Chapter 10: Two Legs

After such a long period of stagnation, substantial progress had finally been made.

Having condensed the fourth physical star frame, Maude felt deeply excited.

His excited expression, however, did not give the Fish-men a good impression.

Maude had no intention of caring about the Fish-men's feelings. After slowly calming his emotions, he looked at the remaining Fish-men in the arena with murderous intent.

Including Arlong, there were still about forty Fish-men left.

Hachi was nowhere to be seen.

However, considering his connection with Rayleigh, Maude had never intended to harm Hachi in the first place.

He would inevitably visit the Sabaody Archipelago in the future, and a visit to Rayleigh would be unavoidable at that time.

Until then, Hachi could serve as a messenger.

As for how the eradication of the Arlong Pirates would affect Hachi, that was not something Maude would bother to consider.

To put it bluntly, potential threats came in different tiers.

Judging by the subsequent developments in the original timeline, Hachi's potential threat was negligible.

"Come."

Maude pointed his blade at the remaining prey.

Compelled by the momentum emanating from Maude, the Fish-men looked at each other in dismay, completely losing their previous fearless and aggressive posture.

The human before them was clearly different from the humans they had encountered in the past.

One slash meant the loss of a compatriot; who could withstand that?

"Fall back."

At that moment, the Fish-men heard Arlong's voice.

The command to fall back sounded like sweet music to their ears.

Without a moment of hesitation, the Fish-men immediately began to retreat.

"Oh?"

Seeing this, how could Maude let the Fish-men have their way? He charged forward instantly.

With a flash of blade light, several more Fish-men were cut down in an instant.

Seeing Maude slaughtering his retreating compatriots, Arlong flew into a rage.

Even though he had realized that Maude was most likely a human returning from the Grand Line, he could not bring himself to cower under such circumstances.

"You're courting death!"

Taking the heavy saw-toothed blade, Kiribachi, handed over by a subordinate, Arlong took a large stride and charged toward Maude.

Seeing Arlong in his furious state, the Fish-men felt a surge of reassurance and hurriedly cleared a path.

In their minds, no human could possibly block a furious Arlong.

Gripping the hilt of the Kiribachi tightly with both hands, Arlong bypassed his retreating subordinates and arrived right before Maude.

Shark: Shark Tooth!

The massive saw-toothed blade cleaved through the air, slashing straight down at Maude's head.

If the blow landed squarely, Arlong was confident he could split Maude in two with a single strike.

"Your power is not weak, but you are too slow."

A faint red light flashed in Maude's eyes as he sidestepped, letting the massive Kiribachi graze past his front and strike the ground.

The sturdy stone paving instantly fractured into several pieces.

Unfazed, Maude stepped forward and swung his blade horizontally toward Arlong's chest.

If he could finish off Arlong in one strike, Maude would then have to swiftly hunt down all the remaining Fish-men present.

Otherwise, once Arlong was dead, these Fish-men would most likely leap into the sea and escape.

Maude did not want to miss out on a few exp pots because of that.

If he couldn't end it in one strike, he would simply have to beat Arlong aside first and slaughter the rest of the Fish-men right before his eyes.

In the fraction of a second when he swung his blade at Arlong, Maude considered quite a few things.

In contrast, Arlong had only a single-minded thought: to kill Maude.

After his Shark Tooth technique missed, his defense lay completely wide open.

However, as a former member of the Sun Pirates, having witnessed Maude's strength, how could he leave such a naive and raw opening?

His hidden countermeasure lay in the alcoholic liquor concealed within the webbed skin of his palms while gripping the hilt of the Kiribachi, revealing his inherent cunning.

Faced with Maude's horizontal slash toward his chest, Arlong decisively let go of the Kiribachi and took a step back.

This single step directly lengthened the distance of Maude's incoming blade while simultaneously granting Arlong the space to fling the liquor from his palms.

A mere two-step decision fully demonstrated Arlong's combat pedigree.

"Go to hell!"

Arlong violently flung the liquor from his palms straight at Maude's face.

