"How could we have gotten in this easily? It feels wrong…" Beckman narrowed his eyes as he surveyed their surroundings.
This was the most important harbor in the Kingdom of Artemis.
Though few people lived there permanently, vast amounts of supplies flowed through it every single day.
By all rights, the security should have been extremely tight.
Shanks' Conqueror's Haki was powerful enough to knock out the low‑level guards blocking the way — only about fifty men in total — but even so, after walking so far into the port, not a single soul had appeared. It was more than strange.
"Look over there — what a rare creature!" Shanks pointed toward the edge of the forest.
A small herd of golden reindeer stood grazing, their heads crowned with long, sharp antlers that looked like blades. They lifted their heads and stared straight at the group.
"Golden reindeer — indeed, a very rare species," Beckman explained.
"They are not afraid of people and seem gentle enough, but they can be fiercely aggressive. A blow from those antlers hurts more than you can imagine."
Gulp.
Lucky Roux swallowed hard and licked his lips. "I've heard their meat tastes absolutely divine. Why don't we just…"
CRASH!
Before he could finish speaking, the reindeer suddenly bolted into the trees and vanished from sight in an instant.
"You big glutton — you scared them off!" Yasopp teased.
"No," Beckman corrected him.
"Roux gave off no killing intent. According to their nature, they would not have run away for no reason. Something else must have spooked them."
BOOM!
No sooner had the words left his mouth than the ground roughly half a kilometer ahead began to rise.
A massive, rectangular steel pillar pushed upward, looking like a giant metal box.
From inside came the heavy, rhythmic sound of pounding: Thump! Thump! Thump!
"What on earth is that?" Shanks tilted his head in curiosity.
RUMBLE…
The heavy doors of the box swung open. The first thing to crawl out was… a hand.
It could barely be called a hand in any normal sense.
It looked like some grotesque, failed experiment — a tangled mass of blackened flesh twisted and knotted like rope, crisscrossed with deep crimson veins.
After the hand came the head, then the torso. When the full twenty‑meter‑tall form finally stood upright, Shanks and his crew found themselves lost for words.
Its legs were short and stubby beneath a massive, bulky upper body. Its skin was entirely black, streaked with those same blood‑red patterns.
"ROOOOAR!!"
With a single sweep of its arm, it flattened a wide stretch of forest.
Throwing its head back, it let out a roar that shook the air, then lowered its gaze and fixed it on Shanks and his men.
Clearly, it had been locked away for far too long and was eager to vent its rage.
"Ah, so it wasn't me who scared the reindeer — it was this thing!" Lucky Roux bit off the last piece of his ham and shouted excitedly.
"Does it even matter?!" more than one member of the crew muttered in exasperation.
"What kind of monster is this? Beckman, I've never seen anything like it…" Shanks trailed off, and suddenly a memory from over a decade ago surfaced.
Back when he was still a rookie apprentice on Grimm's crew, their ship had stopped at an island in the first half of the Grand Line.
There, the Marines had deployed creatures almost identical to this one to fight them.
It had taken every ounce of effort to defeat them, only to fall into an ambush led by Garp afterward — an encounter that had cost several of their crew their lives.
Even after all these years, the memory remained sharp and unforgettable.
"Which just goes to show — the territory of an Emperor is never as easy to enter as it seems," Beckman said gravely.
"Then I'll blow its head off!"
Yasopp raised his rifle in one fluid motion and fired straight at the creature's skull. The bullet pierced clean through its forehead.
But nothing happened. They all saw the hole it left, yet the monster remained as strong and active as ever, roaring and swinging its fist down toward them.
"Dodge!" Shanks called out.
The entire crew scattered instantly. The monster's fist slammed into the ground, leaving a deep, jagged crater.
"Is its brain not even in its head?!" Yasopp reloaded rapidly, firing round after round into what he judged to be vital areas.
Within five seconds, more than a dozen bullets struck home.
"GRRRR…"
The creature gave a low, guttural growl, then slammed its fist into the pavement right at its feet.
Its massive body hunched forward, and its ten‑meter‑long arm sank halfway into the earth.
"Yasopp — watch out!" Shanks shouted.
The sniper's eyes widened, but before he could react, a huge black fist erupted from the ground beneath him.
At the last second, Yasopp raised his rifle across his chest to block the blow.
THUD!
The sheer force sent him flying backward through the air for dozens of meters before he crashed heavily onto the ground.
"Yasopp!" his crewmates cried out in alarm.
"I'm fine!" he called back, though blood was already trickling from the corner of his mouth.
---
Farther back, inside the castle overlooking the harbor, a Den Den Mushi sat on a table, its eyes projecting a live image onto the wall like a movie screen.
It showed exactly what was happening between the Red‑Hair Pirates and the monster.
"Not bad at all," Matthew murmured, stroking his chin beneath his iron mask.
Everyone watching was equally stunned — how could something survive so many direct hits to its vital points?
Standing directly below Grimm, Indigo spread his hands and explained, "We've temporarily named this one The Destroyer. Unlike the earlier infected subjects, it will eat anything and everything, which is how it grew so large. And… its brain is located in its rear end."
Grimm watched the unfolding spectacle with an air of indifference. "Against Shanks, that only gives us one surprise attack before it becomes useless."
"But we have more in store!"
Indigo pressed a button on his remote control.
Back out on the harbor, the same metal box that had released the Destroyer opened again — and dozens more creatures, smaller but still terrifying, began to crawl out.
- The Dominators: Four meters tall or more, grotesquely obese, wielding a pair of heavy iron hammers.
- The Brawlers: Two meters tall, faces contorted in rage, walking on all fours with clawed hands.
All were products of the Blood Plague.
"Wait — are we really letting that many loose at once?" one of the onlookers asked anxiously.
Through the projection, Grimm could see Shanks' crew already surrounded.
But if these monsters were uncontrollable — as Indigo had just said — they would attack anything that moved.
If they broke away from the harbor and headed toward the town, or even deeper into the island, the damage could be catastrophic.
__________________
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