The Bearing of a Great Swordsman Stuns the Entire Crowd

Captain John let out a drunken belch. The sour stench of rum rushed straight at him.

The famous sword in his hand drew a silver line through the air as it thrust straight at Rektol's throat. Its edge tore through the air with a piercing shriek.

To the right, Silver Axe moved as well. His heavy armor scraped with a teeth-grinding metallic screech. His broad greatsword was like an iron wall, sealing off all space for Rektol to dodge.

The sea breeze was compressed by those two brutal forces, making every strand of Rektol's short pink hair stand on end.

The officers of the Rocks Pirates never bothered with probing attacks. Every strike was aimed to kill.

Rektol stood there naked.

He gripped that battered iron sword. The melted hilt was somewhat hot, but his hold remained steady.

"Thump! Thump! Thump!"

Inside his chest, three hearts contracted violently. Blood surged through his veins like rushing magma.

Blue arcs of electricity raced up from his palm and instantly climbed the shattered blade.

"Crackle!"

The dark red rust was stripped away in an instant by the high-voltage current. The entire broken sword lit up with a blinding blue-white glare. A thick smell of ozone filled the air.

Captain John's sword tip was less than half a foot from Rektol's neck. The cold gleam on its point had already stung Rektol's skin.

Rektol moved.

His three-year-old body had an extremely low center of gravity. His right foot stomped a deep crater into the vitrified sand, crushing the grains beneath it to powder.

Both hands gripped the scorching hilt.

The Great Swordsman techniques he had endlessly simulated day and night in his memories of his past life now perfectly overlapped with the violent power of the Logia Rumble-Rumble Fruit.

He needed no apprenticeship, no bitter training. The moment he picked up a sword, he was a Great Swordsman.

Rektol twisted at the waist, his short arms driving the broken sword upward in a slash.

The movement was so fast it left an afterimage.

"Thunderbolt: Flying Dragon Blaze."

He did not shout it aloud. He merely swallowed a mouthful of dry, scorching air.

The instant the blade swung, time seemed to slow.

A colossal dragon woven entirely from blue lightning and blazing heat roared out through the gap in the broken sword. Its head smashed through the air ahead.

"Boom!"

The lightning dragon opened its jaws and bit down on Captain John's famous sword and Silver Axe's massive blade.

The three weapons collided.

There was no evenly matched deadlock, only absolute domination through pure violence.

"Crack!"

Two crisp sounds of metal snapping overlapped.

Captain John felt his palm go numb. The famous sword in his hand jolted violently, and a nail-sized chip burst from the middle of its blade. The flying shard grazed his cheek, leaving behind a bloody line.

Silver Axe had it worse. The recoil from the greatsword made him lose his grip on the hilt, and its heavy guard slammed viciously into the armor on his chest. The Fine Steel armor caved in deeply, while his ribs let out a brittle crack under the strain.

The two notorious officers of the Rocks Pirates were sent flying backward like kites with their strings cut.

Captain John crashed into ruins more than ten meters away, collapsing part of a broken wall beneath him. His wine gourd shattered across the ground, rum mixing with dirt.

Silver Axe plowed two deep trenches through the sand before his back slammed into a reef rock and stopped him. The rock became covered in cracks. Violent coughing came from inside his helmet, along with flecks of blood.

But the power of that slash had not been exhausted in the slightest.

The blue sword pressure Rektol had unleashed, carrying devastatingly violent thunder, swept over the two officers' heads and shot straight toward the harbor.

A three-masted sailing ship they had just seized was moored there.

Blue light flashed past.

The air fell into an eerie silence. Even the sound of waves striking the reefs was drowned out by that sword pressure.

The next second, a world-shaking boom erupted from the harbor.

The massive fifty-meter pirate ship let out a scalp-numbing tearing sound from bow to stern.

The entire ship was split in two.

The cut was charred black. Even the moisture within the wood had been instantly evaporated. There was not a single spark, only a pungent burnt smell.

Seawater poured frantically through the enormous fissure. The two ruined halves capsized in opposite directions and crashed heavily into the sea.

A white column of water more than ten meters high shot into the sky, then fell onto the beach as torrential rain.

The watching pirates stood there with their mouths hanging open.

Rum spilled all over one man's pants, yet he did not notice at all.

A cheap cigar fell from another man's mouth onto the top of his foot, burning up a blister. He had even forgotten to cry out in pain.

