What started as a smooth, bloody operation had now devolved into the Marines aggressively pushing back, infuriating him.
His eyes locked onto Richard and his five men, who were effortlessly cutting through the pirate ranks.
Their sudden appearance had snatched an easy victory right from his grasp.
"Oston! Take some men and eliminate that squad! I want their heads hanging from my blade!" the third-in-command pirate snarled through gritted teeth.
The pirate named Oston was a towering, heavily muscled man wielding a massive, double-bladed battle-axe.
He had thoroughly relished the slaughter in the earlier fight.
Now, upon receiving the direct order, he turned toward Richard, who was advancing triumphantly through the crowd.
A cruel, bloodthirsty twist curled Oston's lips.
"Good. I'll split him in two right now!"
Supremely confident in his own brute strength, Oston didn't retreat toward the gates like the other pirates.
Instead, he charged directly toward Richard with two other brawlers, his strides long and purposeful.
"Huff..."
After cutting down another pirate, Richard paused, gasping slightly for breath to sell his exhaustion.
A taunting, booming voice rang out right before him.
"Damn Marine cur! Daring to resist us? Watch as your granddaddy cleaves you in half!"
The heavy steel battle-axe was raised high and swung down at Richard's head with terrifying brute force.
There was no technique involved, just raw, crushing power.
Richard naturally didn't stand still to receive the blow.
With a simple, perfectly timed high leap, he casually dodged Oston's attack.
The massive axe struck the courtyard, instantly carving a deep, spider-webbed crater into the once-solid cobblestone.
Oston effortlessly wrenched his heavy axe free and charged again, cursing wildly.
"Trash! All you do is dodge! Have the guts to take your granddaddy's axe head-on!"
Having trained so long and brutally under Commodore Momonga, Richard would never fall for such a simple, idiotic provocation.
His movements were fluid and completely relaxed as he calmly evaded Oston's wild strikes.
He then shouted over his shoulder to the Marine musketeers holding the line behind him.
"Volley fire! Let this pirate taste the Navy's might!"
Upon Richard's loud command, the flustered musketeers hurriedly reloaded their rifles, raised them without properly aiming, and fired a massive volley.
'Damn these incompetents bastards!' Richard nearly caught a stray bullet from his own side.
Cursing his useless allies internally, he sought an opening.
Admittedly, while these cowardly comrades severely lacked accuracy, their sheer numbers made up for it.
Coupled with Oston's unusually large, easy-to-hit frame, the blind attack managed to achieve its goal.
Oston had his own brutal methods to survive on the high seas.
He quickly held his broad, thick battle-axe horizontally in front of his chest to block the incoming swarm of lead bullets while hastily retreating backward.
"You bastard, running away now?" Richard mocked coldly. "Rokushiki: Soru!"
In the blink of an eye, Richard vanished and reappeared directly before Oston, thrusting his military saber straight into the pirate's exposed right leg.
Thud!
The sharp blade pierced entirely through Oston's right thigh.
With a fierce, vicious twist of his wrist, Richard completely severed the pirate's leg muscle.
"Ahhhhhhh! You deserve to die!!!"
Enraged and crippled, Oston no longer cared about blocking the incoming bullets.
He raised his heavy battle-axe high with both hands, intent on cleaving Richard's head off even if it cost him his life.
Bang—bang—bang!
The previously overlooked Marine marksmen finally steadied their aim.
Dozens of bullets rained down on Oston's exposed torso one after another, splattering dark blossoms of blood across his chest.
Richard looked down at the wide-eyed, dying Oston, a faint, cold smile curling his lips.
Only absolute fools relied solely on brute force; true experts fought when they could, and ruthlessly called for backup when the odds were against them.
Of course, that logic didn't apply to those absolute freaks of nature in the New World who didn't care about numbers.
With the brutal loss of their key warrior, the pirates' morale completely plummeted, while the Marines' spirits soared.
....
By dawn, the Marine base was completely silent after a night of fierce, exhausting battle.
