"That brat…"
As Kai bared his upper body, cords of muscle standing out beneath skin and that demon-like back piece crawling over his shoulders, even the fifty-million-bounty pirate Sword-Lion Gart couldn't help the slight contraction of his pupils. From Kai's body he felt a pressure—vast, surging.
A four-year-old… is making me feel pressured?
"What a monster," Gart thought grimly, not daring to relax.
At the same time, Lucci's gaze was also drawn to Kai—those sharply etched muscle lines, that devil-stamped back pattern. The visual impact left Lucci momentarily dumbstruck.
This guy…
By comparison, Lucci had the depressing realization that his own build lagged far behind this four-year-old's.
The air tightened. A killing chill rose.
In the next instant, Kai moved.
"Soru."
Rokushiki's Soru exploded underfoot; to the naked eye he simply vanished. In truth his feet hammered the floor dozens of times, recoil flinging him forward like a bullet. In a blink, he closed on Gart.
"Huh?! That's—Rokushiki?!"
Gart's face changed. Having crossed blades with Marines many times, he instantly recognized the technique: the Navy's famed combat system, Rokushiki—the bedrock of mid-tier Marine elites.
He hadn't expected to see it on a four-year-old.
"He's only four! How is he even using Rokushiki—on top of Conqueror's Haki earlier? And using it this cleanly?" Gart's heart pounded.
While Gart was still reeling, Kai arrived right in front of him—less than half a meter.
Not good!
A crisis like he'd never felt surged up Gart's spine. Kai's right fist clenched; his skin tightened like steel as power flooded his arm.
"Tekkai — Steel Fist!"
All strength compressed into his right arm. Then the punch—like a volcano that had been storing pressure—erupted.
BOOM—
Savage force detonated from Kai's knuckles and smashed into Gart. At the last instant Gart crossed both forearms before his chest; otherwise the blow might have pierced his breastbone outright.
Power waves hammered down his arms in layers. Tiles beneath Gart's boots snapped and sank from the pressure.
Crack. Crack.
A web of fissures raced out from his feet, dense as a spider's web and just as chilling. The cracks kept spreading, further and further.
Rumble—
The entire floor fractured and collapsed inward around Gart; the sheer force drove his body down into the subsiding masonry. Broken slabs and stone shards blasted upward, debris whirling.
"What—what terrifying power! This brat… what is he?! Four years old and he hits like this?!"
Cold sweat beaded Gart's brow, fat drops sliding down his cheeks and falling from his jaw to soak into the dust.
The force on Kai's fist only grew more brutal. Gart's forearms were bent toward breaking, pain lancing up to his shoulder; his face twisted despite himself.
Faintly, he even heard it—his own bones creaking toward a snap.
"Damn it—hold!!"
He roared through his teeth.
The next pulse hit.
KRA-THOOM!
The shock blasted the fifty-million pirate captain clean off his feet. Gart's body tumbled end over end, blood spraying as the impact shook his organs into chaos. His aura guttered, paling.
He slammed into the far warehouse wall a hundred meters away.
WHUD—
Stone boomed. The wall dented inward in a human-shaped crater, Gart's body embedded deep in the masonry.
Crack, crack.
Fractures crazed outward from the impact point, multiplying in an instant.
A heartbeat later—
RUMBLE—
The wall gave up the ghost and came down in a roaring collapse. Rubble avalanched, burying the pirate captain under a hill of shattered stone.
Dust geysered up. Grit swirled.
Silence fell—utter, absolute.
Hundreds of eyes stared at the new-made mound of debris. No one dared break the eerie calm.
After a long breath, the four Sword-Lion officers—each worth over thirty million—performed the same involuntary motion:
Gulp.
They swallowed hard, eyes wide and blank, all fixed on the rubble heap that entombed their boss. Terror surged up from the soles of their feet.
"M-my god…"
"J-just now—the boss got one-punched?!"
"This isn't an illusion?"
"With the boss's strength—nearly fifty million in bounty—there aren't many across the whole sea at that level… and yet a four-year-old just sent him flying with one punch!"
They stared at the wreckage, minds blank.
In their memory, Sword-Lion Gart stood near-invincible. Who would have thought they'd see the day he was launched by a single blow?
And worst of all—the one who did it… was a child.
All the surviving pirates looked, as if pulled by a string, toward the small figure standing amid drifting dust.
Bare-chested. Veins lacing savage muscle lines. A demon's back sigil crawling over his shoulders. Pressure rolled off him like heat from a furnace—the aura of some prehistoric beast.
Add to that the image of their boss getting one-punched…
An icy chill speared up every spine.
"T-that monster… he's like a muscle tyrant…"
"Too strong. Even the boss couldn't take one punch!"
"How strong is he?! How does a four-year-old have power like this? What kind of freak did this sea spawn?!"
Led by the four officers, the handful of conscious pirates stared at Kai's back—and their bodies, uncontrollably, began to tremble.
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