Zoro said nothing.
He only kept staring at Zaraki's back as he tightened his grip on his sword again, excitement burning in his chest so fiercely that he failed to notice his own nails digging into his palm until blood began to seep out.
"One day..." Zoro growled under his breath, his eyes blazing with determination. "One day, I'm going to cut out a slash like that too!"
At the center of the battlefield—
[Ding! Congratulations, Host, for killing Mad Treasure.]
[Kenpachi Zaraki Template unlock progress increased to 13%.]
[Reward obtained: Slight increase to Spiritual Pressure.]
[Passive skill obtained: Wild Instinct (Beginner).]
"Only 13%?"
Zaraki rolled his sore shoulder, looked at the light screen in front of him, and clicked his tongue.
"This guy was at least a somewhat famous pirate. System, you're pretty stingy!"
He complained, but he could still feel it clearly.
The power inside him had risen again.
And the feeling from just now, when he gripped the sword with both hands, had already dispersed more than half of the violence building inside him.
"Whatever. Even mosquito legs are still meat."
Zaraki turned around and walked straight toward the still-dazed Commander Domon without even sparing the corpse on the ground another glance.
"So... Domon, right?" Zaraki pointed casually toward the corpse and the wreckage all around it. "I'll leave the rest to you."
"Ah? Y-yes, sir!" Commander Domon jolted upright and saluted on pure instinct.
The way he looked at Zaraki now was no different from how one would look at a future Marine Admiral.
"Alright, relax."
Zaraki waved a hand carelessly, then let his gaze drift toward the purple-haired girl in the distance, who was still clutching her neck and staring at him in lingering terror.
That little thief-cat looked badly shaken.
Still, some accounts needed settling.
If he let her run off with the secret of their cooperation, then this whole trip to Shimotsuki Village would have been meaningless.
"Hey, you little thief."
Zaraki began walking toward Carina, then stopped when he realized only one of the two girls was still there.
His eyes narrowed.
"Where's the other one?"
Carina's throat bobbed.
She had only just stopped shaking, but now the fear in her face changed into something closer to dread.
"Nami... ran away."
Zaraki said nothing.
Carina forced herself to keep talking.
"While everyone was watching you fight Treasure, she slipped away. She took one of the small boats at the eastern edge of the harbor and headed out before the Marines could block the route."
Domon, who had been listening nearby, frowned and nodded.
"It's true. One of the wounded men mentioned seeing an orange-haired girl cutting out through the outer lane while the dock was still in chaos. We couldn't spare anyone to chase her at the time."
Zaraki's brow twitched once.
"And?"
Carina lowered her head.
"She was heading for Cocoyashi Village."
The answer made the air go still for a second.
Then Zaraki let out a low snort.
"So the cat ran home."
He did not sound angry. If anything, the opposite.
It sounded like he had just been handed a direction worth following.
By then, Zoro and Koushirou had already come up behind them.
Koushirou's eyes moved from Zaraki to Carina, then to the sea beyond the broken harbor.
"So that's where this road leads next," he said quietly.
Zoro clicked his tongue, still holding Wado Ichimonji tightly.
"That thief really picked her timing."
Zaraki glanced at him.
"You got a problem with that, moss-head?"
"No," Zoro shot back immediately. "But I'm not staying here either."
He lifted his still-damaged arm slightly, his face tightening for a brief moment before the stubbornness in his eyes pushed everything else aside.
"You said you knew how to deal with the damage from that cursed blade. Until that's settled, I'm not letting you disappear."
That was only half the truth, and everyone there knew it.
The other half was written plainly across his face.
He had seen a wider world today, and there was no chance he would turn his back on it now.
Koushirou looked at his disciple for a long moment before speaking.
"If you've already made up your mind, then go."
Zoro stiffened slightly.
Koushirou's voice remained gentle, but there was no hesitation in it.
"The village doctor won't be able to solve that arm of yours anyway. And after seeing what you saw today, staying here would only leave a knot in your heart."
Zoro lowered his head for a second, then muttered, "Tch... I was going to go whether you said it or not."
"I'm sure you were," Koushirou replied.
Zaraki rolled his shoulder once, then looked toward the open sea.
"Fine. The little thief heads to Cocoyashi, so we go to Cocoyashi."
He turned his head just enough to look at Zoro.
"Mosshead, carry the chest. Try not to die before we get there."
Zoro's face darkened instantly.
"One day I'm really going to cut you down."
"Get in line."
Zaraki then glanced at Koushirou.
"And you."
Koushirou met his eyes calmly.
Zaraki gave a short nod.
"That lesson wasn't bad."
A faint, tired smile touched Koushirou's face.
"Next time, try not to tear the roof off first."
