"Boss, the Marine is charging straight at us!"
"What's there to be afraid of? We're both mid-sized ships, and we've got a ram installed on the bow. If they want to crash, let them!"
"Yes, Boss!"
Nodding, the pirate captain immediately signaled the crew, turning the warship to head directly toward the Marine vessel.
As the captain had noted, their ship was equipped with a terrifying ramming prow. If they hit head-on, the Marine ship would be crippled in a single blow.
'So they can intercept cannonballs, can they?' the captain thought. 'Let's see if you can stop a warship's collision!'
"Something's wrong, Boss!"
While the pirate captain was feeling triumphant, a subordinate observing through binoculars suddenly shouted.
"What's wrong?"
"Boss, there's a man standing on the bow of the Marine ship... he's holding a sword... Wait, did he just swing it at us?"
What the hell?
They were still seven or eight hundred meters apart, and he was swinging a sword?
Either the Marine was insane, or the lookout was. This was a complete joke!
Did he seriously think a single swing could reach someone nearly a kilometer away?
The pirate captain sneered. However, when he looked toward the Marine ship, he froze.
An exaggerated, deep-blue crescent slash was skimming the surface of the ocean, tearing through the water at an incredible speed. Where the slash passed, the sea itself seemed to be split open.
The pirates had no time to react before the blue crescent arrived. It sliced perfectly between the pirate captain and the lookout holding the binoculars.
The massive warship offered no more resistance to the attack than a block of tofu.
In the next heartbeat, the captain felt the lookout beside him tilt sharply. Then, he felt himself tilting too.
The captain looked down and discovered a gap had opened between him and his subordinate—a perfectly smooth fissure that stretched from the bow all the way to the stern.
The entire warship had been sliced clean in half.
"Marine! You have no honor!!"
As the half of the ship he stood upon tilted further, the captain could no longer maintain his balance. Before plunging into the sea, he let out one final, indignant scream.
It was agreed that swords were for close combat! It was agreed that everyone used physical weapons! Then this guy just whips out an energy weapon? If that isn't playing dirty, what is?!
Meanwhile, on the Marine ship seven hundred meters away.
"The path is clear. Close in on Don Krieg's main ship!"
"Yes, Commodore!"
Once they were pressed against the side, Don Krieg's other ships wouldn't dare fire their cannons. After all, the world of pirates was still stuck in the era of muzzle-loading smoothbore cannons and spherical shot. Their range was short, and their accuracy was pathetic.
By hugging Don Krieg's flagship, they effectively used it as a shield. Otherwise, God knows if a stray shot would hit the Marine or Don Krieg himself.
"Commodore, next time this happens, just let me handle it," Lucci suggested after a moment of thought. "I could have just taken out the pirates on deck and turned the ship around. The effect would have been the same, and it would have been less... wasteful."
"It's fine. One slash doesn't cost much energy," Sean replied.
"This... isn't a question of energy consumption."
"Then what is it?"
"Commodore, that ship you just sliced was brand new and made of high-quality materials. If we had sold it to the Luo Lan Company, it probably would have fetched forty or fifty million Belly."
"Uh..."
Sean was stunned. Completely stunned.
He had just made a grand show of power, and in doing so, he had essentially thrown away tens of millions of Belly? His heart bled at the thought.
"Lucci, why didn't you tell me sooner...?"
"You moved too fast. Besides, I assumed you just wanted the slash to graze the side of the ship and use the resulting tidal wave to push it away."
Right...
What else could Sean say? At this moment, he truly wanted to slap himself.
'''
"Impossible!"
"Even the most powerful weapon in the world couldn't produce an effect like that!"
Watching the warship ahead split in two, Don Krieg was utterly bewildered.
Krieg believed in strength, but his definition of strength differed greatly from others. In Krieg's mind, human strength was limited; therefore, a person only became truly powerful once they equipped the strongest weapons.
Because of this ideology, he could not comprehend the scene before him. Ultimately, it was because he had spent his time hiding in the East Blue, leaving his horizons painfully narrow.
"Chief, what do we do?"
One of the pirates beside him was trembling. To them, seeing Sean split a mid-sized warship in one strike was simply beyond the realm of possibility.
"Don't panic! Since they want a melee fight, we'll give them one!" Krieg roared. "Signal the rest of the fleet to close in! They only have a few dozen men; we have hundreds. Even if they're strong, they can't win against a crowd!"
Hearing this, the pirates calmed down. That was true—the Marine only had a handful of people, while they had nearly eight hundred. There was no way they could lose. Besides, the officers of the Don Krieg Pirates were no pushovers.
'''
Ten minutes later.
Although Don Krieg's remaining ships continued to fire, they couldn't pose any real threat to Sean's vessel. Once the distance between the two sides closed to two or three hundred meters, the cannonade ceased. At this range, the risk of friendly fire was too high.
Finally, with a massive 'thud', the Marine ship slammed into the side of Don Krieg's flagship.
However, looking up, Sean frowned slightly.
'Wait, is Don Krieg's ship seriously this big?'
He remembered seeing the Going Merry look like an ant next to it in the original story, but he had always assumed Oda's art style was just being hyperbolic. Now that the ships were side-by-side, Sean realized it was actually gargantuan.
In terms of height alone, the standard Marine mid-sized warship was barely half the height of Don Krieg's main ship. To board it, he would actually have to climb up.
'This is just excessive!'
A moment later, several loud crashes echoed, and the Marine ship shuddered violently. The other ships of the Don Krieg Pirates had also arrived, boxing Sean's ship in from all sides, leaving him with nowhere to move.
Every warship was currently crowded with pirates wielding a variety of weapons. The numerical disparity between the two sides was roughly one to seventeen.
'This number...'
For the Marines under his command, this was far too overwhelming. After all, none of his men had yet reached the level of a "superhuman."
Superhuman... it was a theory Lucci had mentioned in the original story. An average Marine has a Doriki of about 10, but once a person's Doriki reaches 500, they can be classified as a superhuman. Once that threshold is crossed, no matter how many ordinary lackeys there are, they become utterly useless.
'Hmm, if I control it a little and take out about seventy or eighty percent of them, that should do it, right?'
With that thought, Sean's gaze sharpened. He began to release his Reiatsu!
However, this time, Sean exercised meticulous control over the output. He wanted to strip the will to fight from a large portion of the enemy without completely wiping everyone out. He intended to leave a handful of pirates behind to serve as training for his Marines.
It had to be said, finding the exact balance to leave just the right amount of survivors among a crowd of pirate lackeys was surprisingly difficult.
How did Aizen put it...?
'The power to step over ants without killing them is a difficult strength to master.'