Shell Town is said to be a town, but in reality it's only on the level of a village—less than three hundred people, the typical poor and remote place.
Shell Island itself isn't very big either. There's only Shell Town, and the whole town basically survives on fishing and farming. Life was already hard enough without pirates; after the pirates came, it became misery without end.
"You lot can't slack off, meow! Work hard, or you'll be taken to be fish bait, meow."
Meowth lay on a rocking chair. Beside it, a Shell Town child held a big leaf and fanned it, occasionally feeding it little pieces of fruit.
And it was supervising the rebuilding of the houses the pirates had burned down in Shell Town.
Those pirates from the Buri Pirates who were captured—after it was confirmed they had no particularly useful information—more than a dozen of the most vicious scum were dragged out that very night and thrown onto Shell Town's circular plaza, where furious villagers stoned them to death.
They were stoned not only because they were vicious, but also because they had no other value.
Among the more than twenty pirates who survived, most of them had their uses.
For example, the ship's navigator—this was the most valuable person on a ship. Vane definitely wouldn't let him be beaten to death by the townspeople. He had originally wanted to pick up a ship's doctor too, but they didn't have one at all. If anyone got sick, they just endured it until they reached the next place with a doctor and got off to be treated.
"We'll work seriously. Please don't punish us."
"We'll definitely work hard to make up for our mistakes."
Very few of them meant it. Even if some did, they were scared into it.
In the first two days, some people tried to sneak out at night to take the ship and run.
Their ship was a bit bigger than the Going Merry. A few people could operate it. If they really got aboard—so long as they were experienced sailors, in waters they were familiar with, and didn't run into extreme weather—they could still get away.
Unfortunately, the plan failed from the very start. The pirates who made a move were all thrown into the sea to feed the fish. Meowth also worked through the night to hand-forge shackles to limit these pirates' ability to move.
...
"Vane-sama is back."
"Vane-sama is really amazing."
"Vane is back, meow? I think I smell something tasty, meow."
Hearing the commotion at the town entrance, Meowth immediately jumped off the rocking chair and ran over.
Very soon it saw Vane, and also saw Vane lifting a huge creature that looked like a red sea bream.
Meowth had seen gigantic Magikarp before, but this red sea bream was twice as big as that gigantic Magikarp.
"Meow, this fish is definitely super tasty, meow!"
Meowth's eyes were completely captured by this fish. In its head, all kinds of ways to cook it were already flashing by like a slideshow.
The boy who served Meowth exclaimed in shock, "That's the terrifying bullfish from Bullfish Bay."
"So that place is called Bullfish Bay."
Today, Vane had found an inner bay on the back side of the island that suited his training—a natural deep-water bay with a flowing waterfall.
The environment was pretty good. He was wondering why the people of Shell Town didn't settle there when this bullfish attacked him.
"That's the bullfishes' territory. Any other creature that appears in Bullfish Bay will be torn to pieces by them."
So there wasn't just one.
The little boy Jerry looked at Vane with a face full of admiration.
"Vane-sama is amazing—killed a bullfish with a sword in the water."
Right now, personal worship in Shell Town was very intense. Vane was at the top, and Meowth could occasionally fight him for first place… Huh? Where's Meowth? Wasn't it just here?
"Get over here right now. If you don't cook that fish properly, I'll turn you into fish bait, meow."
Meowth suddenly vanished. When it appeared again, it was already dragging the pirate cook over to the scene.
This pirate cook wasn't particularly formidable, but his cooking skills from traveling far and wide were still much better than those of the people in Shell Town.
The cook was also the one among this group of pirates living relatively well. When the fighting started, he stayed on the ship cooking and didn't go ashore to do evil, so the townspeople didn't hate him that much.
Being a cook meant that whether he was a pirate or a prisoner, he was doing the same job.
"This fish is yours to handle. You can pick two more well-behaved pirates to help… Oh right, what's your name?"
Among this group of pirates, the only one Vane knew by name was the navigator, called Whiskers.
"Vane-sama, my name is Hambak."
Hambak??
"You don't happen to have a relative named KFC, do you?"
Hambak shook his head. "As far as I know, no, Vane-sama. My father, who died long ago, was named Henkes."
Hambak's father was an ordinary cook from the West Blue. In his early years, he died in turmoil because of pirates, and Hambak began his own life as a ship's cook.
Later, he also went through pirate turmoil and became a cook on a pirate ship. The Great Saber Pirates weren't the first pirate crew he'd stayed with. Because he was a cook, wherever he went, he wouldn't be killed.
The current situation seemed very normal to him. In his view, with such powerful strength, Vane would definitely drift out to sea in the future, and when that time came, he would probably be swept along too.
"What a fish I've never seen before."
"Such a big fish must be super tasty, meow. If you mess it up, you'll taste Meowth-sama's claws, meow."
While nodding, Hambak examined the fish's flesh. Very quickly, he felt the head of the bullfish. There was a very obvious dent there—you could clearly see it was a fist mark.
So this fish wasn't killed by Vane-sama with a sword, but beaten to death with a single punch?
To kill something like this with a punch in the water? What terrifying strength.
...
Today was Vane's fourth day after his second crossing into the pirate world. He had already begun to work on balancing his body and swordsmanship, and to explore barehanded attack methods.
That fist mark on the bullfish's head counted as a small result.
Creating unarmed martial techniques wasn't something done out of thin air, but combined with breathing methods. In this, he didn't use his Frost Breathing. Frost Breathing was deeply bound to his swordsmanship and was also in a critical period of adjustment recently.
So he used the Wind and Water breathing he hadn't picked up in a long time.
Using Water Breathing and Wind Breathing to create a boxing style.
The former leaned toward defense, the latter toward offense…
Putting it that way, Vane felt he was slowly practicing "Flowing Water Crushing Rock Fist" and "Whirlwind Cutting Fist."
Creating a boxing style himself and making progress in a short time came from using his body to trial-and-error countless times. Every mistaken exertion of muscle would leave bruises of varying severity. An ordinary person training like this would ruin their body sooner or later.
But Vane's current body truly wasn't afraid of injury. That day, a musket shot pierced his lung and he was still fine—just that the recovery wasn't that fast.
Today, that bullfish's head was extremely hard. When Vane punched it, he killed it, but in fact his own fingers and palm also suffered severe bone fractures.
They were already mostly healed now.
"The healing ability is still a bit lacking."
His current bloodline level was too low, which made his recovery ability very weak.
Powerful demons could recover all their injuries with a flick of the hand. Weak demons could easily be torn into human sticks by some gifted people because their recovery speed wasn't enough—the more they were injured, the slower they recovered, and then they'd be killed by the rising sun.
If this were the demon-slaying world, for a demon to improve their level, they'd either have to eat more people or obtain more of Muzan's blood.
He had no desire to eat people, and there was no Muzan here, so he could only keep training himself and keep eating to raise his own level.
Food in the pirate world, especially meat, had extremely high nutritional value—for example, Sea Kings.
If he didn't eat people, then he could only keep eating those powerful creatures. The stronger the creature, the more nutrition their bodies contained.
This bullfish might just let him experience its abundant nutritional value.
Shell Island was relatively small, and there weren't any particularly fierce beasts on it. In his eyes, this bullfish had reached the level of a ferocious beast. In the water, its threat level was equivalent to large tigers on land.