He spent the points that same night.
500,250 KP. He had been staring at that impossible threshold for three months, wading through the blood of the South Blue to reach it. Now, it was just a matter of willing it into existence.
He sat alone on the upper deck in the dead of night, the ocean a black mirror around him. He opened the panel.
Observation Haki. Purchase.
[ KARMA SYSTEM ] [ KP: 250 ]
[ LIFE FORCE Lv.3 — Next: 120,000 KP ] [ WEAPON ARTS Lv.3 — Next: 80,000 KP ]
[ OBSERVATION Lv.1 — Next: 600,000 KP ] [ ARMAMENT Lv.0 — Next: 500,000 KP ] [ CONQUEROR'S Lv.0 — Next: 1,000,000 KP ] (Rokushiki hidden)
The transition was immediate. But unlike the physical, burning furnace of upgrading his Life Force, this was entirely cerebral.
It started as a pressure behind his eyes, a tight, humming frequency that slowly expanded outward until it felt like a third eye had quietly blinked open inside his skull. Light sat perfectly still, cataloging the sensation.
He could feel the ship. He didn't just hear the wood creaking or see the mast against the stars; he felt its spatial geometry, the way a man feels the dimensions of a dark room without needing a lamp.
Below deck, the thirty Marines were no longer just men; they were distinct presences. Weights in the dark. He could sense their ambient emotional states, painted in vague, instinctual colors he didn't quite have the vocabulary for yet. Haas was awake in his cabin—a tight, coiled knot of restless anxiety. Tarro was deeply asleep, a slow, steady pulse. Corro, the giant deckhand, was snoring with a presence so loudly obnoxious it was almost comical.
And from the spare bunk in the Captain's quarters: a small, impossibly dense presence. Warm, deeply unconscious, and completely at peace. Bonney.
Light opened his eyes, the world snapping back to its physical limits. Level 1 Observation was genuinely just the baseline. The range was perhaps fifty meters. The emotional detail was blurry, and he suspected that under the adrenaline of a real fight, it would stutter. But a guaranteed half-second warning before a lethal attack landed?
That alone was worth three months of butchery.
He closed the panel, the remaining 250 KP a meager reminder of how far he still had to go, and went to sleep.
⬛ ⬛ ⬛
Two weeks passed.
Bonney settled into ship life with the feral ease of a stray cat that had successfully conquered a wealthy estate. She claimed Light's spare bunk. She established a meal schedule that was less a "schedule" and more a continuous, aggressive negotiation with whoever happened to be on mess duty. And she had apparently formed a standing arrangement with Corro, which involved the massive Marine making humiliating faces on demand whenever she declared she was bored.
She was also watching Light.
He noticed it about four days in. It wasn't constant, and it wasn't obvious. Just occasional, razor-sharp glances at specific moments. When he returned from a boarding action with a spotless coat. When he stood at the railing of a port town, reading the invisible numbers above the crowds. When he smiled his pleasant, golden-boy smile at a joke that didn't warrant it.
He didn't say anything. Neither did she.
Until the morning she finally put the pieces together.
⬛ ⬛ ⬛
It was a quiet Tuesday. Light was sitting on a crate on the deck, reviewing patrol reports, while Bonney sat cross-legged beside him, aggressively demolishing her fourth meat bun of the morning.
A merchant vessel had just pulled into the harbor two hundred meters away. Light glanced up from his paperwork out of pure habit. His eyes swept the merchant captain and the crew. The captain had a Red Karma of about four hundred. The crew was similarly mundane. Completely ordinary, flawed civilians. Light looked back down at his report.
Bonney stopped chewing. She had been watching his eyes.
"You just checked those guys," she said, her voice muffled around the dough.
"Yes."
"And you decided they were fine."
"Yes."
"But if they weren't..." She took another massive bite, chewing thoughtfully as she stared at the side of his face. "...you'd kill them."
"If they were above the threshold, yes."
"Even if they hadn't done anything to you?"
"What they've done has nothing to do with me," Light replied evenly, turning a page.
Bonney looked at him sideways. It was the expression she got sometimes—the one that violently reminded Light she wasn't just a loud, hungry child, but a survivor of a very ugly world.
"You really enjoy it," she said flatly. "Don't you? Not just the 'justice' part. You enjoy the actual killing part."
Light's pen paused. He considered lying. It would be effortless. He could spin a flawless narrative about the heavy burden of duty and the tragic necessity of lethal force.
But looking into Bonney's completely unblinking eyes, he found he simply didn't want to.
"Sometimes," Light said softly.
Bonney nodded slowly, as if he had just confirmed a math equation she had already solved in her head. She swallowed her bite of food. Then, as casually as if she were commenting on the ocean breeze, she said:
"You're kind of a psycho, Big Brother."
Light's lips twitched. He turned his head and looked at her.
She stared back with completely innocent, wide eyes, taking another bite of her bun.
"Say that again," Light said, his pleasant smile returning, though it didn't reach his dark eyes.
She thought about it. Tilted her head. Grinned a wide, greasy grin. "Big Brother Psycho."
The next thirty seconds were highly undignified for everyone involved.
Bonney shrieked "KYAAAA! MARINE BRUTALITY!" and managed to run approximately four feet before Light caught her by the back of her collar. He sat back down on the crate, flipped her unceremoniously over his knee, and administered a spanking that was entirely symbolic and completely painless.
Bonney responded with a volume of outrage that threatened to shatter the ship's windows.
