It was the darkest hour before dawn.
A thin mist had risen over the sea, cutting visibility to less than a hundred meters. Up in the crow's nest of the Oro Jackson, the night watchman forced himself to stay sharp, sweeping the surroundings with his spyglass every few minutes.
A few minutes later, he spotted something wrong.
At first it was just a few vague dark shapes in the fog. But soon their numbers began to swell, one, two, five, ten... until they blurred together into a solid mass.
The watchman grabbed the alarm whistle and blew with all his strength.
The shrill blast tore the silence of the pre-dawn sky apart.
The entire Oro Jackson woke in an instant.
Crewmen rolled out of hammocks, snatched up weapons, and rushed to their stations. There was no panic, only the precise reactions honed through countless life and death crises.
Bullet was the first to hit the deck. His devouring ability had given him an almost beastlike alertness. Half a second before the whistle sounded, his eyes had already snapped open.
"What's going on?"
He grabbed a crewman who was sprinting toward the cannons.
"A fleet! At least twenty ships!"
"They're closing in from the three o'clock direction!"
Bullet vaulted up onto the base of the figurehead and narrowed his eyes, peering into the depths of the fog.
His Observation Haki spread out like a radar pulse. One hundred meters, two hundred, three hundred...
At the edge of his perception, it brushed against the first solid mass. Then a second, a third... densely packed silhouettes, closing in like a school of sharks.
Farther out, a massive life force radiating a reek of blood was charging toward them with frightening speed.
"All hands, battle stations!"
Rayleigh's voice rang across the deck.
The first mate was already fully dressed, long sword at his waist, golden hair rippling in the morning wind. His expression was grim.
Roger was the last to emerge from the cabins. He was still yawning, but there was not a trace of sleepiness in his eyes, only a razor sharp glint.
"How many?" Roger asked.
"So far I count twenty three ships. Flagship's at the rear, about three nautical miles out," Rayleigh reported crisply. "Lookout's confirmed the flag. It's Karl the Blood Butcher."
The name made a few of the older hands on deck blanch.
"Karl?" Shanks tightened his grip on his sword hilt. "That lunatic with the eight hundred twenty million bounty?"
"Nine hundred thirty million now," Rayleigh corrected him. "Price went up last week. He sacked a Marine branch in the New World last month. Slaughtered three hundred Marines and stole three warships."
Buggy was half hidden behind a heap of coiled rope, his voice shaking.
"N-nine hundred thirty million? That means he's a major league New World pirate..."
"A big bounty doesn't mean he is actually strong," Roger said with a grin that carried no warmth. "It just means he is crazy enough, cruel enough, has killed enough people."
He strode toward the bow and came to stand beside Bullet.
"Can you see the flagship?"
Bullet shook his head.
"The fog is too thick. Observation can only pick up its shape. It's huge, at least twice the size of the Oro Jackson. And..."
He paused, brow furrowing.
"There are at least five powerful life signatures on that ship. One of them is very strong."
"Interesting," Roger stroked his mustache. "Sounds like Karl's gathered a decent number of heavy hitters over the years."
By now the mist was being shredded by the first light of dawn.
As the sun's rays pierced the horizon, the encirclement came fully into view.
Twenty three warships spread out in a fan, with the Oro Jackson trapped in the center. The ships varied in size, from small single masted vessels to hulks as big as mid class Marine warships.
Every sail bore the same emblem, a bleeding skull with three broken blades clenched in its jaws.
And behind that formation, the flagship finally showed itself.
"What kind of monster...?" Shanks muttered.
Calling it a ship almost felt wrong.
It looked like someone had stitched together the wrecks of at least five different vessels. The hull twisted in uneven angles, some sections clad in armor plates, others just bare, charred wood.
Its figurehead was the preserved head of some enormous sea beast. Faded flesh clung to the skull, and ghostly green flames burned faintly in its hollow eye sockets.
Worst of all, the sides of the ship were hung with "trophies."
Not treasure. People.
Strictly speaking, what remained of people.
Some were whole mummified corpses, some were skeletons, some were just a single arm or head. They were chained together along the gunwales, and as the hull rose and fell, the remains clacked against each other with a sound that set teeth on edge.
"Karl the Blood Butcher..."
John's knuckles whitened on the cannon lanyard. His face had gone pale.
"So the rumors were true. Every time that man kills a strong foe, he hangs part of the body on his ship."
Bullet fixed his gaze on the flagship. His scarlet pupils narrowed to slits.
In his Observation, the ship radiated an almost tangible sea of bloodlust, the accumulated stench of countless killings and deaths.
An ordinary person would go mad just staying on that vessel too long.
"Roger!"
A voice bellowed from the direction of the flagship.
It did not come through a transponder snail. It was driven purely by the force of a monstrous pair of lungs and the shockwave of Haki, the sound rolling across the water to fill the entire patch of sea.
The voice was rough and ragged.
"I finally found you."
A figure appeared on the prow of the flagship.
He was nearly five meters tall, wrapped in a kind of "armor" crudely pieced together from leather and metal plates. A bearskin draped over his left shoulder. His right shoulder was bare, showing a massive scar that ran from his neck all the way down to his waist.
Black sigils were tattooed across his face. His eyes were a muddy yellow, pupils long and thin like a snake's.
Karl the Blood Butcher.
He was holding a weapon.
It was a four meter long metal shaft, one end ground into a jagged, saw like blade, the other chained to a heavy iron ball.
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