"Sure your intel isn't wrong?"
Feeling the air turn razor-cold with killing intent, Kai gave Lucci a sideways look.
"CP's intelligence doesn't make mistakes," Lucci said, certain.
"Then this is… interesting." Kai's gaze slid over the ranks of pirates crowding the warehouse. "Looks like this welcome party wasn't meant for us at all. More like a 'surprise' for King Rosed IV—only we tripped it first. Unlucky."
"I'll handle it," Lucci replied, eyes flat as glass. "Just keep yourself alive."
"You'll handle it? There are at least a thousand in here." Kai's tone turned dry. "You sure you can wipe them all by yourself?"
Lucci flicked him a glance. "If you can do better, be my guest."
Kai chuckled. Look at that—still underestimating me.
His eyes narrowed as he scanned the interior. "No, your intel's probably solid. This is a holding site… they just predicted a rescue attempt and stuffed an ambush in here ahead of time. Bottom line: if we clear this thousand, the captives still walk."
Lucci's gaze hardened to a blade.
In the dim corners behind the press of bodies, iron cages squatted against the walls. Inside, nobles in brocade huddled together, shaking, faces white as paper.
"Two kids?" a pirate jeered. "That old goat Rosed sent two brats to save his pets?"
"Hah! Must've run out of men!"
"Come on then, little heroes!"
Laughter rolled like dirty tidewater. The cages rattled as hope rose and died in the hostages' eyes. Rescue? Two children? Against four thousand pirates on the island? Despair sank in all over again.
Lucci didn't bother answering the taunts. "I'm moving," he said to Kai—nothing more.
Then he vanished.
"Starting the slaughter already?" Kai rubbed his chin. He almost forgot—the iron stink of blood always stirred that thing inside him. Red flickered in his pupils; a faint, prehistoric pressure leaked from his skin like heat off stone.
Not yet. He forced it down. Watch Lucci first. If he can't hold it, I'll step in.
Time to see what the world government's "once-in-eight-hundred-years" prodigy looks like—stacked against the Marine prodigy of the future.
Show me, Rob Lucci.
Lucci blurred.
"Soru."
To the pirates, it looked like teleportation. It wasn't—just a flurry of explosive steps that turned reaction into a joke. Lucci reappeared in front of a pirate, two fingers already braced.
"Shigan."
His fingertip tapped the man's brow.
A red flower bloomed. The body dropped before the scream arrived.
"Two."
He pivoted, the same hand punching through another chest—wet thunder, a mist of scarlet.
"Rankyaku."
He whipped a kick across the floor. A pale-blue crescent screamed away from his boot, scything through a clustered knot of bodies.
Slice. Slice. Slice.
Dozens fell in halves that didn't know they were dead until they slid apart. Blood rained; heads turned; mouths opened—too slow.
Bodies thumped the warehouse floor one after another, dust pluming around them. In a blink, over a hundred pirates lay in pieces.
Drip. Drip.
Blood slid from Lucci's knuckles and vanished into the cracks of the stone. His eyes stayed empty as a winter sky.
Silence hit like a slap.
The pirates stared at the charnel pile, then at the boy with the dead, calm face.
"…This brat isn't simple," someone muttered, fear finally edging the bravado.
Across the entry, Kai's hands curled into fists of their own accord. The itch under his skin grew teeth—kill, tear, break. The violence caged inside him slammed at the bars, howling to be let out.
Every time he smelled blood, it woke.
Every time, it wanted more.
And right now—
—it was getting very, very hard to hold down.
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