"OW! OW! THAT HURTS! DAMN YOU, BIG BROTHER, YOU SADISTIC BASTARD!"
"It does not hurt. You're lying."
"IT DOES! IT REALLY DOES! I AM A LADY, YOU CHILD ABUSER! HEY! WAIT! I'M SORRY! WAAAAAAH!"
Corro the deckhand popped his head up from the lower deck, took one look at his terrifying Captain administering an incredibly ineffective spanking to a shrieking pink-haired demon, and immediately went back downstairs.
Lieutenant Haas, who was walking up the gangplank with the morning supply manifest, stopped dead. He stared at the scene, decided absolutely none of this was covered in the Marine handbooks, spun on his heel, and walked right back down to the docks.
Light sighed and set her back on her feet.
Bonney stood in front of him, hands planted firmly on her hips, her face flushed red. Her eyes were bright with something that was definitely not tears and might have actually been laughter, if she hadn't been so fiercely committed to her outrage.
"That was abuse," she announced haughtily.
"You called me a psycho."
"Because you are one!" She pointed an accusatory, grease-stained finger at his chest. "Psycho! Big Brother Psycho! I'm going to call you that forever, and you can't spank me every time because your hand will get tired first!"
Light looked at her. Then he looked at his hand. Then he looked at the patrol report he had dropped on the deck during the scuffle.
He bent down and picked up the report. "Sit down," he said calmly. "You dropped your bun."
Bonney looked down at the ruined meat bun on the deck. Her manufactured outrage immediately wavered against her true priorities. She snatched the bun up, inspected it for dirt, deemed it acceptable, and sat back down next to him.
They sat in silence for a long moment, the only sound the crashing of the waves against the hull.
"...Are you actually a psycho?" she asked. Her voice was quieter this time. Genuinely curious.
Light thought about his past life. He thought about the notebook, the god-complex, the millions of Karma Points he intended to harvest.
"By most definitions, probably," he admitted.
"Hm." She chewed on the bun. "Okay."
Light paused, looking at her. "That's it?"
"I mean, you fed me," Bonney said, as if this were the absolute pinnacle of moral philosophy. "And you killed those government suits who were chasing me. So." She shrugged her small shoulders. "You're my Big Brother Psycho. That's way different from just a regular psycho."
Light stared at her for a long, silent minute.
Then, he went back to his patrol report.
"Do not call me that in front of the crew," he warned mildly.
"Okay," Bonney agreed instantly. She then immediately spun around toward the lower deck stairs and inhaled deeply. "HEY CORRO! BIG BROTHER PSYCHO SAID—"
"Bonney."
"—that he's buying us all premium lunch in town today!" She turned back to Light with a completely straight, innocent face. "That's what you were going to say, right?"
Light looked at her. She looked back at him. She wore the exact expression of a feral creature that knew it had won the war and was thoroughly enjoying the spoils.
Light reached into his coat, pulled out a stack of Beli, and placed it on the crate between them without a single word.
Bonney snatched it up faster than Level 2 Soru. "Thank you, Big Brother Psycho!"
"I am going to throw you into the ocean."
"No, you won't."
She was right. He went back to the report.
⬛ ⬛ ⬛
Three days later, a sleek Marine courier ship pulled alongside them, delivering a heavily sealed intelligence packet directly into Light's hands.
Light broke the wax seal and read the documents on the deck. Bonney immediately tried to read over his shoulder. Light held the paper higher. She climbed onto the crate next to him. Light held it higher still. Annoyed, she gave up and went to the galley to eat something instead.
The packet was from a deep-cover Marine intelligence contact two islands to the east.
A massive pirate fleet had dropped anchor and taken up position off Roca Island—a small, prosperous trading port with a population of about eight hundred civilians. The island was currently under total blockade.
Thirty-three ships. An estimated four thousand men.
The fleet's commander was a man named 'Iron-Breaker' Gareth. Bounty: Seventy million Beli. Confirmed user of the Strong-Strong Fruit. His weapon of choice was a spiked iron mace roughly the size of a mature oak tree.
The contact's report went into graphic detail regarding what Gareth had done to the last Marine patrol vessel that had attempted to break the blockade. Light read that particular paragraph twice, his face an impassive mask.
He closed his eyes and brought up the panel in his mind.
250 KP. Observation Haki at Level 1—barely functional, forty meters of range on a good day. All six Rokushiki martial arts maxed at Level 2. Life Force and Weapon Arts at Level 3.
He thought about four thousand seasoned pirates spread across sixty-three ships. He thought about what their Red Karma values likely looked like after terrorizing the South Blue. He thought about how much KP that represented, even at a ten percent yield.
It was a goldmine.
Light folded the intelligence packet neatly and stared out at the eastern horizon, his dark eyes entirely devoid of warmth.
"What is it?" Bonney asked, wandering back out onto the deck with a chicken leg shoved in her cheek.
"Work," Light said.
"Dangerous work?"
Light thought about a mace the size of a tree, four thousand bloodthirsty pirates, and an island of eight hundred trapped civilians waiting to be slaughtered.
"Yes," he said. Somehow, he found he was reluctant to lie to her.
Bonney chewed her chicken slowly, her eyes tracking the cold intensity in his posture. Then, without any of her usual bratty theatrics, she said:
"Come back in one piece, Big Bro Psycho."
He didn't answer her. But he didn't tell her to stop calling him that, either. Which, by this point, was as close to genuine affection as anyone on the ship had learned to expect from him.
Light turned on his heel. He needed to find Haas. They had a blockade to break.