Chapter 44: Bite! Why Aren't You Biting Anymore?

Hum!

Before the palms even landed, the violent wind they stirred up caused his cheeks to cave inward. Arlong was startled, but his extensive battle experience made him react without thinking, hurriedly ducking downward.

Pathetic as it was, it was truly effective.

Thud!

Where his head had just been, ripples tore through the air. Arlong felt his eardrums ring violently, and blood spurted from his nasal cavity.

He couldn't help but feel a wave of terror; had he hesitated for even half a second longer, his head would have been flattened, if not crushed outright.

Giving him no time to think, after missing his initial strike, Xiano didn't pull back. Instead, he drove his palms straight down, aiming directly for the crown of Arlong's head.

"Damn human!" Blinded by fear and driven to furious rage, Arlong unleashed his feral nature, abruptly opening his blood-soaked maw to bite down on Xiano's arm.

Oh?

Seeing that Arlong had stopped dodging and was instead taking the offensive, Xiano narrowed his eyes with growing interest. He actively thrust his right arm forward, shoving it straight into Arlong's mouth.

You're courting death!

With a ferocious look in his eyes, Arlong clamped down hard.

Stupid human, daring to underestimate him so! He didn't even realize that Arlong's sharpest weapons weren't the giant saw-blade in his hand, but this mouthful of razor-sharp fangs!

Crack!

A familiar shattering sound abruptly rang out, and a salty, metallic taste burst within the mouth.

Arlong grinned, but before a look of triumph could even form on his face, he was horrified to discover that what had shattered was not Xiano's arm, but his own teeth.

The gushing torrent of blood didn't come from sliced muscle on Xiano's arm, but from his own mangled gums.

"Bite. Keep biting."

Xiano's expression remained impassive as he forced his arm deeper inside. "Why did you stop?"

"Mmph... mmph!" Arlong struggled desperately, trying to spit out this arm that felt as though it were cast from molten steel and iron, but his efforts were entirely in vain. He could only watch helplessly as the arm inched closer and closer to his throat.

"I heard you could even bite through cannonballs fired from warships. Why are you so weak today?"

Xiano continued to push further in, speaking as if to himself. "Didn't you eat?"

"Then let me feed you! Eat my whole arm! It's all protein—get some good nutrition, and won't you get your strength back?"

His calm voice gradually filled with overwhelming tyranny.

Arlong's eyes began to roll back as his entire lower jaw was forced open to its absolute limit, faintly emitting the cracking sound of fracturing skull bones.

"Eat! I told you to eat, why aren't you eating?!"

That powerful, unyielding arm began to twist back and forth inside his mouth. The few remaining teeth he had left, along with chunks of flesh, were scrubbed and squeezed out like dirty laundry in a washbasin.

"Mmph...!"

Arlong was on the verge of asphyxiation, his consciousness blurring. Only his primal instinct for survival drove him to flail his claws wildly, scratching frantically at Xiano's chest and arms.

Yet he couldn't draw even a single drop of blood, leaving behind nothing more than faint white marks.

"Let go of Boss Arlong!"

A furious roar suddenly echoed from behind. It was Choo, leading three other fishman officers, charging forward with blades drawn to slash at Xiano's back.

Xiano glanced back over his shoulder.

Strangely enough, even though they were fiercely charging forward and even roaring aloud, their faces were plastered with expressions of utter terror and despair, bearing a striking resemblance to Commander Erwin.

Xiano ignored them, not even bothering to give them a second glance. He turned his head back around and continued stuffing meat into Arlong's mouth as if he were all alone.

Was that scene about to repeat itself?

Looking at that terrifying back muscle closing in and Xiano's utterly dismissive attitude, Choo felt no joy in his heart—only deeper despair.

He had witnessed with his own eyes how Hachi's six swords, no matter how wildly they were swung, had failed to pierce the man's defenses.

Hachi was the crew's premier swordsman, and each of his six swords weighed three hundred kilograms. If even Hachi couldn't do it, what chance did they have?

Yet, they couldn't just leave Boss Arlong to his fate!

In the brief fraction of a second that these thoughts flashed through his mind, the three blades slashed toward Xiano's back from different angles, sinking smoothly inward.

They went in?!

Choo was swept by a wave of mixed shock and joy, but his expression warped drastically the very next moment.

Wrong! The spots where those three blades had entered were merely folds and gaps intentionally created by the opponent's contraction of his latissimus dorsi muscles!

Clang!

