Luffy and Zoro had actually arrived quite a while ago. After all, the sounds of Marcus' battle had been loud enough to hear from a great distance.
The reason they hadn't intervened was because they could see that he was clearly enjoying himself during the fight.
Zoro had also noticed that Marcus was using Kuro as a whetstone to sharpen his own combat skills, which was another reason he hadn't stepped forward to help.
"It's fine," Marcus said, waving his hand dismissively. "If we want to find him, we can do it anyti, as long as he's still on the island."
He paused to check his equipnt status, specifically examining the durability of his iron armor through his interface.
He found that it had already dropped by more than a third of its maximum. The helt's durability had turned yellow in the display, indicating serious wear. If the fight had continued for another half hour, Kuro might actually have managed to break through his defenses.
"You can actually track him down?" Zoro asked curiously, because Marcus' tone had been so confident.
"Yeah," Marcus replied without going into specifics.
Zoro didn't press for more details, accepting the explanation.
Alvida walked over to Marcus' side and looked him up and down carefully. No visible damage anywhere, he wasn't even flushed or breathing hard. If she had gone through that kind of prolonged, high-intensity battle, there was no way she could be as composed as he appeared to be.
"So are we still going after him now?"
Just then, Usopp ca running over. "rry got slashed by Kuro! We should probably go check on him. Also, Kaya's awake, and she's having a really hard ti accepting what's happened."
---
At that mont, Kaya was pacing inside their makeshift wooden shelter.
Before long, the group had regrouped and was heading back toward the villa.
When Kaya saw rry, tears involuntarily fell from her eyes. He had watched her grow up, and after her father's death, he was the only parental figure she had left in the world.
Fortunately, he wasn't dead, though he was in rough shape. His body was covered in blood from multiple claw-like slashes, and the floor around him was stained red. Despite his injuries, he had already begun tending to his own wounds.
Seeing that Kaya was unhard brought relief to his face.
"Miss Kaya," he said weakly.
"rry... I'm so glad you're alright. When I saw all the blood, I thought..."
"It was Klahadore..." rry said grimly.
After rry's explanation, combined with accounts from Luffy and the others, a clear picture quickly ca together.
The so-called Klahadore was actually the forr pirate captain Kuro of the Black Cat Pirates, who had carried a bounty of 16 million berries.
Kaya found it difficult to accept that the refined, polite, and attentive Klahadore was actually a bloodthirsty pirate who had been planning to kill her all along.
But reality could be cruel, and the evidence was undeniable.
At the sa ti, she felt deeply grateful that Usopp had co to help her when she needed it most.
The horizon gradually lightened with the pale glow of dawn, painting the sky in soft pastels.
Luffy's group had finished regrouping and was ready to move.
As for rry's injuries, to Marcus, they were nothing that couldn't be fixed. Two pieces of cooked steak later, much to Luffy's envy, the butler was instantly healed.
"I need to go warn the villagers so they can prepare for an attack," rry said seriously.
"That probably won't be necessary," Marcus said, pointing toward the eastern shore. "There's a group of pirates gathered by the coast, likely his old crew. They're in that direction."
Nami looked in the direction Marcus was pointing, and her brain seed to freeze for a mont. Then she suddenly rembered sothing that made her face go pale.
"Wait! That's where we docked our ship! Oh no! My treasure!"
"Luffy! Quick! We have to get over there right now, or those pirates are going to run off with all our money!"
When it ca to treasure, she was deadly serious, serious enough to unlock hidden reserves of strength as she grabbed Luffy and started dragging him into a run.
The others quickened their pace as well.
And as fate would have it, the more you don't want sothing to happen, the more likely it becos.
Kuro had not led his Black Cat Pirates to invade Syrup Village as he had in the original tiline. Instead, he had boarded a ship and was preparing to leave the island.
Marcus could see on his map that one or two pirates had indeed made their way to Luffy's ship. While he couldn't observe exactly what had happened there, he had a feeling that Nami's five million berries were probably gone.
"Looks like they're getting ready to sail away."
Nami's expression shifted rapidly from panic to fury.
"Luffy! Get over there! Now!"
"You want to fly?" Luffy asked, still being dragged along by an increasingly frantic Nami. "Alright, but you guys better be ready for this."
"Ready for what?!"
A bad premonition began to settle over everyone's minds.
Marcus watched as Luffy stretched his arms out to grab a large tree by the roadside.
"You've got to be kidding !"
Without any further warning, he grabbed Zoro, Nami, Marcus, Alvida, Usopp, and a completely panicked, bewildered Kira, and launched them all into the air.
"Oh, hell no!" Marcus shouted as they soared through the sky.
A chorus of curses, and screams accompanied their flight toward the shore.
---
anwhile, at the coast, Jango was looking rather puzzled by recent developnts.
"We're really just... leaving like this?"
Kuro remained silent, absently tossing the gold bar he'd received from Marcus up and down in his hands.
Jango's eyes widened in surprise, quickly reaching out to touch it and check its authenticity.
"Whoa! This gold bar's purity must be really high. On the black market, this would easily be worth seventy to eighty million berries."
"It's a standard 12.5 kilograms of 99.99% pure gold," Kuro said matter-of-factly.
"What?! Then that's worth nearly 200 million berries!"
Jango cradled the gold bar carefully.
There were many gold bars in circulation throughout the various islands, but the vast majority weren't pure. After all, refining techniques differed from island to island, and compared to pure gold bars, crafting decorative items mixed with other tals was not only more expensive but also more aesthetically pleasing.
Of course, there were also problems like wear and difficulty in trading, but in terms of pure liquidity, gold bars were absolutely top-tier.
"Let's go," Kuro sighed heavily. "There's nothing else here we need."
If his plans had proceeded smoothly, he could have walked away with a total fortune of around 1.5 billion berries after just a few more years of scheming.
But there were no "what-ifs" in life. With that group of Devil Fruit users around, there was simply no way his plan could be executed successfully.
That ability user in particular... what rotten luck to encounter soone like that.
As much as it frustrated him, he couldn't think of any viable way to deal with the problem they presented.
Wait for them to leave and then co back? Unlikely. In another couple of days, his bounty poster would probably be circulating the seas again, making his old identity as Klahadore completely useless.
"Aaahhhhh!"
"Did you hear that strange sound?"
Jango nodded, also scanning the horizon. "Yeah, and it's getting closer and closer—"
He didn't even finish his sentence before, BOOM!
The ship's deck exploded in a shower of wooden splinters.
A straw-hatted figure burst through the air and crashed down, his body inflated like a balloon to cushion the impact.
Several other people clung desperately to his expanded belly.
"Whew... I thought we were gonna fall into the sea," Luffy said, deflating and patting himself off. "But hey, safe landing!"
"Safe?! How in the world was that safe?!" Nami demanded, trembling as she struggled to her feet.
Marcus also stood up slowly, feeling like his entire body was about to fall apart. Even with Luffy cushioning their landing like a human airbag at the last second, the impact had still been absolutely brutal.
Watching it happen in the ani hadn't prepared him for the reality of experiencing Luffy's "transportation thods" firsthand.
Sighing helplessly, he gently shook the thoroughly traumatized Kira awake. The poor girl had been scared half to death by the whole ordeal.
Jango was frozen in place at the sight of the intruders who had just crashed through his ship's deck.
Kuro was slightly more composed, but only slightly, as his jaw dropped in disbelief.
"Co on!" he shouted. "I was already leaving! Do you really have to chase down like this?!"
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