Marcus looked at their landing spot and had to admit, Luffy's aim had been precise.
He immediately sealed Kira inside a protective barrier of wooden blocks, better safe than sorry.
Then he drew his iron sword, turning to face both the former and current captains of the Black Cat Pirates, as well as the countless crew members who were charging toward them across the ship's deck.
The atmosphere grew tense as battle lines were drawn. A massive fight was about to break out.
Luffy faced off against Kuro.
The cat brothers, Butchie and Sham, immediately engaged Zoro in close combat, while Marcus found himself facing off against Jango. Meanwhile, Usopp and Alvida took on the mass of Black Cat Pirates crew members who were streaming toward them.
As for Nami? She had already gone at the first sign of trouble.
The battle began quickly and ended even more quickly than anyone had expected.
Kuro was already injured from his previous encounters, and now without his Cat Claws to enhance his attacks, he was reduced to fighting with bare fists. In that kind of straightforward brawl, he was simply no match for Luffy's punches.
As for Zoro's fight with the cat brothers, there wasn't much to see there. One Oni Giri and one Tora Gari, and the battle was over.
Marcus' fight was equally brief, though for different reasons. After taking a direct hit from Jango's iron-ringed gauntlet, which barely scratched his armor, he simply gave his opponent one clean sword strike across the torso.
Nothing fancy or flashy about it, just a straightforward slash from shoulder to chest.
Surprisingly, after letting out a shrill scream, Jango collapsed and didn't get back up.
Marcus was puzzled by this result. He was pretty sure he hadn't run the guy through completely, and he definitely hadn't hit any vital organs. It was just a surface cut across the chest and shoulder area. So why had his opponent just... fallen asleep?
He poked Jango, then pried open one of his eyelids to check.
Yep, eyes rolled back and everything. Didn't seem like he was faking unconsciousness.
Maybe the weapon's inherent attack power had somehow triggered a knockout effect?
Come to think of it, iron swords did have that kind of effect on vanilla Minecraft mobs, but it shouldn't work on beings from the One Piece world, at least that's what he'd concluded from his experience slaughtering cattle and sheep.
After all, he'd already established that he didn't have the "critical hit" mechanic, whether against Minecraft creatures or One Piece animals.
But he didn't bother thinking too hard about the specifics. Whether Jango was playing dead or had been knocked unconscious, he didn't really care either way.
He did, however, collect the experience orb that dropped from his defeated opponent.
Then he joined Usopp and Alvida's group battle, and one by one, more experience orbs began dropping as they cut through the remaining crew members.
Eventually, even pirates who hadn't yet entered the fray turned and fled at the sight of their comrades being defeated so easily, leaving behind experience orbs as they retreated.
Clearly, both defeating enemies and causing them to surrender yielded experience orbs... though it seemed like each person could only drop experience once.
The quantity and experience value were roughly the same across all the grunt-level pirates, at least.
Jango's experience was somewhat higher, about double the normal amount, roughly equivalent to what Kuro had dropped during their earlier encounter.
Marcus' level had now reached twelve.
If this experience gain rate held true, he was thinking about what might happen two years from now on Fishman Island, when Luffy would use Conqueror's Haki to knock out 50,000 soldiers in one blast. Fifty thousand experience orbs! There'd be no way to collect them all in time.
Lost in these idle thoughts, he dismantled the wooden barrier and released Kira. But when he saw that Nami was also inside, looking completely unruffled, he was speechless.
"Go find your treasure, it's probably..." Before he could finish his sentence, Nami had vanished like the wind.
Kira looked around at all the bodies sprawled across the ship's deck and swallowed hard, her face pale.
"When will I ever have that kind of strength?"
Marcus ruffled the girl's hair gently. "Don't worry about it. People need time to grow. You'll get there."
---
After the dust had settled and they'd secured the ship, Marcus pointed at the bound and defeated Kuro and his remaining crew members.
"So what do we do with them? Turn them over to the Marines? Come to think of it, you guys don't even have bounties yet, do you?" he asked curiously.
Kuro wasn't dead, but he might as well have been given his current state of mind. At the moment, tied up securely, he wore an expression of utter despair, feeling like life had lost all color.
"If I promised I'd never come here again, would you believe me?"
Everyone present looked at each other, and finally their eyes fell on Kaya, who had just arrived with Merry and some of the other villagers.
