The moment Kurogane Ren saw the pirate captain suddenly drop flat onto the deck, he knew something was wrong.
He reacted immediately and rushed forward, but he was still a step too late.
By the time he got there, the man was already gone from his original position.
What greeted Ren instead was a thick cloud of yellow smoke.
Very quickly, he realized just how disgusting it was.
The smell was exactly like a fart—
except at least ten times stronger than anything he had ever smelled before.
And it wasn't just the stench.
His eyes were already starting to tear up.
Clearly, the smoke didn't just smell horrible. It also had a tear-gas effect.
This was obviously a Devil Fruit ability.
He didn't know exactly what the man's power was, but this yellow smoke was severely blocking his vision and disrupting his senses.
At that moment, the pirates who had run into the hold earlier suddenly reappeared.
Only now, they were all wearing yellow outfits and gas masks.
It was obvious they were already used to this kind of situation.
"Kill him!"
"Charge!"
One pirate rushed at Ren with a blade raised high.
Ren smacked him across the face with a flip-flop and sent him flying several meters away.
But instead of being intimidated, the pirates quickly pulled out bows and started firing arrows at him.
Ren activated Observation Haki and used his flip-flops to knock aside the incoming arrows one after another.
With Observation Haki guiding him, the arrows posed no real threat.
But Ren quickly realized something else—
he could not stay on this pirate ship any longer.
Because the smell on this ship was simply too horrifying.
So he activated his ability and created a powerful gust of wind.
The yellow smoke was blown apart at once.
After confirming the position of his own ship, Ren kicked off hard and leaped back across the sea.
The moment he landed, he took a huge, desperate gulp of fresh air.
Dear god.
That smell was truly soul-destroying.
But Xu Nian was looking at him with pure disgust while continuously waving her hand in front of her nose.
Ren followed her gaze and looked down at himself.
Then he lifted his arm and sniffed—
Instant regret.
"Damn it... my clothes are soaked in that smell."
"Hahaha! Now you know how terrifying your daddy really is!"
From the pirate ship, Jerry was laughing wildly.
"Let me tell you, I ate the Skunk Fruit! I'm a Skunk Man!"
"Captain! Captain! That ship has two gorgeous women on it!"
"Yeah, Captain! Real beauties!"
The pirates immediately grew excited.
"Boys! Grab them! Women that pretty could sell for at least two million beli!"
"Bring the ship in closer!"
Ren's eyes turned cold.
"Martha. The pirates on that ship are yours. Don't hold back."
"Yes, Master."
Martha immediately took several steps back, then burst forward in a short run before launching herself into the air.
She landed directly on the pirate ship.
The Skunk Pirates stared blankly for a second.
Then the same thought appeared in all their heads.
What the hell is with these people?
Why do they all love jumping between ships?
And why can they jump that far?!
But Jerry quickly recovered and released more yellow smoke.
Unfortunately for him, he had made the wrong assumption.
Martha was a machine.
She didn't need to breathe.
Her hands flowed with liquid metal and reshaped themselves into two swords.
Then she charged straight into the crowd.
The very first strike pierced straight through Jerry's chest.
His ability came from the Skunk Fruit, and the yellow smoke it produced wasn't just overwhelmingly foul. It also functioned like tear gas, and inhaling too much of it could even cause unconsciousness.
Relying on that power, Jerry had defeated many enemies before—some of them stronger than himself.
But this time, the opponent he faced...
wasn't human.
Looking down at the blade protruding from his chest, Jerry could not understand why this woman had not been affected at all.
After killing Jerry, Martha began slaughtering the rest of the Skunk Pirates.
In barely more than ten seconds, the entire crew of nearly twenty men had been wiped out.
With Jerry dead, no more yellow smoke was being produced, and the existing clouds slowly began to dissipate.
Martha's liquid metal shifted across her body once, and all the blood on her vanished without a trace.
By then, Ren had already run off to take a bath.
The smell on him was simply too unbearable.
...
Three days later, Ren and the others finally reached an island.
To their surprise, it actually had a town on it.
And not just a town—
there was also a Marine base.
The moment Ren saw the Marine base, he immediately thought of the head stored inside his storage bag.
After Martha killed Jerry, Ren had cut off the pirate's head and kept it.
Because he clearly remembered that Jerry was a pirate with a bounty of seventy-five million beli.
That meant if he handed the head over to the Marines, he could exchange it for the bounty.
For Ren, that was a massive fortune.
Because the money he had earned from selling the tavern was already running low.
Right now, he desperately needed cash.
As for whether there had been money on Jerry's ship?
Ren could only laugh bitterly at that.
He had turned the whole ship upside down and discovered one depressing truth—
they were even poorer than he was.
So Ren had Martha and Xu Nian stay aboard the ship while he went alone to the Marine base to collect the reward.
He took a box out of his storage bag.
Inside was Jerry's head.
There was no way he was letting that thing stain everything else red, so he had sealed it inside the box.
When he reached the entrance to the Marine base, two Marine soldiers stopped him.
"What are you here for?"
Ren answered calmly, "I killed a pirate. I brought his head to claim the bounty."
The two soldiers weren't surprised at all.
As the Great Pirate Era continued, the number of pirates had only grown, and their strength had increased with it.
The Marines had to protect civilians while also garrisoning critical islands, and their manpower was stretched thin.
That was why bounty hunters had begun appearing in large numbers.
With bounty hunters helping out, the Marines not only saved manpower, they also reduced their own losses significantly.
Of course, the price was paying out huge sums of money.
But since the World Government covered the bill, the Marines were more than happy to see bounty hunters do the dirty work.
"You killed which pirate?"
"He said his name was Jerry. I think his bounty was around seventy-five million beli."
"What?!"
"Skunk Jerry? You killed Skunk Jerry?"
The two Marines practically shouted in disbelief.
And because they yelled so loudly, plenty of other Marines nearby heard them too.
"What? Skunk Jerry got taken down?"
"No way. Last time Rear Admiral Gilbert took three warships after him and still couldn't capture him."
"He looks so young. He can't even be twenty, can he? How could he kill Jerry?"
"Maybe it's just someone with the same name?"
For all their noise, Ren didn't bother saying anything.
He simply opened the box.
The moment the Marines saw Jerry's head inside, all doubt vanished.
In the end, Ren received a little over thirty million beli.
It wasn't because the Marines had cheated him.
According to the bounty notice, only capturing Jerry alive would earn the full seventy-five million. Killing him only paid half.
As for the rest, several million had been taken as tax.
Ren could only sigh inwardly.
What a black-hearted system.
Just like that, a huge chunk of his money was gone.
Still, even after that, he was now sitting on more than thirty million beli.
So the real question was—
how exactly was he going to spend it?