The night was as deep as ink.
The mobile castle group belonging to the Germa Kingdom sat in a state of dead silence, still reeling from the crushing defeat they had suffered earlier that day. The massive snail ships that had been smashed during the skirmish were scattered across the water, the rhythmic, metallic clanging of repair tools echoing far into the quiet night as workers struggled to mend the damage.
In the flagship castle, located in the royal bedchamber on the top floor, Vinsmoke Judge paced back and forth. Wearing a heavy dressing gown, his movements were irritable and jagged. The humiliation of the day was etched into his heart like a scar. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Kane's mocking, smirking face and Sakazuki's world-destroying, molten magma.
"Commander-in-Chief, it is late. Please rest early," came the emotionless, monotonous voice of a Clone Soldier from outside the heavy door.
"Get out!" Judge roared, his voice cracking with fury as he swept a stack of strategic documents off the table and onto the floor.
Rest? How could he possibly sleep? One billion Beri! That was nearly half the total profit he had managed to squeeze from waging bloody wars over the last several years. It had been snatched away by four mere brats in what amounted to a common street robbery.
"Kane... those damn Marines..." Judge gnashed his teeth so hard they clicked. "Just you wait. Once I complete the final modification of the Lineage Factor, I will show you the meaning of true fear!"
He walked over to the window and looked down at the heavily guarded, massive Treasure Vault Castle connected to the flagship. There lay the vast wealth accumulated by several generations of the Vinsmoke family. It was his greatest capital, the fuel needed for realizing his grand ambitions to rule the North Blue once again.
"Fortunately... the most important things are still there." Judge felt a slight sense of ease as he stared at the vault. "As long as I have that money and those technology blueprints, Germa can make a comeback at any time."
The North Blue overlord had no idea that just as he set this mental flag, four sneaky figures were approaching silently like ghosts hundreds of meters deep in the freezing seawater beneath his feet. Directly beneath the flagship, hidden by the dark, icy depths, the intruders moved with purpose.
"Glug glug..."
Four heads emerged silently from the surface of the water, barely making a ripple.
"Keep up, and move fast!" Kane whispered. He was wearing a black, tight-fitting diving suit and a specialized diving helmet, his voice sounding muffled and distorted through the gear.
"Ara ara... swimming at night in this kind of weather... you really might catch a cold." Kuzan exhaled a visible breath of freezing air. His hair was already hung with tiny ice crystals, and he looked utterly weary of life, as if he would rather be anywhere else than in the middle of the ocean at midnight.
Sakazuki had a dark, brooding expression. He kept his arms crossed, feeling a deep, burning disdain for such sneaky, dishonorable behavior. However, he endured the indignity for the sake of his ultimate goal of justice.
"Yee~ Kane~ are you sure it is here? This wall looks awfully thick~" Borsalino tapped the side of the snail shell, which was as massive as a mountain wall. His finger produced a dull, heavy thud against the biological and metallic armor.
This was the very foundation of the Germa Treasure Vault Castle.
"Nonsense, I already scouted the entire place during the day." Kane pulled a crumpled sketch from a waterproof bag. "See this? According to my precise calculations, entering from here will allow us to bypass ninety percent of the defense systems and lead us directly into the core of the vault."
"Sakazuki, it is your time to shine." Kane reached out and patted Sakazuki on the shoulder.
Sakazuki glanced at him with a look of pure annoyance, but he still stepped forward. He placed his right hand firmly against the alloy shell, which was several meters thick and reinforced for war.
"Hellhound!"
There was no earth-shattering explosion or loud blast. Instead, there was only a soft, violent sizzling sound. Sakazuki's arm turned into churning, boiling magma. The hard alloy melted silently before him like warm butter, forming a perfect circular hole large enough for one person to crawl through.
"Nice job!" Kane gave a quick thumbs up and was the first to crawl into the opening, with the other three following closely behind him.
After stripping off their wet diving suits, the four Marines observed their surroundings. It was a massive underground equipment floor, filled with various pipes crisscrossing the ceiling and the constant hiss of pressurized steam. Just as they landed and before they could even catch their breath, the sound of rhythmic footsteps suddenly came from around the corner.
Clack, clack, clack.
A squad of Clone Soldiers dressed in black combat suits happened to be patrolling past that exact corridor. Their eyes met. The air in the room froze for a long second.
The Clone Soldiers reacted with extreme speed. Almost the instant they saw the strangers, their fingers moved toward their triggers, and they opened their mouths to sound a ship-wide alarm.
"Since we have been spotted, there is no other way." Kane spread his hands in a casual gesture and turned to look at his companions. "The first rule of infiltration: as long as you take out all the witnesses, it counts as a perfect infiltration."
Before his voice had finished echoing through the hall, Kuzan, who had looked completely unmotivated just a moment ago, suddenly had a sharp, predatory glint in his eyes. Since they were already inside, it would only be more troublesome if they were exposed and triggered a massive alarm.
"Ice Time."
A sudden blast of cold air erupted from his body. It was not a wide-range freeze meant for a battlefield, but an extremely concentrated and precise stream of frigid air directed at the patrol. The squad of Clone Soldiers did not even have time to pull their triggers or vibrate their vocal cords to scream before they were instantly turned into crystal-clear ice sculptures. Even the surveillance Den Den Mushi perched on the wall above their heads had its biological functions frozen solid by the sudden, extreme cold.
The corridor fell into a deathly, heavy silence.
"Nice job." Kane walked over and flicked one of the ice sculptures, producing a crisp, metallic clinking sound. "This way, we are still technically in stealth mode."
"What kind of infiltration is this..." Borsalino muttered under his breath with his hands tucked into his pockets. He kicked aside some shattered ice fragments, yet his feet followed along with the group quite honestly.
