That thought remained in Zaraki's mind even as Oles Island drew closer, but Whitebeard was a matter for later.
Right now, the noisy pirates gathering ahead of him were much closer, and therefore much more annoying.
Under countless gazes, the warship slowly approached Oles Island's only dock.
Zaraki did not order them to drop anchor. When the warship was still more than ten meters from shore, he leapt from the bow.
With a dull impact, his feet landed steadily on the wooden dock.
A visible ring of air spread from beneath him, and the planks under his feet instantly filled with spiderweb cracks.
Zaraki straightened and looked around.
The pirates who had been thinking about fleeing now froze in place one by one, unable to move.
A tangible killing pressure pierced their bones like countless ice needles, freezing their wills and leaving them incapable of motion.
Zaraki started walking toward the center of town.
He did not walk quickly. Each step was heavy and oppressive.
Wherever he passed, the crowd fearfully split to both sides, opening a path for him.
His Observation Haki instantly covered the entire town.
Countless presences flooded into his mind, some strong, some weak. He directly ignored the worthless small fry.
Soon, he found his targets.
In the largest tavern at the center of town, more than a dozen clearly stronger presences were gathered together.
They were restless, greedy, and violent.
Good. That saved him the trouble of finding them one by one.
Zaraki followed the main street and walked leisurely toward that tavern.
Along the way, countless eyes peeked at this Marine who had walked into a pirate den alone from cracks in doors and behind curtains.
When he was less than fifty meters away from the tavern called Mad Lion's Maw—
Creak.
The huge double doors of the tavern were knocked open from the inside.
A pirate on lookout duty tumbled out, crawling and rolling, with a flattering smile still on his face as if he was about to go in and report something.
But the instant he raised his head, the smile on his face froze.
His pupils shrank to pinpoints, reflecting the figure in the Justice haori walking toward him.
His mouth opened wide.
A strange clicking sound came from his throat. He wanted to scream a warning, but his voice seemed to be choked by an invisible hand, and not a single word came out.
The pirate turned around and tried to crawl back into the tavern, wanting to tell the people inside what was coming.
"It's..."
One syllable finally squeezed from his trembling throat.
However, he no longer had the chance to say the second.
Zaraki did not care to hear him finish.
Shing.
There was a barely audible sound of a blade leaving its sheath.
The Demon Blade Murasame was drawn by an inch, then returned to its sheath.
The entire motion was so fast it seemed like an illusion.
But a blade pressure condensed to the extreme had already left his hand, tearing through the air toward the pirate.
With a soft pfft—The pirate who had just turned around stiffened and looked down at his chest.
There, a fist-sized hole had appeared out of nowhere, piercing clean through him from front to back.
His life rapidly drained away with the gushing blood.
But this was only the beginning.
After piercing through his body, the invisible blade pressure did not weaken.
Carrying a burst of warm blood mist, it accurately blasted toward the densest and strongest cluster of presences inside the tavern.
Boom!
A dull explosion came from within the tavern.
Zaraki's Observation Haki clearly "saw" it.
The most arrogant presence violently shook and twisted the moment it collided with the blade pressure, then dimmed and was sent flying far away, smashing through several tables and chairs before finally crashing into the tavern's load-bearing wall.
Then came dead silence.
The tavern, which had been full of boasting and curses a moment earlier, seemed to have been muted.
All sounds and presences were cut off in an instant, leaving only a dozen cold, stiff breaths soaked in fear.
Zaraki arrived at the tavern entrance.
He stopped and calmly looked inside.
The lookout pirate with the hole through his body lay silently across the threshold, blood staining the floor red.
Through the broken wooden door, the inside of the tavern was fully visible.
A burly man wearing the outfit of the Beasts Pirates was collapsed in a distant corner, a deep wound torn across his shoulder and upper chest, blood soaking through his clothes and dripping heavily onto the floor.
His eyes were wide open, his face full of disbelief.
He was probably Sheepshead.
Around him, the pirate captains stood frozen in place.
Some still held their cups in the air. Others had dropped roasted meat from their hands without realizing it.
Everyone's gaze passed over the corpse at the doorway and fixed on the figure wearing the Justice haori.
The arrogance and greed that had filled their eyes moments earlier had been crushed cleanly away, leaving only a tremor that came from the depths of their souls.
The sea breeze blew past, lifting Zaraki's cloak with a sharp snap.
In this deathly silence, the sound of cloth rubbing against the wind was especially piercing.
Zaraki stepped over the threshold and onto the wooden floor darkened by blood.
Creak.
With a soft groan, the floorboards beneath his foot complained under the weight.
That sound broke the silence, and the people in the tavern seemed to wake all at once.
"Gulp."
Someone swallowed with difficulty, the movement of his throat especially clear in the dead quiet.
Then cups, knives, and forks fell to the floor with a series of sharp sounds.
