At that instant, the shoreline fell silent.
Marines and pirates alike — even the villagers — stared dumbfounded at the headless corpse slowly collapsing to the ground, unable to speak for a long while.
Only the howling sea wind whined in the distance.
When they finally came to their senses, the Marines swallowed hard, eyes full of terror as they looked at Sofia—
Crazy bitch!
This woman really was exactly as the rumors said: a complete lunatic!
Just because she felt humiliated, she'd come up and, without a word, used that brutal head-blasting method to kill her own subordinate's captain?
"What do you mean by that?"
Molly's face darkened; a faint anger burned in her eyes.
"You'd try to pin this on us… You Warlords, do you actually think that because a treaty shields you, you can do whatever you want in front of me, Sofia?!"
"Shilolololo… you can't say things like that, little girl!"
Sofia erupted in a high, sharp laugh. "I've always been a law-abiding signatory to the treaty, you know. By contrast, it's you Marines who're in the wrong—interfering with my legal plunder, aren't you?"
Molly actually found herself at a loss for words to refute this.
Because according to the treaty's rules, the party who breaks the rules first is indeed at fault.
"Vice Admiral—"
Just then, a somewhat trembling voice came from beside her ear, "Look—five o'clock direction…"
Huh?
Molly turned her head to look, her expression instantly changing, pupils contracting to pinpricks.
From the direction Sofia had just come, a fleet of five large pirate ships was now racing toward them at full speed.
"At least three thousand men…"
the adjutant whispered shakily.
As the strongest of the Seven Warlords, Sofia not only had terrifying personal power, but her faction was top-tier among the Warlords—she held territory in Paradise and commanded more than five thousand pirates.
These five ships carried most of Sofia's forces. And since they'd been moved into the New World, there was no doubt they were elite troops.
Soon the five pirate ships landed. Before they'd even fully steadied, swarms of pirates leapt from the decks with snarling smiles, weapons in hand, sealing off the entire coast until there was no escape.
The Marines Molly had brought numbered fewer than two thousand; they were immediately surrounded.
For a moment, all momentum was crushed.
The trapped Marines drew swords, backs to one another, nervously facing outward at the mass of pirates, faces pale.
"…"
Molly's face grew extremely grim. She said coldly, : "So what exactly do you intend to do now? Plan to frame us for your subordinate's death and then silence us by killing us all?"
Questioning aside, she didn't actually believe Sofia was that stupid.
"Silence you? Hey, hey, little girl, don't calmly say such terrifying things."
"If it were like the old me, today I really would kill every one of you Marines cleanly."
Sofia looked down at Molly with a smile. "But I can't—now that I'm a Warlord, we're at least treaty partners. I can't act like that…"
"Besides, I'm in a pretty good mood today, so let's just drop this interference with my men's legal plunder. Let it go."
Huh?
The Marines around them were stunned, some genuinely surprised.
This lunatic suddenly sounds… reasonable?
Molly's gaze was ice-cold; she didn't buy it for a second.
She knew: given the forces the other side had brought, this wouldn't end so simply.
Sure enough.
The next instant, Sofia looked at the girls on the ground and said lightly, "Take them all. While you're at it, clean out the peasants in this village—leave not a single one alive."
"Yes, Lady Sofia!"
The pirates sneered and responded, some roughly yanking the girls off the ground while others split off, grinning, and surged toward the nearby village.
"Hey, hey, don't go over there!"
"Vice Admiral!! Stop them, please! I beg you!"
The villagers who had just been cursing the Marines were suddenly terrified. Some tried to rush out of the encirclement to stop them but were kicked down by blocking pirates; scrambling up in shame, they immediately began crying and begging Molly.
"Don't be naive, little girl. For a few lowly peasants, you've already done more than enough…"
Listening to the cries, Sofia sneered contemptuously, brought her right hand up, pinched her thumb and middle finger together, and said, "So now you'll probably obediently tell your people to get out of here, right? After all, you should understand — no matter how magnanimous I am, I won't forgive someone interrupting my legal plunder twice…"
Snap!
A snap of her fingers, like flipping a switch that launches a nightmare.
The middle-aged villager closest to her instantly had his skull burst open and collapsed backward, then another, then another…
In two or three seconds, a dozen villagers along the shore were reduced to headless corpses strewn across the ground.
Blood splattered onto Molly's face. Her blood boiled, and she almost instinctively drew her sword, but her adjutant next to her held her back.
"You can't act, Vice Admiral!"
Her adjutant hissed in a trembling, low voice:
"This crazy woman wants to provoke you so she can regain her lost face! If you strike first, you'll be playing right into her hands! Even if she retaliates against us, the logic will be on her side! Headquarters won't be able to intervene! On the contrary, we'd be the ones violating the treaty, affecting the bigger picture, and we'd be severely punished!"
Logic…
Molly gaze turned to the distance, where the pirates who had split off were already flooding into the town, survivors fleeing in all directions;
Then she looked closer, at the girls who had witnessed their families' heads explode at close range. Their faces were deathly pale, legs weak, lips trembling so much they couldn't speak.
Logic?
Defending justice violates the treaty and gets you punished, while logic somehow favors the looters who burn, kill, and plunder? What kind of bullshit logic is that?!
"Let go."
Molly said expressionlessly.
"Vice Admiral!" The adjutant's voice broke with sobs. "Please don't be rash — you'll lose your life!"
"It's not that big of a deal. She wouldn't dare go for a killing blow. At worst I'd get beaten half to death, then take the punishment, demoted and reassigned."
Molly shook her head, surged forward, and shoved the adjutant several meters away with one fierce motion.
