With his plan set, Zodyl abandoned his weapon entirely.
Seizing a gap in Pons’s attacks, he dropped his hammer onto the deck, turned, and leaped into the sea.
This move caught Pons completely off guard.
With a loud splash, Zodyl’s massive frame plunged into the water.
Pons felt a headache coming on.
If Zodyl swam underwater, it would be very difficult to continue the chase…
he might very well escape.
In desperation, Pons formed another Shadow Ball and hurled it at Zodyl, who was already submerged.
Fortunately, this Shadow Ball struck Zodyl squarely on the back of his head just as he was diving deeper.
The Shadow Ball exploded.
Zodyl felt a violent impact to his skull, and then…
darkness.
He lost consciousness.
Zodyl’s skull was quite thick, so that one Shadow Ball was not enough to kill him…
only knock him out.
But passing out underwater was extremely dangerous.
The few pirates still on the ship saw their captain go down and immediately dove into the sea to rescue him.
Even if they hauled him back up, the purple monster might still kill him…
but if they did nothing, Zodyl would certainly drown.
Pons had not expected Zodyl’s underlings to be so loyal.
Just moments ago, Zodyl had fled the town without a second thought for the men still fighting there.
But it did not matter if they fished him out…
Pons would simply finish him off.
That pirate captain was going to die here today.
That Shadow Ball had struck Zodyl by sheer luck, which meant fate had decided he would not escape.
After all, Pons had thrown it in desperation without aiming at all.
If it had missed and Zodyl had dived deeper, Pons would not have been able to hit him again, and Zodyl might have gotten away clean.
Once Zodyl was hauled back onto the deck, some of the pirates knelt before Pons and begged for mercy, hoping he would spare their captain.
But Pons was unmoved.
Their captain had offered him money and that had not swayed him…
so why would a few groveling pirates change his mind?
So Pons formed another Shadow Ball and hurled it at Zodyl’s head…
Just as Pons was finishing off Zodyl, a Marine warship was rapidly approaching from the distance.
“Faster!
Push harder!” Lieutenant Reg, the officer in command of the warship, stared at the massive flames rising from Riman Town, his heart burning with urgency.
All he could think about was getting there in time to save people.
Reg knew that the crew invading Riman Town was Zodyl’s Hammer Pirates.
In these remote waters, the twenty-million-berry bounty pirate “Hammer” Zodyl was already notorious.
This desolate stretch of sea had only a small Marine base, and Reg…
only a lieutenant…
was its commanding officer.
That alone showed just how meager the base truly was.
The entire base had fewer than a hundred sailors stationed there, with only two old, dilapidated warships that had been in service for decades.
On this mission, Reg had brought one ship and forty sailors…
nearly half the base’s total strength.
Reg had crossed paths with Zodyl several times before, and each time the pirate had easily escaped with his crew.
In a one-on-one fight, Reg was no match for Zodyl either.
He could even tell that the only reason Zodyl had never wiped him out was that the pirate feared killing the Marine here might invite greater retaliation from the Marines.
Reg had reported the situation to his superiors, asking for reinforcements…
or at least for an officer of Lieutenant Commander or higher, someone who could match Zodyl in combat, to be stationed at the base.
But his requests had all been denied.
After all, this sea was far too remote to warrant much attention.
Moreover, Zodyl had never attacked a proper nation…
only small towns on tiny islands…
so his superiors saw no need to send more troops or stronger fighters.
To Reg and the residents of these waters, Zodyl was a great pirate with a twenty-million-berry bounty.
But to his superiors, he was just a petty criminal with a bounty of twenty million…
hardly worth the trouble.
Though he knew he could not defeat Zodyl, Reg had to fight anyway upon learning that Riman Town was under attack.
He had joined the Marines to protect innocent civilians from pirate predation.
Even if he could not win, he hoped to minimize the town’s losses.
As his ship drew near the harbor, Reg shouted at the top of his lungs: “Hammer Pirates!
Surrender immediately!” Reg knew full well that they would never surrender…
but protocol demanded he make the demand anyway.
To his utter astonishment, however, no sooner had he finished shouting than voices called back from the pirate ships: “We surrender!
We’ll give up!” ‘What…
what was going on?
Was I hallucinating?’ Reg turned to the sailor beside him and asked: “Did you hear them say they’re surrendering?” The sailor wore the same look of disbelief and replied: “Sir…
I think we all heard someone on those ships calling for surrender…” ‘What was happening?’ Reg was utterly baffled.
‘Could this be some kind of trick?
But the Hammer Pirates were so much stronger than his small detachment…
why would they need to resort to deception?’ No matter.
He would sail into the harbor and get closer first.
“All hands, prepare for battle!” Reg ordered his sailors as the warship closed in on the harbor.
But when they drew near enough to see clearly, Reg’s jaw dropped.
The pirates were all kneeling on the decks…
but there were very few of them.
Counting all three ships, he estimated no more than ten people in total.
Zodyl lay on the deck of the middle ship, apparently dead.
And standing beside him was a black-haired young man, perhaps fifteen or sixteen years old…
the only person on any of the pirate ships who was not kneeling.
That young man was Pons, who had reverted from his Gengar form back to human shape.
He was sixteen years old, roughly one meter and eighty centimeters tall, with black hair and black eyes.
He wore cheap hemp clothing.
His features were somewhat plain, but his brow carried a composure and maturity that seemed beyond his years.
Pons was a Transmigrator from another world.
In his previous life, he had been a senior college student who loved anime and games.
Just as he was about to graduate, a traffic accident sent him into the world of One Piece, where he became an orphaned boy named Pons.
When he first arrived, this world’s version of himself was only fourteen…
an orphan with no parents, living in a tiny wooden shack of barely fifteen square meters.
Inside, there was only a table, a chair, and a bed with a single thin blanket.
There was nothing else.
Even using the bathroom meant finding a bush outside.
To make matters worse, likely due to malnutrition, the fourteen-year-old Pons had stood only about one meter and fifty centimeters tall, and his frame was frail and thin.
The initial panic and confusion of transmigration were beyond words.
But once he calmed down, Pons realized that the world he had landed in was the world of One Piece.
At first, he had thought it was just some medieval-style setting.
Then one day, a seagull flew overhead and dropped a newspaper.
The paper carried stories about great pirates like Red-Haired Shanks, and Pons finally understood…
this was the One Piece World.
The calm he had barely regained shattered once more.
The One Piece World was far more dangerous than any medieval setting.
The threat of pirates was one thing, but the tyranny of the Celestial Dragons hung like a sword over every commoner’s head.
Here he was, a poor orphaned boy with no parents, struggling just to get by day to day.
If pirates came, how would he survive?
Pons was filled with anxiety, but life had to go on.
He currently worked odd jobs at a general store in Riman Town, earning only three hundred Berry a day…
barely enough for three meals.
If he was frugal, he might save about thirty Berry.
One day, after finishing work and returning home, Pons sat down on his chair to rest.
Suddenly, a purple-black Devil Fruit appeared on the table before him out of thin air.
There was no warning.
First, a faint outline of a Devil Fruit materialized on the table.
That outline quickly solidified, and before long, a real Devil Fruit was sitting silently where there had been nothing at all.