"Want to find out what happens when you defy a dictator like me?"
Yas's voice, cold and utterly devoid of emotion, slammed into Brannew's heart like an invisible sledgehammer.
In that instant, Brannew felt a bone-deep chill shoot from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head.
He looked at the youth before him, younger even than his own son. Those ice-blue eyes held no anger, no murderous intent-only pure indifference that regarded all things as ants.
It was the gaze of a god looking down upon mortals.
As a battle-hardened Marine elite who had crawled out of mountains of corpses and seas of blood, Brannew possessed willpower far beyond that of ordinary men. He fought down the trembling that rose from the depths of his soul, clenched his teeth, and said, enunciating every word, "Colonel Yas, I am upholding Marine military law! If you attack me for that, it will be an act of outright brutality! Neither the five hundred elites behind me nor Marine Headquarters will stand idly by!"
He tried to use Marine law and the strength of the collective to restrain the lawless monster before him.
But he had miscalculated one thing.
Before absolute power, all rules and laws were pale and powerless.
"Military law? The collective?"
Yas seemed to have heard some enormous joke. He slowly shook his head.
"Brannew, you've gotten one thing wrong."
"Aboard this ship, I am military law."
The instant those words fell, a sudden change occurred at the fingertips of Yas's raised right hand.
There was no brilliant lightning, no raging aura.
Only a black arc so faint it was almost imperceptible, seemingly capable of devouring all light, danced gently at his fingertip.
Bzzzt.
The black arc flashed from his fingertip. Moving faster than the visual nerves could react, it struck precisely in a corner of the bridge. There sat a hundred-kilogram weight plate, forged from a special high-density alloy and used for daily strength training.
It all happened in a flash.
Those on the bridge had not even seen clearly what had happened.
Then the inconceivable unfolded.
The specially made alloy weight plate could withstand several tons of impact, and even cannonballs could scarcely scratch it. Yet the instant the black arc touched it, it neither exploded nor melted.
Instead, it silently underwent erasure.
Yes, erasure.
Like an image drawn on paper, it was completely erased from the world by an invisible hand wielding an eraser, leaving not a trace.
Where it had stood, there was only empty floor and a tiny scattering of black powder finer than dust, drifting away in the breeze.
Time seemed to have been paused at that moment.
A pin could have been heard dropping anywhere on the bridge.
Everyone stopped breathing.
The elite soldiers who had just been doubtful of Yas's arrogance now stared with eyes wide and mouths open far enough to fit a fist. Their eyes nearly bulged from their sockets.
They looked at the empty corner, then at the youth who slowly lowered his hand as though he had done something utterly trivial. They felt their understanding of the world crushed and reshaped in that instant.
What was this power?
A Devil Fruit ability?
No! No Devil Fruit ability could produce such a bizarre, utterly unreasonable erasure effect!
Haki?
Even less likely! Even the Fleet Admiral's Armament Haki could only pulverize things, not erase them on this conceptual level!
This was a terrifying power of a higher dimension, completely beyond their understanding.
And as the closest witness, Brannew suffered a shock a hundred, a thousand times greater than anyone else's.
His body froze where he stood, like a stone statue.
Cold sweat poured from his forehead and back like a waterfall, instantly soaking his immaculate colonel's uniform.
His legs shook violently beyond his control. His teeth chattered with an audible clacking.
He stared fixedly at Yas's hand, still as smooth and unblemished as before, as though nothing had happened. His eyes were filled with fear and despair more profound than death itself.
At last, he understood.
At last, he understood why the Fleet Admiral had staked the Marines' future on this monster.
At last, he understood why Vice Admiral Garp, that undefeated hero, had been beaten into the hospital by this monster.
He had been wrong.
Utterly, terribly wrong.
He had tried to bind a god with mortal rules.
He had tried to fathom a dragon with the logic of an ant.
How foolish. How laughable.
Gulp.
Brannew swallowed with difficulty. The sound was especially clear in the deathly silent bridge.
He could no longer hold himself up. His legs buckled, and with a thud, this Marine Headquarters Colonel renowned for his iron will and strict discipline fell to both knees before all his subordinates.