At such close range, the water blast formed by the liquor would undoubtedly inflict severe injuries on Maude.

For the sake of this, taking a slash was a negligible price to pay.

"You had a hidden trick up your sleeve?"

Maude halted his momentum just in time, bending his knees to squat down, allowing the incoming blast of water to skim right over the top of his head.

Screeech—!

Simultaneously, the tip of the Wadori carved a straight, horizontal wound across Arlong's abdomen.

Had it not been for dodging the water blast, that single slash would have ended the fight right then and there.

"You actually dodged it...!"

Seeing Maude evade the water blast, a fierce glare erupted in Arlong's eyes.

Ignoring the slash across his abdomen, he lunged his upper body violently forward, driving his sharp, saw-toothed nose straight toward Maude's forehead.

Instead of withdrawing his blade, Maude raised his right right foot and, just before the saw-toothed nose could pierce him, delivered a vicious upward kick straight into Arlong's chin.

Bang!

A shockwave rippled outward from Arlong's chin.

The heavy force packed into that kick rattled him so hard his eyes rolled back into his head, lifting his feet clean off the ground.

Before Arlong could fly into the air, Maude swiftly retracted his right leg, twisted his waist, and spun around to deliver a side kick directly into Arlong's flank.

Another dull, heavy impact echoed out.

"Pwah!"

With his eyes rolled back, Arlong vomited a mouthful of dark blood.

His robust body immediately went hurtling toward the perimeter wall to the side.

Maude's spinning kick had abruptly altered the trajectory of Arlong's flight path.

With a loud crash, Arlong smashed a massive breach through the wall, continued flying forward with unspent momentum, and tumbled over a dozen meters across the ground before finally coming to a stop.

Right at that moment, Nami, Nojiko, and Genzo, who had rushed over from Cocoyasi Village, happened to witness the wretched sight of Arlong crashing through the wall and flying out.

They stared at Arlong lying motionless on the ground, struck dumb with astonishment for a moment.

Arlong... had actually been blasted flying.

Inside the Arlong Park compound.

Maude glanced sideways at the shattered breach in the wall caused by Arlong.

The strength in his legs hadn't been trained in vain.

Those two kicks were more than enough to knock Arlong completely out of commission.

Yet, during this brief clash, the combat proficiency displayed by Arlong still caught Maude somewhat by surprise.

That insidious hidden trick of concealing alcohol within his webbed palms while gripping the blade hilt was something that had never been shown in the original work.

It seemed one could never define a character's existence solely based on the impressions of the original story.

"As the main dish, you should just lie down for a while."

Maude muttered to himself, then turned his gaze back to the remaining Fish-men.

"As for you lot, none of you are getting away."

With Arlong out of the picture to distract him, Maude intended to eliminate all the remaining Fish-men with thunderous momentum.

To prevent the Fish-men from leaping into the sea to escape, Maude did things the hard way: ignoring the nearby Fish-men, he targeted those closest to the ocean first.

Seeing Maude kick Arlong into a state between life and death with just two strikes, the remaining Fish-men lost their will to fight and prepared to leap into the sea and flee.

However, Maude's foresight had directly cut off any path of survival for the remaining Fish-men on the scene.

After a flurry of bloody carnage, dozens of Fish-man corpses littered the ground.

Maude shook the blood off the blade of the Wadori, stepped over the sea of corpses, and walked past the broken wall into the open ground outside.

Having fought somewhat too eagerly earlier, his face and clothes were stained with quite a bit of blood.

Once outside, Maude noticed Nami and the others.

He merely glanced at them briefly before quickly withdrawing his gaze, stepping forward stride by stride toward the motionless Arlong lying on the ground.

Right now, harvesting Arlong's experience points was more important than anything else.

As Nami, Nojiko, and Genzo watched Maude emerge from Arlong Park covered in blood, they seemed to realize something.

The tiny flicker of hope that had previously ignited in their hearts instantly transformed into a towering inferno at that very moment.