"I don't like taking potshots. There's no feeling of cutting into flesh." Lin Xuan rolled his stiff right shoulder, his tone flat. "Your dynamic vision is good. Instead of stealing a handful of Beli, learn to blow the heads off anyone who wants to kill me from a thousand meters away."
Carina froze.
She cradled the hot rifle, her fingertips brushing its cold bolt. In the past, she had navigated various pirate crews through petty theft and reading people. No one had ever placed a weapon capable of deciding life and death in her hands.
Much less a weapon like this, one that could change the course of a battle.
"Leave it to me!" The shock in Carina's eyes quickly turned to excitement. She hugged the stock tightly, her sly eyes gleaming. "As long as I have enough bullets, I'll blow the head off anyone who dares approach the captain!"
If I sold this thing... no, with this, how much money could I rob in the future!
Three days later, at the Baratie.
The midday sun spilled across the floor, and the air smelled of fried fish and rum.
Lin Xuan sat in a corner, idly swirling the ice water in his hand.
Suddenly, the noisy restaurant fell silent.
The door swung open, and several figures walked in against the light.
The young man leading them wore an orange cowboy hat with crying and smiling face ornaments hanging from its brim. Bare-chested, he radiated youthful vigor.
He was Portgas D. Ace, captain of the Spade Pirates, a rookie rapidly rising to fame in the East Blue.
"Welcome, bastards. What do you want to eat?"
A blond cook with curled eyebrows approached with a cigarette between his lips. His tone was hostile, but his body tensed.
Sanji sensed a dangerous aura from the boy in the hat, completely unlike that of ordinary pirates.
Beside the second-floor railing, the one-legged "Red-Leg" Zeff also stopped polishing his prosthetic leg, a sharp glint flashing through his old eyes.
"The makings of Conqueror's Haki..." Zeff murmured. His gaze lingered on Ace for a moment before sweeping toward Lin Xuan, who was quietly drinking water in the corner.
The waters of the East Blue seemed to have grown a little murky these past few days.
"Hey! That's... the Spade Pirates!"
"That 'Fire Fist' Ace?"
The restaurant's diners finally reacted. Cries of alarm rose from all sides, and quite a few people were so frightened that they dropped their cutlery.
Ace was used to this sort of commotion. He was just about to find a seat when an even louder uproar suddenly came from outside.
The noise came from the docks.
"Oh my God! Look outside!"
"That's... the Krieg Pirates' flagship!"
"It's 'Admiral' Krieg! The overlord of the East Blue is here! Run!"
Panic swept through the entire restaurant in an instant.
The diners scrambled toward the back door. Even Sanji and Zeff looked grave.
The Krieg Pirates, a massive fleet of fifty warships, were the nightmare of these waters.
Yet Lin Xuan, sitting by the window, chuckled, his fingers tapping rhythmically on the table.
"Overlord? More like a drowned rat now."
As though to prove his words, everyone froze when they looked out the window.
It was indeed the Krieg Pirates' fleet, but it had long since lost its imposing grandeur.
A dozen or so ships lay in tatters, their sails torn and their hulls covered in blackened scorch marks.
Their flagship, the Delidano, was especially wretched. Its mainmast was gone, and a massive, scorched hole pierced its side. It creaked gratingly as it rose and fell with the waves, as though it might fall apart at any moment.
"Did they... run into a storm?"
"Are you kidding? What kind of storm could burn steel decking like that?"
The restaurant fell deathly silent.
Even Ace, who had just sat down, stood and walked to the window. He lowered his hat brim, his gaze fixed on the flagship's horrific state.
As a Flame-Flame Fruit user, he was particularly sensitive to the destruction caused by flames.
Those lingering marks had been caused by some extremely concentrated heat piercing through in an instant.
"Interesting..." Ace's lips spread into a wild grin, fighting spirit burning in his eyes. "Someone in a place like the East Blue could beat Krieg that badly?"
He turned, his gaze sweeping across the restaurant before finally settling on Lin Xuan, who remained seated calmly in the corner.
Chapter 43: A Fifty Million Bounty? Can You Eat It?
That probing gaze lingered on Lin Xuan for half a second before withdrawing upon sensing some sort of danger.
Ace lowered his hat brim and turned back around. Leaning beside the window frame with his arms folded, he watched the dense crowd outside, a faint smile instead curling his lips.
Let's watch for now and see what waves this pack of beaten dogs can still stir up.
Lin Xuan withdrew his gaze, his fingers gently rubbing the droplets condensed on his glass.
The cold sensation traveled through his fingertips, calming the blood that had stirred slightly at the sight of characters from the story.
He even had the leisure to pick up his fork, spear a remaining piece of smoked ham from his plate, and put it in his mouth.
Now this was living.
Compared with that railgun shot three days ago that had nearly drained him dry, watching the show from a premium seat was the sort of pace a transmigrator ought to have.
"Food... give us food..."
On the docks outside the window, the pirates pouring off the battered warships did not immediately attack.
Hunger had drained away their reason and ferocity.
A man with two enormous iron shields strapped to his body-Baru-lay sprawled on the pier like a dead dog. Saliva mixed with stomach acid dribbled from the corners of his mouth, and his eyes held nothing but the faint, warm yellow light spilling from the restaurant.
"Admiral... I can't go on..." Baru's voice was so weak it sounded as though it had been squeezed through a crack in the gates of hell.
"Shut up! Charge in! Kill all the cooks! Take everything edible!"
Krieg's hoarse roar came from the deck of the battered Delidano.