She walked up to Kuro slowly, her expression complex and conflicted. Everything had happened so fast that she still found it hard to believe that the man who had served loyally in her home, caring for her with such attention to detail, had actually been plotting to seize her family's entire fortune.
"My parents' deaths... was that you?"
Kuro let out a long sigh and fixed his gaze directly on her face.
"Your parents died of illness," he said flatly.
Hearing this, Kaya instinctively felt a sense of relief, but her expression remained troubled. She didn't know whether she should believe his words right now, especially because...
"If your parents hadn't died naturally, I probably would have eliminated them at some point anyway," Kuro added, providing a much darker alternative answer.
Upon hearing that, Usopp immediately jumped up, ready to beat Kuro senseless.
To say something like that right in front of Kaya! This man was truly heartless.
But Kaya stepped in front of Usopp to stop him.
"Kaya! How can you—"
"He's just proving that he didn't kill my parents," Kaya said softly. "That's why he's saying such horrible things."
She looked at Kuro directly and asked, "Why?"
Kuro stared at her. "Why? What kind of question is that? I'm a pirate, a pirate who has committed countless crimes over the years. I spent three years in this village pretending to be someone else, earning the trust of everyone around me. Everyone knew me as a good, reliable man. And then, when the time was right, I was going to claim your family's inheritance. Only then could I live freely, without restraint, and obtain true 'peace.'"
Kaya stared at Kuro in disbelief. Three years of memories flooded her mind, she could hardly reconcile the devoted, meticulous Klahadore with the cold stranger standing before her now.
His demeanor and tone were completely different, as if he were a stranger.
Marcus, however, frowned as he watched Kuro's expression carefully. Something about the man's behavior was striking him as off, like pieces of a puzzle that didn't quite fit together.
Suddenly, he thought he understood what was really going on.
"Kuro... you're a tsundere, aren't you?"
The moment he spoke those words, the air in the room fell completely silent.
Luffy, Zoro, and Usopp looked completely baffled, they had no idea what that word even meant.
But the women present all froze, their expressions quickly turning odd.
"What the hell are you talking about?" Kuro demanded, full of confusion.
"Kaya's parents died about a year ago, right?" Marcus asked, looking to Kaya for confirmation.
She nodded slowly.
"A whole year," he continued. "If you'd really wanted to seize the inheritance by force, there were plenty of opportunities. Her parents died of illness, and then their sickly daughter also dying of illness wouldn't have raised any suspicions, families catch diseases from each other all the time."
"If you'd truly wanted to go through with it, you could have easily done it. She's been frail and sickly since childhood, after all."
"Yet you continued taking care of her... right up until someone else appeared."
He looked directly at Usopp, who froze as he realized the implication.
"The young lady who never seemed to get better despite all your comfort and care... suddenly showed improvement after some wild kid told her a few ridiculous lies. Her condition even came under control for the first time in years."
"You were jealous."
"But you suppressed that jealousy, after all, you wanted her to be healthy and happy. Yet seeing her smile again and again because of that wild kid, listening to her excitedly tell you about his ridiculous stories... jealousy completely consumed your thoughts. But you refused to admit it to yourself."
"In the end, you gave up on everything, deciding to destroy it all rather than face your own feelings. So you made this decision. But in reality... you never actually intended to take her life, did you? You had your former Black Cat Pirates invade the village, but the real target was always that kid, wasn't it? And you planned from the beginning that after the Black Cat Pirates finished their job, you'd eliminate them too, so no one would ever know your true identity."
"That way, you could erase your past and get rid of your romantic rival in one move. As for Kaya, yes, you did plan to use hypnosis to get her to write a will, but there was probably another condition attached, like erasing a part of her memory?"
"Hah... hahahaha!" Kuro laughed wildly. "That's quite the theory you've come up with! But too bad for you, I'm a pirate. There's no way I'd ever fall for some spoiled, little girl who likes to throw tantrums!"
But to everyone else, it sounded like the stubborn denial of a man who had lost.
Kaya listened to the entire exchange, then lowered her head for a moment in thought. When she looked up, she spoke seriously to Kuro, "I'm sorry, Klahadore... but I've always thought of you as an older brother figure. After all, there's a sixteen-year age gap between us."
With those soft, kind words, she delivered the most devastating blow possible.
From that moment on, Kuro said nothing more.