The people on the Thunder Fortress could see that the warship that was hit at first only seemed to have a single piercing wound glowing red.
It looked like the damage wasn't very big, but that little red glow was like a flame appearing on a thin sheet of tissue paper—the fire spread rapidly, and the entire ship was soon swallowed by flames.
And it was accompanied by multiple explosions—this was the powder magazine being detonated.
Being fully ablaze was already deadly enough; the explosion caused by the ignited powder magazine directly tore the warship apart. A large ship was destroyed just like that with a single strike.
"Meowth, next time when facing a single ship, you can dial the energy down a bit."
"I think so too, meow. A lot of energy was wasted. Looks like half the power would be more than enough, meow."
On the Thunder Fortress, aside from the two of them, there wasn't a single person who wasn't shocked by the Thunder Fortress's power. Quite a few people, clinging to old-fashioned ideas, thought cannons were still better, and that the Lightning Projector Meowth built was a huge waste of energy with terrible cost-effectiveness.
Until they saw with their own eyes the Lightning Projector effortlessly destroy a warship about the same size as the Thunder Fortress, a single thought drifted through their minds: "No wonder he's the Science Leader."
"I really deserve it—I actually doubted Meowth in my heart."
"From now on, Lord Meowth is my second-greatest faith."
The greatest one went without saying—there was a bit of flattery in that.
The Bear Guard's mouth was wide open .
One of the three big ships of the Six-Gold Kingdom just… vanished like that? What kind of pirates were these—how could they be this strong? And they'd never even heard of them before.
"Oh! So pretty, fireworks!"
The younger Perona only felt that the ship with flames shooting into the sky looked incredibly beautiful. She danced with her hands and feet, leaning over the railing and shouting happily.
One of the negative ghosts she summoned also started dancing along.
"Be careful not to fall. You're a Fruit user—you can't swim."
Martha was afraid Perona might fall from the railing, so she stayed right beside her. Maybe because both of them had once been princesses of a kingdom, Martha felt a sense of closeness and showed an especially high degree of concern for Perona.
"Lena, you and Charizard go see if there are any survivors. If there are, leave one or two alive. Don't keep too many—execute the rest directly."
Lena nodded and climbed onto Charizard's back.
"Rraa!"
Charizard flapped its wings and carried Lena into the sky, heading toward the warship that was already slowly sinking.
...
The warship had started sinking because the explosion had blown its main structure apart into pieces. Still, since it was wood, it was unlikely to completely sink in such a short time.
This half-submerged state actually made the burning flames a lot smaller.
Riding Charizard, Lena arrived above the wreckage. Everywhere she looked were corpses floating on the sea surface—most of these people had died in the successive fiery explosions.
Suddenly, among several corpses sprawled over a piece of wreckage, one crawled up and fired a shot at the low-flying Charizard.
The moment Lena heard the movement, she put her hand on Charizard's back. The incoming lead bullet's aim was indeed very good—it hit Charizard's abdomen.
But Lena's Through-Through Fruit ability activated, and this kind of lifeless object passed straight through Charizard's body.
In the version without Haki, the defensive ability of the Through-Through Fruit was even more useful than the Chop-Chop Fruit. Buggy, who could split apart, was only not afraid of swordsmen's slashes; the Through-Through Fruit wasn't afraid of anything as long as it had no life.
Charizard wasn't injured but did feel something unusual. Without Lena needing to remind it, it made a turn and came above the wreckage.
"Rraa!"
Lena directly raised her gun and aimed at that person.
The one who had been playing dead was none other than the warship's captain. He didn't have time to think about why his lead bullet hadn't worked. Seeing the woman on the flying dragon already aiming her muzzle at him, he immediately grabbed a nearby piece of iron-banded wood wreckage and held it up in front of himself.
Lena pulled the trigger. A bullet shot out. The iron-banded wood wreckage was completely useless before the bullet—the bullet ignored the wreckage's defense and hit the captain's arm.
Lena immediately fired three more shots, blasting both of the captain's arms until they went limp and couldn't move.
She had made some progress in developing her Fruit ability. Within a hundred meters, bullets she fired could maintain the Fruit's effect. Further development would mean a longer distance.
But by then she would need a better firearm or the support of Armament Haki.
"Bring him back."
Charizard grabbed the captain—whose hands had been ruined—by the shoulders with both claws.
The captain was in a lot of pain from the grip of those claws and started cursing and yelling, but neither Lena nor Charizard paid him any mind.
They flew back to the Thunder Fortress and, from high up, tossed him down, letting him crash heavily onto the deck.
"It hurts like hell! Do you know who I am? I'm the number three ship captain under the Six-Gold King, second only to the three great generals!"
Under the Six-Gold King, one of the three great generals commanded the army, and two were naval commanders. And because their navy had three big ships, a relatively unknown person like him had ended up in command of one.
Vane: "If the Six-Gold King's subordinates are all as stupid as you, I'll be very happy."
He had no sense of reading the situation at all. You think you're some Celestial Dragon or something?
Those Celestial Dragons were propped up by the World Government as a whole and raised to be lawless, with a "I'm the greatest" personality.
You're just a ship captain from an allied country who's fallen into someone else's hands, and you still dare to be this arrogant? What are you thinking?
"Bear Guard, you should have seen this person before, right… Let me introduce him. This is a palace guard of the Nanami Kingdom, the kingdom your Six-Gold Kingdom wiped out."
"Because of you, everything in his family is gone. Right now he probably wants nothing more than to slice you into meat and eat you."
Sure enough, the Bear Guard's face was full of hatred: "I won't eat people, but I'd be very happy to slice this guy into meat and feed it to the fish."
Seeing the Bear Guard about to make a move, the captain finally began to panic, realizing he was no longer the captain who could boss people around, but a prisoner under his enemy's hand.
"Don't kill me, don't come over…"
This captain was a complete coward. When the three-meter-tall Bear Guard approached, he started flopping on the ground like a carp.
"If you don't want to die, then spill everything you know about the Six-Gold Kingdom."
After the new king of Six-Gold took the throne, in order to annex the Nanami Kingdom he had secretly stockpiled troops. Like the three great generals—there had actually only been one before.
The other two were secretly recruited later.
The captain didn't care whether Vane was bluffing him or not and directly dumped everything he knew.
Speak and you might not live; don't speak and you'll definitely die.
"So that's how it is. I didn't expect this new king to have gone through something like that."
When the Six-Gold new king was still a prince, he had gone to sea as a pirate for two years. He had even been to the Grand Line and finished the first half of it.