Boom!
A heaven-shaking burst of Conqueror's Haki exploded from Kai's body.
It surged outward like a storm-tossed tidal wave—
overwhelming,
crushing,
catastrophic.
That incomparable pressure spread with blinding speed.
Layer by layer, it expanded outward—
until it blanketed the entire battlefield.
It was like being trapped on a small wooden ship in the middle of a violent storm.
The pressure was simply too terrifying.
At that moment, before the Conqueror's Haki fully reached Morrison, he was still dismissing Kai's earlier words as a ridiculous joke.
"What did you just say?"
"You think you can keep us here?"
"Don't tell me you actu—"
Before he could finish—
BOOM—!
The pressure crashed down on him.
A violent gust swept his messy curls back, revealing a face that had gone rigid in an instant.
The sheer force of that Conqueror's Haki pinned his body under its weight.
The smile on Morrison's face froze.
His body stiffened.
He could no longer move.
"W-what is this…?!"
His pupils contracted violently.
His face changed at once.
Before he could recover—
that overwhelming Conqueror's Haki surged across a full three-hundred-meter radius, sweeping through the entire area like a merciless tide.
And the hundred pirates behind him—
all of them were within its range.
That was with Kai deliberately restricting its spread.
If he hadn't reined it in, that same terrifying Haki could have engulfed a radius of over a thousand meters.
And yet now—
he had only released it over three hundred.
Clearly, Kai wasn't even going all out.
Even so—
the moment the pressure swept across the pirates—
their minds shattered.
Their consciousness collapsed.
One pirate after another foamed at the mouth.
Their eyes rolled back.
And as their awareness vanished—
their bodies dropped to the ground.
Thud!
Thud!
Thud!
More and more pirates collapsed.
All around the battlefield, the bodies kept falling.
Every last one of Morrison's subordinates—
all of them—
were knocked unconscious by Kai's Conqueror's Haki.
Not one escaped it.
A moment ago, many of them had still been wearing arrogant smiles.
Now those same expressions remained stiff on their faces as they dropped like corpses.
The violent pressure stirred up dust and dirt from the earth.
Smoke-like clouds of dust rose and rolled in every direction.
By the time it settled—
the noisy battlefield had turned dead silent.
Absolute silence.
Not a sound.
Everywhere, pirates lay sprawled across the ground.
Their eyes were rolled back, foam hanging from their lips, all of them motionless and unconscious.
Over a hundred pirates—
wiped out in an instant.
Not a single one remained standing.
Only one man was still conscious:
Morrison.
As a Logia user, he alone had managed to stay awake.
And now all of that horrifying carnage was reflected clearly in his eyes.
Sweat began to pour down his face in layers.
He stared around him in horror, looking at the bodies scattered everywhere and the absolute devastation left behind.
His lips trembled.
His face turned pale.
Gulp.
He swallowed involuntarily.
The scene before him made him start questioning reality itself.
"W-what…"
"what the hell is going on?!"
What had just happened?
What in the world had he just seen?
Questions and raw terror flooded Morrison's mind all at once.
Cold sweat rolled down his face in thick drops, sliding from his forehead to his cheeks, then falling from his chin to the dirt below.
"In a single moment…"
"my crew was annihilated!"
His voice trembled with rage and disbelief.
Even now, he still couldn't understand why.
"What kind of terrifying power…"
"could erase more than a hundred men in an instant?!"
"My men were no weaklings!"
"They were my future core crew for the New World!"
"And now they were all wiped out in a single moment?!"
He simply couldn't accept it.
The subordinates he had painstakingly gathered—
gone in an instant.
That one fact alone shattered everything he thought he knew.
"Brat…"
"What did you do?!"
Morrison glared at Kai, anger and fear mixing with deep caution.
"I merely kept the promise I made earlier."
"You came here, didn't you?"
"So not one of you is leaving."
"You're all staying here."
Kai smiled back at him.
The Swamp Pirates were not part of the trial.
They were outside interference.
Because of that, Kai had no issue making a move against them.
He wasn't breaking Zephyr's rules—
he was eliminating an unintended disruption.
That was exactly why he had attacked without hesitation.
The instant he stepped in—
he wiped the entire group off the field.
"So those weaklings were the subordinates you planned to take with you into the New World?"
"What a laughably naive thought."
Kai's expression was full of amusement.
Since the trial had now been disrupted by an outside force, it naturally fell to him, the hidden examiner, to deal with the problem.
There was no reason for a Marine Admiral like Zephyr to personally step in just for a bunch of small fry.
"You…!"
Morrison was furious, but he no longer dared act rashly.
What Kai had just done had filled him with real fear.
At the same time, Kurrin, the captain of the Cerberus Pirates and a pirate with a sixty-million-berry bounty, had also been badly shaken.
"What the hell is going on?!"
"The Swamp Pirates got wiped out?"
"How is that possible?!"
"That brat didn't even move!"
"How were they suddenly all taken down?!"
Kurrin was dumbstruck.
He stared wide-eyed at the unconscious mass of pirates on the ground.
A chill shot straight from his feet to the top of his head.
His entire body went cold.
For the first time in his life, he truly realized just how weak he was on this sea.
"That little brat…"
"what exactly is he?"
Kurrin looked toward Kai with naked fear and caution.
He was certain of one thing.
Whatever had just happened—
it had to be Kai's doing.
In Kurrin's eyes, Kai was no longer simply strong.
He was unfathomable.
Terrifying.
Something to be feared.
"He's even scarier than I imagined."
"No wonder…"
"even that Smoke-Smoke Fruit Marine brat treated him with so much respect."
Kurrin had finally grasped a terrible truth.
Far from the battlefield, Colonel Trull and his four hundred Marines stood staring in complete disbelief.
They were all stunned.
"W-what the hell?"
"What just happened?"
"How did the Swamp Pirates all get wiped out in an instant?!"
"My god…"
"That's impossible!"
"What kind of move was that?!"
"He erased over a hundred men in the blink of an eye!"
The Marines were all shaken to the core.
Trull himself widened his eyes.
"T-this…"
"If I'm not mistaken…"
His stare slowly shifted toward Kai.
As a Marine colonel, Trull knew many secrets of the sea that ordinary people did not.
Among them—
the greatest power recognized by the world:
Haki.
Only those who mastered Haki could truly stand among the sea's top fighters.
Even though Trull himself had never mastered it, he understood enough to recognize its terror.
"Colonel Trull, did you figure something out?"
One of the Marines beside him asked nervously.
All at once, countless shocked and confused eyes turned toward him.
Under all those gazes, Trull swallowed hard and finally answered in a trembling voice:
"If I'm right…"
"then that power that just wiped out the Swamp Pirates…"
"…was the legendary…"
"Conqueror's Haki."
The entire Marine force went silent.
One man asked shakily,
"What is Conqueror's Haki?"
Trull answered slowly,
"It is the mark of a king."
"A power possessed by only one in a million."
"Anyone born with Conqueror's Haki is a true monster of the sea."
"But in all my life…"
"I have never once heard of a five-year-old who had already awakened and mastered it."
"From the beginning of history until now…"
"there has never been such an example."
"That five-year-old boy…"
"…may be a real monster."
As Trull explained, the Marines around him finally understood.
And once they did—
their shock only deepened.
"You mean…"
"that terrifying force that wiped out the Swamp Pirates…"
"came from that five-year-old?"
"My god!"
"No way!"
"A five-year-old can really be that strong?!"
"What kind of monster is that?!"
One after another, the Marines paled in disbelief.
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