Chairs were suddenly shoved backward, scraping harshly across the ground.
After that brief shock, panic exploded through the crowd.
"M-Monster..."
"He... he came in alone?"
"Lord Sheepshead... he was taken down in one move..."
The pirate captains who had been gathered around Sheepshead with flattering faces were now backing away with cold hands and feet, their faces pale, until their backs hit the cold wall and there was nowhere left to retreat.
There was only the most primitive fear in their eyes, as if they had seen a demon crawl out of hell.
This man had not even entered the door before using an invisible attack to badly injure a Headliner of the Beasts Pirates.
This had completely exceeded their understanding of strength.
"Don't fucking panic!"
A roar filled with hollow bravado broke the silence.
A one-eyed pirate captain with a scarred face suddenly drew the curved blade at his waist and pointed it at Zaraki by the door.
The slight trembling of his wrist, however, exposed his true feelings.
"He's alone! There are more than a dozen captains here, and some of us have bounties over a hundred million! Outside on the dock, there are still countless brothers waiting to move! What are you afraid of? Attack together and chop him into meat paste!"
Those words restored a little courage to some of the pirates.
That's right.
He was only one man!
They had numbers!
A few pirates regained a trace of ferocity and tightened their grips on their weapons.
Zaraki's gaze finally moved away from Sheepshead in the corner and lightly swept over the shouting one-eyed man.
His eyes were calm, without the slightest ripple.
"The people outside?"
Zaraki spoke softly, a hint of amusement in his voice.
"You mean the trash hiding at the back, hoping to pick up benefits without even daring to approach my warship?"
The fierce expression on the one-eyed man's face froze.
What did that mean?
"The ones chasing me from the sea are already gone," Zaraki said, his tone casual, as if stating a minor fact.
"As for the cowards outside, most of them started running the moment my ship appeared. Now it's your turn. You're just... slightly bigger pieces of trash gathered in the same garbage pile."
Boom!
Those words made every pirate's mind buzz.
Cleaned up?
Over a thousand men, just like that...?
The blood drained from the one-eyed man's face. His lips trembled, and he could not say a word.
As for the other pirates who had just managed to build a little courage, that pitiful ferocity vanished like smoke.
Zaraki no longer bothered with these small fry.
He stepped forward again, walking one pace at a time toward the figure deep in the tavern who was struggling to get up.
"Hey."
He stopped in front of Sheepshead and looked down from above at the man whose chest and shoulder were still soaked with blood.
"I gave you one slash from outside."
Zaraki raised a finger and tapped the edge of the wound with a flat expression.
"By the rules, shouldn't you... slash me back?"
"You're... dead...!"
Sheepshead let out a beast-like roar and suddenly sprang up from the floor.
He was a Headliner of the Beasts Pirates, a direct subordinate of the emperor Kaido.
Yet he had been heavily injured in a single strike by a Marine who treated him with such contempt, then provoked him right to his face.
"Raaaaagh!"
The pair of sheep horns on his head instantly hardened and were covered in pitch-black Armament Haki.
His whole body shot forward like a cannonball, carrying a violent force that seemed capable of smashing through anything as he rammed straight into Zaraki's chest.
"Horn Cannon!"
Facing a strike powerful enough to pierce a steel fortress, Zaraki's expression did not change in the slightest.
He merely slowly raised his left hand, opened his fingers, and met it head-on.
Thud!
A dull, heavy impact echoed through the tavern.
The imagined bloody scene of Zaraki being smashed to pieces did not appear.
Instead, the sight before them nearly made every pirate's eyes pop from their sockets.
Sheepshead's headbutt, covered in Armament Haki and strong enough to crack mountains and split stone, had been steadily blocked by a hand that did not look particularly thick.
Zaraki's body did not move at all.
Even the Justice cloak behind him did not lift from the shockwave.
"Too weak."
Zaraki looked at the face in front of him, twisted by shock and pain, and shook his head in disappointment.
"So this is a Four Emperor's officer? You don't even qualify to make me draw my blade."
The instant his words fell, the thumb of his right hand, which had been resting on his sword hilt, gently pushed.
Shing.
The Demon Blade Murasame finally began to leave its sheath.
As the edge left the scabbard, dark-gold Reiatsu pressed against the air around Murasame, thick and heavy enough to make the tavern walls groan.
The pressure stayed controlled at first, rolling through the tavern before spreading across the central district of Oles Island and making every pirate nearby feel as if a blade had been laid directly against his soul.
The air distorted around the pitch-black edge.
Faint black-gold arcs crawled along the blade, less like ordinary killing intent and more like the weight of a battlefield condensed into steel.
Zaraki gripped the hilt and raised the ominous weapon high above his head.
"Since all of you enjoy gathering together so much..."
His voice was cold and indifferent, without the slightest emotion.
"Then return to dust together."