'Interesting.'
The corner of Zaraki's mouth lifted silently.
here was not the slightest gravity in his deep eyes. Instead, a burning excitement shone there.
"One Calamity? I like Calamities. A Calamity... means I might actually enjoy myself."
Enjoy himself?
Gion whipped her head around and stared at him in disbelief.
The sea breeze blew through her deep-purple hair, but her usually calm and beautiful face now showed shock and confusion.
What the hell was this man talking about?
That was one of Kaido's Three Calamities!
A monster with a bounty as high as one billion berries, enough to shake the whole world.
Shouldn't a normal person immediately plan a route and find some way to avoid an enemy like that?
Yet he said he liked it?
He even wanted to go meet him on purpose?
Gion felt her throat go dry. She spent a long moment gathering her words before finally forcing one sentence out.
"Are you insane?"
Zaraki only smiled and did not answer.
His gaze moved past Gion and landed on a pirate ship pursuing them from the rear flank.
The figurehead of that ship was a savage shark head.
On the deck stood a burly man with a necklace of huge shark teeth around his neck, holding a telescope and looking this way.
"Oi! Boys, see that?!"
The man's rough laughter carried over from a loudspeaker Den Den Mushi, filled with undisguised contempt.
"That's the Marine monster from the papers! War Demon Zaraki! Looks like some pretty boy who hasn't even been weaned yet! Put your backs into it, lads! I, Slash Shark, am taking his head today and trading it to Lord Kaido for a lifetime of riches! Hahahaha!"
"Boss Slash Shark is the best!"
"Take him down!"
The surrounding pirate ships immediately burst into roaring agreement.
Filthy curses mixed with greed rolled across the sea like a wave.
'Slash Shark?'
The name sounded vaguely familiar.
He was some pirate captain under the Beasts Pirates, with a bounty of over ninety million.
Zaraki sighed softly.
There were always flies like this.
If he did not swat them dead, they would keep buzzing in his ear and getting on his nerves.
He did not even bother answering. His right hand rested casually on the Demon Blade Murasame at his waist.
He gave no obvious motion of drawing the sword, no clear warning beyond the faint shift of his fingers against the hilt.
Buzz.
A low blade cry suddenly rang out.
A fine dark-gold line of Reiatsu burst from Zaraki's waist.
The instant it left the sheath, it tore through the air and widened into a crescent-shaped slash that cut across the sea breeze with terrifying silence.
The blade pressure was dark and heavy, with faint golden arcs crawling along its edge.
Wherever it passed, the air folded inward as if compressed by a force too sharp to properly explode.
Slash Shark, who had been laughing wildly only moments ago, froze completely.
The telescope in his hand dropped onto the deck with a clack. In his large, copper-bell eyes, there was only the reflection of that black crescent growing larger and larger.
He wanted to dodge.
He wanted to order the ship to turn!
But his body was nailed in place by invisible fear, and he could not move even a single finger.
The hand that had just been boasting about twisting off someone else's head was now trembling beyond his control.
The slash arrived.
The slash passed in terrifying silence, cutting so cleanly that the sound of destruction arrived only after the blade pressure had already swept through the center of Slash Shark's pirate ship.
For one instant, everything was dead silent.
Then—
Crack... crack...
A fine split appeared at the brow of the shark figurehead, then rapidly spread downward and backward.
Under the horrified gazes of every pirate on board, the sturdy warship beneath their feet, along with its deck, cabins, and mast, was smoothly divided into two halves from the middle.
The cut was as smooth as a mirror, clean enough to reflect the clouds in the sky.
And not just the ship.
The slash continued onward and carved a long trench across the sea behind the vessel, sending towering walls of water rising to both sides before the waves came crashing back together.
"Ah... aaaaaah!"
Only when the two halves of the ship collapsed outward with a tooth-grating groan and sank into the sea did the nearby pirate ships finally erupt in screams.
"M-Monster!"
"One slash... he cut the ship and the sea..."
"Run! Run!"
Fear devoured every trace of greed and fanaticism.
The remaining pirate fleet no longer cared about any Four Emperor's kill order.
They frantically turned their ships and fled in every direction with everything they had.
At that moment, two figures, one green and one black, leapt from Zaraki's warship.
Sanji kicked off the air in rapid bursts, while Zoro launched himself from the railing and landed hard on the wreckage drifting between the fleeing ships, cutting off the pirates' escape routes from two directions.
"Sorry, this road's closed."
Zoro grinned and slowly drew the three swords at his waist.
"You can leave if you want," Sanji said, exhaling a ring of smoke, his gaze ice-cold. "Just leave your lives behind first."
"Bastards! Don't look down on us! We're—"
A pirate leader roared with more bluster than courage, charging forward with a large blade in hand.
He thought that because there were only two of them, he might have a chance if he fought with his life on the line.
What awaited him was a one-sided massacre.
"Three-Sword Style: Purgatory Oni Giri!"
Zoro's figure became a green whirlwind.
Countless sharp slashes crossed in an instant, tearing through the rigging, deck, and mast of one pirate ship until the whole vessel lost control and broke apart under the terrified screams of the pirates aboard.
"Diable Jambe: Flambage Shot!"
Sanji's right leg ignited with crimson flame.
With one kick, even the air seemed to catch fire, and the impact smashed through another ship's rudder and lower hull, sending the vessel spinning out of formation while flames burst across the deck without reaching the powder magazine.
The pirates who fell into the sea screamed miserably, and several escort boats from Zaraki's warship moved in only after the ships had been crippled, ready to haul up whoever still had the strength to surface.
