Upon hearing this, Krieg was momentarily stunned before an expression of extreme greed and arrogance surfaced on his face.
"Oh ho ho ho ho!"
He let out a piercing laugh, his massive frame trembling slightly with excitement.
"frost fairy? A brat with an eighty-million bounty? You didn't take the road to heaven, but instead barged into the gateless hell!"
He didn't take that title to heart at all; in his eyes, he, 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! commodore!"
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 Lorne'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, commodore 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 this commodore!"
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!"
"Oh ho ho ho ho!"
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, Lorne 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?
Oh, he remembered now.
Distant memories surfaced in Lorne's mind—this was the unlucky fellow who was wiped out by a casual slash from Hawkeye 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 criminal like himself?
Was his brain made of gold like that armor? Even though it looked shiny, it was actually completely useless.
The pirates here in the 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!
Lorne sighed softly; he just wanted to quietly research Haki. Why did these blind flies always have to buzz around him?
Seeing Lorne's indifferent, even bored expression, Krieg's fury was instantly ignited.
This was contempt!
It was the most thorough contempt for him, commodore Krieg, the Overlord of the East Blue!
"You bastard! How dare you ignore this commodore!"
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 Lorne 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.
Lorne 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 crystal 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; 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.
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