"This is bad! It's a trap! Brace yourselves!"
Kozuki Oden and the daimyo blanched and shouted warnings.
They did not tell anyone to flee. The blast radius was unknown, and they probably would not be able to escape it.
Still, if they stayed alert and defended themselves with Haki beforehand, they would not suffer too badly in the explosion.
Unfortunately, it was already too late. The instant Oden spoke, Wendigo's body erupted with dazzling white light.
Boom!
A terrifying explosion erupted on the spot.
And that was only the beginning. All the bombs hidden nearby seemed to receive a signal to detonate.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
In the blink of an eye, an area stretching hundreds of meters around Wendigo became a massive crater.
The explosion came far too suddenly. The powerful samurai were unaffected, looking a little disheveled at most.
But samurai like that were ultimately in the minority.
Having devoted themselves to swordsmanship, few samurai could coat their entire bodies in Haki.
Those samurai suffered for it.
Arms and legs were torn off. Those a fraction too slow were swallowed by the explosion and blown to pieces.
As the smoke and dust cleared, Kozuki Oden and the others could not believe the scene around them.
Their force of five thousand elite samurai had lost nearly a third of its men in the explosion. Most of the survivors were badly injured, and some could no longer fight.
"Damn it!" The samurai who could still fight were utterly enraged.
How could the deaths of so many samurai not break their hearts?
They had thought they could avoid the damage inflicted by the pirates' strange weapons. Who could have imagined they had laid a trap like this?
The enormous losses did not make them back down.
They faced the pirates who had