Pirate: I Maxed Out Conqueror's Haki First Since I Can't Die

"Quick! Notify the captain and the officers!"

"Kill them! There aren't many!"

Compared to the Pirates, Garp's force numbered only around a hundred.

Yet in barely a dozen breaths, more than two hundred Pirates had leaped from the ships along the shore, each wearing a vicious, savage expression.

Xia Le felt a sudden, crushing pressure.

They were badly outnumbered.

This was no hot-blooded anime like the ones he had watched in his previous life. This was brutal reality.

Bang!

A gunshot rang out. The tall Marine directly ahead of Xia Le grunted, then crumpled without another sound.

Xia Le leaped over him and saw blood rapidly staining the ground.

This was war. People would bleed. People would die.

Bang, bang, bang, bang!

Gunfire quickly became a continuous roar. The two sides were barely a hundred meters apart, shooting at each other.

Marines fell every second. Some were shot in the head; others had their stomachs or chests pierced. The smell of blood spread fast.

Pirates, too, kept falling.

The force Garp had brought was clearly the best of the best, veterans of countless battles. They might not possess extraordinary strength or combat skills, but no one could question their courage or their willingness to die.

"Charge!"

The Marines in front kept firing their Rifles as they roared, their faces wild.

The force pressed forward. In moments, only forty or fifty meters separated them from the Pirates. At that range, some Pirates lowered their firearms and drew the long blades at their waists.

The melee was about to begin!

Xia Le took a deep breath and tightened his grip on the Chair.

It was his only weapon.

Bang!

Thirty-six seconds into the charge, just as the two sides were about to collide, his body jerked. He grunted and looked down to find blood spreading over the left side of his chest.

An enemy bullet had struck his heart.

A moment later, he snapped awake from the suffocating darkness and recovered once more.

The bullet worked its way out of his body and dropped to the ground with a clink.

He had revived again.

Xia Le looked up and quickly found the Pirate who had hit him with a Gunshot.

The burly man wore a pirate bandanna and held a Rifle. He stared at Xia Le in utter disbelief, visibly shaken.

"Jerry, what are you standing around for?"

His companion shouted beside him.

"Hey, did you see that? I hit that kid right in the heart, and he's completely fine!"

Jerry could hardly believe it.

"How is that possible? Shoot him again!"

"He's fighting us, the Harricks, with a Chair! That's an insult!"

His companion roared.

Jerry drew a breath and aimed his Rifle once more at the black-haired boy among the Marines, the one holding a Chair and standing out from the crowd.

Bang!

The shot rang out, and the bullet tore toward him.

It struck the black-haired boy square between the eyes. Jerry froze again.

He had clearly seen the boy's head snap back. Then the boy picked him out and glared straight at him.

"That guy's a monster, isn't he?"

Jerry's voice trembled.

He had hit him. He knew he had!

Xia Le now understood just how cruel war was. The chances of dying were far too high.

He had been shot twice in mere moments.

By then, the troops at the front had reached the enemy.

An even more brutal melee began, filling the air with curses and screams.

He saw Kuzan dart through the enemy with a saber in hand, swift and precise as he cut down Pirate after Pirate.

He also saw a fellow Marine he did not know run through by a Pirate's blade. Blood poured from the man's mouth, but with a roar, he dragged his attacker down with him.

They fought without fear of death!

Marines and Pirates alike seemed mad to Xia Le in that moment. Neither side appeared to care about their own lives; they charged toward death without hesitation.

"Kill!"

With a low roar, Xia Le ran forward and sprang into the air.

He cleared ten meters in a single leap.

His strength and explosive power had far surpassed what they had been when he first arrived in this world.

He swung the chair in a wide arc and smashed it down on a pirate's head.

Crack!

The chair struck him square in the forehead. Xia Le saw blood burst from the pirate's skull as bone split. The force of the blow shattered the chair into splinters.

Blood and worse splashed all over him, but he had no time to care.