He bowed his proud head and spoke in a trembling voice filled with endless remorse and reverence. "Colonel Yas, I... I was wrong."
"I apologize for my earlier ignorance and disrespect!"
"From this moment on, your will is the sole standard aboard the Leviathan! Your orders are the entire purpose of our existence!"
As Brannew knelt, the other elite soldiers on the bridge seemed to wake from a dream. As though some switch had been triggered, they dropped to one knee in unison and lowered their heads.
"We await your orders, Colonel Yas!"
Their synchronized roar, filled with reverence and fear, echoed through the bridge.
Only now had this Special Fleet of five hundred unruly elites truly been unified.
They were no longer the elites of Marine Headquarters.
They were a private army belonging solely to the monster Yas.
Yas watched the scene before him without the slightest change in expression.
This was what he wanted: absolute, unquestioning obedience.
He did not need a group of elites with minds of their own. He only needed a group of humanoid weapons unafraid of death, capable of carrying out every order with precision.
"Get up."
Yas spoke indifferently and returned to his captain's throne.
"There won't be a next time."
"Yes, Colonel Yas!"
Brannew and the others felt as though they had been granted a pardon. They rose shakily, no longer daring to utter another word. The way they looked at Yas was now no different from Bullet and the others. Only pure, bone-deep fanaticism and reverence remained.
The fleet continued ahead at full speed amid a strange yet efficient atmosphere.
No one dared question any of Yas's decisions again.
They simply carried out their duties meticulously, like precision machines.
Yas closed his eyes once more.
That display of Black Lightning had been a new application he had experimented with by combining his newly unlocked ability with Armament Haki.
He compressed Black Lightning's extreme destructive power into an infinitesimally small point, then used Armament Haki's Internal Destruction technique to drive it into matter's most fundamental structure, triggering a chain reaction that produced an erasure effect.
Even he was startled by the power of this move.
But its consumption of chakra and Haki was correspondingly enormous.
That single wisp had consumed nearly five percent of the power within him.
It could only serve as a surprise trump card, not a regular move.
For establishing his authority, however, it had proved remarkably effective.
Still not strong enough.
Yas thought silently to himself.
Against a monster on Rocks's level, this much power probably wouldn't even be enough to tickle him.
I have to get stronger!
Just as Yas was immersed in his hunger for power, a lookout's sharp, piercing shout, filled with tension and excitement, suddenly rang out from the lookout tower.
"Captain! Pirate ship sighted dead ahead, at twelve o'clock!"
"The emblem on the sails-my God! It's them! It's the Bloodjaw Pirate Crew!"
The Bloodjaw Pirate Crew?
At the name, Brannew, who had only just regained his footing, instantly turned deathly pale again.
He lunged toward the Radar screen. Looking at the enormous red dot rapidly approaching, even his voice trembled.
"Bloodjaw Carlos! A notorious pirate with a bounty of ninety-eight million Beli! One of the most vicious sweepers at the entrance to the New World! They say his backer is a senior officer of the Rocks Pirates!"
"Colonel Yas! What should we do?"
Brannew instinctively looked toward Yas on the throne, his eyes filled with panic.
Though he had already witnessed Yas's unfathomable power, the Bloodjaw Pirate Crew's vicious reputation had circulated through the New World for years. They were true lunatics who had fought their way through mountains of corpses and seas of blood.
Against an enemy of this caliber, any Marine fleet would choose to avoid a direct clash for the time being and call for reinforcements.
Yet Yas merely opened his eyes slowly.
Those ice-blue eyes held not the slightest tension. Instead, they burned with a cold fighting spirit that sent chills down the spine.
"So they're here?"
Yas rose and walked to the enormous floor-to-ceiling window, gazing at the distant black speck growing clearer on the horizon.
With Brannew behind him, he delivered his first combat order since becoming captain-and his most insane-in a tone that took it entirely for granted.
"Pass on my orders."
"All hands, battle stations! Level-one combat readiness!"
"Target the enemy ship!"
"Ram them!"
Before you continue