Chapter 475: Shino Encounters an Enemy
The officer in charge of the defense was Rear Admiral Rick.
After hearing the frontline reports, his face tightened with anxiety, but what he felt more than anything was helplessness.
He was one of those officers who had joined through World Recruitment. Not long after receiving his commission, he had been sent to Loguetown to serve as the stationed commander.
Loguetown was supposed to be an easy posting.
It was in the East Blue.
The sea that people called the calmest in the world.
Not just because Vice Admiral Garp often returned here, but also because the Dragon Hunter Pirates had marked several nearby kingdoms and islands as places under their protection. Pirates rarely came to make trouble, and those who did were mostly rookies setting sail toward the Grand Line.
The kind of pirates you could smack down just to maintain form.
Who would have thought that the first real crisis he faced would be this?
"Hold the line!" Rick shouted. "Do everything you can to hold them back!"
"Our reinforcements will arrive soon!"
"These guys dared to attack so blatantly and even want to pin it on us."
"We absolutely cannot let them succeed. We are the navy. We represent justice!"
His voice boomed across the ramparts.
The sailors, who'd been starting to panic, stood firmer at once.
"Follow Rear Admiral Rick and hold the line!"
"Follow Rear Admiral Rick and hold the line!"
The shout rose from somewhere in the formation, and more and more voices joined in.
Hearing that, Rick froze for a moment.
He had only wanted to boost morale.
He didn't expect the men to respond like this.
Heat rose in his chest, a feeling he hadn't experienced even when he first put on a Marine coat.
Pride.
Proud of this position. Proud of these men. Proud that even in the East Blue, where life was supposed to be easy, there were still Marines who could stand tall and speak of justice without shame.
He felt like he finally understood why the higher-ups wanted to keep the navy alive even without the World Government.
"Defend the town behind us!"
"If they want to break through, they'll have to step over every Marine here!"
Rick drew his saber and coated it with Armament Haki. Then he strode to the very front of the defensive line.
He would be the first one to face those monsters.
While the cannons at the port boomed and the defensive line fought desperately, several shadows had already slipped into Loguetown.
They were tall. Wrongly tall.
Their hair was the color of dried blood. Their bodies looked human at a glance, but the closer you looked, the more you realized everything was wrong. Their limbs were too long. Flesh seemed stitched from different sources. Their mouths were split to the ear, full of jagged teeth.
They moved fast.
Too fast for bodies that looked that mismatched.
"They got in."
"So the sea battle was just a cover."
From her vantage point, Shino spotted them the moment they emerged.
She slid the stabilizer into place, attached the suppressor, and set the rifle against her shoulder.
The targeting lens in front of her right eye flipped down. Trajectory, wind, distance—everything was calculated in an instant.
They were all moving toward the same place.
"The execution platform?"
Shino's eyes narrowed.
That was the place where Gol D. Roger had been executed.
To pirates, it was practically a holy site.
But what would people like this want with that place?
She didn't understand, but she didn't fire. Not yet.
"These things aren't here just to break stuff," she thought. "If I shoot now and miss the real target, I'll blow my position. Then I won't get another shot."
Besides, with how fast they were moving, if any one of them got close, a sniper like her would be in real trouble.
"Hehehe…"
"Did they draw your attention?"
A cold, wet voice came from behind her.
Shino immediately went to spin and shoot, but something slick lashed out and wrapped her up from behind.
"Slurp…"
The sound of something licking—wet, obscene—came from right behind her ear.
She looked back and saw tentacles.
Glossy, pulsing, coiling around her like poisonous vines.
"Little girl," a warped voice said, "I'm going to love you slowly."
"I'll hang you here."
"Let everyone admire you…"
"Bang!"
Shino pulled the trigger mid-grapple.
The blast from the shot kicked her forward, breaking the tension of the tentacles. Even bound, she could use recoil.
The tentacles loosened.
"Monster. Die."
Shino spun, raised her rifle, and fired point-blank.
The thing in front of her had a human shape if you were incredibly generous. Its head was mostly squid-flesh and writhing tendrils, its arms were nothing but bundled tentacles, and its body was patched like a failed experiment.
The shot blew a hole through it.
For one second.
Tentacles flowed back into the wound, refilling it.
So the whole body was tentacles?
"There has to be a core," Shino thought, rolling aside as another mass of limbs struck where she had just been. "Where is it?"
She activated Observation Haki, but the thing was a mess. Its entire body was noise, countless living strands wriggling, obscuring its center.
This type was the worst for snipers.
If Kirito were here, he would have rushed in and chopped it into a hundred pieces.
"A sniper's limitation…" Shino gritted her teeth. "So what?"
A voice seemed to echo in her mind.
A memory.
"Didn't we say we'd use our own hands to make new possibilities?"
Kirito's voice.
Shino's eyes brightened.
"Yeah."
"Possibilities are endless."
She canceled the sniper rifle.
The long gun disappeared in a shimmer of light, and she pulled out a hilt.
"Hehe, hahahaha…"
"Giving up already?"
"Good, good… Be my little—"
The monster never finished.
Because Shino moved.
The hilt in her hand lit up with a sharp violet glow.
The blade extended with a hum.
The CCG's only sword in this world—the Prayer Light Saber.
The monster tried to block with Armament Haki, but this blade wasn't a normal weapon.
"Shave."
Shino darted in close.
The light blade flashed again and again.
Tentacles fell like severed ropes.
The monster let out a shriek as its limbs were carved open like vegetables. The squid-like head flipped back, revealing at last a long, eel-like core connected to the brain.
"Puff."
Shino thrust straight through it.
The monster fell, body dispersing into twitching meat.
She didn't gloat. She didn't even stop to look. She retracted the light blade and began moving at once.
This sniper point was blown.
She had gotten away with that kill only because the guy underestimated her and thought she was just a long-range shooter. The rest wouldn't be that stupid.
She leapt off the rooftop.
She did not land.
Because three huge shadows slammed down in front of her.
And behind her, three more.
Six in total.
All of them stitched, warped, and wrong.
"A member of the Dragon Hunter Pirates?"
"I hit the jackpot!"
The one in front—who at least had a face that could still be called human—grinned, his eyes glowing with hunger.
Shino's back tensed.
There was no retreat.
She drew the light blade again.
"Come on then," she whispered to herself. "How many did you slip into town?"
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