Station 4 was an imposing piece of architecture.
It sat on a natural harbor fortified by heavy stone walls, boasting three docked warships and a Marine flag that actually flew straight because someone had bothered to maintain the pole. Light stood on the deck of his ship as they pulled in, assessing the pristine layout. It looked like a base that was run properly, which meant one of two things: either it was a genuine bastion of justice, or the corruption was simply better organized.
The numbers told him the truth before the anchor even dropped.
He scanned the dock crews from the railing. Standard ranges—Greens in the low thousands, Reds modest and scattered. Nothing that made him pause. The harbor master possessed an impressive Green. A young Ensign scurrying across the docks had an embarrassingly high Red for someone who looked barely nineteen, which was almost impressive in its own pathetic way. Light filed the information away, smoothed his immaculate coat, and walked down the gangplank.
Haas walked a step behind him. The Lieutenant had been perfectly, rigidly quiet since the slaughter on the pirate ship yesterday. Light preferred it that way.
⬛ ⬛ ⬛
Commodore Vesh ran Station 4 out of a sprawling office on the fort's second floor, featuring wide windows overlooking the harbor and a desk that was slightly too large for the room—the kind of desk designed to make the man sitting behind it look like a king.
Vesh was in his fifties, distinguished by silver at his temples and the build of a man who had been genuinely formidable twenty years ago and hadn't entirely let himself go. He stood when Light entered, extending a heavy hand, and smiled with a warmth that seemed entirely genuine.
[ Vesh, Commodore — Station 4 Commander ] [ Green: 2,100 / Red: 47,300 ]
Light took the hand, his own smile perfectly matching the Commodore's. He sat down across from the massive desk, noting that 47,300 was the highest concentration of Red he had seen since waking up in this world. It was nearly double the bounty-head Bors. It was higher than any of the thirty-one cutthroats he had butchered yesterday combined.
Light kept his posture slightly forward, exuding the exact body language of a diligent, slightly overwhelmed junior officer grateful to be in the presence of a competent superior.
"Captain Yagami." Vesh settled back into his plush leather chair. "The Iron Jaw Pirates. That was fast work. Your report stated all hands were killed during the boarding action. The entire crew?"
"Yes, sir," Light said, rubbing the back of his neck in a show of boyish nerves. "Honestly, I wasn't sure how it would go. It was my first major engagement as Captain. I was more terrified than I'd like to admit. Captain Bors was significantly stronger than his poster suggested. He threw me into the mainmast at one point." Light offered a self-deprecating laugh. "I think my spine is still vibrating."
Vesh chuckled, a deep, rumbling sound. "The first boarding is always a trial by fire, son. Bounty posters never capture the sheer weight of a pirate backed into a corner. You came out clean, though. That's what matters." He leaned forward, his eyes narrowing slightly. "The full crew, however. That is... unusual."
"It got messy, sir," Light said, spreading his hands in an open, helpless gesture. "Some surrendered, but then one of them made a break for a dropped flintlock. The men panicked, the pirates rushed us—it just escalated into a bloodbath before I could re-establish order. Lieutenant Haas can confirm the details."
Haas, standing stiffly by the door, said nothing. Light didn't bother to look back at him.
Vesh studied Light for a long, silent moment. Whatever metric the Commodore was using to weigh the young Captain, Light apparently passed it. Vesh nodded slowly.
"Right. Well. The South Blue is better off without them, regardless of how it happened," Vesh said, pulling a file from a neat stack. "Station 7 has three active bounty targets in its patrol sector right now. I'll expect weekly reports on your progress. If you need anything from us—supplies, personnel, ammunition—submit a formal requisition and I'll see it expedited."
"Thank you, sir. There is one thing," Light said, shaking his head with the mild, exhausted exasperation of a man cleaning up someone else's mess. "My ship's Seastone restraint supply is severely depleted. The previous Captain apparently failed to restock for eight months. I've been making do with iron, but given the targets we'll be hunting, it's a liability."
"Consider it sorted today," Vesh said, making a quick note on his ledger. "Anything else?"
