Yamato: Nowhere Near as Good as Brother Lucas

New World, Wano Country, Flower Capital.

Bang!

A dull gunshot tore through the air. A bullet struck Kozuki Oden squarely between the brows, sending up a glaring spray of blood. This pitiful, lamentable man fell stiffly into the scalding cauldron of oil.

The boiling oil swallowed him in an instant, leaving only a wisp of charred smoke to disperse in the cold wind.

On the platform, Kurozumi Orochi trembled with excitement. He abruptly rose to his feet, spread his arms, and let out wild laughter at the numb crowd below.

"Did you see that?! This is what happens when you defy me! From today onward, I am the one and only shogun of Wano Country!"

His ugly face was filled with the greed and arrogance of a petty man drunk on success.

Beside him, Kaido stood with his back to everyone, silently tilting back strong liquor. The alcohol ran down his chin and soaked into the grooves between his muscles.

At the highest attic of Shogun's Castle.

Yamato leaned over the railing and watched the entire farce without expression.

"He was finally dead."

She curled her lip and muttered under her breath, too quietly for anyone else to hear.

"What an idiot. He clearly had the strength to injure Dad, yet he stupidly stood there and let them boil him.

"He believed whatever the enemy told him. Are so-called samurai all brainless idiots like this?"

She shook her head, and the little horns atop it swayed along with the motion.

"He was nowhere near as good as Brother Lucas."

After five years of Lucas's subtle influence, her values had long since become completely different from those of the little girl in the original timeline who had been brainwashed by a diary.

She had long been taught the simplest and cruelest truths: mercy toward an enemy was cruelty toward oneself, and an enemy's promises could not be trusted.

"What a waste of an hour."

Yamato disdainfully brushed the dust from her hands, picked up the spiked club nearly as tall as she was, and trotted out of the attic on her short little legs.

The streets were a complete mess. Members of the Beasts Pirates were brandishing their weapons as they brutally suppressed the scattered rebellion.

Cries, screams, and the crackling of burning houses intertwined. The once-prosperous Flower Capital had now become a living hell.

When Yamato appeared at the end of the street, every act of violence abruptly stopped.

The pirates, who had looked so fierce and vicious moments ago, instantly put on fawning smiles and lowered their heads in salute.

To show off before the young lady, they swung their weapons even faster, their arms leaving afterimages as they smashed the rebels into pulp in just a few blows.

Yamato turned a blind eye to it all.

As usual, she walked through the streets without looking aside, heading toward Kuri.

It was the Kozuki Family's fief, and it was now engulfed in raging flames.

The once-vibrant Kuri had been reduced to crumbling walls and rubble. Charred corpses lay everywhere, and the air reeked of a nauseating burnt stench.

Yamato stepped over the debris, wandering without purpose.

Suddenly, her wooden sandal kicked something.

She looked down and found a brown booklet with its corners blackened by fire.

She bent down and picked it up. The large, crooked words on its cover—Kozuki Oden's Logbook—came clearly into view.

The Kingdom of Ye and Wano Country had originally shared the same roots, and their writing systems were largely similar.

On top of that, Lucas had taught her to read and write since childhood, so she understood its contents without any difficulty.

"So it was something written by that idiot."

Yamato raised an eyebrow. Driven by a trace of insignificant curiosity, she opened the diary.

One page, two pages, three pages.

The curiosity on her face gradually faded, replaced by growing disgust and anger.

A few minutes later, she abruptly snapped the book shut and forcefully crumpled it into a ball.

"What the hell is this?!"

Her cheeks puffed up with rage, and her clear eyes burned with fury.

"Was someone like this even worthy of ruling a country?"

Lucas had taught her a principle: as a ruler, one's foremost duty was to take responsibility for one's people. If one could not even do that, then one was a complete failure.

In this logbook, she saw only a selfish man's boundless longing for the outside world, only his fanatical pursuit of adventure.

From beginning to end, not a single word mentioned Wano Country, nor a single word mentioned the people waiting for him to return.

What she found most unacceptable was his reason for going to sea.

On these seas, the vast majority of pirates set sail simply to survive. Either they had no food to eat, or they had been driven into desperation by nobles and gangs.

Even if they later became scoundrels capable of every evil, at least their original intention had been to survive. They only needed to take responsibility for themselves and those around them.

Kozuki Oden was different.

He was the heir to Wano Country. From the moment he was born, he had borne the fate of the entire nation.

Others went to sea with nothing tying them down; he went to sea by willingly severing those ties.

Others went to sea to survive; he went to sea for his so-called "freedom," throwing tens of millions of his people into hell.

"Disgusting."

A powerful wave of nausea rose within her. Yamato could not bear to read any further. She raised her hand and threw the crumpled logbook with all her strength, sending it precisely into a burning wooden house ahead.

The orange-red flames instantly devoured the booklet.

The pages curled, carbonized, and finally turned to ash, drifting away on the wind.

TO BE CONTINUED

(PS: This chapter could actually have described the execution by boiling in full detail. If I had done that, readers who hate Wano Country would probably have felt physically sick, so I started directly with Oden's death instead. After all, the focus of this chapter was Yamato's change in values.)