Nami stepped forward, advancing in a constant pace.
Beneath her feet were the shards of glass Luffy had smashed apart. Their crisp crunch echoed through the empty Arlong Park, sounding especially jarring.
She didn't look up, and her pace remained slow and steady.
The iron sword she had borrowed from Zoro hung casually at her side. The tip pointed toward the ground, and every now and then the blade scraped against the broken glass, producing a faint metallic sound.
Arlong had been leaning back in the high-backed chair with his eyes closed, but as Nami drew closer, his eyelids twitched involuntarily.
He could clearly feel the intense hatred carried by the orange-haired girl walking toward him.
That hatred made his chest feel heavy and his fingertips grow cold. Even his shoulders, resting against the back of the chair, slowly sank lower.
It wasn't as though he'd never seen humans who wanted to kill him.
Back when he ruled Cocoyasi Village, nearly every villager had looked at him with the same emotion.
But back then, that hatred had been powerless. It was the helpless struggle of people who could only vent their despair through their eyes.
The hatred in the girl before him, however, had grown fangs.
She really might make sure he died in the most miserable way possible.
Arlong slowly opened his eyes.
He had originally planned to obediently play his part until the end.
As a supporting actor who had been forced back here by Shirahoshi and shoved into this script against his will, he had already told himself that since he was going to die no matter what, he might as well die with some dignity.
But he couldn't do it.
He was afraid he was about to die an ugly death.
Arlong suddenly sucked in a deep breath. His massive body shot out of the chair like an arrow released from a bow.
His powerful legs exploded with force, launching him more than three meters into the air.
His five fingers spread wide, the knife-like claws slicing through the air as they came crashing down toward Nami's head.
Since she wasn't going to spare him anyway, and wasn't going to let him die peacefully...
Faced with the enormous shadow descending from above, Nami didn't even look up. Her steps remained as steady as ever.
She merely raised her free left hand. A layer of Armament Haki silently coated her slender knuckles.
The next instant, Arlong's palm, carrying tremendous force, collided head-on with Nami's seemingly delicate fist.
There was no shockwave.
Only an extremely dull impact rang out, like a chunk of iron smashing into an even harder block of steel.
The next moment, Arlong's huge body flew back like a kite with its string cut.
The arm he had always been proud of twisted backward from the point of impact.
The sharp crack of bones breaking and shifting spread all the way from his wrist to his shoulder.
The tremendous recoil slammed him into the high-backed chair behind him, shattering the sturdy wooden seat instantly.
The impact continued carrying him back. He tumbled across half the park before crashing heavily into a massive glass wall.
With a deafening crash, the entire wall collapsed, burying him beneath an avalanche of shattered glass.
Arlong lay buried in the ruins of the wall, half his face pressed against sharp shards. Fresh blood trickled down from his temple.
His completely twisted arm hung limply at his side, obviously ruined beyond use.
The intense pain made Arlong gasp. He tried to push himself up with his remaining arm, only to find he couldn't muster any strength.
He couldn't win.
Not even close.
This overwhelming power was far beyond what a weakened fish-man like him, one who had just endured Shirahoshi's torment, spent eight full years in prison, and hadn't even had a proper meal since being released, could hope to resist.
Years without training had left him weaker than he probably used to be. He might not even be stronger than Luffy anymore.
Arlong knew perfectly well.
That attack had unquestionably been above B-rank.
With great difficulty, he forced broken words from his throat. After coughing up a large mouthful of black blood mixed with fragments of his organs, he slowly raised his head.
Looking at Nami, he somehow managed a bitter smile tinged with relief.
"Give me a quick death."
His was destined to die in the end. Dying at the hands of a powerful human who could use Haki wasn't the most humiliating outcome.
Even if that powerful person had once been as weak as a chicken.
At the words quick death, Nami finally stopped.
She quietly stood half a step away from him. For the first time, ripples of emotion appeared in her eyes, which had been as still as stagnant water.
