The days that followed fell into the same steady rhythm as the weeks before.
Simple missions, cleanly executed. An escort to an island whose name Elian had already forgotten before even arriving. A retrieval job that was settled in less than an hour. A minor bounty on a local pirate who barely put up any resistance. The Berries accumulated slowly but surely, and Elian felt his Suiton chakra settling more and more naturally within his body with each passing day, even without techniques to express it.
It wasn't spectacular. But it was real.
One evening, docked in a small, nameless port, Shikamaru did the usual count and set the pouches on the table.
Elian opened the Shop without hesitation.
He didn't buy any techniques. Not yet. Instead, he took what he needed: three additional sets of kunai, two new batches of shuriken to replace those lost during recent missions, and two small doses of chakra to slightly expand his reserves. Modest, practical purchases, without any flair. Shikamaru watched him without comment, which in itself was a form of approval.
"What are you thinking about?" Elian asked as he stored the new weapons.
"Krieg," Shikamaru said simply.
Elian looked up.
"His name keeps coming up more and more. In every port we pass through, in every tavern we stop at." Shikamaru stared at the ceiling of the inn, his hands folded over his chest. "It's no longer a whisper. It's a presence."
Elian nodded slowly. He had noticed the same thing. Conversations shifted the moment Krieg's name was mentioned. Less curiosity, more fear. The kind of fear that settles in when you've seen something with your own eyes.
"We need to know more before we cross paths with him," Elian said.
"Yeah," Shikamaru replied. "And I think the sea is going to give us that opportunity sooner than we expect."
***
He was right.
Three days later, on a slightly rough sea beneath an overcast sky, they found the island.
They weren't looking for it. They were simply sailing east when Elian spotted the smoke from the bow. A thick, black column rising slowly into the gray sky—too large to be a campfire, too localized to be a natural blaze.
Shikamaru saw it at the same moment.
They changed course without a word.
***
The island had no name on their charts. It was a small coastal island, with a modest village that must have once looked like every other modest village in the East Blue—simple houses, a small port, fishing nets stretched over wooden posts.
They docked their boat in what remained of the port. Two fishing vessels were still burning faintly, smoldering with a slow, stubborn fire that suggested the attack had taken place only a few hours earlier. The dock was littered with torn planks, shattered crates, and scattered ropes. The market had been completely looted. Several houses were nothing more than blackened shells, their charred interiors exposed.
Elian stepped off the boat and moved onto the dock in silence.
The village wasn't entirely deserted. Survivors moved through the ruins with that particular slowness of people who haven't yet decided what to do with what remains of their lives. Some gathered scattered belongings. Others sat on broken debris, staring into nothing, too exhausted or too shocked to move.
A man approached them. In his fifties, clothes torn and covered in soot, a poorly closed gash on his forehead. He looked at them without much suspicion, with the eyes of someone who no longer had the energy left for it.
"Krieg?" Shikamaru asked simply.
The man nodded.
"Barely four hours ago. They came at dawn." He paused, glancing around at the ruins as if seeing them for the first time. "We gave everything. Everything we had. It wasn't enough. They took it all and burned the rest anyway."
Elian looked at the charred houses, the sunken boats, the people wandering through the wreckage. He felt something cold and steady forming in his chest, different from the usual warmth of his chakra.
"How many ships?" Shikamaru asked.
The man took a moment, eyes unfocused.
"We counted around forty from the shore. Maybe more. They came from all sides at once." He shook his head slowly. "Forty ships for a small fishing village."
Shikamaru said nothing.
Elian didn't speak either for a long moment. Forty ships. It matched what they had heard in Porto Calmo. And the number would only keep rising.
Another survivor approached—a woman in her forties with a child clinging to her coat. She spoke without being asked, as if holding the words back had become impossible.
"Krieg was standing on the deck of his ship when they arrived. You could see him from afar. Tall, covered in metal from head to toe. He didn't move the entire time. He just watched." She paused. "His men did everything. He didn't even need to lift a finger."
"Did he say anything?" Elian asked.
"Only once. When a fisherman tried to fight back with an oar." The woman lowered her gaze. "He said resistance was a waste of time. Then he watched his men deal with it without changing expression."
Elian stored those words away, quietly.
They spent two hours in the village. Shikamaru gathered whatever information he could, asking short, precise questions to the survivors who were willing to speak. Elian helped move debris, put out the last remaining fires, and organize what provisions were left for the villagers.
It wasn't much. But it was what they could do.
Before they left, the first man found them again on the dock. He held out a small hand-drawn map, stained with smoke.
