Chapter 22 Plunder

In the distance, the grand tribute ship could be seen struggling to turn its bow around.

With the sails furled, relying solely on human muscle to maneuver a vessel noticeably larger than a warship was clearly no easy task.

Discord faded from Hody's face, replaced by a quiet calculation of the tribute ship's escaping speed.

It wouldn't matter if it escaped anyway; it was just a single ship, far less important than the bountiful harvest of experience points scattered all over the deck.

Withdrawing his gaze from the tribute ship, Hody turned and walked over to Laffitte.

Aside from the buck-toothed commodore and the afro-headed colonel who had ambushed him using the Six Powers, who both warranted digging out more detailed intelligence, the rest of the men only needed a name.

Under that premise, there was no need to hypnotize every single person.

Their names could easily be extracted straight from the buck-toothed commodore.

Laffitte was currently in the middle of torturing the commodore.

To successfully hypnotize a powerhouse of this caliber, one first had to shatter their willpower or employ various methods to severely fatigue the target's mind, thereby lowering their hypnotic resistance.

"Hody, your injuries."

While continuing his torture of the commodore, Laffitte glanced at Hody's left palm and the conspicuous slash wounds on his body.

"Oh, minor issues."

Hody lifted his bloody left hand for a quick look, then casually ripped a strip of fabric from his clothes to use as a makeshift bandage, wrapping it tightly around his palm several times.

A few seconds later, large patches of blood began to seep through the improvised bandage.

Without medical supplies, mere bandages could only slow down the rate of blood loss, not to mention the several untreated sword wounds on his body.

An ordinary person would likely bleed to death in such a condition without emergency medical attention.

However, Hody's constitution had already reached three and a half stars; he only needed to wait a little while, and the wounds would gradually stop bleeding through the power of his self-healing ability.

Besides, since he was about to harvest dozens of heads shortly, those gains should, barring any accidents, directly elevate his constitution to four stars.

By then, the physical transformation akin to an enlightenment would not only instantly heal his injuries, but at the very least completely staunch the bleeding.

Hody stroked his chin.

That being said, it was still quite necessary to find a ship's doctor at this stage.

After all, battles like today's would only become more frequent in the future, and getting injured was inevitable.

A few minutes later, Laffitte successfully hypnotized the buck-toothed commodore.

"Name."

"Ability."

"Specialty."

Following his usual routine, Laffitte reeled off three questions in succession.

Hody summoned his notebook and, based on the commodore's answers, briefly jotted down the intelligence onto the page.

After recording the most crucial information, Hody signaled with his eyes for Laffitte to bring over the other prey.

Understanding the cue, Laffitte dragged over the marines he had deliberately kept alive earlier.

He held each marine's face up to the line of sight of the hypnotized commodore, much like a facial recognition scanner, and thus extracted the name of every single marine.

Hody jotted down the names on the side and then executed them personally.

With Laffitte's efficient cooperation, the entire process from start to finish operated with the terrifying efficiency of an assembly line.

Before long, only the afro-headed colonel and the buck-toothed commodore remained on the deck.

These two were the highest-quality prey on the warship.

With the intelligence-gathering phase completed, Hody did not hesitate for a second and snapped both of their necks.

The experience bar, which was already lingering near the critical threshold, was instantly pushed past the limit by these two substantial gains.

Hody dismissed the notebook and closed his eyes.

Within the pitch-black field of vision, the hunter's notebook, wreathed in a faint halo, abruptly emerged.

Above the cover of the notebook, the dense constellation of stars swarmed like disturbed ants, darting across the surface and tracing clearly visible trails of white light.

Immediately afterward, these starlight dots began to descend, sliding along the cover toward the star frames on the silver line.

Almost in an instant, breakthroughs were achieved in the requirements representing constitution, ambition, and swordsmanship respectively.

Constitution ascended to four stars, and faintly showed signs of condensing a star frame.

Swordsmanship skipped the star-frame condensation phase entirely, jumping straight from one star to two stars.

In comparison, the gains in ambition were less pronounced, condensing only a single star frame.

Hody was pleasantly surprised, quickly scanning the number of stars along the silver line.

