Someone Fired a Shot

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An explosion?

Was it coming from the auction house?

Corvin's thoughts shifted, and hesitation followed.

If the explosion really had come from the auction, then something had gone wrong over there.

Trouble meant a better chance to exploit the chaos.

At the same time, it also meant greater risk.

Should he go or stay away?

Corvin thought for a moment.

In the end, he only needed to keep his distance.

As for Sol's safety, the thought never crossed his mind.

Even if everyone attending the auction died, Corvin believed Sol would absolutely be the last one standing.

After all, ever since hearing Sol's theory of sniper levels, Corvin had come to understand one deep truth.

If you ran fast enough, the enemy's bullets, blades, and whatever else they threw at you simply could not catch up.

In Corvin's view, Sol was an old veteran sniper whom even Yasopp addressed with respect. Even if he was not the strongest fighter up close, his talent for getting out alive was probably second to none.

Once he made his decision, Corvin put away his guns, sprang upward, and landed lightly on a rooftop.

The three pirates he had hunted that night had brought him a real gain. His jumping power had improved as well.

Clearing a two- or three-story building was no longer difficult.

Corvin bounded across the rooftops, heading toward the auction house.

Before long, he reached Lookout Point Street.

It took some effort before he found a suitable vantage point on top of a building.

To avoid being dragged into the mess, the spot he chose was still some distance from the auction house.

From where he stood, he could clearly see black smoke rising from the building. The crowd outside the auction house, however, was only barely visible.

At a time like this, Corvin suddenly felt the need for a pair of tactical goggles or a small spyglass he could carry around.

Something like that would let him stay at a safe distance while still seeing what was happening.

"Should I get a little closer?"

Corvin considered it.

"No. Safety first."

He quickly gave up on the idea of taking unnecessary risks.

If killing those pirates directly were enough to produce a return, he would have been willing to take the chance. The reward would have been right there.

But the Hunter's Ledger had restrictions. Under these conditions, there was no reason to gamble.

All he needed to do was stay somewhere safe and wait patiently.

If luck came, heads would deliver themselves.

If luck did not come, there would be another chance.

Holding Usopp, Corvin leaned against a long chimney pipe and watched the distant situation outside the auction house.

Aside from the smoke, the crowd gathered outside remained fairly calm. There was no obvious large-scale panic.

Either that, or the auction house's armed guards had managed to control the scene.

"Looks like a lot of thunder and not much rain."

Corvin glanced at the smoke rising into the sky, disappointed.

If no one fought, how was he supposed to pick up anything useful?

In his ideal scenario, he did not need something as brutal as a war where everyone fought to the death. A messy brawl would have been enough.

Where there was a brawl, there would be killing. Where there was killing, there would be wounded people forced out of the fight for a while.

That was when he could move in and collect a few heads.

His plan sounded good in theory, but if the disturbance stayed this small, he would probably walk away with nothing.

"At this point, even a troublemaker would do."

Corvin muttered to himself.

The moment the words left his mouth, as if he had tempted fate, another explosion sounded inside the auction house.

Immediately afterward, a figure burst through the smoke and crashed into the crowd like a tank.

"Hm?"

Corvin's spirits rose at once. He narrowed his eyes and looked toward the broad street outside the auction house.

With his current eyesight, he could only make out the general shape.

It seemed that someone, or something, had broken out of the auction house and slammed the crowd apart.

"Now that's more like it."

Watching from afar, Corvin praised the sight silently.

To see the situation outside the auction house more clearly, he stopped waiting in place and moved closer.

Outside the auction house, blood and chaos swept through the crowd.

A fish-man more than two meters tall charged through the people around him.

"Move!"

The fish-man's face was twisted with savagery. His mouth, packed with sharp teeth, cut through anyone blocking his path like a blade, tearing bodies apart in an instant.

Worse still, one of the scattered pieces of flesh happened to fall into his mouth.

Gulp.

The fish-man did not spit it out. He swallowed it down, filling his empty stomach with human meat.

"Move! Move! All of you, get out of my way!"

"I need to go back. Back to the sea!"

Blood streaked the fish-man's face. As he roared, both hands shot forward and clamped around the cheekbones of two pirates.

Terrifying grip strength erupted.

The two pirates' heads burst like melons.

The fish-man did not slow. He kept driving forward.

But there were too many humans around him. No matter how hard he forced his way ahead, to everyone watching, his steps looked painfully slow. Between him and escape stood one final distance called despair.

If nothing unexpected happened, then in that hopeless situation, no matter how many people the fish-man killed, he would eventually be exhausted and die.

"It's a fish-man! If he gets close, you're dead! Shoot him! Hurry up and shoot him!"

Someone shouted from the crowd.

Bang.

Someone fired.

The bullet missed the fish-man entirely and struck an unlucky pirate instead.

"What idiot fired that shot?"

The wounded pirate's companions were shocked and furious. They could not believe that, in a crowd this dense around one target, someone had still been stupid enough to shoot.

Was his aim normally so bad that he had come here looking for confidence?

"Move! Everyone, move!"

The auction house guards forced a path through the crowd like a pair of hands prying people apart.

"Stop! That fish-man slave is important auction property!"

"Screw you! He's already in our faces and you want us to stop?"

A pirate whose companion had just been killed by the fish-man glared with bloodshot eyes and raised his gun toward the fish-man's back.

Just as he was about to pull the trigger, one of the auction house guards moved in time, taking advantage of the chaos to snatch the flintlock from behind.

The pirate froze. He turned, ready to curse, when a gunshot suddenly rang beside his ear.

His body jerked. He looked down at the blood pouring from his chest, his lips moving soundlessly, then collapsed into a corpse.

The guard holding the stolen gun froze as well. For one instant, he thought the weapon had misfired.

Who fired?

The question flashed through his mind.

Then someone shouted.

"The auction house people attacked! They killed someone!"

"I didn't-"

The guard had only begun to explain.

Another gunshot cut him off.

The bullet struck the center of his brow and stopped the sentence before he could finish it.

With one pirate and one auction guard dead by gunfire, disorder finally began to show.

"Damn it, they killed my brother!"

Bang.

Another shot rang out, and another auction guard dropped.

The man who had shouted and fired vanished back into the crowd almost instantly.

The auction house guards had lost two men for no clear reason, but they represented the auction house's position. They did not immediately return fire.

Then two more shots followed.

Those bullets shattered what remained of their restraint.

In an instant, the scene became even more chaotic.

The fish-man slave did not know what had happened, but he saw an opening. His movements grew even faster and more vicious as he slaughtered through the pirates around him.

"Who gave me the assist?"

On a nearby rooftop, Corvin stared in surprise, quickly put away Usopp, and jumped down into the alley between two buildings.

"Do I have a colleague out here or something?"

He moved quickly to change position.

Only after he came closer to the scene had he realized that the person who had broken out of the auction house was a fish-man.

After watching for a while, he felt the situation was far too orderly, so he fired a test shot.

He had not expected much.

Who would have thought that one test shot would make chaos break out from every direction?

The situation developed far beyond his expectations.

Listening to the fighting near the auction house, Corvin moved through the alleys between buildings while loading ammunition and quickening his pace.

He was not running away.

He was changing spots to see whether any fish would slip out of the net.

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