Although Lin Xuan had blasted his golden armor to pieces with a single shot, he seemed to have dug another spare suit of heavy armor out of storage. But on that body covered in burns and bruises, it looked particularly ridiculous, like a plucked peacock still trying to spread its tail.
At that command, the dying pirates seemed to have been injected with a berserk drug called survival.
Hundreds of green-tinged eyes locked onto the restaurant doors. Their faces, twisted by extreme hunger, were more horrifying than any horror movie.
"What a pain..."
Behind the counter, the old man with only one leg sighed.
Zeff slowly untied his apron. His cloudy old eyes did not look at the thugs about to charge inside, but instead passed over the crowd toward Ace by the window.
"Hey, you little fire-playing brat." Zeff's voice was not loud, yet it reached everyone's ears clearly amid the din. "Since you ate without paying, you ought to do some work to cover the bill, right? If this place gets smashed up, take that curly-browed eggplant over there with you while you're at it. Save me the annoyance of looking at him."
"You rotten old man! Who are you calling an eggplant?"
Sanji, who had been preparing to kick someone with a cigarette between his lips, instantly exploded. Veins throbbed on his forehead, and he ground his black leather shoe hard against the floor. "I'm not leaving! If this trash dares dirty the floor, I'll kick their ribs apart one by one!"
Ace paused, then burst out laughing.
He reached out to stop a crewmate who was about to draw his blade, his face full of easy cheer without a trace of tension. "Well, since the owner put it that way... Deuce, go say hello. Make them realize they should back off."
The masked, long-haired man-Deuce-shrugged helplessly.
He walked to the entrance, cleared his throat, and sharply raised his voice at the ravenous men surging toward them like a tide.
"Pirates up ahead, listen! This is Spade Pirates territory! Standing before you is Fire Fist Ace, with a bounty of fifty million Beli! Get lost right now if you don't want to die!"
Fifty million Beli.
In the East Blue, where the average bounty was only three million, that was an astronomical figure enough to silence a crying child.
Following the usual script, the other side should have been scared witless, then bowed down in submission.
Ace thought so too.
He had even adjusted his pose, ready to receive their shocked and admiring gazes.
Reality, however, was often more absurd than the script.
"Fifty million? What's that? Can you eat it?"
The pirates charging at the front did not even pause. Even if they heard that number, the ringing in their ears brought on by hunger automatically filtered out its intimidating weight.
Krieg, standing at the bow, even snorted. "Fire Fist, Water Fist, whatever! They're all trash before my fleet! Boys, ignore that brat who doesn't know his place! Take everything! Whoever grabs the meat gets to keep it!"
The atmosphere instantly grew awkward.
Ace's confident smile froze on his face. It felt as though he had painstakingly prepared a grand entrance, only for the audience not merely to withhold applause, but to throw a rotten tomato onto the stage.
The corner of his mouth twitched. He scratched his hair in embarrassed irritation. "These guys... couldn't give me a little respect?"
Sitting in the corner, Lin Xuan nearly laughed aloud.
He swirled the wineglass in his hand, watching the lunatics outside who were ruled by desire.
On this sea where the strong preyed on the weak, reputation certainly mattered. But in the face of true desperation and ignorance, that string of numbers could sometimes be less persuasive than a moldy piece of bread.
This was the human element. No lofty maneuvering, just the rawest instinct to survive.
Just as the Krieg Pirates were about to burst through the doors, and sparks had already appeared at Ace's fingertips as he prepared to act and reclaim his dignity-
"What... is that?"
A trembling cry of alarm came from the Spade Pirates.
He was not looking at the nearby enemies, but staring fixedly at the distant, mist-shrouded sea, his expression as though he had seen a ghost.
"Someone... someone's walking over the sea!"
That shout was so shrill his voice nearly cracked, instantly piercing the clamor of the battlefield.
Every gaze, including those of the pirates preparing to charge, involuntarily followed the direction of his pointing finger.
On the distant sea, a small boat that looked like a coffin plank slowly parted the mist.
And on that boat, barely wide enough for one person, sat a figure.
The man sat with his legs crossed. Beneath his black formal hat shone a pair of golden eyes as sharp as a hawk's, and the enormous Black Blade strapped to his back was even more conspicuous than the little boat.
The instant the Krieg Pirates, who had been driven mad by hunger, made out that figure, it was as though a bucket of ice water had been dumped over their heads.
That was a fear deeper than hunger, etched into their very marrow.
"It's... it's him!"
"That devil of a man followed us!"
"Run! That's the monster who destroyed our fifty warships on the Grand Line!"
The thugs who had been arrogantly demanding food moments earlier now screamed like pigs being slaughtered.
They could not even spare a thought for the food within reach. Scrambling and stumbling, they turned around and desperately tried to row their battered little boats away, as though that lone swordsman were more terrifying than all of Marine Headquarters.
"Damn it! All of you, stop!"
Watching his men's morale collapse in an instant, Krieg furiously brandished his great battle spear.
The humiliation of having his armor blasted apart by Lin Xuan's single shot, combined with the shame of now being frightened off by one man, snapped the last thread of his reason.
"He's just one swordsman! I'm the overlord of the East Blue! Since you followed me all the way here..."
His eyes bloodshot, Krieg raised the shield capable of firing poison gas shells and roared at the slowly approaching figure, "Then die!"
In that instant, Lin Xuan keenly caught an abnormal shift in the air currents.
He set down his fork, his body instinctively tensing.
Within his sight, the man seated on the coffin boat made no large movements.
He merely raised his hand slightly and drew the enormous Black Blade from his back, as though swatting a fly.
There was no earth-shaking buildup of power, nor any flashy light show.
Just a casual swing.
Swish-
Before you continue