Zaraki stood at the bow, watching everything without expression.
Only after the last scream vanished from the sea did he withdraw his gaze.
"Good. The irritating flies are mostly cleaned up now."
He turned back toward the sea chart and tapped the location of Oles Island with one finger, his tone calm.
"Now we can go harvest the little tails hiding at the very back. And while we're at it... I hope that Calamity doesn't keep me waiting too long."
Gion was completely stunned.
She stared blankly at the man before her.
The sea wind made the word Justice on the haori over his back shine brightly, yet his actions were madder and more overbearing than any pirate she had ever seen.
He was treating this pursuit as a hunt.
And he was the hunter.
Gion had always considered herself a swordsman who loved battle.
But only now did she realize how small and laughable her own love of battle was before Zaraki's mindset of treating the world's strongest as prey.
Between her and this man was a distance she might never be able to cross in her lifetime.
She subconsciously tightened her grip on Konpira at her waist, but the cold touch of the hilt could not calm the waves in her heart.
It was a feeling mixed with shock, horror, and a faint flutter she herself had not even noticed.
The wind scattered her hair and brushed over her slightly warm cheeks, but she did not notice at all.
Her gaze had been completely captured by this man's calm yet insane profile.
A salty sea breeze blew toward them, making the haori embroidered with Justice behind Zaraki snap loudly.
Zaraki paid no attention to Gion's shock.
However, beside Gion, another figure quietly moved closer.
"Hey, Vice Admiral."
A lazy female voice with a teasing edge sounded beside her.
Carina leaned against the rail, smiling as if she had just discovered something profitable.
"Careful. Your eyes are looking a little dangerous."
Gion snapped back to herself.
Her body tensed instinctively, and she turned her face away, avoiding Carina's gaze.
"Dangerous? What nonsense are you talking about?"
"Really?"
Carina rested her chin lightly on one hand, her smile sweet enough to be suspicious.
"The look in your eyes just now didn't seem like you were looking at a colleague. It looked more like you had found something that made your heart race. Don't worry, I won't tell anyone... unless there's a price for keeping quiet."
"You—!"
Two blushes rose across Gion's cheeks in an instant, and she became visibly flustered.
"Stop talking nonsense! I was just shocked by his completely unreasonable way of fighting. Yes, shocked! If you keep running your mouth, I'll throw you into the sea!"
Her rebuttal came quickly, her voice even higher than usual, which only made it sound more like she was trying to cover something up.
Seeing the Vice Admiral so rarely embarrassed, Carina chuckled and did not press further.
She merely leaned leisurely against the ship's rail and looked back at the sharp, commanding figure standing at the bow.
A madman? Maybe.
But sometimes, this world needed exactly that kind of madman to cut through chains that seemed impossible to break.
...
The warship cut through the waves.
After Zoro and Sanji finished clearing the battlefield and returned, it sailed at full speed toward the marked destination on the chart—
Oles Island.
As the island's outline changed from blurry to clear on the horizon, a smell mixed with rum, gunpowder, and cheap perfume drifted over with the wind.
It was a typical lawless zone occupied by pirates. Figures crowded the dock, and the noise could be heard from far away.
However, the moment that warship flying the seagull flag appeared in everyone's sight, with a man in a Justice haori standing at the bow, that noise came to an abrupt halt.
Time seemed to freeze.
A pirate who had been drinking from a barrel let the liquor spill from his mouth with a splash. It poured down his messy beard and soaked his body, but he did not notice at all.
His drunken eyes widened until they were larger than copper bells, and most of his intoxication vanished.
A weapons vendor shouting from the edge of the dock dropped the long blade in his hand with a clang.
He did not even bother picking it up and immediately turned to dive into an alley.
"It's... it's the Marines!"
Someone let out a distorted scream, like a ladle of cold water thrown into boiling oil.
The entire dock exploded.
"Run! Run!"
"It's War Demon! That monster is here!"
"Set sail! Hurry up and get the damn ship moving!"
Fear was contagious.
The pirates who had been showing off their strength only a second earlier now had nothing but panic on their faces.
They threw away their weapons, knocked over stalls, and rushed toward their ships with no regard for anything else.
The dock instantly became a pot of boiling chaos.
Some people were so panicked that they could not untie their ropes even after fumbling for ages.
Others, desperate to leave first, rammed directly into allied ships beside them.
Stampedes, curses, and cries rang out together.
Zaraki stood at the bow, coldly watching the farce caused by his name.
A faint smile appeared at the corner of his mouth.
'How nice.'
'Each of these people looked like a walking experience pack.'
'A kill order from the Beasts Pirates?'
'What was that supposed to be?'
It was clearly a full-course gift basket personally delivered to him by Kaido.
Of course, he would gladly accept such kindness.
He even started thinking that, after cleaning up Kaido's dogs, perhaps he should find an opportunity to take a stroll through the New World.
For example, he could visit the Moby Dick and have a proper fight with Whitebeard, the man known as the strongest man in the world.
After all, fighting a monster of that level was the fastest way to improve his strength.
Once this thought appeared, it could no longer be suppressed.
If this sea had a will and could peer into the hearts of men, perhaps it would tremble at what he was thinking right now.
A man wearing a Marine Justice coat was actually thinking about challenging an Emperor who ruled the sea purely for the sake of improving his own strength; justice and duty had little place in that thought, only the raw hunger of someone chasing a higher battlefield.
An idea more arrogant than that of any pirate was quietly taking shape in the heart of the man wearing a cloak of justice.