Chapter 167: The Air Force is Ahead of Its Time
"Marines? Why are the Marines here? Did King Chaplin order you to guard the slaves here?"
The Marines had strict uniform regulations, but once one reached Zephyr's rank, aside from the "Justice" coat draped over their shoulders, there were no hard requirements for the rest of their attire.
And that very coat was enough to clearly indicate his identity.
However, this guard didn't know much about the outside sea and failed to realize that the man standing before him was the absolute highest combat power of the Marines.
"No."
Zephyr only replied with a single, flat word, then suddenly swung his arm.
Before the guard could even react, Zephyr's arm had already smashed into his face.
Although it was just a simple swing of the arm, it contained a force the guard could not possibly resist, sending him flying backward instantly.
But because of his "no killing" principle, Zephyr's control over his strength was exceptional. The guard who was sent flying merely fainted, with no threat to his life.
"Hey, hey, hey, a Marine Admiral attacking a member of an allied nation? I saw all of that."
"What are you talking about? Didn't you do this?"
Learning to be good is hard, but learning to be bad is easy. Perhaps stimulated by the circumstances, Zephyr began to exhibit a slight, inappropriate trend toward becoming like Garp.
Right in front of Nereus, Zephyr threw the blame squarely onto him. At this moment, Zephyr had figured it out.
Never mind beating up one or two people; even if he truly turned the Doel Kingdom upside down, the outside world would just assume Nereus did it.
However, Zephyr hadn't been pushed quite that far yet. After sending the guard flying, Zephyr casually threw another punch, blasting a massive hole straight through the wall of the Slave Colosseum.
Then, he took a set of keys hanging on a nearby wall and handed them to the people in the nearest cages.
"You are free now. Stay away from the city center and wait... for the rebirth of this kingdom."
If Zephyr had sneered at Fleet Admiral Kong's "mediation" in the beginning, right now, he didn't even have the slightest intention of "mediating."
Ooo! Ooo!
At the same time, the melodious sound of a conch shell horn echoed from the coast.
Accompanied by the horn's call, Nereus beside Zephyr suddenly transformed into countless bats that scattered and flew out through the cracks in the surrounding windows.
"That guy... is still a bastard after all..."
Watching Nereus abandon him there, Zephyr didn't choose to follow. Instead, he looked at the guards who were now converging on the area due to the broken wall.
Swish...
Zephyr took off his "Justice" coat and turned to face them. No matter how you looked at it, he was no longer wearing that coat.
Meanwhile, the departing Nereus had returned to where the fleet of warships was anchored. He hovered quietly in mid-air, his pupils reflecting the masts of the warships below.
Without any exaggerated movements, he slowly raised his right arm and swung it down toward the sea in front of the warships.
It looked utterly ordinary, but the power it contained was enough to make the ocean below suffocate.
Under the influence of Nereus's power, the ocean at this moment seemed to be screaming.
His mastery over Fish-man Jujutsu, combined with his own sheer strength, directly severed the ocean currents below.
BOOM!
The surface of the sea tore open on command.
A massive chasm appeared out of thin air on the ocean surface, and the surging waves pushed the warships backward.
"No entry ahead. Those who cross the line bear the consequences."
He had an agreement with the World Government and had discussed it with Zephyr: as long as the Marines obeyed the rules today, Nereus had no intention of adding their souls to his River of Death.
But if they genuinely wanted to mediate, they would have to see if their wrists were strong enough. If not, they could only serve as his Revival Coins.
However, before leaving, Zephyr had given them a strict order not to act without permission, so no Marine attempted to do anything anyway.
On the other side, within the royal palace of the Doel Kingdom, Chaplin was standing at a high vantage point, using a telescope to observe everything in the distance.
"Your Majesty! The Ryugu Kingdom's forces are attacking!"
"Don't panic! Aren't the Marines right there? With so many warships, they can't cross. And with just one ship, what can they possibly do..."
"Your Majesty! Bad news! The port has fallen!"
Watching the warships stand off against Nereus's ship had initially made Chaplin feel very reassured. But in an instant, terrible news arrived.
"How is that possible?! Didn't I order you to deploy sea mines in the surrounding waters?! Even if those Fish-men can swim, how could they break through the defensive line so quickly?!"
"Your Majesty, they... they didn't come underwater, they... they came from the sky!"
Anti-air defense.
This was a topic basically no one cared about on this sea. Although there was various powerful ancient technology, much of it was fundamentally lost to time.
Organized air forces simply did not exist on this sea, and even the World Government lacked this concept in its structure.
The World Government didn't have three branches of military service, nor did they have a Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces; they only had a Commander-in-Chief of the Army.
This "Army" referred to the Marines, the government forces represented by the Cipher Pol agencies, and the royal armies of the member nations.
If strictly following World Government decrees, the Government had the authority to command the royal armies of member nations when necessary.
Even though Chaplin had made some countermeasures against the Ryugu Kingdom, he had no idea Nereus had long prepared an air force.
Not long ago, on Nereus's ship, his personal guards were standing in front of a strange device resembling a massive slingshot.
Although these Flying Fish Fish-men possessed the ability to fight in the sky due to their specific species, their flight was fundamentally gliding.
They weren't like birds that could fly just by flapping their wings. They could only take off smoothly by utilizing wind power and a running start.
And this device was a "Catapult Launcher" tailor-made just for them.
Under the surprise attack of this air force, the coastal defense line was instantly torn apart, and the sea mines Chaplin had deployed proved utterly useless.
Unless manually detonated, the Fish-men simply wouldn't swim into them, and the defenders responsible for detonating them had already been neutralized by the air force beforehand.
In a sense, this was a coordinated joint operation between the Marine Corps and Naval Aviation.
However, before Chaplin even had time to digest this news, another piece of devastating information arrived.
"Bad news! Your Majesty! Someone has broken into the palace!!"
"What?! That guy Nereus is still out on the sea! Who broke in?!"
"It's... it's Zephyr! Zephyr from the Marines! Without saying a word, he just blasted the palace gates to pieces!!"
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