He bent quickly, snatched up a rifle from the ground, then tossed it aside and took a long blade instead.

He had never learned to shoot, either in his previous life or in this world.

A blade, at least, was something he could get the hang of quickly.

Bang!

A bullet from somewhere struck Xia Le in the stomach, staggering him. He recovered at once and lunged at the pirate before him, his face twisted in fury.

No one who had never fought in a melee could imagine its brutality.

Blood and severed limbs covered the ground in no time.

Xia Le swung his blade into the neck of a pirate whose back was turned. Flesh and bone caught the edge, and he put more strength into the cut.

The next instant, the pirate's head came free. Xia Le had beheaded him.

He drew a deep breath, stepped forward, and faced another pirate.

Their eyes met. Both bared their teeth and swung.

Slash!

The sharp blade cut down Xia Le's cheek, sliced open his neck and chest, and continued to his abdomen. Blood gushed from a severed artery like a fountain.

But in an instant, his body healed without a mark. At the same time, a fiercer, greater power surged through him.

Without hesitation, Xia Le struck again and drove his blade into the pirate's kidney.

He pulled it free and rushed toward the next pirate, leaving the man staring after him in shock and incomprehension.

For a rookie like him who had only just entered the battlefield, death was practically commonplace. In that short span, his system points had risen to seventy-five.

Xia Le could clearly feel himself changing, growing steadily stronger.

Before long, he was moving between pirates with ease.

Then, just as the fighting reached its fiercest, Kuzan called out from nearby.

"Xia Le!"

"Look ahead!"

The gravity in Kuzan's voice made Xia Le raise his head toward the town.

A thunderous battle cry erupted from the streets of the European-style town. Dense ranks of figures swarmed forward like ants, charging straight at them.

A crushing, suffocating feeling swept through Xia Le.

There were too many!

Infusion! Instinct

"The Harricks are a large pirate crew with more than a thousand members!"

A veteran beside him spoke grimly.

"Now it's up to Vice Admiral Garp!"

Another Marine pulled his blade from an enemy as he spoke.

Xia Le paused, then turned toward the bow of the warship behind him, where Garp stood with his arms folded.

The next moment, he saw the warship move.

No—more precisely, Garp moved.

He bent his knees slightly, and the entire bow of the warship tilted downward with him. Its stern rose high into the air, nearly perpendicular to the ground.

The bow scraped against the sand with a harsh, heavy sound.

When the force he had built reached its limit, Garp launched himself hundreds of meters into the sky like a cannonball. He arced over everyone's heads and looked down.

He clenched his right fist. The sky above him hummed and creaked as though it were about to shatter, while countless brilliant rays of light streamed out behind him.

Then, under the Marines' excited gazes, his figure hung motionless in the air.

Voom!

A ripple swept across all of Jerseylo Island at incredible speed, making every heart skip a beat.

"Fist Bone Clash!!"

Garp threw his punch.

Boom!

An unimaginable force erupted and slammed down into the crowd of pirates charging out of town.

It was as if a nuclear bomb had fallen. The crowd exploded apart, and the ground shattered, cracks racing outward as far as the town.

Crack!

The town broke apart. A massive tremor rolled outward, and Xia Le and the Marines struggled to keep their footing.

Xia Le's pupils trembled as he stared at the scene before him.

It was as though the world itself had shattered. Beneath that punch, nothing remained. Like a nuclear blast, it had wiped everything away.

Nearly a thousand pirates were buried beneath the broken, heaving earth and the terrifying force of that punch before they could even scream.

"Vice Admiral Garp!!"

Kuzan shouted with excitement, his eyes shining as he stared at the imposing figure in the sky.

Behind him, the Marines roared, their morale soaring.

This was the hero of the Marines, Vice Admiral Garp!

Xia Le stood rooted to the spot. For an instant, he thought he had sensed Conqueror's Haki, but he could not be sure.

Conqueror's Haki Infusion?