Upon hearing this, Krieg was momentarily stunned before an expression of extreme greed and arrogance surfaced on his face.
"Hahahaha!"
He let out a piercing laugh, his massive frame trembling slightly with excitement.
"Frost fairy? A brat with an eighty-million bounty?"
He didn't take that title to heart at all. In his eyes, he, Don Krieg, was the sole king of these East Blue waters. Whether it was Arlong or the Frost fairy, they were nothing more than appetizers before he conquered the Grand Line.
Eighty million Berries!
That was a fortune large enough to upgrade his fleet's equipment to the next level.
"Pass down my orders!"
Krieg waved his hand abruptly, his golden armor reflecting the piercing sunlight.
"All ships, form a surrounding formation and trap that brat! Remember, I want him alive! I'm going to twist his head off with my own hands!"
"Yes! Admiral!"
As the order was given, thirty pirate ships, like a pack of sharks smelling blood, quickly adjusted their course and closed in from all directions toward that solitary single-manned sailboat.
The massive sails blotted out the sun, casting shadows that completely swallowed Ryoma's small boat.
Aboard the flagship, Krieg was beside himself with joy.
He grabbed a megaphone-like object and roared in that direction, "Brat up ahead, listen up! I am the Overlord of the East Blue, Don Krieg! You are surrounded by my great fleet of three thousand men! If you know what's good for you, hand over the treasure you stole from Arlong and your eighty-million-berry head to me!"
Krieg's roar echoed across the sea, filled with unquestionable dominance and arrogance.
"With my thirty ships and three thousand subordinates, we could drown you with just our spit!"
"Surrender now, and maybe I'll leave your corpse intact!"
"Hahahaha!"
The pirates burst into a roar of laughter, brandishing their swords and eyeing the surrounded figure with playful and greedy gazes, as if looking at prey already in their grasp.
On that tiny sailboat, Ryoma didn't even bother to lift an eyelid. He remained sitting cross-legged, merely setting his own bounty poster aside.
Krieg? Overlord of the East Blue?
He remembered now.
Distant memories surfaced in Ryoma's mind. This was the unlucky fellow who was wiped out by a casual slash from Mihawk out of boredom, then fled pathetically to the Baratie, only to be pummeled by brute force by a Luffy who hadn't even learned Haki yet.
A guy with a seventeen-million bounty, leading three thousand pieces of cannon fodder, coming to pick a fight with an eighty-million bounty him?
Was his brain made of gold like that armor? Even though it looked shiny, it was actually completely useless.
The pirates here in East Blue really have no world experience.
Despite such a massive gap in bounties, he actually harbored delusions of making a name for himself by stepping on his head.
Truly... a waste of time.
Ryoma sighed softly.
He just wanted to quietly research Haki. Why did these blind flies always have to buzz around him?
Seeing Ryoma's indifferent, even bored expression, Krieg's fury was instantly ignited.
This was contempt!
It was the most thorough contempt for him, Krieg, the Overlord of the East Blue!
"You bastard! How dare you ignore me!" Krieg roared with a distorted face.
"Fire! Blast him and his boat into fragments!"
He had changed his mind. He wanted this ignorant brat to be turned into dust before absolute firepower.
"Fire!"
"Fire!"
The black muzzles of the cannons on dozens of pirate ships were all aimed at that central point.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom...
Deafening roars echoed through the sky as hundreds of heavy cannonballs, trailing black smoke, tore through the air and whistled toward Ryoma from all directions. That dense rain of projectiles was enough to level a small island in an instant.
The pirates of the Krieg fleet let out excited howls. They could already see the scene of the small boat being blown to bits and the person on board being torn to pieces.
At the very moment the sky-covering cannon fire was about to descend, Ryoma finally moved.
He simply raised a hand slowly.
"Thousand Petal Ice Lotus."
Accompanied by a soft chant, a chilling frost suddenly erupted, centered on his small boat.
A massive ice lotus bloomed out of thin air upon the sea's surface. The lotus was composed of countless layers of translucent ice petals, layered upon each other, holy and magnificent, perfectly enveloping the small sailboat within its heart.
