Chapter Ninety-Seven: Like Me (Part 2)

"The Komodo... pirate ship is closing in!"

"Keep your distance! Attention, keep your distance!"

"Starboard side, bearing straight ahead, range 2300, aim!"

"All guns fire!"

The voices relaying orders rose and fell, chaotic yet disciplined, and it was precisely because of such commands that the warship's large-caliber naval guns could methodically spew flames at a steady rhythm.

Gun barrels radiating heat and steam, crimson shells, flickering muzzle flashes, smoke dissolving into the night, hulls already burning from hits, the overexposed reflections scattered across the sea's surface...

Robots are a man's romance.

If not for robots, then ships of the line and sixteen-inch naval guns are another kind of man's romance.

If not for naval guns, then crossdressing is another, another kind of romance...

But in the thick of an intense artillery duel, what the sailors faced first and foremost was iron and blood—only those who survived were qualified to boast about romance or the lack thereof. In the darkness, two warships were launching a ferocious assault on a single pirate vessel.

"Keep your distance—don't let them get close! Use our firepower advantage to annihilate these pirates in a gunnery duel!"

Keeping the distance was a point the commander emphasized with particular force... Even though the pirate ship was equipped with a total of eighty cannons and could bring forty to bear on either broadside, its firepower delivery efficiency was nowhere near that of a navy warship armed with rapid-fire guns, let alone when the fight was two against one.

So maintaining distance and striking the weak from afar was one reason; the more crucial point was that the navy's desire to destroy the pirates at long range stemmed from their lack of confidence in winning a boarding action.

The commanding officers of the two warships held the ranks of commander and lieutenant commander respectively, meaning the navy's highest combat strength here was at the commander level. If it came down to individual combat, the enemy would clearly hold the advantage.

Therefore, to maximize their firepower advantage, maintain the attack tempo and sustained projection capability, and to avoid friendly fire, the two warships did not adopt a pincer maneuver. Instead, they formed a single-file line on one side, hammering the pirate ship with full starboard broadside fire.

In that comparison, the warships' triple-gun turret configuration was far more advanced and flexible.

Such an attack approach was without a doubt correct—the navy held an absolute advantage in the artillery duel. Of course, this was only to be expected. Whether in terms of equipment or training standards, pirates could never measure up to the navy.

Did pirates undergo gunnery training? Did pirates practice firing cannons from dawn till dusk every day?

"Commander, bearing sixty degrees to starboard, we have a new contact!" Amid the thunderous cannonade, new information was reported.

"What is it? Have the pirates' reinforcements arrived?"

"No, it's an unarmed sloop, but it's heading straight for the pirate ship. There doesn't seem to be anyone on board... wait... no, found them. There's only one person, standing on the upper yard of the sail!"

It had to be said, the lookout's eyesight was remarkably sharp. The commander took the telescope, peered through it carefully before faintly making out the figure atop the white sail, and then quickly made his decision:

"Disregard it. Maintain the attack."

"...Aye, sir!"

By this point in the battle, how could he, as the commander, halt operations over some person of unknown origin?

Amid the exchange of fire and intermittent geysers of seawater, the tiny boat with no fighting power whatsoever pressed forward with unshakable resolve.

In the silence of the night, such a large-scale artillery battle could be heard clearly dozens of kilometers away, and anyone who heard it clearly and still chose to approach despite knowing the danger...

Either they were insane.

Or they were out of their minds.

Or they were Qiubai.

The familiar shape of the ship, the clearly visible flag emblem on the sail illuminated by firelight—both meant Qiubai had come to the right place... After drifting at sea for roughly half a month, he had finally found the Komodo Pirate Crew.

Because he was downwind, the pirates' attention was all focused on the port side where they were exchanging fire with the warships. By the time someone noticed a tiny speck wobbling its way up from the starboard rear, the distance between the two vessels had shrunk to the point where the front needed only to slow slightly for the rear to collide with it at any moment.

"Brother Mora, someone's approaching us!" But eventually, someone did notice the enemy drawing near.

"Keep hauling the shells. I'll deal with the enemy."

The well-meaning subordinate who reported the news received a fierce kick from his big brother, but just as Mora had said, he pressed his hand on the longsword at his waist and walked toward the starboard side.

Regardless of what propulsion system they used, it was the norm for a big ship to be outrun by a small one. The tiny sloop, at a speed the great vessel could never hope to match, raced toward the pirate ship's starboard side.

A ramming tactic? It would smash itself to pieces, wouldn't it?

Correct—the small boat did indeed ram straight in, and it would indeed be shattered to splinters, but before that...