"Not for now." Light stood, gave his coat a sharp tug to straighten it, and offered a crisp salute. "I appreciate you taking the time to see me, sir. It's reassuring to know Station 4 is in such capable hands."
Light shook the man's hand again, smiled his perfect, golden-boy smile, and walked out.
⬛ ⬛ ⬛
Light spent the rest of the afternoon blending flawlessly into Station 4.
He oversaw the loading of the Seastone cuffs, walked the perimeter of the docks, and ate a meal in the officers' mess. He spent over an hour engaged in a genuinely stimulating conversation with a Lieutenant Commander named Paras regarding the optimization of patrol routes in the eastern channels. Paras had apparently been theorizing these routes for years but had never found a superior willing to listen.
[ Paras, Lieutenant Commander ] [ Green: 9,400 / Red: 620 ]
Light listened intently, asked sharp, insightful questions, and suggested two minor adjustments that Paras immediately recognized as brilliant logistical improvements. The Lieutenant Commander left the mess hall looking like a man who had just been handed the keys to the world. Light watched him go, sipping his water, thinking that 9,400 Green was a tragic waste of talent under a commander like Vesh.
He requested overnight quarters before departing the next morning. Vesh approved it without a second thought.
Light retired to his room at ten. He read a naval history text for an hour, turned off the lamp, and lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling until the rhythm of the fortress slowed and finally went completely, heavily quiet.
⬛ ⬛ ⬛
Commodore Vesh's quarters were at the end of the senior officer corridor, third door on the right. Light had cataloged this detail on the walk to his own room.
He stood outside the heavy oak door at half past one in the morning, entirely silent in his socks. A Marine-issue dagger was resting loosely in his right hand. He closed his eyes and listened, filtering out the distant sound of the ocean until he isolated the deep, rhythmic breathing on the other side of the wood.
Asleep. Deeply.
The door wasn't locked. There was no need for locks inside a heavily fortified Marine stronghold guarded by hundreds of soldiers. Light turned the brass handle with agonizing slowness, slipped inside, and crossed the pitch-black room without needing to see.
He aimed for the juncture where the neck met the collarbone, driving the dagger downward in one clean, lethal motion.
Or, that was the idea.
Vesh's eyes snapped open the absolute microsecond the steel grazed his skin. He didn't wake up—he simply was awake, shifting from deep sleep to combat readiness so violently fast that the Tekkai activated before the blade could sink deeper than an inch and a half.
The dagger stopped dead, wedged with a sickening clink against muscle tissue that had suddenly become harder than tempered steel.
Vesh's massive hands shot up, locking like a vice around Light's wrist. For three chaotic seconds in the dark, there was a genuine struggle of brute strength. Light felt his bones grind under the Commodore's grip. Without hesitation, Light triggered his Force Authority, generating a localized burst of kinetic repulsion between Vesh's palms. The invisible shockwave blew the Commodore's grip apart, allowing Light to step back smoothly.
They stared at each other in the gloom.
Vesh was sitting bolt upright in his bed. One hand hovered instinctively near the dagger still protruding from his neck at a shallow angle. It hadn't hit an artery; it was barely deep enough to draw a trickle of blood.
The Commodore's face rapidly cycled through rage, confusion, and finally settled on a rigid, hyper-focused calculation that bordered on terror. He was holding the Tekkai. Light could see the immense physical toll it took—the unnatural rigidity of his chest, the shallow, pressurized exhales through his nose. Vesh understood his tactical nightmare perfectly.
If he released the Tekkai, his skin would soften, and Light only needed a fraction of an ounce of pressure to drive the blade directly into his jugular. But to maintain the Tekkai at that absolute, hardened level, he had to freeze his major muscle groups. He was locked in his own defensive shell. He couldn't lunge. He couldn't reach the flintlock on his nightstand. He couldn't even draw enough breath to scream for the guards without dropping the technique for a fatal millisecond.
Twenty years of Marine service, a Commodore's coat, and all the authority in the South Blue had been reduced to a pathetic, shivering paralysis in less than four seconds.
