On the deck.
Morrison, the CP officer in charge of this mission, was completely stunned—
and utterly terrified.
His eyes were wide open as he stared blankly at the bodies sprawled across the decking.
All of his subordinates…
Every single one of them…
Had collapsed.
Only he was left standing.
Just now—
What the hell happened?!
What kind of sorcery was this?!
The brat in front of him hadn't moved a muscle—
not a single step, not a single swing.
Yet his entire unit had mysteriously lost all combat ability and dropped like flies, unconscious on the floor.
Gulp.
Morrison swallowed hard.
He stared at Ryukawa, his eyes filled to the brim with fear.
He didn't know how this had happened—
But he knew who did it.
It had to be this boy.
"You… what did you do?!"
Morrison's voice cracked into a hysterical roar.
All the arrogance, all the condescension that had been etched into his face earlier—
Gone without a trace.
In its place was panic.
Fear.
And something close to despair.
The difference between his earlier attitude and now…
was like heaven and hell.
The moment all of his men collapsed, Morrison understood—
The situation had slipped completely beyond his control.
Especially this boy before him—
Just standing there, Ryukawa gave him an indescribable sense of danger.
A pressure so heavy it felt like it was crushing his very soul.
The gap between them—
Was enormous.
In that instant, Morrison suddenly recalled…
Rumors.
From the upper echelons.
Whispers about certain secrets of the sea.
He connected those whispers with what had just unfolded before his eyes—
And a terrifying possibility flashed through his mind.
"This… can't be…"
His throat went dry. His pupils shrank.
That thought was too insane.
Too impossible.
He looked at Ryukawa again.
So young.
So impossibly young.
How could that be?
No.
Impossible.
"It has to be something else… right…?"
Morrison's lips trembled.
But the images just now wouldn't leave his mind.
The boy stood there—
All his men collapsed.
No blades.
No gunfire.
No visible attacks.
Just a single overwhelming wave of pressure that had erased their consciousness.
"Conqueror's Haki…"
If that insane guess was right—
Then this scene was exactly what the old legends described.
"How could I… in the East Blue, of all places… run into something like that?!"
"This is supposed to be the weakest sea!"
The more he thought, the more broken he felt.
Back in the Grand Line, he'd never encountered such a monster.
But in this backwater East Blue—
He did.
"How is that fair?!"
"Conqueror's Haki…? No. No way—no way!"
"That brat… no matter how you look at him, he's just some snot-nosed kid from the East Blue! How could he possibly have that kind of talent?!"
"Conqueror's Haki is something that appears once in a million people…"
"And this kid… from here of all places… is the one in a million?!"
Morrison's heart screamed in denial.
It had to be a mistake.
It had to be something else.
But every time he tried to refute it,
the scene from a moment ago slammed into his mind again.
His men collapsing.
Foam at their mouths.
Eyes rolling back.
Exactly as the reports described.
"Conqueror's Haki…"
"I actually ran into Conqueror's Haki in the East Blue…?"
"The hell kind of cursed luck is this…"
The more he thought about it, the more terrified he became.
He understood what Conqueror's Haki meant.
He knew what kind of people possessed it.
And the most frightening part wasn't just that this kid had it—
It was that…
"He's not just born with it…"
"From the looks of it, he's already able to use it freely at his age!"
"Most people with Conqueror's Haki only awaken it instinctively in a life-or-death moment…"
"But this brat—this freak…"
"He just decided to use it."
As if flicking a switch.
"If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes… I'd never believe it…"
Morrison felt like he was about to cry.
When he first accepted this mission, he thought it would be easy.
Pick up the goods.
Dispose of a few bottom-feeder pirates.
Clean up the witnesses.
Report success.
Nothing more.
He never expected—
That everything would go to hell so suddenly.
Especially not because of this—
A monster who had snatched the "goods" from under their noses…
and just so happened to possess Conqueror's Haki.
"This level of talent…"
"What the hell is this kid?"
"At his age… he can already control and release Conqueror's Haki at will…?"
"In the Grand Line, he'd be considered top-tier among his generation… but in the East Blue?!"
"This kind of monster… actually appears in the East Blue?!"
Morrison felt like the world was mocking him.
Laughing in his face.
What kind of probability was this?!
Conqueror's Haki—
one in a million.
And he, on this crappy mission to the weakest sea, just happened to run into that one.
In the absolute lowest-probability region.
He wanted to curse out the heavens.
He really did.
"This is it… I'm finished…"
His mental defenses completely crumbled.
His legs gave out, and he collapsed to his knees on the deck.
There was no fight left in him.
No thoughts of resistance.
No thoughts of escape.
What was the point?
Fight a Conqueror's Haki user?
He wasn't suicidal.
He was a CP agent, yes—
psychologically trained and hardened.
But that only mattered up to a point.
When faced with something truly hopeless—
All that training shattered like glass.
And Morrison had never felt this hopeless in his life.
"…I should've checked the almanac before I left today…"
He laughed miserably.
"To think I'd meet a Conqueror's Haki user…"
"In the East Blue…"
"Do you know what kind of odds that is…?"
"One in a million, and I bumped right into him in this backwater…!"
"What kind of cursed… rotten luck is this!!!"
He wanted to cry.
But no tears came.
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