LittleDance Tavern, Booth No. 3.
"Captain, the fact you called all of us out here today... guess that means you've finally got it down?"
Swirling his wineglass, Arlan turned his eyes toward Aeridar.
At his words, everyone at the booth glanced toward Aeridar, who was currently chugging straight from a bottle of rum. With a final gulp, he slammed the bottle down and wiped his mouth, satisfied.
"More or less. It's just about control and release, really," he said coolly.
"Stupid Conqueror's Haki! Last time it knocked us clean out!" Millie and Mina both pouted with matching frustration.
It wasn't that the two of them were weak, after all, even Silvers Rayleigh's Conqueror's Haki hadn't been enough to take them down before. The issue was that both Rayleigh and Aeridar had released their Conqueror's Haki back-to-back. The overlapping shockwaves had created a kind of cumulative pressure, and among their group of elites, Millie and Mina, physically the weakest, were the first to collapse.
"Still, having Conqueror's Haki does make things easier in quite a few situations," Aeridar muttered, toying with the empty bottle in his hand, his tone laced with deeper meaning.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
Suddenly, a dull series of explosions thundered from outside, shaking the floor beneath them.
A deafening blast tore through the right-hand wall of the tavern's entrance, carving a gaping hole as bricks flew and dust filled the air. Shouts and groans echoed as flying debris battered the patrons inside.
"Aaaah! That hurts like hell!"
"Wh-what the hell—Ow! Damn it!"
Through the haze of smoke, a massive silhouette stood, holding what appeared to be a thick, steel-tipped spear. The figure turned toward the exit, calm and steady.
"What the hell, bastard?!" Gorbo scowled, glaring at a shard of brick that had landed in his beer.
No wonder Gorbo was pissed. Normally, an explosion like that wouldn't even come close to affecting Booth 3—it was tucked away at the back of the tavern. But Gorbo had been sitting on the edge, enjoying his drink. Just his luck: a rock had flown directly into his mug. He'd almost swallowed the damn thing.
The dust settled quickly, and they finally got a good look at the intruder. The man stood over three meters tall, with broad shoulders and a barrel-like chest. His back was turned, showing only tangled black hair and a bare, heavily muscled torso in an inverted triangle shape. A large bird tattoo sprawled across his back. He wore baggy brown pants and no shoes. Slung over his shoulder was a massive steel spear, thicker than a man's wrist and taller than even himself.
"That tickled a bit, freak. Kinda felt good, actually," the man growled with a rough, gravelly voice as he swung the spear like a club, creating a wind gust strong enough to rattle nearby windows.
From Booth 3, Aeridar and the others watched intently.
"That guy..." Arlan's hand froze mid-hair-flip.
"That tattoo..." Oliver's fingers closed around the hilt of Nagamitsu.
"Totem Warrior, Kohl Goff," Aeridar said with an amused smirk. "Guy's built almost as tough as Backan."
Just then, another voice rang out—deep, guttural, and filled with killing intent. It sounded less like a man and more like a beast.
"I'm going to tear you apart."
"Bring it on, then! Let's hurt each other real good!"
With a booming laugh, the bear-like Kohl Goff dashed forward, fast as a gust of wind.
One of the Six Supernovas, Totem Warrior—Kohl Goff.
Bounty: 126,000,000 Berries.
Outside, chaos erupted again. The ground rumbled from the force of their clash.
"The earth's shaking... That kind of power..."
Feeling the tremors underfoot, Aeridar rose and waved for the others.
"Let's go. We've got a show to catch."
Out on the street, the battle was already in full swing.
Facing Kohl Goff was another mountain of a man, slightly shorter, around 2.3 or 2.4 meters, but just as formidable. He wore beast-hide garments, his coal-black muscles looking more like rebar than flesh. Gripped in his hands was a massive, twin-handed axe the size of a cartwheel. But what truly stood out was his face: individually, his features weren't bad, but put together... he was spectacularly ugly. No wonder Goff had called him a freak.
The clash was all brute force—pure physical carnage. Spear met axe with each exchange, shaking the air and cratering the ground beneath them. The grass was torn to shreds. Pavement cracked.
"That ugly mug is hard to forget!" Aeridar quipped as they watched from the tavern steps.
Everyone had recognized the man now. No doubt about it.
He was also one of the Supernovas.
Bounty: 190,000,000 Berries.
They also finally got a clear look at Goff's face, a rugged square jaw and matching bird tattoos, one large across his chest, and another smaller one etched onto his right cheek.
With a ferocious swing, Goff slammed his spear like a club directly into Otto's torso, launching him like a missile. The impact blew him through a building, which collapsed moments later in a storm of debris and dust.
Resting the spear on his shoulder, Goff sneered.
"Orc Otto? Don't make me laugh. Ugly and weak, and they gave you a higher bounty than me? The Navy really is a joke."
Suddenly, a thunderous beast-like howl erupted from the rubble, shaking the entire grove. Even faraway birds took flight in panic.
The ruins exploded outward. Shattered bricks flew as dust billowed. From within the chaos, a colossal silhouette emerged, taller than Goff and even more muscular. But its form... was no longer entirely human.
"You bastard... I'M GOING TO RIP YOU APART!!"
With a roar that could tear mountains, the monstrous figure charged through the smoke.
"What the hell... are you even supposed to be?!"
Goff's eyes widened, stunned beyond belief as he took in the transformed Otto.
The figure before him now stood four meters tall. A massive head. An unnaturally wide jaw lined with jagged fangs. Its upper and lower canines had morphed into tusk-like sabers, each over a foot long. Coarse brown fur blanketed its body. A thick, sinewy tail nearly six meters long lashed behind it. Its hands and feet had become beastly claws, and in one hand, it wielded a massive axe the size of a wagon wheel.
It looked like some kind of bipedal monster—half-man, half-beast.
"So that's where the name 'Orc' comes from..."
Aeridar was dumbfounded.
It was like one of those orcs from Earth's fantasy films or games like Warcraft, only this one was even more beastly. It didn't just resemble an orc... it embodied one.
"That's Otto?! Oh my gosh!"
Millie and Mina clapped their hands over their mouths in shock.
"Unbelievable... is this a Zoan-type transformation?"
Arlan's voice trembled with surprise.
"Were his parents animals or something?"
Oliver tilted his head, genuinely puzzled.
"Never... seen this... kind of animal."
Backan scratched his head, clearly lost.
"A hybrid-animal mutation...?"
Dimitri looked completely thrown off.
"Orc? Could you even cook something like that?"
Gorbo's face was one big question mark.
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