After staying on high alert for a full ten minutes and finally putting together a simple wooden shelter, Marcus dismantled the protective barriers he'd built earlier.
But when he saw Nami, who had sohow co out alongside Kira, he was a little speechless.
"When did you start hanging out with Kira?"
He hadn't noticed her when he was placing blocks during the fight. Only now did he rember that she'd completely vanished during the chaos.
Nami shrugged. "Just the natural survival instincts of a weak, defenseless girl."
Marcus waved his hand dismissively, deciding not to bother with it.
He freed Usopp and Kaya from their wooden enclosure. Kaya remained unconscious, but that was probably for the best given the circumstances.
Usopp was grimacing in pain but trying to tough it out. There were five parallel gashes across his back, though fortunately none of them had cut too deep.
Marcus pulled so cooked steak from his inventory.
"Eat this. Should help with those wounds."
Usopp grabbed the at and started chewing imdiately. "Damn, this is good."
"Eh!? at!" Luffy ca running over instantly, eyes lighting up like a kid on Christmas morning.
Marcus sighed and pulled out two more pieces. He'd originally planned to save these for himself, but whatever.
Luffy dug in enthusiastically. "This is beef, right? So delicious!"
After both of them finished eating, the changes beca apparent.
The wounds on Usopp's back visibly began to heal.
The sa thing happened to Luffy's arm, where Kuro's claws had left their mark.
Clearly, the Minecraft chanic of continuous health regeneration after eating cooked food still worked perfectly in this world.
Luffy stared at his arm. "Marcus, you should join my crew!"
"Sure," Marcus replied without hesitation. "But only if Alvida and Kira can join too."
Luffy looked at Alvida, then at Kira, and grinned as he extended the sa invitation to both of them. "Do you want to join my pirate crew?"
Alvida studied Luffy carefully. "Are you sure you want to invite ? I did mock Koby's dream, you know."
But Luffy just gave his trademark smile. "You're different now, aren't you?"
"That's true."
Kira, however, gave Marcus a puzzled look.
"What's wrong?"
"I thought you were planning to beco a pirate captain yourself."
"?" Marcus scratched his head. To be honest, he had thought about it more than once. But he was also realistic about his limitations. Having spent his entire life in modern society, suddenly becoming a pirate captain would be a massive adjustnt. More importantly, his current strength really wasn't impressive, he couldn't even figure out how to properly defeat a pre-tiskip character like Kuro.
After the fight, one thought kept nagging him. Torchlight. If only he had placed a few on the ground, he would've had far better visibility. It was like doing an exam: you struggle during the test, and only afterwards do all the solutions co rushing into your head.
Maybe it sounded like a la excuse, but in Minecraft he had only ever placed torches inside caves or dark tunnels, never out in the open, so it hadn't crossed his mind in the heat of the mont.
Even then, he wasn't sure if it would've actually helped. Torchlight wasn't the sa as sunlight, far from it. Sunlight bathed everything evenly, but torches carved up the darkness into patches of bright and shadow. Human eyes struggled with that kind of contrast, and in the middle of a fight, shifting focus between light and dark could have made things harder for him and his group. Kuro, with his speed, would've had a field day exploiting that kind of uneven visibility. In fact, the mont he spotted the torchlight, he might've fled much sooner rather than pressing the fight.
Still, the fact that he was even thinking of "what-ifs" after the battle only reminded him how unready he really was. He wasn't so natural-born captain like Luffy.
"I only recently decided to beco a pirate anyway. Besides, this guy's a good person. He and his crew are the ones who saved Orange Town, so there's nothing wrong with joining them, right?"
Kira thought back to Orange Town and the joyful bonfire celebration they'd witnessed there. She smiled and nodded. "Alright, I'll join too. But... are you sure I'm good enough?"
Luffy didn't care about such concerns in the slightest. "Aweso! I just recruited three new crewmates!"
Zoro and Nami both shook their heads, but neither objected to the new additions.
