"Go!"
A tide of pirates crashed toward Kai, blades flashing, eyes feral. Steel screamed down in a storm of edges—
Kai didn't even sidestep.
"Iron Body."
Muscle locked like welded plate. Knives and sabers rang off his skin with shrill, metal-on-metal shrieks.
He drew back his fist and let it drop.
BOOM!
The closest hitters exploded backward. The shockwave hurled bodies like driftwood, pulp and steel scattering; a dozen died outright, several dozen more tumbled end over end across the warehouse.
Before the echoes finished bouncing off the rafters, his second punch was already there. Air tore with a hard crack—a sonic pop—and caved through a pirate's gut, blowing a fist-sized hole clean through and bowling a score of men behind him like pins.
"Too weak," Kai said, shaking gore from his knuckles. "Ants."
The survivors froze, faces white. No one wanted to be next.
"That brat…" someone whispered. "His pressure—feels like Captain Gart's for a second…"
"Idiot, he's four!"
"Then stall him! Stall them both till the Captain gets here!"
The mob shifted tactics—circling, darting in to jab and fleeing, trying to bleed time instead of blood.
Across the floor, Lucci had already painted a straight red corridor through the crowd. He flicked a bead of blood off his cheek, eyes flat. When he glanced at Kai—still untouched—surprise rippled and then vanished.
As long as he doesn't drag me down, this mission is clean, he thought, and stepped forward again.
The headcount had plunged: from over a thousand to barely eight hundred in minutes—half by Lucci's Shave / Finger Pistol / Tempest Kick rhythm, the rest crushed by Kai's bare-handed brutality.
Kai shifted to move—then stilled. From outside the warehouse rolled a drumbeat of boots and voices, multiplying, swelling—thousands.
"Not the royal guard," he said softly. "We told the king to pull back."
His eyes narrowed. "So it's the whole Sword-Lion crew."
Proof arrived at once. Doorways, windows, gaps in the shattered wall—black with bodies. The warehouse vanished behind a living wall of cutlasses and muskets. Three thousand at least.
And at their point, a mountain stepped through.
He was just shy of three meters, all corded mass and lion-eyed glare; a centipede-thick scar crawled down from the corner of one eye. The air around him felt heavier.
Gart. Captain of the Sword-Lion Pirates. Bounty: 48,000,000 berries. Zoan—Beast Type. Sword-Lion.
"You useless maggots," Gart rumbled, voice shaking the timber. "Two brats did this to you?"
Silence. Heads down. No excuses.
Gart's gaze slid to Kai and Lucci and split into a slow, vicious grin.
"So the king sent children to pluck my trophies? Who gave you that courage?" He snorted. "Rosede IV's finally gone senile. A fertile kingdom, wasted on a fool… better to hand it to someone with teeth."
His shoulders rolled; tendons creaked like rigging in a storm.
"Like me."
On the rafters, dust shivered down. Outside, the roar of three thousand men rose as muskets leveled and blades thumped on shields.
Lucci's jaw set.
Kai smiled back at the giant, eyes going faintly red again. "Finally," he said. "A real warm-up."
Next: Zoan Awakening? The Sword-Lion bares his fangs!
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