The next instant, the knotted muscles violently bulged outward, and the three blades were simultaneously deflected and shot backward at high speed!

Swish, swish, swish! The three fishmen failed to dodge in time and were instantly nailed to the coconut trees, their necks pierced straight through as blood gushed down the deep grooves of the bark.

No, no!

Catching the scene in his blurring peripheral vision, Arlong felt a wave of crushing grief and indignation as tears streamed uncontrollably down his face—

Run! Hurry up and run, you idiot comrades! Can't you even tell by now? This human... no! This monster is simply not someone you can ever hope to rival!

"You're... crying?"

Xiano looked down at him with genuine curiosity. "It almost makes me feel pity, makes me almost want to spare you. Too bad there's a saying: crocodile tears are not worthy of sympathy."

He glanced into the distance.

Seeing that their officers were nearly all dead and that even Arlong was completely powerless to fight back, the remaining fishman pirates had their courage utterly broken. They turned and bolted frantically toward the shoreline, each wishing their parents had given them an extra pair of legs.

Xiano lowered his head and whispered softly into Arlong's ear:

"Oh right, you're a shark, aren't you? Doesn't matter, isn't it pretty much the same thing anyway?"

The moment his voice fell, he suddenly grabbed Arlong's head with a reverse-claw grip, turning and chasing after the fishmen who were fleeing frantically toward the dock!

He continuously executed the "Sabi," the scenery on either side flashing backward in a rapid succession of speed bursts. Arlong's lower body repeatedly smashed and shattered the giant trees along the way, his consciousness rapidly fading away.

Plop. Arriving at the shattered wooden pier, Xiano finally halted.

Looking down with an indifferent gaze, he saw the purple fishman in his hand had been dragged across hundreds of meters of gouged earth, his flesh completely mangled and leaving a winding trail of blood across the rustic dirt path.

"Dead?"

Xiano frowned slightly, unable to mask the disappointment and loneliness in his expression. "Turns out... you really were only at this level?"

To this day, they still hadn't been able to force him to use his full strength and enjoy a satisfying battle.

Shaking his head as though tossing aside a piece of garbage, he threw Arlong's corpse onto the sandy beach and turned his gaze toward the fishman pirates who were clumsily scrambling aboard the Shark SP.

"Oh no! That monster is chasing us down!!"

A fishman spotted him and let out a shrill shriek. "What are you waiting for, move!"

"The hull is still turning, there's no time!"

"Then jump ship and swim away! In the water, could he possibly catch up to us fishmen?!"

Trying to escape into the sea?

Xiano sneered. He didn't have the bad habit of leaving roots behind when cutting weeds.

Moon Walk!

Flexing his arches and stamping against the ground, he vanished in a flash of motion, reappearing right at the very top of the tall mast.

His field of vision was clear, and every single fishman pirate was laid out before his eyes without exception.

Some fishmen had already climbed over the railing from the port side and were leaping into the sea. Xiano's face remained expressionless as he raised his right arm, aiming his index finger directly at the back of a fleeing head.

Finger Pistol!

A shockwave burst forth from his fingertip, instantly blowing apart the fishman's skull. Xiano didn't even spare a second glance; before the brains could even splatter, he had already locked his fingertip onto the next target...

...

The sea breeze blew past, carrying a heavy stench of blood mixed into its salty tang.

A-Huan's legs trembled. Cautiously looking around every step of the way, he stepped over the scattered severed limbs and pools of blood until he reached the edge of the pier.

The scene here was much like the dirt path from earlier—fishman corpses drifted everywhere across the ship's rails, the deck, and the surface of the sea.

What on earth had happened here?

Could it be...

That figure who had sped past him just moments before, rushing toward the sea ahead of him, had single-handedly brought this battle to an end?

"Xaa... Xiano?" A-Huan cupped his hands around his mouth like a megaphone, probing the area with a loud shout. "Where are you?! Are you alright? Did you get hurt?"

"Up here, Uncle A-Huan."

The voice came from above.

Only then did A-Huan notice that atop the giant pirate ship's mast, a figure sat completely motionless, lowering his gaze to quietly survey the scene below.

"Uncle, you seem to have arrived a little late."

Xiano raised his head, revealing a face that looked slightly fatigued. It wasn't physical exhaustion, but rather the release that came after keeping his spirit tightly wound for far too long.

Looking at the dumbfounded A-Huan, he smiled faintly:

"I've killed all the pirates, not a single one escaped. It's a bit of a pity, though—didn't leave you a chance to pitch in as a local patrolman."