Light stepped off the porch of the Tropical Tavern.
Before him, the main avenue of Mock Town was completely choked with pirates. Thousands of them. They spilled out of the side alleys, hung out of the brothel windows, and packed the dirt street shoulder-to-shoulder. They were armed with cutlasses, heavy flintlocks, and the desperate, cornered fury of men who had just realized their sanctuary was a cage.
"KILL HIM!" a massive pirate with a spiked club roared from the front lines. "HE'S JUST ONE MAN!"
The mob surged forward, a tidal wave of wood, steel, and screaming muscle.
Light didn't draw his saber. He simply raised his left hand, his palm open toward the charging sea of men.
Force Authority. Maximum Output: Repulsion.
He didn't target the men. He targeted the air between himself and the mob. He compressed a massive sphere of atmospheric pressure down to the size of a marble, and then violently released it.
The sound was indescribable—a shrieking, concussive CRACK that ruptured the eardrums of every man within a two-block radius.
The shockwave hit the front lines like a solid wall of invisible iron moving at the speed of sound. The first three hundred pirates didn't just fall; they were pulverized. Bodies were thrown backward with such devastating velocity that they shattered the men behind them. The sheer kinetic force ripped the facades off the buildings on both sides of the street, sending avalanches of timber and glass crashing down onto the screaming mob.
Light slowly lowered his hand.
The first two hundred feet of the main avenue had been wiped entirely clean. It was a crater of splintered wood and broken flesh.
Behind him on the porch, Bonney lowered the wooden menu from over her head. She peered out at the devastated street, her jaw slightly slack, a half-chewed piece of bread sitting on her tongue.
"...Okay," Bonney muttered, swallowing hard. "That's new."
Light drew his saber. The ink-black sheen of Level 1 Armament Haki crept up the steel, hardening the edge.
"There's more." Light said simply.
He triggered Soru and vanished into the remaining thousands.
⬛ ⬛ ⬛
The next forty minutes were not a battle. They were a harvest.
Light became a phantom of localized gravity and razor-sharp steel. He weaved through the chaotic, terrified ranks with Level 3 Kami-e, his body folding and twisting around sword swings and musket fire with impossible fluidity.
Every time he swung his saber, Level 4 Weapon Arts generated a flying slash that cleaved through five, ten, sometimes twenty men at once. When a group tried to surround him, he used Force Authority to yank them all into a tight cluster before casually removing their heads.
The Red Karma numbers hovering above the crowd began to wink out like extinguished candles.
[ KP: 145,000 ] [ KP: 380,200 ] [ KP: 610,500 ]
The KP counter in his mind was spinning like a slot machine, fueled by the staggering density of Grand Line veterans. But as he pushed deeper into the town square, the resistance suddenly hardened.
A heavy, two-handed broadsword swung down at his blind spot. Light raised his saber to deflect it, expecting the pirate's weapon to shatter.
CLANG.
Sparks showered the air. Light's boots skidded back two inches in the dirt.
He looked up. The pirate captain wielding the broadsword was a scarred veteran with a 95 Million Beli bounty. And his broadsword was coated in a faint, unmistakable black sheen.
Armament Haki.
"You think you can just slaughter us all?!" the captain roared, his eyes bloodshot. Behind him, three other high-bounty captains stepped forward, two of them brandishing weapons that hummed with the same dark coating. These were men who had likely tasted the New World and retreated, bringing the lethal fundamentals of the second half of the ocean back to Paradise with them.
"We've survived worse than you, Marine!" another captain spat, his fists turning pitch-black.
Light's chest was heaving slightly. His Life Force was at Level 5, but sustaining maximum output across a battlefield of thousands was finally draining his reserves. His breath was hot. His muscles ached.
He looked at the four Haki-wielding captains. He looked at the hundreds of terrified pirates rallying behind them for a final stand.
Then, he looked at his panel.
[ KARMA SYSTEM ] [ KP: 1,485,000 ]
Nearly one point five million points. The harvest was complete. It was time to evolve.
System, Light commanded mentally. Weapon Arts Level 5. Armament Level 2.