The corners of her lips curled into a smile as cold as frost.
Looking down at the demon she had once feared, she asked softly, "When all those people from my village died, who showed them enough mercy to give them a quick death? A quick death? You think you deserve one?"
Nami raised the sword and thrust it forward.
She didn't grant Arlong's wish by taking his head in one stroke. Instead, she slowly turned her wrist and pressed the sharp tip against the bulging muscles of his abdomen.
"Iggy."
Nami coldly spoke a name.
As the name left her lips, she drove her wrist down. The blade easily sliced through the fish-man's tough skin.
Rip!
A chunk of flesh the size of a palm was carved from Arlong's abdomen and fell onto the glass-covered ground with a wet slap.
"AAAAAH!"
Arlong's entire body convulsed violently as a horrifying scream tore from his throat.
Nami didn't even blink. She stared at the bloodstained blade in her hand, her voice completely calm.
"Do you remember the nine-year-old boy from the old carpenter's family on the east side of the village?"
"He was always waiting by the window for me to come play. He even carved me a little wooden fish. I still have it."
"You were the one who bit through his stomach and threw him into the mud like garbage."
"He clutched his wound and crawled desperately toward home."
"He never made it."
After finishing the story, she drove the second cut precisely into the outside of Arlong's right thigh, carving away another large piece of flesh.
"AAAAAAAH!"
Arlong rolled across the ground in agony, his miserable screams echoing through the night.
"And Mira."
Nami remained steady as she spoke the second name.
She was the eleven-year-old daughter of the bakery owner in town, and one of Nami's childhood friends.
Whenever Mira came to play, she'd always save a piece of freshly baked bread for her.
She always wore a pretty blue ribbon in her hair.
Nami had eventually found that ribbon in the muddy ditch outside Arlong Park.
Its original color was no longer visible.
Only dark, dried blood remained.
The third cut followed immediately, the blade plunging deep into Arlong's left calf. The pain of flesh being carved away sent his huge body into spasms.
He tried to grit his teeth and endure it, but the agony of being slowly dismembered piece by piece was beyond what any living creature could bear.
Nami's cold words continued.
"Kiel."
Kiel, the eight-year-old son of the fisherman on the west side of the village, had been pushed off the second floor by the fish-man pirates on the day construction of Arlong Park began.
His mother lost her sanity because of it.
Every time she saw Nami afterward, she would ask over and over where her son had gone.
The fourth cut came down, sending flesh flying from Arlong's waist.
"Lucy."
Lucy, the twelve-year-old granddaughter of the village chief, had been Nojiko's closest childhood friend.
The year Lucy fell seriously ill, her mother knelt before Arlong and begged him to leave enough money for medicine.
Not only did Arlong take every last coin, he kicked her into the freezing sea.
Lucy never survived that winter.
Nami had stood silently beside her when she died.
The fifth cut brought another spray of blood.
Arlong's screams had become hoarse and shrill. Blood poured from the five or six horrific wounds covering his body like a burst spring.
The chunks of flesh carved from him lay scattered across the broken glass.
For the first time in his life, Arlong hated the fish-man blood he had always been so proud of.
If he had been nothing more than an ordinary, fragile human, he would have bled to death long ago after enduring such crude, merciless cutting.
He would never have had to remain conscious through everything that followed.
But he was a fish-man.
His body was ten times tougher than a human's.
His vitality was ten times greater.
And so was his sensitivity to pain.
Because of that, he couldn't die quickly.
He could only remain awake in despair.
Listening as Nami read each name from the list of the dead.
Feeling every cut as it pierced skin, sliced through muscle, and carved away flesh.
Arlong's teeth chattered.
"Give me... a quick death! Please!"
With great effort, he raised the one arm that still functioned and pleaded weakly for a merciful end.
The answer was the sixth cut.
Nami didn't waste a single extra word.
She simply continued reading the next victim's name.