Usopp, however, wasn't sharing in the celebratory mood. He sat on the ground looking distressed. "So what do we do now? That guy's too fast. We can't just stay here until morning, can we?"
Everyone fell silent. It had only just gotten dark, they still had many hours until sunrise.
"You four can stay here," Marcus said, gesturing to the wooden shelter. "This little bunker is pretty sturdy. If he tries to break in, Usopp can fight back with his slingshot. I'll make so modifications."
He reinforced the structure again, but this ti he didn't completely cover the second layer. Instead, he created a ground-level wall with one empty block space in between layers.
That way, if the outer layer got broken, they'd notice imdiately and could counterattack through the gap.
He was confident that Kuro wouldn't be crazy enough to crawl inside after them. Usopp's firing speed was impressive, he'd probably land consecutive headshots if soone tried that.
"Should we head out and search the area?" he asked, looking at Luffy and the others.
The other three had no objections to this plan.
He dug an opening in the ceiling of their shelter, and the four of them each took a different direction to search.
Under the night sky, the distant village lay silent and still.
Marcus jumped down to ground level and headed toward the spot where Kuro had made his escape earlier.
Ding.
An experience orb suddenly rged into his body, and he instantly leveled up to ten.
"What the hell?"
A massive XP gain? But why? Who had dropped it?
It obviously wasn't from Luffy and the others, if one of them had died or been defeated, he would've seen it happen.
That left only one possibility: Kuro.
But why would he get experience from that guy? He hadn't even managed to land a single attack on him. He'd been the one getting attacked, and Kuro had simply retreated.
Wait a second. At the beginning of the fight, hadn't Alvida been planning to attack but held back because of her injuries? Could that have sohow counted as a defeat? Or maybe a surrender?
Marcus decided not to overthink it. He was more interested in seeing what reaching Level 10 would unlock.
A map system? Seriously? Wasn't this sothing that should've been available from the start?
But there it was, a familiar minimap in the top left corner of his vision, plus a larger map he could open at will.
The big map showed darkness all around him, but when he zood in and out, he could see the portraits of Luffy and the others marked on it.
Soon, he discovered another feature.
It could display the coordinates of other creatures. He enabled the hostile creature tracking option.
Imdiately, Kuro's portrait appeared on the map.
While this wasn't the kind of map that allowed instant teleportation, the function was already incredibly useful for tracking purposes.
He looked in the direction where Kuro's marker indicated he was hiding.
Judging by his position, after taking that punch from Luffy and the sword strike from Zoro, he was probably seriously injured and looking for a place to lick his wounds.
Should he inform the others about this?
Marcus hesitated for only a mont before striding forward. He could tell them, but there wasn't really any need. Right now it might seem like the enemy was hidden while they were exposed, but with this map system, Kuro had no way of escaping Marcus' detection.
Besides, he wanted to test his full capabilities for himself. And most importantly, he was confident that Kuro couldn't inflict any serious damage on him thanks to his armor.
When Luffy and the others saw Marcus heading off in a specific direction, they exchanged glances and began moving in different directions.
---
anwhile, Marcus walked straight toward Kuro's hiding spot.
Should he pretend he was searching randomly? No point in that charade.
He already had his iron sword drawn as he approached the exact location where Kuro was.
He couldn't see exactly where the pirate was hidden, but the map marker indicated he was definitely in this area.
Bushes and thick vegetation surrounded him on both sides. This was the front courtyard of the mansion, with plenty of places for soone to hide.
"Co out and fight head-on," Marcus called out. "If you win, I'll let you walk away."
No response ca from the darkness.
"I can track you. Hiding is pointless."
He wasn't surprised by the lack of response. If Kuro could be flushed out that easily, he wouldn't have earned the reputation for intelligence that supposedly rivaled Benn Beckman himself.
Ding!
The sharp sound of tal striking tal rang out.
Startled, he reached up to touch his neck and found a series of white marks on his skin.
"You really are fast."
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