Chapter Seventy-Eight: Fruit Ninja

The corpse, cleaved neatly in two, spilled a torrent of fresh blood that soaked the ground. Yet Bege himself remained unscathed, eyes wide with terror as he stumbled backward. Were it not for the underling who dashed out of the castle at the critical moment and took the blow in his stead, Bege would no doubt have been the one to fall, his blood staining the stones.

When had such a formidable figure appeared in the West Sea? The thought sent a shudder through Bege’s heart.

His henchman’s timely sacrifice did nothing to slow the relentless momentum of Maud’s blade. Without pause, Maud’s sword seamlessly swung again toward Bege. At that moment, yet another gang member leaped from the castle. But before his body could even return to its full size, Maud’s sword found him, cutting him down in the same instant.

In the blink of an eye, another corpse, split cleanly in two, joined the growing pile on the earth.

“How amusing,” Maud murmured, a faint smile curling his lips. Bege’s desperate, lizard-tail tactic of self-preservation had genuinely amused him.

After all, Bege had only consumed the Castle Fruit a little over two months ago. His mastery was clearly lacking; he could not yet harness its true potential, nor perform the myriad feats depicted in the original tale. Otherwise, with such a power, there would have been at least three ways to counter this predicament.

Instead, Bege could only take blow after blow.

“Rending Slash.” Maud, merciless in his advantage, unleashed five swift strikes at Bege. Yet Bege, like a seahorse giving birth, kept tossing out his henchmen to block the incoming blade.

Slice after slice—five more corpses littered the ground.

Maud grinned and struck again. Bege could only hurl another subordinate in the way, desperately trying to slow Maud’s advance. Another body fell.

So, in this strange dance of advance and retreat, a gruesome trail of half-corpse remains stretched down the long street. With every step Bege retreated, he had to sacrifice at least one of his men. With every step Maud pressed forward, another corpse was added to the tally.

Within moments, the ground was strewn with more than fifty gang members’ bodies.

What made Bege nearly cough blood in frustration was that, no matter how he tried to delay Maud’s attack, he simply could not escape the pursuit. In other words, those fifty-odd men had died for nothing.

In truth, Bege’s speed in tossing out henchmen was not slow. But Maud’s blade was just as quick, at the very least matching the frequency at which Bege could summon his men.

Part of the reason the underlings were so easily sliced in two was due to another flaw of the Castle Fruit: anything emerging from the castle had to undergo a brief period of transformation before returning to its original size. Before that process was complete, they were, in essence, living targets.

But ultimately, it all came down to Bege’s lack of proficiency. So long as Maud could grasp the timing of that transformation, he could slaughter the emerging henchmen in their so-called cradle. It wasn’t especially difficult—Maud was more than capable.

And so, in this massacre that resembled chopping vegetables, Maud gradually found his rhythm. On several occasions, with a skillful twist of his wrist, he sliced through three gangsters in a single, fluid stroke.

He was quickly becoming addicted to the sensation.

Around them, the pirates who had not yet left—Lafitte among them—watched the bizarre scene unfold in silence. Those with a keen eye sensed a strange dissonance in the fight. They felt that, if Maud only increased his tempo a little, he could break through Bege’s desperate, sacrificial defense in no more than thirty exchanges. Yet Maud’s assault always seemed to fall just a fraction short.

On the other hand, with a Devil Fruit power at his disposal, Bege should have seemed resourceful and dangerous. But under Maud’s assault, he appeared clumsy, as if he might have fared better without relying on his ability at all.

As they watched, Lafitte and the others couldn’t decide whether Maud was simply too strong, or if Bege was just hopelessly inept.

A few kilometers away, Saul sat atop a building, carefully “watching” the battle on the long street. When he saw Maud’s rapid, deft swordplay, several question marks seemed to pop up above his head.

What on earth was happening? He hadn’t let Maud touch a sword in the past two months—how had he only grown fiercer instead of rusty? This was ridiculous.

“Could it be that the boy’s talent for the sword exceeds—bah!” Saul shook his head violently. “No, the gun suits him better. I can’t let that talent for Observation Haki go to waste. Yes, that’s how it should be,” he muttered to himself.

On the long street, the battle raged on. Under Maud’s relentless attack, Bege, unable to wield his castle’s power deftly, was only sabotaging himself, forced to retreat step by step. In just a few minutes, over a hundred henchmen had been thrown out to block the blade, but all to little effect.

Even so, cutting down so many at once would surely take a toll on anyone’s stamina. With this thought, Bege took a moment to study Maud’s expression.

What he saw chilled him: not a hint of fatigue, but rather a ravenous hunger burning in Maud’s eyes, as if to say, “Throw more—faster!”

“Is this guy for real?” Bege thought, a sense of dread swelling within him.

But Maud truly was serious. Before making his move on Bege, he’d written fifteen names into his Hunter’s Notebook. Excluding Bege, there were three gang lieutenants and eleven captains among them.

Now, among the hundred-plus corpses, three of the registered captains had already fallen. Maud hadn’t planned this at the outset, but as he kept slashing, the experience points he craved seemed to come to him of their own accord—like a sudden stroke of luck.

More than savoring the thrill of triple kills, Maud now sought that unexpected windfall. He began to eagerly anticipate each target Bege flung his way. He wasn’t greedy: he didn’t ask for three at once, nor for the gang’s lieutenants—he just hoped Bege would throw out the captains.

This hopefulness gave rise to the ominous feeling that plagued Bege. In his desperation to escape, he never realized that Maud had orchestrated this entire situation. Even if Bege managed to break out of the relentless assault, he would ultimately meet a grim end—not because Maud was overwhelmingly powerful, but because Saul had his sights trained on this very spot.

So long as Saul’s rifle remained fixed on the scene, Bege was fated to become a trapped beast, doomed to die within his cage. Such was the true effect of having a top-tier sniper as an ally.

On the long street, the seemingly deadlocked battle continued. Around them, more and more onlookers gathered, drawn by the earlier explosion. A few reckless fools reached for pistols, eager to spice up the fight, but bullets from afar ended their lives before they could act.

Those warning shots quickly cowed any ill-intentioned spectators.

Within the field, the corpses piled ever higher. Maud’s expression grew more and more exhilarated—he’d just claimed his sixth captain. Outside the fight, Lafitte’s gaze lingered on Maud’s every move, watching as he carved through the opposition.

He smiled, lost in the sight, his eyes glowing with admiration.