"Someone who knows navigation sketched this out this morning before leaving to get help. The route Krieg seemed to be taking when he left the island." He looked at them both in turn. "If you're going to do something with it, do it right."
Elian took the map and slipped it into his pocket without a word.
Shikamaru was already looking out at the sea, hands in his pockets, his half-lidded eyes darker than usual.
***
They left in silence.
The sea was calm now, the sky clear, as if nothing had happened a few hours earlier on that nameless island. Elian rowed for a long time without speaking, letting the images of the burned village settle in his mind. The blackened houses. The boats still smoldering. The face of the woman with the child clinging to her coat. The empty gaze of the man with the gash on his forehead.
It wasn't anger. It was something colder, something more usable than anger.
Shikamaru spoke first, his voice lower than usual.
"About forty ships. And he'll have more tomorrow." He looked at the map the survivor had given them, spread across his knees. "He's moving west. At this pace, in a few weeks, he'll be in our area."
Elian kept rowing without answering right away. He was thinking about what the man had said. They took everything and burned the rest anyway. Not out of necessity, not out of strategy. Just because it was in Krieg's nature to leave behind something unusable. A way of telling others that resistance was pointless. That even cooperation guaranteed nothing.
"We're not ready," he finally said.
"No," Shikamaru replied. "Not yet."
A silence settled between them, comfortable despite the weight of what they had just seen. The sea lapped gently against the hull, steady and indifferent. The sun was beginning to dip toward the west, tinting the water with an orange glow that would have been beautiful under different circumstances.
"What exactly do we need?" Elian asked.
Shikamaru folded the map and slipped it into his pocket. He stayed quiet for a long moment, eyes on the horizon, with the expression of someone taking inventory of something complex.
"Techniques," he said at last. "Your Suiton without techniques is a foundation without walls. Solid, but not enough for what's coming." He paused. "And an understanding of how Krieg fights. We know he uses armor, that he commands from a distance, that his men obey out of fear. But we don't know what he does when someone actually gets close to him. We don't know his limits."
"And his fleet," Elian added.
"His fleet is the real problem," Shikamaru said. "Crane had a Devil Fruit, but he was alone. Renzo was competent, but with few men. Krieg is different. If we face him on his flagship in the middle of his fleet, we're dead before we even begin." He paused, eyes still on the horizon. "Two people aren't enough against an entire fleet. Even with Suiton, even with the Shadow Jutsu."
Elian looked at him.
"You're thinking about summons."
"Yes." Shikamaru closed his eyes. "Not for tomorrow. The prices are still out of reach. But Krieg is exactly the kind of situation the system is made for. We'll have to start seriously thinking about saving for that. A basic summon—even a single additional shinobi—changes the balance of a fight at this scale."
Elian nodded slowly. He thought about the fifty million needed for a basic summon. Still far away. But not as far as before.
"After the Suiton techniques," he said.
"After the Suiton techniques," Shikamaru confirmed. "In order. But we keep it in mind."
Elian nodded and took up the oars again.
He thought about how they had operated so far. Discreet approaches, targeted strikes, Shikamaru's Shadow Jutsu as the centerpiece. It worked against isolated individuals or small groups. Against an entire fleet, out on open water, they would need something else.
"We need to isolate him from his fleet," Elian said.
Shikamaru glanced at him.
"Go on."
"If we fight him at sea with forty ships around him, we have no chance. But if we find a moment when he's separated from the bulk of his fleet, or if we create a situation that forces him to act alone…" Elian paused, letting the thought fully form. "He does that sometimes. The survivors said his men handled everything during the attack. He observes, he commands from a distance. He's not someone who likes to get his hands dirty."
"Which means," Shikamaru said slowly.
"Which means if something forces him to intervene directly, he might be less comfortable than we think." Elian looked at his hands. "The armor protects him from physical impact. But armor that heavy restricts movement. And Suiton doesn't need to strike to be effective."
Shikamaru remained silent for a long moment, eyes half-lidded, turned toward the horizon.
"That's a good direction," he finally said. "But there are still a lot of missing pieces before it becomes a real plan." He slowly lay back in the bottom of the boat, arms crossed over his chest. "We keep accumulating. We gather more information about him in the ports. And when we have enough, we build something solid."
Elian nodded and resumed rowing.
They sailed like that until nightfall, carried by a steady wind from the north. The stars appeared one by one in the darkening sky, and the sea took on that deep, black color Elian now knew by heart.
He thought about the nameless island behind them. He thought about what it would be in a year, in five years. Would the people stay? Would they rebuild? Would the memory linger in every beam replaced, every net repaired?
He thought about Kael. About the village they wanted to build. About what it meant to have something worth defending.