At this moment, Baro was shirtless.
Veins popped on his well-defined muscles.
Wielding an oar, he used incredible strength and speed to cut a white line across the sea, steering the small raft straight towards the two ships in the distance.
Swish, swish, swish...
As he got closer, Baro suddenly felt that something was not right.
What was wrong?
These two ships... seemed to be sailing backwards?
No, that wasn't right.
Baro rubbed his eyes and then noticed that the reality seemed to be different from his first impression.
Normally, pirate ships should be chasing merchant ships, but the two ships in front of Baro were the opposite.
The pirate ship was running at full speed with its sails fully extended, trying its best to shake off the tail behind it.
And the merchant ship was following closely, chasing relentlessly, with a tendency to bite and not let go!
Baro: "..."
Huh?
What's going on?
...
This scene stunned not only Baro, but also the old captain and his crew who were closely following the ships.
Four Seas Alliance - is this their way of maintaining fixed routes?
A merchant ship chasing a group of pirates?
How novel!
The young lookout looked at the experienced old captain and couldn't help but swallow.
"Captain..."
He paused, looking a little confused, and said, "Are you sure they're a merchant ship?"
...
"Are you sure they're a merchant ship?!"
On the pirate ship, the pirate captain asked his first mate the same question.
The first mate was also troubled. After searching through many old newspapers, he finally found useful information on one of the pages.
"Captain, the place we just stopped to rest seems to be on the Four Seas Alliance's route!"
"Four Seas Alliance?!"
The pirate captain was new to the Grand Line, but he had heard the name on the previous islands, and it seemed to be a commercial alliance started by a superpower.
At first, the pirate captain was quite dismissive of this news.
They were pirates, after all, and wasn't their job to kill, burn, loot, and plunder?
The pirate captain liked doing these things the most.
A commercial alliance? To them, it should just be a slightly tougher piece of meat!
However, as he heard more news, the pirate captain became increasingly wary of the name Four Seas Alliance.
After all, every message he heard said that he should never try to mess with the Four Seas Alliance, and any pirates who dared to provoke the Four Seas Alliance would pay an unimaginable price!
"I heard their merchant ships have fish-men as guards!"
"I heard it was a Devil Fruit user?"
"I know, it's a minotaur!"
"No, no, it's a bird-man!"
"You're all wrong, it's a dog-man!"
"..."
"I heard it's a Logia Devil Fruit user."
"..."
As soon as these words came out, the whole place fell silent!
In the end, the pirates gathered together and came to a common conclusion:
Never provoke ships flying the flag of the Four Seas Alliance!
Although the young and energetic pirate captain said he didn't believe it, he secretly made a note of it in his heart.
Navigation should be simple.
But he never expected that he would be so unlucky as to stop on the Four Seas Alliance's route just because he thought the weather was nice and he wanted to sunbathe and fish!
And more importantly...
The pirate captain turned back and saw the sandstorm swirling on the deck of the ship.
A... Logia?!
The rumors were true, it was a Logia Devil Fruit user!
The pirate captain urged his men.
"Run if you want to live!"
But unfortunately, ordinary pirate ships could not match the speed of the Four Seas Alliance's ships at all.
It was an Alabasta-made ship, and as a ship of a superpower, its performance was second only to Marine ships!
Before long, the pirate ship was overtaken.
A sandstorm leaped from the deck of the ship and onto the pirate ship.
The pirate captain looked at the man in the black fur coat and recognized his identity.
One of the Seven Warlords of the Sea, [Sand Crocodile] Crocodile!
Clang!
The sword he had just drawn fell to the ground, and the pirate captain couldn't muster the courage to resist at all.
"Please, let me go!"
He hadn't enjoyed enough of this great sea yet!
But what the pirate captain didn't expect was that his steel knife, which had fallen to the ground, was slowly floating up under the support of the sand, and then stabbed straight into Crocodile's body.
"Ah."
The tip of the knife entered his body, and Crocodile let out a calm and perfunctory "scream".
"That hurts."
Clang!
The steel knife fell again, and a "wound" filled with sand appeared on Crocodile's body.
He flicked off the ash from his cigar, raised his eyes to look at the pirate captain, and smiled grimly: "Since I've been attacked in such a 'dangerous' way, then I can only fight back, right?"
Before he finished speaking, the surrounding sand had already begun to stir restlessly.
The pirate captain had already peed his pants in fright, and retreated repeatedly, saying, "No, don't, I don't want to die!"
Whoosh!
The sandstorm raged.
Among the screams, Crocodile's voice was also particularly clear.
"If you're afraid of death, then don't go to sea!"
...
According to the old rules of the Four Seas Alliance.
Three people were left alive. They would carry the existence of the Four Seas Alliance to the whole sea.
After returning to the ship, Crocodile took a deep breath, felt refreshed, clapped, and ordered:
"I'm going back to my room. Call me if you meet any pirates."
In another day, he should be able to return to Alabasta.
But just as Crocodile turned around, an odd presence suddenly appeared behind him.
"Who!"
Crocodile turned around suddenly and saw a tall, muscular man with a backpack and a bare chest.
This person was not on the pirate ship, and he was definitely not one of his own crew on the ship.
A stranger suddenly appeared on the deck of the Four Seas Alliance.
So fast that no one had reacted, and no one had even seen how he got on board!
Whoosh!
In an instant, Crocodile turned his right hand into a scimitar, ready for battle.
The accompanying guards did the same, pointing their weapons at the strong man with extremely tense expressions.
Normally, with the reliable Crocodile here, the guards wouldn't need to react so strongly, but the man in front of them didn't look "friendly" at all.
He was the kind of guy who looked like he would make a good pirate just by standing there.
With a fierce face, his muscles were filled with visible "violence"!
Tough guy - that was the perfect description for him.
Seeing this, Baro quickly waved his hands, took out his Justice cloak from his backpack, shook it violently, and displayed the word "Justice" to the crowd.
"I'm a Marine going to Alabasta. I saw you were attacked by pirates, so I came to help."
The more he said, the less confident he became, because Baro was still not sure whether the people in front of him were "attacked by pirates" or "attacked the pirates."
Well, in any case, it would be great if no innocent people were hurt!
Thinking of this, Baro smiled from the bottom of his heart, and smiled very happily.
"Hehe, hehehehe..."
Crocodile wondered why he would meet a crazy Marine at sea!
He looked even more like a bad guy than himself, and he talked like an idiot.
And he was a crazy Marine with a Justice cloak!
Wait...
Did this guy say he was going to Alabasta?
How annoying, he didn't want to travel with a Marine!
So, Crocodile said casually, "It takes about a day for the ship to go to Alabasta at full speed."
"Okay, thanks a lot!"
Baro nodded and thanked him, then planned to get off the ship.
Crocodile then noticed that Baro's "ship" was just a small raft!
A Marine... going to sea on a small raft?
Crocodile didn't understand even more.
"You're going to sea with that?"
Baro nodded, but suddenly slapped his head, "Oh, right, you reminded me, a small raft is not very good!"
Crocodile: "..."
Then, Baro put the Justice cloak back in his backpack and said to himself, "Luckily, the backpacks issued by the Marines are waterproof."
Crocodile: "?"
What did he mean? Didn't he want to hitch a ride on his ship to Alabasta?
But Baro's next words stunned Crocodile.
"If the ship takes a day, then I can probably swim there in a day, that's much faster!"
Before Crocodile could confirm his words, Baro jumped into the sea.
Even after a few breaths, Crocodile still hadn't reacted.
That crazy Marine... was going to swim to Alabasta?!
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