Light tilted his head, looking down at the frozen man with an expression of mild, almost childlike delight.
"47,300," Light whispered, his voice smooth as silk in the quiet room. "That's your Red Karma. I read it this afternoon while you were condescending to me across your ridiculously oversized desk."
Light glanced upward, checking the space above Vesh's head out of pure habit. "The pirate captain I gutted yesterday had 24,800. You have nearly double that sitting right above you like a halo of filth. And yet, you wear that coat, you command this fort, and you smiled right in my face while offering to expedite my Seastone." Light let out a soft, breathy laugh through his nose. "Do you even know what that number means? What atrocities you've committed that have been meticulously counted, weighed, and judged?"
Vesh's eyes were wide, white rims showing in the dark. What the hell is he talking about? Is he insane? Vesh's eyes darted toward the door, toward the window—processing, calculating, desperately searching for an angle, an exit.
There wasn't one.
"I've decided on a baseline," Light continued, entirely conversational, as if they were back in the office discussing supply chains. "Ten thousand is the absolute limit. Anything over five thousand Red means a person has ceased to be a flawed civilian and has become a structural failure of humanity." Light smiled down at him. "You are at forty-seven thousand. You are significantly worse than the scum you pay us to hunt, Commodore."
Light took a deliberate half-step forward and activated Force Authority, placing a pinpoint sphere of intense gravitational attraction directly on the pommel of the dagger.
The invisible pressure spiked. The blade groaned, pushing against the Tekkai.
Vesh made a desperate, suffocated sound in the back of his throat. He tried to harden the Tekkai further, tried to twist his shoulders—but the only noise he could manage was a frantic hiss of air through his teeth. His eyes screamed everything his frozen vocal cords couldn't. Why? Who are you? What is wrong with you?!
Light absorbed the sheer, unadulterated terror radiating from the man. A man who had run this fortress like a god for a decade, who had never once imagined his reign ending like this—helpless, in his own bed, paralyzed by a polite junior officer who had complimented his harbor just hours ago.
"I know," Light murmured, his tone dripping with mock sympathy. "It's incredibly bad luck."
Light amplified the attraction force. The physics of the Authority simply overrode the biological limits of the Tekkai. The dagger slid cleanly, brutally through the hardened muscle and severed the artery.
Vesh held the iron-body state for another two agonizing seconds—pure, stubborn reflex—before his nervous system collapsed. The Tekkai released. He slumped backward, completely still.
Light stood in the quiet dark, listening.
Nothing. No alarms. No rushing boots in the hallway. Just the distant crashing of the waves against the fort walls.
He opened his panel.
[ KARMA SYSTEM ] [ KP: 43,960 ]
He had gained 4,730 points from Vesh. Combined with yesterday's remainder, his pool was growing. He mentally closed the panel; he would allocate the points in the morning. Doing it at the scene of the crime was sloppy.
Light moved efficiently. He adjusted Vesh's body, pulling the blankets up to make it consistent with a man who had been silently assassinated in his sleep. A Commodore with a Red Karma that high inevitably had skeletons in his closet—smuggling rings, blackmails, buried bodies. When the investigators tore this room apart tomorrow, they would find evidence of his corruption. They would look for suspects among his criminal associates and his countless victims.
It had absolutely nothing to do with Captain Yagami, who had met the man for the very first time just yesterday and had been asleep in the guest quarters all night.
Light pulled the dagger free, wiped the steel meticulously clean on Vesh's bedsheet, and slipped it back into his coat.
He returned to his room, washed his hands in the porcelain basin, and lay back down on his bed. He stared at the ceiling in the dark, and a slow, wide smile spread across his face. He tried to pull it back into his standard, pleasant expression, but found he couldn't quite stop smiling. Which was fine. No one was here to see it.
Five thousand, he thought. It was a clean, round number. Though, perhaps it was still a bit too generous. He would have to observe more of this world before finalizing the law.
Either way, cleansing the South Blue was going to take a while.
He was incredibly looking forward to it.