"No promises."
The decision was made just like that.
While the Marines continued cleaning up the dock and securing the wounded, Zaraki and Zoro boarded the small ship again.
Nami was already gone, so Cocoyashi Village had become the next destination by default.
Domon watched it go and said quietly, "Do you think they'll catch up to her?"
Koushirou looked toward the horizon.
"Whether they catch her or not," he said, "that boy has already made his decision."
Domon fell silent after that.
He could not disagree.
...
And just as Zaraki turned and left, dozens of nautical miles away out at sea, a warship carrying a dog-headed figurehead was cutting through the waves at full speed.
On the deck, two figures stood side by side, looking toward Shimotsuki Village.
Though the warship was still far away, the Spiritual Pressure lingering in the air was already being carried toward them on the sea breeze.
"This aura..." A white-haired man with two cigars clenched in his mouth frowned slightly.
"Garp-san, it looks like your 'grandson' has made quite a scene."
That suffocating pressure did not scatter with the wind.
It burrowed into people's bodies and left them with a deep, crawling sense of discomfort.
The two cigars in Smoker's mouth were burning noticeably faster, their tips making faint sizzling sounds.
Garp did not answer at once.
He kept staring at the island on the horizon as it drew nearer and nearer.
The Justice coat on his back snapped violently in the wind.
The carefree grin he normally wore had long since vanished, replaced by complete seriousness.
"That bastard Treasure..." Smoker exhaled a thick cloud of smoke, his brows tightly drawn together.
"He may be trash who only cares about money, but his Jara Jara no Mi really is troublesome—especially for new recruits who haven't gone through any real training."
Oran, the aide standing behind Smoker, could not help swallowing hard.
It was his first time seeing the Marine Hero with this kind of expression.
The feeling was like watching an old lion that had been dozing suddenly get its tail stepped on.
"Um... Vice Admiral, sir." Oran carefully opened his mouth, trying to ease the atmosphere. "Even though that aura was strong, it faded quickly too. So maybe... maybe that kid Zaraki already—"
Crack.
A crisp sound of wood breaking cut through the air.
Before Oran could even finish speaking, a chill rushed from the soles of his feet to the top of his head and froze him in place.
The massive hand Garp had been resting on the ship's rail had already sunk into it slightly.
The hard teak beneath his palm had been crushed into splinters.
"Already what?"
Garp's voice was light, almost gentle, like the whisper that comes before a storm breaks.
He slowly turned his head, and in the eyes hidden beneath the shadow of his brow, there was not even the slightest trace of emotion.
There was only pressure.
"Boy, the sea winds are strong. Some unlucky words are better off rotting in your stomach."
At that instant, even the sea around the warship seemed to freeze.
Oran felt as if an invisible giant hand had closed around his heart, squeezing so hard he could no longer breathe.
His legs went weak, and he nearly dropped to his knees on the deck.
"Hey, old man, quit scaring my men."
Smoker frowned and stepped forward, shielding Oran while taking part of that terrifying pressure onto himself.
"Besides, you said that brat's is a monster. Instead of worrying about him, you should worry about how we're supposed to write the battle report later."
Garp gave a cold snort and withdrew his gaze.
That terrifying pressure disappeared at once.
He dug lazily at his nose and slipped right back into his usual absent-minded look.
"It'd better be like that. If that treasure hunter dares touch even one hair on my grandson's head, I'll turn this whole sea upside down."
...
The warship docked at last.
Before the ladder had even been lowered, two figures had already rushed forward.
Smoker's lower body dissolved into rolling white smoke and shot toward the dock, while Garp relied on nothing but the explosive strength of his body, punching a hole through the deck with one stomp before launching himself shoreward like a fired cannonball with a shriek of rushing wind.
"ZARAKI!"
Garp's roar was still echoing in the air when he landed heavily on the dock.
The ground beneath him collapsed into a spiderweb-shaped crater several meters wide.
And yet the scene that met them was nothing like the field of corpses and devastation they had expected.
Instead, all around them were busy Marine soldiers.
Some were moving stones.
Some were repairing the ground.
Others were gathered together, bandaging the wounded.
Every face still carried traces of shock, but none of them bore the expression of people who had just survived a hopeless slaughter.
There were no battle cries.
No screams.
Only the sound of soldiers hauling supplies and the sea striking the reefs.
"This..."
Smoker landed a moment later and froze, one of the cigars nearly dropping out of his mouth.
He swept his eyes across the strange post-disaster reconstruction in front of him, his head filling with questions.
"Where's Treasure? Where are those lunatic pirates? This is what you call a hard fight?"
At that moment, a dusty figure came running from behind a pile of rubble.