[Constitution: ★★★★]

[Swordsmanship: ★★]

[Ambition: ★★☆]

Those newly filled solid stars were emitting a dazzling silver radiance.

Hody had barely managed to take a couple of looks before he was enveloped by a long-absent wave of warmth.

Pop, pop, crack.

Amidst a flurry of popping sounds from his joints, the clothes on Hody's body rippled slightly.

About thirty seconds later.

Hody slowly opened his eyes.

The wounds on his body had stopped bleeding, and he could no longer feel any pain.

The exhaustion from his fierce battle with the buck-toothed commodore had also been completely swept away.

Seeing Hody open his eyes, Laffitte asked eagerly, "How is it?"

"A bumper harvest."

Hody's eyes shone brightly.

From the time he left Conomi Islands until now, less than a month had passed, yet he had yielded such rewards.

Aside from relying on prophetic intelligence to reap over a hundred fish-men from the Arlong Pirates, it was also sheer luck that led him to encounter these two warships dispatched from Marine headquarters.

Nearly two hundred qualified targets had elevated both his constitution and swordsmanship by a star each.

However, acquiring such massive gains was also largely thanks to Laffitte's abilities.

Hody examined his pain-free palm, then raised his right hand and gripped the hilt of his blade.

Clang—!

Under Laffitte's watchful gaze, Hody suddenly drew the Chidori.

"The Concealed Blade, huh..."

Hody lowered his gaze to look at the lifeless buck-toothed commodore, then walked over to the warship's mast, bringing the usage method and principles of the Concealed Blade to the forefront of his consciousness.

Concealed Blade Style — Pinwheel.

Hody's wrist trembled at high speed, and the forward-slashing Chidori abruptly dragged along a series of afterimages, spinning backward like a pinwheel.

One circle, two circles, three circles...

It wasn't until the blade shadows had rotated six times that Hody successfully made the Chidori blend into the blurs of the afterimages.

In an instant, Hody stepped forward twice.

The seemingly hazardous chain of blade shadows struck the mast, yet produced no substantive damage whatsoever.

It was as if they had melted directly into the mast.

And just as the final blade shadow vanished, the Chidori arrived belatedly, slicing straight through the mast.

Following that, Hody swiftly sheathed his blade with a click.

Creak—

The thick, severed mast toppled backward, crashing heavily onto the cabin with a thunderous roar.

"Flashy and impractical."

Hody shook his head slightly.

Having personally executed the Concealed Blade Style, he still hadn't changed his initial assessment.

Still, this could be considered a competent sword technique, at least far better than the Quake-Sunder Slash.

Its only flaw was being too cumbersome; take this Pinwheel move, for instance, which required at least six rotations just to hide the blade body behind the afterimages.

This was also a manifestation of low proficiency.

If the buck-toothed commodore had used it, he probably would have only needed one or two rotations.

Laffitte glanced at the fallen mast and asked, "What was that move just now?"

"Concealed Blade Style, the sword technique of this uncle here."

Hody pointed at the corpse of the buck-toothed commodore.

Laffitte understood, a faint glint rising in his eyes as he mused, "I see."

With that, he looked toward the tribute ship, which had now shrunk to the size of a black dot.

"Shall we pursue?"

"Of course."

Hody nodded.

Since the Marines had already branded him a wanted criminal with a bounty as high as 68 million, there was no longer any need to have such misgivings.

From now on, as long as he sailed the seas with his status as a wanted criminal, batch after batch of Marines would inevitably be drawn to him.

Normally, when facing Marine pursuit, any pirate would fundamentally choose to run.

There were many reasons for this, one of which was that the Marines were simply inexhaustible.

Sink one warship today, and another would pop up tomorrow.

Because of this, unless necessary, pirates generally wouldn't waste energy entangling themselves with the Marines.

But Hody was different.

If they wanted to come, then let them come...

A moment later, Hody stepped on the Moon Walk, hurtling into the distance in pursuit of the tribute ship.

Laffitte followed closely behind.

Aboard the tribute ship.

A middle-aged man wearing a golden crown was flying into a rage, completely unaware that danger was rapidly approaching.