At this moment, Meowth released the Thunder Fortress's full power, and you could see that the Thunder Fortress, which had originally been about as fast as a sailing ship, suddenly accelerated to four or five times its speed.
The two sides had already closed to a very short distance. After the Thunder Fortress unleashed a powerful attack and finished off the Six-Gold Kingdom's small ship with a single shot, the other two large ships hesitated a little.
Then the Thunder Fortress suddenly accelerated and charged straight into the middle of the two warships. Big ships like theirs don't turn easily.
The battle instantly turned into a boarding action.
"Charge! Let them see how formidable our Six-Gold Kingdom army is!"
General Moros saw that there were only a handful of people on the enemy deck and immediately decided to start close combat—pile on them and crush them by sheer numbers.
Just these two ships alone had at least over fifteen hundred men in total. The numerical advantage was indeed huge.
"Kill your way onto their deck!"
On the other ship, General Bissel, holding a huge axe, also commanded the soldiers to prepare for boarding.
"You two have been to the Grand Line as well. How do you not know that in front of true power… numbers don't mean much!"
Vane narrowed his eyes. A surge of blue-white Haki spread outward from him, instantly enveloping everyone on the two warships.
The soldiers of the Six-Gold Kingdom collapsed one after another like dominoes, eyes rolling back as they fainted.
Using Conqueror's Haki to intimidate ordinary soldiers looked incredibly imposing.
But Vane, who had exchanged pointers with Shanks, had gained a deeper understanding of Conqueror's Haki. This kind of wide-area release was actually a very wasteful way to use it.
After all, Haki isn't endless. If you burn too much in a short time, it's hard to recover. So masters who are highly skilled at using Conqueror's Haki will save it and attach it to Armament to perform Conqueror's Haki Infusion.
Of course, if your Haki reserves are huge, then it doesn't matter. Isn't Green Bull criticized so much precisely because he was intimidated by Red-Hair's Conqueror's Haki from so far away?
Vane's indiscriminate use here was simply because he still couldn't do Conqueror's Haki Infusion, and also because there were no enemies here who needed that kind of technique to deal with.
Thud! Thud~~
In the end, the number of people still standing on the two ships together didn't even exceed ten. That was with Vane holding back.
"What happened?"
Moros and Bissel were men who had followed the new king to the Grand Line. They had seen far more than ninety-nine percent of the West Sea natives, but even they had never witnessed a scene like this in the first half of the Grand Line.
"Right, I forgot you haven't been to the latter half, and you haven't been to Kano Country either."
There are indeed very few people in the first half of the Grand Line who can use Conqueror's Haki. In the West Sea, the most likely one you'd encounter is that unlucky Chinjao—he's old, but he really does have Conqueror's Haki.
"Tant, Dice, don't die at the hands of those two."
Tant: "Absolutely not."
Dice wore a lovestruck grin: "Can you make me excited?"
The two of them leaped up from the deck and landed on the enemy decks.
"Roar!"
Tant transformed into a Lion-Man. With powerful legs, two bounds carried him across a long distance, and his clawed hands slammed down at Moros.
Moros's eyes turned yellow, and a large amount of yellow fur burst out over his body.
Zoan-type — Orange Cat Fruit user.
Moros's Devil Fruit was the Orange Cat Fruit, focused on being a "big orange."
That wasn't surprising. Even among the Marines there's a Dalmatian—basically the same kind of fruit.
Bang!
The Lion-Man and the Cat-Man collided, and their momentum was actually quite evenly matched.
A lion's base strength is indeed stronger than a cat's, but Tant hasn't trained as long as Moros. Even without having gone to the latter half of the Grand Line, Moros had still trained far more than pirates of the Four Seas. It was normal for the two sides to fall into a stalemate.
"A lion? Don't think that just because your fruit is stronger, you're stronger."
On the other ship, Dice charged straight at General Bissel with his axe. Compared to Tant being evenly matched with Moros, when Dice's great axe collided with Bissel's, he was clearly at a disadvantage in power.
General Bissel's strength burst forth fiercely, and Dice was blasted back several meters. At the same time, intense pain shot through the place where both hands gripped the axe handle.
"So good!!"
The pain didn't bring Dice any suffering—on the contrary, his face was full of enjoyment.
General Bissel was a bit numb. Is something wrong with this guy's head?
Dice really does have something wrong with his head. He swung his axe as fast as a blade, completely ignoring the huge openings in his own moves.
General Bissel had many chances to seize those openings, but he soon realized that the opponent's fighting style was entirely about trading wounds for wounds. He had stayed in the Six-Gold Kingdom for far too long; he no longer had the boldness he once had on the Grand Line and wasn't willing to fight Dice like that.
Clang! Buzz!
Dice lost out in several clashes, and the expression on his face grew more and more delighted.
"Madman! Freak."
Vane shook his head and looked toward Meowth in the control room:
"Keep an eye on those two. Don't let them die."
Letting Tant and Dice face two men who had returned from the Grand Line at this moment—Vane didn't know whether they could win. But he also couldn't stop them from fighting. If every enemy were solved by himself, his subordinates would never grow.
He decided to go straight to find the Six-Gold King. He would leave Meowth and Electabuzz here to watch over things. With Meowth directing Electabuzz to provide support at any time, Tant and Dice might lose, but they definitely wouldn't lose their lives.
"Don't worry, meow. With me here, I definitely won't let anything happen to them."
Meowth came out of the control room and climbed straight up to the very top of the Thunder Fortress's mast, looking down on the two warships beside them.
Electabuzz had already slipped into its body, ready to jump out at any time to use Thunder.
The Fish-Man team also jumped into the sea at this moment under Big Pan's command. Their target was to control the small ship that was burning after taking a hit from the Lightning Projector.
That small ship had gradually brought the fire under control. To their credit, these soldiers had just fought a battle—they were still able to fight the fire while trying to adjust the usable gunports for support.
Meowth directly had the Fish-Man team dive under the enemy ship and start drilling holes in the hull.
These Fish-Men's weapons were long spears shaped like bamboo shoots—perfect for drilling through a ship's bottom.
That Fish-Men are natural warriors at sea is beyond doubt. In the original story, whether it was Arlong who appeared earliest, or later Tiger and Jinbe, and even Hody Jones's New Fish-Man Pirates, they were basically all fighting on land.
There were hardly any proper naval battles.
Either they didn't make use of their advantage at sea, or, like Hody Jones on drugs in his first underwater fight with Zoro, they thought they were strong enough to fight head-on—and almost got split open, scaled, gilled, and gutted.
As a Fish-Man, you have to have a correct understanding of your own strength. If you don't have the power, don't fight people head-on. Use the sea's advantage and drill through the enemy's ships—that's the real way.
On this point, Arlong did very well against the Marines: two or three Fish-Men could take out a small Marine warship.