At the very last moment, Qiubai leaped from the yard and flipped his body lightly, clearing the pirate ship's high bulwark in a single bound. At the same time, he hurled the storm lantern in his hand onto the sloop's sail.

The cotton fabric ignited instantly in the searing flames, and the fire that shot skyward even dispelled the chill of the night air.

Mass determines inertia—the collision of the small boat should not have caused much of a stir... that was how it should have been, but the burning sail then set fire to something piled on the boat's hull, and so immediately after...

"BOOM!"

With that explosion, the entire pirate ship shuddered... Since he had nothing better to do anyway, Qiubai had stacked the little boat full of gunpowder.

For a wooden vessel, the foulest move was undoubtedly to blast the waterline directly. The pressure of displacement forced a massive flood of seawater to surge into the hull through the gap torn by the explosion in an instant, and the pirate ship's speed plummeted like a clunker that had suddenly been slammed with the brakes.

Now, the warships could shoot even more accurately... if they hadn't already sailed beyond their firing range due to the increase in relative velocity.

Qiubai, having just landed on the deck and anticipating what was to come, instinctively took a step back.

The first enemy to meet him was actually someone he had a "passing acquaintance" with—the man who had once gone all arrogant to deliver a message to Doflamingo and been humiliated for his trouble. Though... what was his name again? Qiubai couldn't remember anymore.

Non-crew members who set foot on a pirate ship either got to drink themselves into a stupor with the pirates without a care, or the pirates would hack them to death on the spot. Given the scene before him, Qiubai undoubtedly belonged to the latter category.

A blade gleaming with cold light tore through the air, cleaving down toward Qiubai's head.

Qiubai's right foot pulled his upper body back, evading this expected "sudden strike." With a dull, not-too-heavy "thunk," the tip of the blade grazed the inside of Qiubai's left foot and embedded itself at an angle into the deck planks.

This man's movements were far too exaggerated. Did he really think he was some kind of salted fish?

Then Qiubai's left foot pivoted on its heel, shifting his forefoot rightward, and with a mere press and step, knocked the vertical blade flat.

Fine splinters of wood scattered from beneath the sword tip, and the vertical groove scratched into the deck planks was gouged into a notch. When the man tried to yank the sword back, he found that the force of that foot pressing down was beyond anything his arms could contend with.

Then Qiubai moved his right foot forward and planted it on the middle of the blade, as though idly strolling along a blood-stained slope.

Under such stepping pressure, whether one was clever or not, the proper response would be to immediately let go and abandon the weapon. But people had habitual reactions—the more dire the moment, the more the man thought of brute-forcing the sword free.

But that was impossible.

"I didn't come here for you, Mr. Extra."

In such a posture, Qiubai, who was clearly shorter in stature, looked down upon the man with smug satisfaction. And at such close range, the man seemed to recognize Qiubai's identity:

"You're Donquix—"

At that moment, what lingered around Qiubai was like a palpable aura of darkness—so still it was the cold of death itself, yet also surging with a murderous ferocity that rose to the heavens, like a wild primordial beast baring its fangs.

Mora felt all his vital energy completely locked down; the momentum he had mustered moments ago was entirely dissolved.

He felt there was nowhere to flee.

Or perhaps all he could do was tremble.

Qiubai's arm extended, his hand turned in a hundred-and-eighty-degree arc into a knife-hand that drove forward, drawing a spiral of turbulent air in its wake.

The arm stirred the air so violently that even a sonic-boom-like crack accompanied it.

Though there was no sword in his hand, Qiubai employed a sword technique:

「Chen Gui」

In the end, the knife-hand only grazed past his ear. With a faint chill, a stream of blood gathered from the thin cut on his cheek and trickled down.

The man was left utterly stupefied, having forgotten even fear and trembling... Simply put, this move was Qiubai's version of "One-Sword Style: Great Star Tremor."

As Qiubai had said, his targets were only the captain and the first mate. For anyone else, he wouldn't have bothered to come all the way to a place like this... That was something to be grateful for, wasn't it?

Qiubai's feet alternated—his left foot stepping on the man's protruding elbow joint, his right foot on the man's firm shoulder.

One man simply stood upon another as a matter of course, looking down at the pirates crowding in from all sides.

"Good evening, gentlemen pirates. If it's convenient... could you tell me where your captain and first mate are?"

Even beneath the unbroken thunder of cannon fire in the background, Qiubai's voice was unmistakably clear.

But only he knew that what awaited him ahead was not so much victory as an abyss.