking water, locks it away in his private reservoirs, and watches civilians die of thirst because they cannot afford water, he has already brought down the butcher's blade! The monopoly of wealth and resources is the cruelest kind of massacre—the kind that sheds no blood!"

Rain turned, his dark eyes locking onto Farl.

"I don't need you to do it. I don't even need you to acknowledge it. Keep playing the righteous 'National Salvation Army' and drawing the garrison's attention. All I need is your intelligence. In exchange, I'll send every parasite sucking your blood from atop your necks straight to hell. And I'll take all the infamy in the name of a bounty hunter."

"Now tell me your answer. Cooperate, or I'll find someone else."

Farl's entire body shook violently. Rain's words had mercilessly torn apart the reality they had spent so long avoiding. He remembered his sister, who had died from lack of water, and the fellow villagers who had become dried corpses by the roadside. The last trace of hesitation in his eyes was finally crushed by hatred and reason.

"Let's do it!"

Farl abruptly raised his head, his eyes bloodshot. He pulled a parchment map from his clothes and offered it to Rain with both hands.

"Fifty kilometers east of here lies a large oasis city called Golden Sands. Its governor is Barman. He controls the city's only two deep wells, hoards eighty percent of its water resources, and sells a bowl of water for the outrageous price of ten thousand Beli. And..." Farl gritted his teeth. "We found out that he secretly gives the wealth he squeezes from the people to Baroque Works as protection money. To protect him, Baroque Works even stationed two senior agents in his mansion permanently!"

"Barman. And Baroque Works agents." Rain accepted the map, glanced at the red marker, and tucked it into his coat.

"Gather your forces. Prepare to take control of Golden Sands City's water supply."

Rain turned away, his black trench coat snapping in the night wind. Gray-black stone dust began to seep from the edges of his body.

"By dawn, Golden Sands City will no longer have a governor."

The instant his words fell, Rain's entire body exploded with a bang into a raging sandstorm and vanished into the dark desert.

Late at night, Golden Sands City.

Unlike Alabasta's other drought-stricken towns, bleak as ghost realms, Golden Sands City's inner district remained brightly lit at this hour, like a dazzling pearl in the desert.

Yet the city's prosperity was grotesquely distorted.

Rain stood atop Golden Sands City's towering stone walls. Looking down, he saw how a single high wall had brutally divided the city into two separate worlds.

The outer district was an endless slum. The streets reeked of rotting corpses, and barely clothed civilians lay beside dried-up ditches like dead wood. Even at night, intermittent cries of despair could be heard.

Beyond the wall, inside Governor Barman's enormous mansion in the inner district, melodious music drifted through the air. Massive crystal chandeliers lit the courtyard as brightly as day, and at its center stood an extravagant fountain spraying clear groundwater!

In this country, where every drop of water was worth its weight in gold, some were dying of thirst while others used fountains as decorative toys.

Rain did not enter through the city gate. He placed a hand on the granite wall beneath his feet.

Like a drop of water falling into the sea, Rain's lean body merged seamlessly into the solid stone wall. He moved swiftly through the rock, his senses sweeping across the entire mansion.

The drowsy security guards outside, holding muskets, might as well have been nonexistent in his eyes.

On the third floor of the main building, inside an extravagantly luxurious hall.

Governor Barman, a man so fat his neck was nearly invisible, lounged lazily on a velvet sofa. He held a glass of premium red wine chilled with ice, while the table before him was piled with gold, silver, jewels, and property deeds seized from civilians.

On either side of the sofa sat a man and a woman.

The man wore an afro and a floral shirt printed with the number "10." The woman wore revealing clothes and casually played with several throwing knives coated in lethal poison.

Senior Baroque Works agents, Mr. 10 and Miss Tuesday.

"Gentlemen, I've prepared this month's share." Barman smiled fawningly and pointed to several large chests on the table. "As long as Baroque Works protects me, those damned rebels won't set foot in Golden Sands City."

"At least you know your place, fat pig." Mr. 10 casually grabbed a handful of gold coins and weighed them in his hand. "Relax. With me here, even if the rebel leader Koza comes himself, I'll turn him into a sieve."

