Clack! Clack! Clack!
Ryoma's boots stepped onto the main ship's deck, making soft tapping sounds.
The sound spread across the deathly silent ice field, so clear it was almost piercing, each step thumping heavily against Krieg's heart, which was already filled with terror.
"Monster! You monster!"
Krieg finally wrenched a sliver of sanity from his extreme horror, leaving only the madness of a cornered beast.
He let out a beastly roar and suddenly raised that massive spear, which weighed over a ton, using all his monstrous strength to smash it down toward Ryoma's head.
The tip of the spear even sparked against the air due to the sheer speed of the swing, and the gunpowder mechanism inside the spear was primed and ready to trigger a violent explosion the moment it struck its target.
Facing this blow, Ryoma did not stop his pace. He raised his right hand, fingers spread, toward the massive weapon whistling toward him.
"Useless struggle." He softly uttered a few words.
In an instant, a visible white cold current gushed forth from his palm.
The heavy spear came to an abrupt halt less than half a meter above Ryoma's head, the sparks at the tip instantly extinguished, and the entire shaft was rapidly encased in a thick layer of frost.
Krieg felt an irresistible power of extreme cold travel from the spear's handle, and his hands instantly lost all sensation.
Crack... Snap!
A crisp cracking sound rang out as the spear, hailed as Krieg's strongest weapon, began to disintegrate inch by inch from the tip under his terrified gaze, turning into countless shimmering ice crystal fragments that drifted down like snow.
"No... impossible! My spear!"
Krieg stared blankly at his empty hands, that was the power he was most proud of.
He frantically threw away the remaining half of the spear handle, aimed his Diamond Gauntlets at Ryoma, and charged forward recklessly.
A translucent ice wall rose from the ground, blocking Krieg's charge perfectly.
Bang!
The incredibly hard Diamond Gauntlets slammed heavily against the ice wall, letting out a dull, heavy thud.
The expected scene of the ice wall shattering did not occur. Instead, spiderweb-like cracks appeared on Krieg's Diamond Gauntlets, centering on the point of contact.
"What?"
Krieg's mind went blank.
The next second, cracks spread across the entire gauntlet, which then shattered into crystalline grains all over the floor.
"Ah!"
Krieg let out a scream as his entire arm instantly lost sensation.
The Golden Armor covering his arm let out an overwhelmed groan before peeling off piece by piece, disintegrating into the most primitive metallic debris.
He staggered backward, his tall frame finally unable to support itself, and he slumped heavily onto the cold deck.
The Golden Armor on his body had become incredibly fragile due to the extreme cold. As he fell, the shoulder and chest plates groaned under the strain, disintegrating and peeling off in large chunks, revealing skin that had turned purple from the frost.
A sharp longsword composed of pure ice crystals manifested in mid-air, silently pressing against his throat. The chilling aura emanating from the sword tip made the hair all over Krieg's body stand on end. He sat paralyzed on the ground, not daring to move an inch.
"Admiral!"
"Bastard! Let go of Admiral Krieg!"
Just then, grief-stricken roars sounded from the ship.
Gin the Man-Demon and several of Krieg's most loyal pirates brandished their weapons and stepped onto the frozen deck, charging desperately toward Ryoma in an attempt to create a sliver of a chance for Krieg to escape.
Ryoma's brow furrowed imperceptibly, as if he felt a hint of impatience at the noise.
He turned his head and glanced at the rushing figures.
"Noisy flies."
He casually waved his hand. A small ice storm formed out of thin air, whistling as it swirled toward Gin and the others. The storm was initially only about as tall as a person, but it expanded rapidly as it spun closer, instantly swallowing all dozen or so pirates.
"Aaaah!"
Piercing screams sounded from the storm, only to be quickly drowned out by the howling wind and snow.
Countless tiny ice blades spun at high speed within the storm, constantly eroding their bodies and cutting them until they were covered in wounds, before they were immediately frozen by the extreme cold.
Ryoma no longer paid attention to the scene over there. He turned back, looking down from above at Krieg, who had completely lost his will to fight.
"I'm curious."
Ryoma's tone was flat, yet it carried a hint of genuine confusion.
"Are you all completely brainless? With such a massive bounty difference, you actually dared to initiate an attack. Who gave you the courage?"
Krieg's lips trembled, unable to say a single word.
Bounty difference?
He had only seen the eighty million Berries. To him, that was a mountain of gold, the capital for him to dominate the Grand Line. He had never considered what kind of terrifying power lay behind those digits.