Monster.

Those were the only two words left in everyone's minds. Their Adam's apples bobbed involuntarily.

A naked three-year-old brat, wielding a broken sword picked up from the ruins, had sent Captain John and Silver Axe flying with a single strike.

He had even casually cleaved a main warship in half.

What Devil Fruit ability was this? This was clearly a slash that only a Great Swordsman standing at the pinnacle of swordsmanship could unleash.

"Clang."

Someone's musket fell to the ground, shattering the dead silence.

Rektol remained where he was, maintaining his sword-swinging posture.

The battered iron sword in his hand finally could not withstand two hundred million volts of lightning and violent sword energy. With a snap, it shattered into scrap iron all over the ground. Black smoke rose from the fragments as they landed.

Rektol shook his numb wrist. This body was still too small after all. Though its strength was off the charts, the length of his bones made swinging a sword feel somewhat awkward.

"Mamamamama!"

A wild, boisterous laugh rang out from behind him, making everyone's eardrums ache.

Charlotte Linlin strode across the crystallized sand. With every step she took, the ground trembled.

She did not care in the least about the wreckage everywhere, nor did she care about the sunken warship. In her eyes, there was only the son who had given her such an enormous surprise.

Linlin laughed as she walked to Rektol's side, her fan-sized palm slapping heavily onto her son's shoulder.

Rektol staggered half a step forward from the blow, then frowned and steadied himself. His toes dug fiercely into the sand.

"Well done, Rektol!"

Linlin pointed at Captain John and Silver Axe, who were covered in dust and grime amid the ruins, laughing so hard tears nearly came out. The fat on her face jiggled wildly.

"You two idiots can't even beat my three-year-old son, and you still dare call yourselves officers? You might as well go scrub toilets in logistics!"

Captain John climbed out of the pile of rubble.

He spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva and stared at the chipped famous sword in his hand, gritting his teeth in pain. He ignored Linlin's mockery and simply glared at Rektol with the eyes of someone looking at a monster.

Silver Axe silently rose beside the reef rock and sheathed his warped greatsword across his back. Without saying a word, he turned and limped away.

Losing to a three-year-old child had utterly humiliated him. Staying here would only make him a bigger joke.

The pirates whispered among themselves and retreated, opening up distance. The way they looked at Rektol now held a deeper, heartfelt fear.

In this camp where strength ruled above all, that single slash had carved the prestige of the Charlotte Family's eldest son into everyone's bones. No one dared treat him like a child again.

Rektol had no interest whatsoever in his mother's boasting.

Barefoot, he stood on sand that was still somewhat hot. When the sea breeze blew, his bare body felt a little chilly.

He turned his head.

A faint blue glow surfaced once more in the depths of his eyes. The All-Knowing Eye silently activated.

His gaze swept across the dense crowd around him like radar.

He was looking for someone.

The perception network of mind-reading Observation Haki rapidly spread out. All kinds of noisy thoughts flooded into his mind, like a hundred ducks quacking beside his ears.

"That's terrifying. Is that even human?"

"I'm never provoking anyone from the Charlotte Family again."

"Once that brat grows up, he'll definitely be even more terrifying than Captain Rocks."

Rektol automatically filtered out that nonsense.

His gaze pierced through three layers of watching pirates and locked onto a pile of discarded beer barrels at the edge of the harbor.

A tall youth was crouching there.

Though he was only in his teens, he was already more powerfully built than most adult pirates.

The youth wore a ragged burlap vest and tightly gripped a spiked club. The iron spikes on the club had pierced the skin of his palm because he was gripping it too hard, drawing a little blood.

Most striking of all were the two thick bull horns growing from his forehead.

At that moment, the youth hid in the barrels' shadows. Every muscle in his body was tensed taut, and his forehead was covered in cold sweat.

He gasped heavily, staring at Rektol in terror through a gap between the barrels.

His thoughts came through clearly.

"What kind of monster is that... If I fight him, I'll die. I'll definitely die!"

Rektol pushed Linlin aside and took two steps forward on his short legs.

His blue gaze passed through layer after layer of gaps and landed precisely on the horned youth's face.

Separated by dozens of meters, their eyes met.

Kaido shuddered. He felt like a rabbit being watched by an eagle. He nearly could not keep hold of the spiked club in his hand.

Rektol looked at the trembling apprentice in the corner and stopped walking.