"V-Vice Admiral Garp! Captain Smoker!"
Commander Domon saluted, though even as he did, his eyes flicked reflexively toward the enormous trench in the distance, and the look on his face turned extremely strange.
"Domon!" Garp grabbed him by the collar and nearly sprayed him in the face. "Where's that brat Zaraki? And where's that bastard Treasure?!"
"Z-Zaraki-kun, he..." Domon shakily pointed toward the open sea beyond the harbor. "He already left. After the battle, he found his companion slipped away by boat and was heading for Cocoyashi Village. Zaraki-kun went after her."
Smoker's brows jumped.
"Cocoyashi Village?"
"As for Treasure..." Domon drew in a deep breath, as though it took all the strength in his body just to say the next words, and then pointed a trembling hand toward the far end of the abyss that had split the dock in two.
"Treasure... is over there."
Smoker followed the direction of that finger.
The moment he saw what was there, even a man long accustomed to blood and death felt his pupils contract sharply.
At the end of that trench, two halves of a mangled corpse lay quietly in the rubble.
The cut was smooth and neat, without the slightest sign of tearing.
What disturbed Smoker most was that there was no lingering sharpness of sword aura around the body.
Instead, it was full of the marks left behind by pure violent crushing through overwhelming force.
"One hit?" Smoker's voice had gone dry.
"Y-yes." Domon swallowed. "With just a... rotten piece of wood."
"Don't screw with me!" Smoker spun around and glared at him. "Treasure was a twenty-million-beri pirate and a Devil Fruit user at that! His chain defense could block cannon fire! And you expect me to believe he got killed by a rotten piece of wood? Do I look like I'm three years old?"
"It's true! I saw it with my own eyes!" Domon was so anxious his whole face had gone red. "There weren't any flashy moves, nothing like that at all—just a simple smash. And then Treasure, chains and all, was... gone."
The scene fell silent.
The sea wind swept grit and dust across the ground and stung Smoker's face.
He looked at the mangled corpse and suddenly felt the whole thing was absurd.
He had rushed here at full speed, even prepared himself for a hard battle, only for the target to be humiliated to death by a rookie who had only gone to sea not long ago.
"Pfft... pffhahahahahahaha!"
A burst of laughter shattered the silence.
Garp released Domon's collar, planted his hands on his waist, and laughed so hard toward the sky that tears nearly came out.
"As expected of my grandson! As expected of the seed I picked! Hahahaha! A rotten stick? Good! Very good! That's what a real man fights like! Screw all that Devil Fruit nonsense—before absolute strength, it's all flashy garbage!"
Still laughing, Garp slapped Smoker's shoulder so hard he nearly beat the Logia user apart on the spot.
"Well? What do you think, smoky brat? I told you there was nothing to worry about! That kid inherited the best part of my bloodline!"
Smoker's face darkened as he slapped the huge hand off his shoulder.
Grinding his teeth, he said, "This is not something worth celebrating. Power like that... if nobody keeps it in check, sooner or later it'll turn into a huge problem."
"A problem?"
Garp's laughter stopped at once.
He turned around and looked at the abyss that had split the dock apart, the amusement slowly leaving his eyes as his expression grew extraordinarily serious.
Then he reached into his clothes, pulled out a sleeping Den Den Mushi, and without the slightest hesitation dialed a number.
Buru buru buru...
"Hello? Sengoku?"
Garp roared into the receiver without caring in the slightest that the soldiers around him had all turned pale.
"I don't care what damned meeting you're in right now. Get a file ready for me immediately!"
He paused, then a lawless grin spread across his mouth, and his voice rose so loudly it drowned out even the crashing of the waves.
"I'm recommending Zaraki as a candidate for Marine Headquarters Admiral!"
Silence.
At that moment, it was not only Domon and the surrounding soldiers—even Smoker himself stood there with his mouth hanging open, both cigars dropping to the ground with a soft plop.
An Admiral candidate?
A sixteen-year-old boy was going to be directly pushed toward the highest level of Marine fighting power?
Madness.
This old man had definitely gone mad!
Standing off to one side, Domon looked from the laughing Garp to the stunned Smoker, and his lips moved slightly as though he wanted to say something.
He remembered the look in Zoro's eyes as he watched Zaraki's back after the battle, and he remembered the way Zaraki himself had simply walked away afterward, lazy and unconcerned, as though rules meant nothing to him at all.
'Was that boy... really suited to such a position?'
'Or could any position truly hold a beast like him?'
The words rose to Domon's lips.
In the end, however, he swallowed them back down.
Because in Garp's eyes, beneath all that laughter that seemed almost feverish, Domon saw a depth of light he could not understand.
---------
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