"Tim."
Tim, a ten-year-old boy from the neighboring village, had only come looking for his uncle.
He accidentally bumped into one of the fish-man pirates.
For that alone, he was killed.
By the twentieth cut, Arlong no longer had the strength to scream.
His throat was clogged with blood, and only wet gurgling sounds escaped.
His body lay limp like mud beside the shattered glass wall, more than half of it soaking in the pool of blood he himself had spilled.
The once-powerful body that had terrified so many people had been carved beyond recognition.
Even so, his monstrous vitality kept him alive.
His unfocused eyes remained open.
The cruelty, hatred, and even despair that had once filled them were gone.
Only one thing remained.
A humble, desperate plea to be released.
Amid the silence that resembled a battlefield of slaughter, violent coughing suddenly came from the pile of shattered glass behind them.
"NAMI, STOP! YOU'VE GONE TOO FAR!"
Covered in blood and dust, Luffy struggled to his feet from the wreckage. Blood still trickled from the corner of his mouth.
Staggering unsteadily, he charged toward Nami without hesitation.
His eyes were bloodshot with anger as he shouted at the top of his lungs, trying to stop the slaughter.
Nami's hand paused briefly before the twenty-first cut.
Then she let out a long, heavy sigh.
Finally, she turned around.
With utterly cold eyes, she quietly looked at the young captain standing before her, his face covered in blood.
"Luffy, you're really annoying."
Before she even finished speaking, Nami lifted her right leg without hesitation.
She didn't even bother coating it with Armament Haki.
She simply kicked lightly but precisely into the center of Luffy's chest.
Luffy let out a muffled groan of pain as he was launched away like a cannonball.
His body smashed through two thick glass pillars in midair before crashing into the edge of the distant pool with a deafening boom, sending up a splash taller than a person.
Then he collapsed beside the water like a heap of mud.
He didn't move again.
Nami didn't spare Luffy another glance.
She calmly turned back and crouched in front of Arlong once more.
"Where was I?"
"Oh. The twenty-first."
She quietly confirmed it to herself.
Then the cold iron blade came down once again.
When Nami made the fiftieth cut, Arlong could no longer make a sound.
By the seventieth, his left leg had been stripped down to white bone.
By the ninetieth, the once-ferocious fish-man face had become an unrecognizable mass of blood and flesh.
Yet he still clung to life with his final breath.
His crimson eyes stared blankly into empty space.
"The ninety-ninth."
"Am."
Nami finally spoke the last name.
The final cut landed across Arlong's throat without surprise.
With a wet slice, his enormous head rolled away from his neck and dropped into the shattered glass, now completely soaked red with his own blood.
Ninety-nine cuts.
Back then, the Arlong Pirates had slaughtered ninety-nine innocent villagers in Cocoyasi Village.
Now he had been carved ninety-nine times without a single cut omitted.
A blood debt should be repaid with blood.
That had always been the fairest rule on these seas.
The enormous Arlong Park fell into deathly silence.
Only the distant sound of waves crashing against the shore remained.
Zoro stood with his arms crossed, leaning lazily against one of the remaining glass pillars by the park entrance.
From the beginning of the execution to the end, he never said a word.
Although his brows occasionally furrowed before relaxing again, he never took a single step forward, nor did he have any intention of stopping her.
Usopp stood beside him with both hands in his pockets, his expression so calm it was as though he were watching a third-rate play whose ending he had already known.
In truth, that was exactly how they saw it.
This revenge was nothing more than the natural result of cause and effect.
Sanji pulled a fresh cigarette from his pocket and flicked open his lighter with practiced ease.
As the orange flame flickered to life, he leaned in to light it.
Then he tilted his head back and leisurely exhaled gray smoke into the broad night sky.
None of the three showed any extreme reaction.
A murderer paying with his life was only natural.
Nami had merely collected the debt that was owed.
She hadn't made even a single extra cut.
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