Ryoma tilted his head and continued to ask, "Or perhaps you thought that because I'm a devil fruit user, I'd be helpless once I fall into the sea, so you could easily defeat me with your three thousand lackeys and the ocean environment?"
Krieg looked up blankly, his distorted face full of incomprehension.
Devil fruit user? The sea? What were those?
In a place like the East Blue, the existence of devil fruits was merely a legend to the vast majority of people.
Seeing him like this, Ryoma understood instantly and sighed softly. "Haa... I asked for nothing."
Sure enough, they were just a bunch of frogs in a well who didn't even possess basic knowledge of the world, yet were arrogant beyond measure.
Although Krieg didn't understand Ryoma's previous words, he understood Ryoma's current posture of disappointment and impatience.
An unprecedented sense of deathly crisis completely overwhelmed him. His already collapsed nerves could no longer hold out, and his massive body suddenly lunged forward as he prepared to kneel and beg for mercy.
"Wait! I... I'm willing to offer all my treasures! Spare my life!"
"I..."
Before he could finish his sentence, frost began to spread upward from the ice sword at his throat, sealing his mouth and plugging his unfinished words back forever.
Amidst endless fear, Krieg's body was completely encased in a layer of translucent ice, turning into a lifelike ice sculpture with an expression of mingled pleading and terror frozen on his face.
At the same time, the ice storm that had swallowed Gin and the others had expanded to a terrifying degree, sweeping across the entire frozen fleet and pulling every pirate from all thirty ships into its vortex.
After the storm passed, everything returned to a dead silence.
The three thousand pirates, without exception, had all turned into ice sculptures in various poses, standing quietly upon the ships. Every ice sculpture was pierced by hideous ice spikes, like thorns growing out from within their bodies, pinning them into a despairing eternity.
Ryoma withdrew the ice sword from the throat of Krieg's ice sculpture, letting it dissipate into points of light.
He began to stroll leisurely across the main ship, eventually finding all the treasure the Krieg Pirates had plundered in the captain's quarters: several large chests of gold and silver jewelry and some Berries.
He merely gave them a casual glance before transferring these items, along with the food, fresh water, and other supplies stored on the ship, to his own small boat. Finally, he picked up a thick logbook.
Having finished all this, Ryoma returned to his single-person sailboat.
He gave the ice beneath his feet a light tap, and the hard ice around the small boat began to melt rapidly, turning back into seawater.
The small boat regained its freedom and, carried by the sea breeze, slowly sailed away from this frozen graveyard consisting of thirty ghost ships.
Not long after, a Marine patrol ship flying the seagull flag received a terrified report from a nearby merchant ship and cautiously entered this sea region.
When the lookout saw the scene before him clearly, the binoculars in his hand fell to the deck with a clatter.
"Report... report! The... the Krieg Fleet... all... all of them..."
The young soldier was incoherent, his face deathly pale.
A Marine Lieutenant snatched the binoculars. When he saw the terrifying scene of thirty ships frozen on the sea, filled with ice sculptures of pirates pierced by ice spikes, a chill ran from the soles of his feet to the top of his head.
"Immediately... immediately report to the branch! No! Use the highest-level emergency communication to report to Marine Headquarters!" The Lieutenant's voice was trembling.
"Frost Fairy Ryoma... bounty of eighty million Berries... This is... a real monster."
Meanwhile, on the other side, far from that sea of death, Ryoma was leisurely sitting on his boat, flipping through Krieg's logbook.
The log's entries were vulgar and arrogant, filled with greed for wealth and disregard for life.
Ryoma flipped through quickly until a place name suddenly caught his attention.
East Blue, Sambas Region, Sea Restaurant Baratie... possessing highly skilled chefs...
Baratie?
Memories surfaced in Ryoma's mind.
He remembered that Sanji seemed to have been exiled to East Blue by his father, Judge, at the age of eight or nine. Later, the passenger ship he was on was attacked by Zeff the Red-Leg, followed by a shipwreck where the two of them starved on a deserted island for over eighty days. Only after being rescued did they open the Sea Restaurant Baratie.
Calculating the time, Sanji should be around eleven years old now. In that case, Baratie should already be open and have made quite a name for itself in East Blue.
Ryoma rubbed his chin. The continuous sailing had made him a bit tired of dry rations.
He closed the logbook and adjusted the direction of the sails.
"Before heading to the Grand Line, enjoying some top-tier cuisine seems like a pretty good choice."
(End of Chapter)
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