[ WEAPON ARTS Lv.5 (MAX) — Purchased: 400,000 KP ] [ ARMAMENT Lv.2 (Intermediate) — Purchased: 800,000 KP ] [ Remaining KP: 285,000 ]
The physiological shift was so violent it nearly dropped Light to his knees.
The knowledge and muscle memory of a grandmaster swordsman slammed into his brain. He understood the absolute microscopic edge of the blade. He understood how to cut the space between molecules. And simultaneously, the reservoir of Haki within his soul exponentially deepened.
The faint, ink-like stain of his Level 1 Armament erupted. It flooded out of his hand and swallowed his saber entirely, turning the blade into a sleek, terrifying void that seemed to absorb the ambient light around it. The air around the steel began to hum with a low, vibrating pressure.
The four pirate captains stopped their advance. The Haki on their own weapons suddenly felt incredibly, pathetically thin.
Light slowly stood up straight. His breathing leveled out. He smiled.
"You have survived worse than me?" Light asked, his voice carrying effortlessly across the silent, bloody square. "I find that highly unlikely."
"ATTACK HIM!" the lead captain screamed in pure panic.
The four veterans charged, their black blades and fists raised.
Light didn't use Soru. He didn't use Force Authority. He simply planted his feet, gripping his saber with both hands, and pulled the blade back.
He focused every ounce of his new Level 5 Weapon Arts and Intermediate Armament into a single, horizontal arc. He didn't just swing at the men. He swung at the geographic space they occupied.
"Judgment."
He swung the saber.
There was no sound of tearing air. There was no concussive boom. The swing was so perfectly optimized, so devastatingly sharp, that it simply deleted the resistance in front of it.
A colossal, crescent-shaped wave of pitch-black kinetic energy erupted from the blade. It was thirty feet high and growing wider by the millisecond.
It hit the four charging captains. They didn't even have time to scream. Their Haki-coated weapons snapped like dry twigs, and the men were instantly vaporized in the pressure wave.
But the flying slash didn't stop.
It tore through the town square, cleanly bisecting the remaining hundreds of pirates. It sheared through the three-story gambling hall, cutting the stone building perfectly in half. It ripped across the coastal forest, turning ancient trees into sawdust.
And then, it hit the towering, rocky mountain that served as Mock Town's backdrop.
The black slash carved into the solid bedrock. A second of agonizing silence stretched across the island.
Then, with a deafening, apocalyptic groan, the entire top half of the mountain slowly began to slide backward.
Millions of tons of rock sheared cleanly off the peak and crashed down into the ocean on the other side of the island, throwing up a tidal wave that blocked out the sun.
Light lowered his saber.
A perfectly smooth, glass-like gorge now existed where the center of Mock Town and the coastal mountain had been. Dust and debris rained down gently over the eerie silence.
The few dozen pirates who had managed to dive out of the path of the slash were kneeling in the dirt. They were completely paralyzed. They stared at the missing mountain, and then they slowly turned to look at the Marine standing in the center of the square.
The sound of clattering metal filled the street.
The surviving pirates were dropping their swords, their pistols, and their daggers. Some of them were openly weeping. Some were simply staring into space, their minds utterly broken by the sheer, incomprehensible scale of the violence they had just witnessed.
They weren't surrendering to the Marines. They were surrendering to a god.
Light stood perfectly still, his black blade resting easily at his side. He looked up at the sky. The thousands of glowing red numbers that had choked the air an hour ago were gone. The island was finally, completely quiet.
"Big Bro?"
Light turned around. Bonney was standing at the edge of the cratered street. For the first time since he had met her, she wasn't holding any food. She was staring at the cleanly sheared mountain, and then she looked at Light.
"You... you cut the island," she said, her voice unusually small.
Light flicked his wrist. The black Armament Haki retracted, and he smoothly sheathed the clean steel.
"It was in the way," Light said pleasantly. He adjusted his white coat, which was miraculously free of dust. "Come along, Bonney. We need to find T-Bone and see about a promotion. They won't be stingy after this, right?"