Chapter 8: Slaughter Begins
Patcheus felt like he'd stepped in the worst luck of his life today.
He had originally heard that Loki Port was a great place to fence stolen goods, which was why he'd traveled a long distance to come here, planning to sell the expensive perfume and the gold, silver, and jewelry he had looted from Dressrosa, exchanging it for beli and supplies.
He had even planned that if this trip went smoothly, he would use Loki Port as his best fencing spot from now on.
For pirates like them, with no territory of their own and forced to live by roaming and raiding, a neutral trading zone where it was easy to move loot and not worry about being robbed immediately was unbelievably important.
And Loki Port was exactly that kind of place.
This was the territory of the most dominant pirate crew in the New World, the Rocks Pirates.
The rule here was that fighting was forbidden within the port and the island's boundaries.
If you broke it, you would be attacked by the Rocks Pirates.
And if you sold stolen goods here, you did not have to worry about the original owners coming to reclaim them.
With Rocks' flag flying, forget a member nation like Dressrosa—even the Marines and the World Government's forces did not dare to push deep into this place.
Aside from having to hand over twenty percent of every deal as protection money to the Rocks Pirates, this place was basically a fencing paradise in Patcheus's eyes.
As for whether you would get robbed by other pirates after leaving Loki Port and sailing into farther waters, that depended on your own ability.
He, Toxic Fang Patcheus, captain of the Toxic Fang Pirates, with a 90,000,000-beli bounty, was not someone who'd grown up scared.
And today was not even his first time here, so he had not been worried in the slightest about his safety or his cargo.
However, he watched with his own eyes as his pirate ship was casually grabbed by that horned giant and hurled dozens of meters into the air, thrown toward the port town like a toy.
He watched Twin-Blade Cook, whose bounty was only 2,000,000 beli less than his, get half his body smashed apart by a single blow.
He watched his peers, pirate captains with bounties over 100,000,000, get slaughtered by that demon king like chopping melons and slicing vegetables.
Patcheus went numb.
For the first time, he felt that even big-name pirates with bounties over 100,000,000 could be so fragile.
Without any hesitation, he decisively blended into the crowd and slipped away, not even having time to gather his crew, and ran for his life straight into the depths of the town.
He was not the only one thinking that way.
Up ahead, several pirate captains with bounties no lower than his were also running.
He saw Pete, captain of the Gluttony Pirates, with a 98,000,000-beli bounty.
He saw Leech Rick, captain of the Bloodsucking Pirates, with a 130,000,000-beli bounty.
He also saw the lone assassin with a 150,000,000-beli bounty, Levi the Slasher.
And then...
"Hm? Who's that white-haired guy?"
Patcheus froze.
In the middle of the street ahead stood a white-haired young man, tall and powerfully built, clearly over three meters.
The street was not wide to begin with, and with him facing the crowd, as if he had been scared stupid by all these pirates, standing there stiffly in the middle of the road made the already narrow street feel even tighter.
The pirates at the front could only squeeze past him on both sides.
It was not that the pirates had good tempers and did not get angry about being blocked—everyone was busy escaping for their lives, terrified that the demon king behind them would catch up.
Otherwise, that clueless rookie standing dumbly in the middle of the road would have been torn apart by the mob long ago.
But that white-haired idiot's luck did not last long.
A massive fat man, three meters tall and three meters wide, came charging forward, his whole body wobbling with wave-like rolls of flesh as he barreled straight into the white-haired young man who was still standing there.
That fat face, so bloated his eyes were nearly invisible, was twisted with frantic panic.
Just as he was about to collide with the white-haired young man, the fat man flailed his short, thick arms desperately, looking absurd.
"Move, brother! I—I can't stop! I'm—I'm going to hit you!"
Seeing his movements and the panic on his face, Patcheus sneered.
That fat man was Pete, captain of the Gluttony Pirates, the so-called Big Belly King—a dead fat bastard who always wore a smiling face, but was actually treacherous and vicious.
Couldn't stop? He was doing it on purpose.
Although fighting was strictly forbidden on this island, right now, because Kaido had arrived, everything had already fallen into total chaos.
Pete had been chased down and crushed by Kaido, left humiliated and furious, and now he clearly wanted someone to vent on.
And that white-haired young man, scared stupid and blocking the road, had obviously become his punching bag.
He was going to smash that fool to death with his thick, heavy body.
"Heh heh heh..."
Imagining that in the next moment the young man would be twisted and broken under the high-speed impact, blood spraying everywhere, Pete's fat face filled with a delighted smile, but his mouth kept shouting hypocritically.
"Move! Move, brother! I really can't stop!"
"S-sorry!"
Bang!!
In the next instant, that mountain of flesh slammed into the white-haired young man like a rampaging elephant, right under the crowd's gloating stares.
The bloody scene Patcheus and Leech Rick expected, flesh flying and limbs twisting, did appear as anticipated.
But what left everyone slack-jawed and stunned was that the one exploding into gore was not the white-haired young man standing in the road—it was Pete, whose body alone weighed over ten tons, fat like a hill of meat.
The moment he hit the white-haired young man, the young man did not move at all—his feet planted on the ground did not even shift back by a single millimeter.
Instead, Pete's enormous body was like it had slammed into a steel pillar welded into the earth.
As his skin stretched tight to its limit, it tore in huge ragged splits.
Yellow-white-red flesh and fat squeezed out from the torn wounds and splattered everywhere, filling the narrow alley with the stench of blood.
"AAAAAAAH!!"
The agony of his body ripping apart made Pete scream.
Even with injuries that horrific, he still did not die.
His bloodshot eyes bulged as he stared at Carlo at point-blank range, howling, and actually tried to bite Carlo's face.
"Bastard! Bastard! I'll kill you! I'll eat you!"
As Pete's reeking, drool-covered mouth came closer and closer, Carlo finally moved.
His left hand, hanging at his side, lifted and pressed against Pete's massive chest, pushing forward.
It did not look like he used much strength at all, yet Pete's mountain of flesh was pushed away with ease.
Then Carlo slowly raised his right hand, clenched it into a fist, lifted his arm, and drove the punch forward.
Boom!!
The air in the entire alley visibly warped and rippled, blasting out a violent pressure wind, as if the air itself had detonated like explosives right on Carlo's fist.
All the pirates in the alley only saw a white shockwave erupt in front of Carlo.
Then Pete's open mouth was driven full of a fist—punched straight through, bursting out the back of his fat head.
A chunk of hard skull spun through the air like a dart and flew toward the stunned Patcheus, whistling past him and carving a deep groove into the alley wall.
"Sorry. The one who should be saying sorry is me."
Under the terrified stares of the pirates around him, Carlo slowly pulled his entire right arm back out of Pete's mouth, letting Pete's massive body crash to the ground.
Without the slightest concern, he reached into his clothes, took out a gold-stamped cigar, and put it in his mouth, lighting it in an alley where the stench of blood was suffocating.
"Hiss—"
He took a deep drag, the cigar smoke going into his lungs.
Carlo, his face splattered with blood, slowly raised his head to look at Patcheus and the others.
"Slaughter begins."
"Are you ready?"