The next second, over a hundred cannonballs slammed violently into the massive ice lotus.
There was no explosion, nor the expected spray of ice shards. Those cannonballs, capable of destroying steel, seemed to hit an immovable absolute barrier the moment they touched the ice lotus petals and their impact was instantly absorbed.
Immediately after, extreme cold spread along the shells, freezing them one by one into ice lumps, which then slid powerlessly off the smooth ice surface.
Plop! Plop...
The massive ice lotus didn't tremble in the slightest, while every single one of those cannonballs fell into the sea.
The clamor and fervor on the sea came to a screeching halt at this moment.
The laughter of all the pirates froze on their faces. They stared with wide eyes and open mouths, gazing blankly at the ice lotus that remained unscathed after the baptism of fire, appearing even more translucent than before.
"Wha... What is this?"
"Blocked... It blocked them? It blocked them all?"
"You've got to be kidding! That was a volley from over a hundred cannons!"
Aboard the flagship, Krieg felt that the golden armor he was so proud of could no longer provide him with even a shred of security.
His laughter was stuck in his throat, and his facial expression was distorted to the extreme.
"A mon... monster..."
Just as everyone was in a daze, the massive ice lotus slowly retracted its petals, revealing the unharmed Ryoma inside. He stood up, stretched his slightly numb ankles, and looked around at the ships surrounding him, his brow furrowing slightly.
"So annoying."
He spoke softly, yet his voice clearly reached everyone's ears.
Then he lifted his foot and lightly stepped on the deck beneath him.
Buzz—
An invisible ripple radiated outward from Ryoma in all directions.
Immediately, within a thousand-meter radius centered on him, the surging motion of the seawater was forcibly terminated.
Crack... Crackle...
The tooth-aching sound of freezing came from all directions. The originally azure sea surface lost its original color and form at a speed visible to the naked eye, rapidly turning into a silent, pure white.
In just a few seconds, Krieg's massive fleet—thirty pirate ships along with the surrounding seawater—was all frozen into one giant ice field.
The ships' keels groaned under the extreme cold, their hulls firmly imprisoned in the ice, unable to move.
Panic spread through the entire fleet like a plague.
"The ship can't move!"
"The... the sea is all frozen! How is this possible!"
"He's a demon!"
The pirates screamed in terror, they had never seen such inconceivable power.
This was already beyond their scope of understanding. This was simply a great power possessed only by a god.
Krieg watched his proud fleet being instantly frozen, and fear finally occupied his arrogant face.
"Impossible! This is absolutely impossible!"
He roared hysterically, taking out a peculiar shell from behind his back and aiming it at Ryoma.
"Die!"
He fired his proudest weapon, a gas bomb containing deadly poison.
He believed that as long as the opponent was a living creature, they would definitely be unable to withstand this terrifying poison.
The specially made shell whistled as it flew toward Ryoma.
Ryoma merely glanced at it and extended a finger, lightly tapping toward the shell flying in mid-air.
"Freeze."
The gas bomb carrying Krieg's last hope suddenly halted in the air, still a hundred meters away from Ryoma. A layer of white frost quickly condensed on the surface of the shell, and the gas inside instantly turned into solid crystals, becoming a harmless ice sculpture suspended in the air.
Krieg was stunned. He looked at the stationary gas bomb and the endless ice field, a bone-chilling cold rushing from the soles of his feet straight to his skull.
He finally realized what kind of existence he had provoked.
Ryoma no longer paid attention to the collapsing pirates. A crystalline path extended from the ice beneath his feet, connecting straight to Krieg's flagship.
He set off, walking unhurriedly along the ice path toward Krieg. Every step on the ice surface made a crisp sound that echoed across the silent ice field, like a death knell tolling on Krieg's heart.
Krieg watched that man—the "Frost Fairy" he had regarded as prey—approaching step by step, his legs beginning to tremble uncontrollably.
He wanted to retreat, but found his feet as if nailed to the deck.