The four moved through the facility as if they were walking through an uninhabited land. They encountered three more patrol teams along the way. Sakazuki did not waste any words on them; he simply elementalized his body into flowing magma and slid across the floor. Wherever he passed, the Clone Soldiers were vaporized by the high temperatures before they could even let out a scream, leaving not even a pile of ash behind. It was a true one-stop service for silencing witnesses and destroying evidence simultaneously.
Watching this efficiency, Kane could not help but give Sakazuki a hundred likes in his heart. Finally, the massive Germa royal vault door appeared before them. It stood five meters high, made of a special reinforced steel and covered in complex, multi-layered combination locks. It was said that even heavy naval cannons could not blast this door open.
"Borsalino, that door ahead looks pretty sturdy." Kane pointed toward the vault entrance.
"Yee~ Piece of cake~"
Borsalino's figure suddenly turned into a blinding beam of golden light, instantly reappearing before the gate. He extended a single finger, and a brilliant point of light condensed at the very tip. Like a high-precision laser pen, he quickly traced a line around the massive circular lock core.
With a soft, mechanical "click," the gate that was built to withstand heavy shelling began to slowly swing open.
"What do you call professional? This is professional!" Kane praised again, filled with genuine emotion. These future Three Admirals were practically a born criminal gang!
Passing through the heavy gate, a massive space opened up before the four of them. When they clearly saw the scene inside, even the future Admirals, who were well-traveled and knowledgeable, could not help but gasp in shock.
A mountain of gold!
As far as the eye could see, there were literal piles of gold. Gold coins, heavy gold bars, intricate gold jewelry, and solid gold statues filled the room. The golden light reflecting off the surfaces was almost blinding. Beside the gold were neatly stacked Berries, crate after crate, forming several small mountains of paper currency. Further away, there were various rare ores, jewels, and high-tech blueprints and equipment sealed inside special, pressurized containers.
Gulp.
The sound of someone swallowing hard came from the back of the group.
"We are... we are rich..." Borsalino's sunglasses almost slipped all the way to the tip of his nose.
"Hey, hey... with this much money, did Judge scrounge through the entire North Blue?" Kuzan's mouth hung open wide enough to fit an entire egg.
"Filthy wealth." Sakazuki's face was dark, his fists cracking loudly as he clenched them. His eyes were full of righteous rage. "Every single Berry here is stained with the blood of the innocent! Germa... is unforgivable!"
Kane turned around abruptly with an air of absolute righteousness, his voice sounding powerful and commanding: "Comrades! What is this? This is evidence of a crime! This is the fuel that allows Germa to keep waging horrific wars!"
He waved his hand like a presiding Judge reading a final verdict: "I now announce that the Zero-Dollar Purchase special operation has officially begun! Execute the highest level of confiscation standards!"
"Move it! Empty everything!"
..."Hey! Kane! Do we want those gold bricks on the wall?" Kuzan asked, pointing at the decorative relief gold bricks that lined the vault walls.
"Yes! Of course!" Kane's eyes lit up as he jumped down from a pile of gold coins. "Even the smallest mosquito leg is still meat! Pry them off! Do not leave a single piece for them!"
"And that solid gold toilet! Take that too!"
"That diamond-studded chandelier! Tear it down!"
For the next hour, a tragic and brutal looting took place within the Germa vault. Kuzan was in charge of packaging the loot. He created massive, hollow ice spheres, stuffed tons of gold and silver treasures inside, and then sealed them shut. This not only made transport easier but also made the stolen goods completely waterproof.
Borsalino was in charge of the demolition. He moved through the vault as a beam of golden light; anything that looked valuable, whether it was embedded deep in the wall or welded to the floor, was sliced off cleanly with a laser.
Sakazuki was in charge of destruction. For any large machinery that could not be taken or contraband items that offended his sense of justice, he simply used a magma-infused punch for physical destruction.
Meanwhile, Kane was busy stuffing the most valuable items and the high-tech blueprints into his system space, humming a little tune to himself:
"Hachimi~ Hachimi~ Hachimi~ Oh~ Na! Ashiba! Ashiba! Ashiba! Oh yeah~ Naru! Na-na-na~ Na-na-na-na-na-na-na~"
[Ding! Detected that the host is conducting destructive plundering of an affiliated nation!]
[Nature: Extremely malicious!]
[Disciplinary Violation +10,000!]
[Your actions have caused the Germa Kingdom's finances to fall into a deficit, setting them back thirty years and seriously affecting the world situation!]
[Extra Subversion Level reward: Disciplinary Violation +10,000!]
Hearing the wonderful prompts in his mind, Kane smiled even more happily. Twenty minutes later, the once magnificent and incredibly wealthy Germa vault was now left with nothing but bare concrete walls. Forget the treasures; Kane even had them pry up three layers of decorative floor tiles. The space was so empty that their speech echoed; even a rat entering this room would leave in tears.
"Withdraw!"
Watching the last batch of massive ice sphere cargo being pushed into the underground waterway, Kane clapped the dust off his hands with immense satisfaction.
The four returned the way they had come, pushing the spoils through the seawater back to the bottom of the Marine warships. On the sea surface, dozens of massive ice spheres floated in the pitch-black seawater, swaying gently with the waves. They contained wealth enough to buy several small countries.
Back on the warship, looking at the deck full of ice spheres, Kane sniffed the air, which was thick with the metallic scent of gold, and felt his entire being was sublimated.
"This is the smell of justice..."
He turned to look back at the Germa fleet, which was still brightly lit in the distance, a flicker of pure mischief in his eyes. Tomorrow morning, when Judge opens that vault door, his expression will surely be a sight to behold.
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