"You don't understand."
She glanced back at him, took a deep breath, and spoke quietly, "If I go home today without doing anything, I'll never sleep peacefully for the rest of my life."
"Shilolololo…"
Sofia paused her finger-snapping action,raised an eyebrow, and a slow, expectant smile curled her lips, "Looks like you're coming after all…"
WHOOSH!
In that instant, Molly's figure suddenly vanished.
The next moment, she reappeared behind Sofia, using Soru. Her gaze was icy cold, and the longsword clenched tightly in her right hand flared with jet-black Armament Haki as it came down in a sudden, violent slash toward the neck below!
Did I get her?
Molly's eyes were fixed on the spot, but—as expected—just as the blade was about to cut into flesh, Sofia suddenly dissolved into countless tiny bubbles and drifted away on the wind.
Boom!
The blade slashed empty air, gouging a deep trench in the ground.
At the same time, a sharp, mocking laugh echoed—now distant, now close—coming from all directions, elusive and unnerving:
"See, little girl? You brought this on yourself. I can't be generous a second time."
As those words fell, many of the drifting bubbles suddenly swelled with the wind. In the sunset light they formed into an eerie red air-bubble that surrounded Molly on all sides.
"Bubble… Explosive Hell!"
Pop! Pop! Pop!
The red bubble burst like kernels, detonating all at once.
Boom!
The explosions were deafening. The terrifying shockwave threw the nearby Marines to the ground; even the pirates farther out had their hair whipped about and their faces twitching uncontrollably, and they hurriedly retreated.
"Everyone clear out! Get away from Lady Sofia!"
"Don't rush in—encircle the coast; just make sure none of these Marines get away!"
The pirates who had surged into the town paused their hunt and climbed to roofs and hilltops, chuckling as they watched what was sure to be a one-sided fight on the shore.
They really have some nerve, that Marine…
But still—what does a mere G-5 deputy Base commander, a branch Vice Admiral, have to stand up to the almighty Lady Sofia?
...
As the red shockwave gradually dissipated, from within that illusory landscape woven of countless bubbles, a battered figure emerged step by step — Molly, clothes in tatters, leaning on her longsword, gritting her teeth as she walked forward.
The Armament Haki that had clung to her body like armor faded away. Of course, to serve as deputy commander of a base in the New World, Molly was well-versed in Armament Hardening.
But even with that protection, her condition was clearly poor: her eyes were unfocused, and blood trickled from her mouth and nose.
"Shilolololo… what an adorable little girl—too bad your temper's so violent."
A teasing voice sounded, still vaporous and uncertain.
"Among the girls I keep, I happen to be short of a manager... Begging from the Celestial Dragons can't earn much. How about it, ever consider..."
"Consider your damn mother!"
Molly's furious roar cut her off. She suddenly drew her blade and leapt high, swinging from left to right as a massive pale-blue arc of sword energy slashed outward:
"Your laugh is disgusting! Shut the hell up!"
WHOOSH!
The sword energy howled past, instantly shredding thousands upon thousands of bubbles. From midair came a muffled grunt—clearly, caught off guard, part of Sofia's elementalized body had been struck.
That blow seemed to spark Sofia's anger. A cold, sinister laugh drifted out:
"You really don't know what's good for you… fine, then I'll play with you today…"
Crash!
The air rippled as waves of bubbles appeared again. As they fell, they fused together, transforming into countless transparent serpents, their tongues hissing as they lunged ferociously at Molly.
Molly's pupils contracted, but she didn't hesitate. With a single slash she deflected a massive serpent already striking at her shoulder, then—shhhk!—she seized the opening, launching herself with Moonwalk to break through the encirclement, rising into the air. With an angry shout, she swung her longsword down at the other serpents below.
"Dust Slash!"
...
Wave after wave of sword energy slashed out, without pause.
But the endless bubbles, under Sofia's control, swelled and shrank, soft one moment and hard the next, fusing and dispersing, refracting dreamlike lights in the twilight.
At first, Molly was only slightly at a disadvantage, able to block most of the attacks.
But as time passed and Sofia began fighting seriously, even the onlookers could tell—
Molly was faltering. Her breathing grew heavier, her wounds multiplied, and her overall state was deteriorating fast.
"Shilolololo… I thought that at least the New World's Branch Commanders would be stronger than those rookie Vice Admirals I crushed back in Paradise."
Sofia's voice remained calm, tinged with mockery.
"But now it seems you're only barely stronger—hardly worth the effort. Such a disappointment…"
"So then…"
Her tone suddenly dropped to an icy chill.
"I suppose this is where it ends."
At that instant—
The countless bubbles floating in the air seemed to heed her call, surging upward in a mad rush, fusing together. During the fusion, thick Armament Haki poured out, winding and coiling around them.
"Th-that's…"
"Unbelievable…!"
In just seconds, before everyone's stunned eyes, a massive arm appeared in the sky. Pitch-black, as if cast from molten steel.
Through a rift in the clouds above, the colossal arm looked as though it were reaching straight down from the heavens themselves, exuding a divine might that crushed any thought of resistance.
"Bubble... Hand of God, Annihilation!"
The next moment—
The enormous black hand struck down with terrifying speed, utterly disproportionate to its size.
In the low sky, Molly tried to dodge, but suddenly her legs were ensnared by foamy tendrils bursting out of nowhere. She could only watch helplessly as the looming shadow consumed her vision—
BOOOOM—!
A thunderous crash shook the entire island. Molly spat a mouthful of blood as her body was hurled away, like a broken puppet with its strings cut.
She traced a long arc across the sky over the crowd's heads, before plummeting toward the distant sea.