"What the hell is going on?!"
Mad Treasure could no longer stay calm.
Fear spread quickly. One person panicked, then another, and before long, the terror rippling through the crowd had become contagious.
And right now—
with thousands of pirates screaming and fleeing in blind panic—
anyone who saw it would feel their heart lurch.
Fear took root silently in Mad Treasure's chest.
"Something's chasing them." Breed stared at the scene with the same alarm, even his voice trembling.
Then, in the very next instant—
Boom!
A dazzling blade of light exploded in the middle of the fleeing crowd.
A violent gale swept outward.
Hundreds of pirates were blasted off their feet, and two or three dozen died on the spot.
Breed and Mad Treasure raised their binoculars at the same time.
Even through their fear, they were driven by the same desperate curiosity.
What could possibly drive nearly ten thousand pirates into this kind of panic?
And then—
"It's… it's…"
Breed's throat seemed to seize shut.
Only broken sounds came out.
The binoculars slipped from his hands, hit the deck, and shattered.
Mad Treasure's eyes widened. He staggered back several steps until his spine struck the mast.
At some point, cold sweat had already soaked through his shirt.
What they had seen—
was enough to chill anyone to the bone.
At the rear of the fleeing crowd stood a figure wrapped in monstrous demonic energy.
His entire body was drenched in blood.
He held two blades in his own hands, while a ghostly oni arm gripped a third.
He stood there in the distance, doing nothing more than existing—
yet the freezing, wicked aura pouring off him was so overwhelming that even from ten thousand meters away, they could feel it clearly.
And tremble.
"It's… Kairos!!"
Mad Treasure finally forced the name out.
Both he and Breed had recognized that sinister figure standing far away.
He was the super rookie whose name had spread across the Grand Line—
Kairos D. Vale.
And the moment that name left Mad Treasure's mouth—
Kairos seemed to sense something.
Those blood-red eyes turned toward them.
Both Mad Treasure and Breed sucked in a sharp breath.
Their hearts nearly stopped.
No one could stay calm when stared at by eyes like that—
eyes like a demon preparing to devour them whole.
"Not good—run!"
Breed scrambled toward the helm and desperately tried to turn the ship around.
Mad Treasure vaulted off the deck and ran deeper inland without even looking back.
Then—
BOOM!!
A deafening burst of sound exploded behind them.
It was the crack of air being torn apart—
something was approaching at an absurd speed.
Something was already here.
Breed whipped his head around.
Buzz—
His mind went blank.
His entire field of vision turned red.
Those weren't bloodstains.
They were eyes.
Kairos' eyes.
In the span of a few short seconds, Kairos had crossed nearly ten thousand meters and appeared right behind him.
"Sp—"
Breed didn't even get to finish begging for mercy.
Higekiri came down.
The blade fell in utter silence.
It was as if every sound in heaven and earth had been stripped away, leaving only that single descending slash.
Sword energy ripped across sea and sky, stirring the ocean below into towering waves.
A blade-light more brilliant than the morning sun shot upward, piercing the heavens and scattering the white clouds overhead.
For one instant, it became the only thing that existed between sea and sky.
That slash could split mountains.
It could slaughter gods and demons.
It only moved forward.
And then—
everything in that area was erased.
Breed at the helm.
Mad Treasure, who had abandoned ship.
The pirates fleeing in the distance.
Anything caught in the path of that strike was torn apart and dragged into oblivion.
…
At the top of a distant ridge, Robin looked down toward the harbor below.
The shock had yet to leave her eyes.
The slaughter was finally over.
Now the sea was littered with thousands of corpses.
So much blood had poured into the water that the ocean itself had turned red, like a river of blood surging beneath the morning sun.
The smell carried for miles.
Even from where she stood, Robin could smell it clearly.
Of the nearly ten thousand pirates gathered at Hannabal, three thousand had been left behind forever.
The number of wounded was beyond counting.
And all of it—
every last bit—
had been caused by that one figure wrapped in monstrous purple aura.
Kairos.
Robin took a deep breath, her chest rising and falling, then slowly shook her head.
She could not help feeling a trace of relief.
Fortunately, she had listened to Kairos and left Hannabal the moment he killed the bookmaker.
If she had stayed, those desperate pirates would have used her—the woman traveling with Kairos—as a hostage.
If that had happened…
she would have been the one in trouble.
As Robin was lost in thought, the sun finally rose fully above the horizon, hanging high in the sky and bathing the land in light.
And in that light—
a figure appeared before her.
He wore a faint smile.
He looked down at her, and in those deep black eyes, traces of blood-red light still flickered.
"I'm back."
He spoke softly.
Kairos had returned.
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