The tavern was deathly silent.
Only the wind poured in through the broken doorway, making the door panels creak while wood chips and dust fell in soft streams.
The center of that energy impact was now eerily calm.
When the smoke and dust cleared, two figures were revealed.
Jackal Odd was still in his half-beast form, his claw stopped only a finger's width from Zaraki's heart, unable to move even a fraction farther.
In his scarlet beast pupils, there was only incomprehensible horror.
Across from him, Zaraki still stood in place. Even the position of his feet had not shifted.
The ordinary black coat on his body had not suffered a single tear.
There was not even a crease.
His right hand, which had caught the curved blade, slowly loosened. The sharp weapon fell to the debris-covered floor with a clang.
Zaraki raised his eyes, his pupils calmly watching Odd's trembling body.
"That's all you have?"
Those three calm words made the heart of every survivor in the tavern tighten.
Gulp.
Someone swallowed with difficulty. In that silence, the sound of a throat moving was especially jarring.
The pirates who had been lucky enough not to be blown away were all pale, their legs shaking uncontrollably.
Their gazes had shifted from amusement, to shock, and now to nothing but fear.
'A monster... This guy isn't human at all. He's a monster!'
"I... I think... I've seen him somewhere before..."
A bearded man near the bar murmured in a trembling voice, his eyes fixed on Zaraki's overly young and indifferent face.
Behind the bar, Sally's earlier laziness had long since vanished. Her expression had become extremely grave.
When she heard the man's mutter, she seemed to remember something and suddenly bent down to rummage through the messy space beneath the counter.
Soon, she straightened up with a newspaper soaked in spilled liquor.
Sally slapped the newspaper onto the bar.
Her slender fingers trembled slightly from tension as they swept quickly over the text before finally stopping on a black-and-white photograph.
In the photograph, a young man with cold eyes and golden pupils stood at the bow of a warship.
Beside the photograph, the headline was written in large, eye-catching letters.
War Demon Zaraki!
Marine Headquarters' Rising Monster Who Exposed Crocodile's Alabasta Plot!
"War... Demon..."
Sally's voice was dry and hoarse, carrying a tremor of disbelief.
Those two words plunged the tavern into dead silence.
The bearded man saw the newspaper as well.
His pupils shrank to pinpoints, and an icy chill shot from his tailbone straight to the top of his skull.
"It's... it's him! The Marine monster from the papers! War Demon Zaraki!"
Boom!
That name exploded in every pirate's mind, shattering the last trace of hope they had left.
'The Marine... War Demon?!'
Why would that kind of Marine monster appear in a place like this?!
And yet that newspaper, that face, and those unmistakable golden eyes all told them a fact that made their courage collapse.
Jackal Odd's horrified expression froze.
His body, which had swollen from his Devil Fruit ability, rapidly shriveled like a punctured balloon, returning to his original tall, thin form.
The pirate who had been roaring about chopping Zaraki up and feeding him to the dogs only moments earlier now let out a scream that barely sounded human.
He scrambled backward on all fours, turned, and fled toward the blasted-open doorway in a desperate crawl.
"Run!"
His roar snapped every pirate back to their senses and ignited their will to survive.
"Run!"
"It's the War Demon!"
"Damn it! Move!"
Over a hundred pirates erupted with the fastest speed of their lives.
They shoved and trampled each other madly, falling into total chaos as they rushed toward the only exit.
Tables and chairs were overturned.
The injured were stepped on and screamed miserably. In an instant, the tavern descended into complete disorder.
Zaraki merely watched the farce quietly, with no intention of stopping them.
In less than ten seconds, the once-crowded tavern was left in ruins.
In the open, only Zaraki, Gion, and the pale-faced Sally behind the bar remained.
Gion walked to Zaraki's side. Looking at the wreckage everywhere and the figure fleeing in panic, her elegant brows furrowed slightly.
"You're not chasing him? And what about the information? Are you planning to just take it by force?"
Her words made Sally's body suddenly tense, and her face turned even paler.
She instinctively tightened her grip on the information hidden beneath the bar.
Before that Marine monster, her rules and manpower were nothing but a joke.
Zaraki, however, did not even look at her.
He casually picked up an unopened bottle of rum from a nearby table, popped the cork off with his thumb, and tilted his head back to drink a large mouthful.
The spicy liquid slid into his stomach, bringing a faint burning warmth.
"Take it by force?"
He lowered the bottle, the corner of his mouth curving upward.
"I don't steal things with a clear price tag."
Before his words had faded—
Shing.
The long blade at his waist slowly left its sheath.
As the edge emerged inch by inch, a terrifying aura spread from his body.
His entire presence changed in an instant.
The gold in his eyes seemed to darken as Reiatsu gathered around Murasame.
Zaraki held the blade in one hand, its tip angled toward the floor.
His gaze passed through the tavern's broken walls and looked toward the distant black dot fleeing for his life.
"I'm just here... to collect a debt."
Gion's breathing stopped at that moment.
As a great swordsman herself, her understanding of the sword far exceeded ordinary people's.
Yet the scene before her overturned everything she knew.
Her hand instinctively tightened around the famed blade Konpira at her waist, not because she wanted to fight, but because her instincts as a swordsman were warning her.
Zaraki did not look at her.
In his world, there seemed to be only that tiny figure fleeing desperately toward the horizon.
A thin line of dark-gold Reiatsu compressed along Murasame's edge.
It gathered so tightly that even the air around the blade seemed to bend away from it.
Pure black pressure spread across the long blade in his hand, swallowing the steel beneath a heavy, lightless sheen.
Then, he swung his arm lightly.
There was no grand sword aura, no violent explosion announcing the strike before it left the blade.
Only a fine black thread of compressed Reiatsu shot from the darkened edge and cut silently through the air.
For a breath, it was as though nothing had happened.
It was as though nothing had happened.
"Hah... hah... hah..."
Jackal Odd had never run this fast in his life.
He poured every bit of strength he had into his legs.
His muscles bulged, leaving deep pits in the ground with every step as his body turned into an afterimage.
He only wanted to get as far away from that tavern as possible.
Fear made his entire body cold, and his heart nearly stopped beating.
That monster was actually the War Demon from the papers!
His mind was blank, leaving only one thought.
'Run.'
However, just as he had rushed several hundred meters away and felt that he was about to escape—
A massive sense of death descended and completely enveloped him.
It was a pure declaration.
A declaration of his end.
Odd's body froze.