"Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!"
Dozens of muskets belched fire at once. The deafening gunfire rang through all of Mock Town!
A dense hail of bullets became a metal storm mixed with smoke, about to swallow the two men in the crater whole—
"Click… click… click…"
When the gunfire thinned and the barrels ran dry, the pirates around them instinctively backed away in fear.
Down in the crater, the two figures still stood calmly—completely unharmed.
About a meter in front of them, hundreds of bullets that had been screaming in… had slammed into an invisible wall and stopped dead in midair.
Every bullet was wrapped in fine blue arcs of electricity, crackling with zzzt sounds, yet unable to advance even a fraction.
Rain hadn't even bothered using Armament. He had simply raised a small electromagnetic barrier.
The pirates who had been firing froze in their shooting stances, faces locked in place.
Wind swept through, lifting dust off the ground.
Mock Town fell into a dead silence.
Clang.
A pirate in the front row let his musket slip from numb fingers. He didn't even notice—his knees were shaking violently, teeth chattering.
"H-how…?"
"T-the bullets… they stopped…"
Rain looked at the bullets hanging in the air, then at the pirates who'd been scared stupid, and calmly relaxed his fist.
Clink… clink… clink…
All the bullets lost support at once and dropped to the ground in a rain of metal.
"Mills… boss…" one pirate trembled as he looked at Mills—only to see their boss had already started stumbling backward too.
A slightly more experienced pirate stared at the two unharmed figures in the crater. His legs gave out and he collapsed, voice shaking with despair.
"T-that… that's a Devil Fruit user…?!"
Panic spread among the pirates like a plague.
"R-run! It's a monster!!"
Over a hundred pirates dropped weapons and fled like startled rabbits, stampeding toward the port.
"Too loud."
Rain watched them scatter and spoke coldly.
He had no intention of letting Mock Town's pirates go—these were walking Sin Points.
Sure, kill a hundred pirates and you might catch one innocent adventurer in the mix… but Rain couldn't be bothered to sort out who that one might be.
If you chose to go out to sea, you should have that kind of resolve.
Besides, he was a Marine. Marines killing pirates—wasn't that the natural order?
Rain slowly closed his eyes.
His [Transcendent] Observation Haki spread over the entire Mock Town in an instant.
In his perception, hundreds of life signals flared.
One second later, the filtering was done.
More than five hundred pirates in Mock Town were precisely locked on.
Rain raised one hand toward the sky.
His expressionless face looked, in that moment, indifferent like a god.
"Ten Thousand Thunderbolts."
In an instant, the previously clear sky darkened at visible speed.
A vast thundercloud—large enough to cover all of Mock Town—swelled and gathered above the town.
RUMMMMMBLE—!!!!
Brilliant blue lightning snakes danced wildly inside the clouds. The oppressive pressure made everyone stop breathing.
"W-what is that?!"
"G-good god—!!"
Rain lowered his hand.
BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM—!!!!!
Hundreds of thick bolts of lightning speared down from the heavens at once—like divine judgment lances.
It was a "rain" of lightning, beautiful to the extreme and terrifying to the extreme.
Lightning became a pure web of destruction.
A pirate sprinting toward the port was punched through the crown of his head—man and boat turning to charcoal.
A pirate hiding in a wine barrel was vaporized along with the barrel.
A pirate who tried to resist was reduced to ash before he could even move.
Their screams didn't even have time to form—drowned out by louder thunder.
When the clouds dispersed and sunlight returned, Mock Town was silent.
The air reeked of strong ozone and scorched protein.
Smoker stood at the edge of the crater, cigar in his mouth, staring blankly at the now "clean" streets.
No—he wasn't truly unmoved.
The cigar hung there, but his hand trembled slightly. He'd even forgotten to light it.
He stared at the devastation—those charcoal human-shaped outlines—then at Rain, bathed in residual lightning like a god.
Smoker had already basically confirmed it: Rain was the 500-million bounty "Devil Clark."
He had no intention of turning Rain in.
After nearly a year living together, Smoker knew exactly what kind of person Rain was.
What he felt now wasn't betrayal—it was helplessness at the gap between himself and this monster.
He hadn't realized Rain's strength could be this far beyond imagination.
Smoker glanced at his own hand that could only produce smoke, imagining himself facing so many pirates—could he really wipe them all out?
Meanwhile, in Rain's head, system notifications were blasting like spam, Sin Points skyrocketing by hundreds of thousands in under ten seconds.
Among the massive pool of selectable rewards, Rain searched quickly and discovered three pirates had [Intermediate Medicine]. That skill was actually useful—selecting all three merged into [Advanced Medicine], an unexpected bonus.
Everything else he defaulted to physique boosts. But since reaching [Top-Tier] physique, low-level physique gains were honestly close to negligible.
Rain stood in the fading crackle of electricity and let out a slow breath, as if he'd done something trivial.
Smoker finally snapped out of it. His trembling hand fumbled until he managed to pull out a lighter.
Click.
He lit the cigar, took a deep drag, and only when the hot smoke filled his lungs did sensation return to his cold limbs.
Then… he turned away, back facing the monster he couldn't look at directly.
"Let's go," Smoker's voice was hoarse. "We need to get to the port and find a ship."
"And then we've got to contact Headquarters…"
He paused, as if it took all his strength to force the words out:
"…and report how we barely survived."
Rain looked at Smoker's broad back and smiled.
He stepped up to stand beside him, also looking toward the port.
"Yeah. Exactly," Rain said lightly. "After all, we were abducted by that five-hundred-million-berry 'Devil Clark.' Escaping his clutches is a miracle."
Smoker's body stiffened—apparently furious at Rain's shamelessness.
He didn't look back. He just ground out a sentence through his teeth:
"Hmph… next time you cook, I'm eating first—and I'm eating till I'm full."
"Deal."
~~~
Patreon.com/Weze_
— You can read more Chapters in my Patreon Page! please vote, comment, share this, or visit my Patreon Page and join the Free Membership!