“Haven’t you ever heard that a Fish-Man’s grip strength is ten times that of a human’s?”
“W-What?!”
The captain of the Fat Bottle Pirates desperately tried to pull his sword free from Nanamo’s hand.
But no matter how hard he tugged, the blade refused to budge, as though it had been welded in place.
Nanamo’s hand clamped around it like a steel vise.
Because of the natural differences between their races, Fish-Men were born with roughly ten times the grip strength of ordinary humans.
That comparison was based on the average of each race, much like how the Marines and Cipher Pol measured Doriki, where a trained Marine carrying a rifle was assigned a baseline value of ten.
Strength was measured the same way—using racial averages as a starting point.
Exceptional individuals could surpass those averages through training and discipline.
And strength didn’t exist in isolation.
Denser bones, stronger muscles, and a more powerful physique all contributed to the innate physical advantages a race possessed.
“…Then again, explaining all this to someone like you is pointless.”
Nanamo tightened her grip.
The razor-sharp edge couldn’t leave so much as a scratch on her seemingly delicate palm.
Instead, it was the sword itself that began to groan under the pressure.
That wasn’t the effect of Haki.
It was simply her natural-born ability.
In truth, every race living on the seas possessed unique innate talents.
Because each race had evolved to survive in vastly different environments and fight under entirely different conditions, trying to rank them with a simple “stronger” or “weaker” label was both difficult and unfair.
Finding a genius within a single race, however, was much easier.
Among humans, Charlotte Linlin stood at the absolute pinnacle of natural talent.
Even as a child, she possessed monstrous strength, capable of killing a giant brown bear with her bare hands.
Her skin was as hard as steel.
Neither cannon fire nor razor-sharp blades could leave the slightest mark on it.
That extraordinary gift was known as the Iron Balloon.
Among all of Charlotte Linlin’s children, Nanamo was the only one to inherit that talent.
The starting line she was born with was a finish line that countless others could never hope to reach.
Clang.
Half of the broken blade fell to the ground.
The sound wasn’t loud, yet in the tense silence it rang painfully clear.
The captain of the Fat Bottle Pirates stared at the broken edge of his sword in utter disbelief.
It hadn’t snapped from brute force.
The fracture looked as though the metal had been corroded—almost melted away by something.
“Fish-Man Karate: Water Shot—Acid Rain!”
The right hand that had been gripping the blade now held what looked like a shimmering mass of liquid, as though it might drip from her fingertips at any moment.
But the instant Nanamo threw her punch, the liquid burst apart into countless razor-thin streams of water.
Like a torrential downpour, they shot toward the pirates attempting to ambush her from behind.
Water Shot was one of the most fundamental techniques in Fish-Man Karate, as well as its most basic ranged attack.
The principle was simple: compress water gathered in the hand and fire it like a bullet.
Its range and penetrating power depended entirely on the strength of the user.
Nanamo’s water strikes fired from her hands were like shotgun blasts, punching straight through several pirates.
The water arrows, even after piercing their bodies, still carried enough force to bury themselves deep into a nearby wall.
But after that, the small holes in the wall began to emit a faint hissing sound of corrosion, accompanied by wisps of white smoke.
The punctures in the surface were visibly expanding and deepening at a speed the eye could clearly track.
“Ugh… ah…!”
Among that earlier barrage, the pirates who were struck directly in vital areas and died instantly were, in a sense, the lucky ones.
Because Nanamo’s attack was spread out like a shotgun blast, the exact points of impact were inevitably somewhat uncontrollable.
Some of the “lucky” ones managed to avoid fatal hits—but the acid left in their wounds and bodies was still corroding them from within.
A searing pain, as if erupting from the depths of hell itself, exploded violently from inside their bodies.
The agony left them completely unable to speak.
In the end, they could only curl up on the ground in torment, their bodies convulsing uncontrollably from the pain, while broken, intermittent sounds escaped their throats—voicing the suffering they could no longer endure.
From this perspective, avoiding a fatal wound was not luck at all, but misfortune.
But that pain did not last long.
As their bodily functions broke down under the acid’s corrosion, they soon lost even the ability to feel pain, and their lives quickly faded away.
“Mon… monsters!
Those two damn brats are monsters!
Run—run!”
After witnessing Katakuri over on the other side slaughtering his subordinates as easily as chopping vegetables, and then seeing his own crew members drop from a single strike of Nanamo’s, the captain of the Fat Wine Bottle Pirate Crew’s last mental line of defense finally shattered.
He threw away his broken blade, abandoned the fate of his remaining crew, and fled in a desperate, disorganized retreat.
“Honestly… even in the New World, how can they be so ignorant?
At least call us Devil Fruit users or something.”
Nanamo was very dissatisfied with being called a “monster.” The seas were full of bizarre abilities—most of them were related to Devil Fruits.
“With that level of strength and understanding… no, actually, with a brain that smooth, it makes sense you’d say something like that.”
What she was using wasn’t a Devil Fruit ability at all, but an innate trait of her own species—the fish-type lineage of fishmen.
For example, Arlong, as a shark-type fishman, can rapidly regenerate his teeth.
Sebastian, due to his toadfish traits, can camouflage himself and become invisible.
This kind of ability is greatly enhanced in both fishmen and merfolk.
Due to genetic inheritance, the offspring of the fishman race do not necessarily possess the same “fish type” abilities as their parents.
There is a certain degree of randomness involved.
Moreover, the variety of fish in the seas is far greater than most people imagine.
Fishmen and merfolk can also inherit traits from creatures like seahorses, octopuses, and other marine life, which occasionally results in unusual or highly specialized abilities.
In many cases, even fishmen and merfolk themselves cannot clearly explain what their own traits are, and can only make rough inferences based on books and records.
Nanamo’s fish type comes from a marine creature capable of secreting corrosive fluids.
In her hands, this acidic liquid has been further enhanced—so much so that even metal can be easily corroded.
The captain of the Fat Wine Bottle Pirate Crew wasn’t listening to anything Nanamo was saying.
He only wanted to escape—escape this hellish place.
Although he didn’t know where he could possibly run, his most primitive human instinct for survival drove him to sprint into the distance.
Reality, however, was merciless.
There was no glimmer of hope waiting for him—only a trident hurled by Katakuri.