Limbless corpses lay scattered everywhere across the courtyard, the morning air thick with the metallic smell of blood and the choking smoke from burning wreckage.
Exhausted Marine soldiers collapsed on the spot, their uniforms soaked in sweat and gore, too drained to even move.
Richard and his covert team also acted worn out, but their actual achievements were remarkable.
In that night's combat, Richard had personally slain fifteen pirates, including the third-in-command.
After a brief, staged rest, Richard's team began actively directing the less exhausted soldiers to clean up the battlefield.
The fallen Marine soldiers were respectfully gathered for identification before cremation.
The pirates' bodies were mercilessly beheaded, and the remains were piled together in the center of the yard and burned to ash.
The sole remaining Navy Major, who had been severely wounded in the pirates' last-ditch counterattack, had been rushed down to the town clinic for emergency treatment.
But given the isolated town's limited medical capabilities, his survival was highly unlikely.
Now, the remaining Marine soldiers looked exclusively to Richard and his five companions as their true leaders, protecting them like stars surrounding the moon.
Unconsciously, the entire surviving 102nd Branch had already defaulted to Richard's absolute command.
High on the back mountain, Commodore Momonga watched the concluded battle through his binoculars, meticulously recording every single detail in his encrypted notebook.
"This battle's success will provide highly valuable experience for all our future purge operations."
When calm finally returned to the island, the Marine soldiers realized their branch commander, Captain Dyer Webb, had perished in the previous night's fight, supposedly taking the pirate captain and his men down with him at his estate.
Though some astute individuals in the ranks sensed something deeply amiss about the convenient timing, their lack of strength and the terrifying reality of the purge compelled them to remain perfectly silent.
Momonga noted this psychological reaction down as well.
There were many corrupt Navy officers in the Four Blues exactly like Dyer Webb—cowards who didn't live in the barracks with their troops, but instead hoarded extorted wealth in their own lavish residences outside the base.
The covert faction needed collective wisdom to ensure these fallen Navy officers met their ends as plausibly and cleanly as possible.
After documenting all the tactical details, Momonga took a moment to send a heavily encrypted message to Vice-Admiral Raleigh via a White Den Den Mushi.
It contained just a few words: Mission accomplished perfectly.
...
When Raleigh woke up in his cabin on the Grand Line and saw Momonga's decoded message, he felt a rare surge of genuine excitement.
This was the very first official implementation of a master plan he had contemplated for years, successfully executed without drawing anyone's attention at Headquarters.
If the circumstances were appropriate, he would have definitely invited Momonga, Richard, and the others out to celebrate.
Raleigh stood alone on the deck of his warship, but his gaze stretched far beyond the Grand Line, looking toward the distant territories of the Four Blues.
The East Blue purge was merely the beginning; the South Blue and West Blue would follow simultaneously.
As for the North Blue?
That sea was Raleigh's true, undisputed stronghold.
Anyone who was not already secretly under his command had long since been replaced through various "unfortunate incidents."
Competent, honest Marine officers were legitimately promoted and transferred elsewhere based on their military achievements.
Meanwhile, incompetent, corrupt officers "coincidentally" died tragic, heroic deaths during brutal battles with pirates.
...
A few days later, a standard report from the East Blue appeared on Fleet Admiral Kong's massive desk in Marineford.
The letter briefly described a tragic incident at Branch 102, where the base commander, Captain Dyer Webb, died heroically in combat protecting the town.
Since all the senior officers perished fighting the pirate raid, the report proposed that Commander Richard, a newly decorated combat hero, temporarily assume the base commander position.
Of course, such minor appointments for isolated Four Blues branches didn't require Kong's personal investigation—just a cursory glance and a stamp of approval would suffice.
Kong indifferently stamped the paperwork and tossed the document into his 'Approved' pile.
The Fleet Admiral certainly never imagined that, before his eventual retirement, identical, perfectly staged reports would continuously flood his desk until the entire Navy belonged to one man.
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