That Guy Was No Small-Time Pirate

A voice lingered where they had stood.

"Hey! I didn't expect one to still be alive."

"Alive?"

"Yeah, alive. Looks like that Hatt Yamai guy, the captain of this ship. Lucky him."

Sizzle!

Clang!

Bang!

"Hmm... now he's dead."

"Right, right. Kuina, you're amazing."

"Of course I am."

Their voices drifted over the sea, curling through the thick smoke. Only after a long, long while did they finally fade.

Beneath the spot where Hatt Yamai had floated, a charred, headless corpse slowly surfaced from the depression in the sea.

He had been right. Now that Kuta and the others had found him, how could they possibly let him go

?

Life moved forward through one choice after another. Some people endured hardship and still looked toward the light. Others suffered a blow and never recovered, even becoming monsters.

Was Hart Malt wrong to kill nobles?

No!

He was wrong to inflict his own pain on civilians weaker than himself, and to do it with even greater cruelty.

He was wrong to hate nobles while committing acts crueler than theirs.

And he was wrong to be so weak himself, and to run into Kuta and the others.

What was wrong... was this world.

For this lawless sea was a place where the strong truly preyed on the weak.

Here, good and evil did not matter. Neither did right and wrong.

If someone rubbed you the wrong way, a fight to the death could break out at any moment.

Here, only the strong could truly live well.

And Hart Malt was not only a villain, but a weakling.

That was why, in the end... the sea became his grave.

Water 7.

On the roof of an unremarkable single-story house.

Carteles lay on the roof like a man who had truly retired,