Crack.

The instant Mr. 10 finished speaking, the heavy double doors of solid wood suddenly emitted a teeth-grinding groan of twisting wood from within.

"Who's there?" Miss Tuesday reacted instantly. The poisoned throwing knives in her hand flew out at once, becoming several cold flashes shooting toward the doors.

Bang!

The solid wooden doors, sturdy enough to withstand musket fire, were blasted apart by terrifying force along with their frames and the surrounding stone wall, reduced to fragments that flew everywhere!

Clang, clang, clang—

Miss Tuesday's prized poisoned throwing knives struck something with crisp impacts the instant they entered the dust cloud, then fell uselessly to the floor. Their tips had been completely blunted!

As the dust settled, a cold-eyed young man in a black trench coat stepped slowly into the hall over the rubble.

His right hand remained clenched in a fist. His entire arm had turned into hard gray-white rock, and its surface was covered by an incredibly dense layer of Obsidian Armor that glinted with a cold, sinister sheen.

"Your defenses are too lax." Rain lowered his arm and swept his gaze over the three people in the hall. "Drinking red wine with wealth wrung from the people. Looks like I found the right place."

"Who are you? Where are the guards outside?" Barman's fat body trembled violently in fear, and the wineglass in his hand fell to the floor and shattered.

"Those trash? They're probably still dozing off." Rain walked step by step toward the middle of the hall.

"Bastard! You dare cause trouble on my turf!" Mr. 10 flew into a rage. As a Baroque Works agent, he had never been ignored like this. He yanked two huge short-barreled muskets from his waist and pulled the triggers at Rain without hesitation.

Bang bang bang bang!

The bullets screamed through the air. But before Rain, this level of physical attack was not even worthy of making him dodge.

Rain did not so much as raise an eyelid. The bullets tore through the trench coat over his chest, only to bounce away with dull thuds.

"H-How is this possible? A monster?!" The arrogance on Mr. 10's face was instantly replaced by terror.

"That's all you've got, and you dare collect protection money?"

Rain stomped his right foot down.

Boom!

The hall's floor, paved with top-grade marble, instantly became a raging wave of stone. A sharp stone spike burst without warning from beneath Mr. 10's feet, piercing straight through his right leg with lightning speed and pinning him in midair!

"Arghhh! My leg!" Mr. 10 let out a shrill scream as his muskets dropped to the floor.

"A Devil Fruit user?" Miss Tuesday's face went pale with fright. She had just turned to leap through a window and escape, but Rain moved faster.

Rain raised his left hand and spread his fingers. Stone blocks from the ceiling instantly peeled away, turning into two enormous rocky hands that slammed Mr. 10 and Miss Tuesday against the wall. They locked their limbs in place, embedding them into the stone wall and leaving them unable to move.

In just one exchange, the two Baroque agents who stood so high above ordinary people were instantly defeated by Rain, hung from the wall like dead dogs.

"Y-You can't kill me! I'll give you however much money you want! I'll give you the key to my treasury!" Governor Barman had been scared so badly that he wet himself. A foul stench spread through the hall as he scrambled into the corner behind the sofa, desperately shoving the gold, silver, and jewels on the table toward Rain.

Rain walked up to Barman and looked down at the bloated dictator.

"Of course I'll take the money. That's my reward as a bounty hunter."

Rain gently placed a hand on Barman's flabby shoulder, his voice cold.

"But your life doesn't belong to me."

As Rain's power flowed into him, Barman discovered in horror that everything below his waist, including his legs and feet, had instantly gone numb and become encased in a massive square granite base.

"No... no... my legs!" Barman screamed desperately, trying to claw at his lower body, but the icy sensation of stone utterly shattered his mental defenses.

"Save your strength, fatty."

Rain grabbed Barman by the hair and dragged his heavy body toward the blasted-open doorway as though dragging a massive stone pedestal.

"Tonight's rain needs the scent of blood as an offering. Come on. We're going to the square in the city center."

Rain's dark eyes reflected the faint lights of the slums outside Golden Sands City.

"To broadcast a public execution for all those you made die of thirst."