One Piece: The Salted Fish Fruit

Upon approaching the empty pirate ship, Alice and Jack's expressions changed drastically, and they rushed inside.

"They've already gone in, we need to hurry."

"Ford! Get all your men onto the Merry; the Merry is smaller and faster."

Maby noticed the sweat beading on Ford's forehead; after all, controlling two ships would only deplete his stamina faster than using a single, lighter vessel.

Upon hearing this, Ford looked at his excited crew and immediately gave orders.

"Men! Prepare your weapons, drop anchor, and head straight for the Merry."

"Alright!" The crew members, each performing their duties, moved in an orderly and efficient manner without any sign of panic.

“Brother Mabi, my crew is just as good as the Chamber of Commerce guards you trained, isn’t it?” Ford said proudly, looking at the crew members assigning tasks.

"Not bad! A well-organized formation can generate greater fighting power." Maby praised, it seems that the years this kid spent following him hadn't been in vain.

"That's right, I don't see anyone teaching him that."

"Let's go quickly!"

"Yes, First Mate."

···

"Aow! Aow! Aow!" Before the group even arrived, a series of intense screams erupted as they rushed into the clouds.

“Our people are being slaughtered; we need to get in quickly.”

"Rubber! Rubber! Slingshot!"

"Idiot! We only heard the sound, but we don't know how far away the land is! I'm going to find him!"

Mabi looked at the cloud tunnel that had been created and rushed into it by stepping on the air.

"Two idiots!" the people around thought to themselves as they gathered their belongings in preparation for battle.

"First mate, don't break these tiger skins. If they're broken, they won't be worth anything, and we won't be able to replenish our treasure." On the shore littered with corpses, some pirates were carrying tiger carcasses to dissect and skin them. One of the crew members pointed to a broken corpse and advised them.

"Trouble! I'll wipe out those thieves sooner or later." He casually smashed a tiger-man that pounced on him and continued walking into the forest.

"Bang!" Suddenly, he felt as if he had been struck in the waist, and he rolled away, crashing into and breaking countless trees.

"Luffy, slow down! Rejoin the group."

Mabi shouted ahead, and then suddenly her vision cleared as she broke through the thick fog. She turned to look at the familiar figures carrying corpses below and said coldly.

"It really was you guys."

"Damn it, it's you! You're a crew member from that ship, and this time no one will save you." First mate Dick stood up and looked at Luffy, who was still in a daze, and immediately became furious. His bones emerged and solidified into a thick layer of bone armor.

"That's so cool!"

"Idiot! Go find their captain, I want him!" Mabi shouted after dealing with the henchmen.

"Alright! Maple, you handle him, I'll go take down that captain." Luffy, who never hesitates when it comes to important matters, didn't waste any time and ran straight to the center of the island, guided in the right direction by the grove of trees that had been forcefully pushed down.

"Woman! What are you doing here instead of going home to raise your children? I won't let you off the hook just because you're a woman. I suppose you're one of that guy's crew members, so you might as well take him with you."

"Bone hammer!"

"Mabi! Big Brother Mabi, where are they?!"

“He’s gone to the island! I’ll stop him.” Mabi drew her sword to meet the attack, giving him no chance to attack anyone else.

The group of companions who followed rushed onto the island without hesitation; there was no time for idle chatter.

"Okay! It's up to you now."

"No one is allowed to leave! Bone Spear Forest!" Countless white spears, each ten feet long and as thick as an arm, rained down from the sky.

"Air shakes!"

"tornado!"

"Control the object! Return!"

Before he could even land, he was knocked away and broken by various skills, and some bone spears were also controlled and reflected back.

"You're asking for death! Sever Void!" Seeing that the opponent was about to condense a second attack, Mabi directly slashed at the opponent's wrist.

"Bone hammer!"

"Circle around! Use the opponent's force against them!" Mabi extended her longsword and struck the solidified bone hammer. Her body was thrown into the air by the blow, then fell from the sky and slashed down again.

"A mere novice swordsman can't do anything to me; your longsword is completely ineffective against my armor!"

"Is that so! How will you know if you don't try? All truths exist in practice." Mabi remained unmoved, feeling the air currents flowing around her as she swung her sword down. The omnipresent atmosphere was always the foundation of her battle; her physical body alone couldn't withstand even a single horizontal slash from Zoro.

"Clang!" Bone fragments flew everywhere, and the broken wound was completely covered up and restored to its original state with a single breath.

"Looks like it's still useless! After resting for a few years without fighting, my body has become rusty." Mabi looked at her masterpiece, only to have it directly repaired by the other party, and said with a pain in her heart.

"You pissed me off!"

"Bone Spear!" A six-meter-long spear formed in her hand and was thrown directly at Mebius.

Accompanied by a strong gust of wind, Mabi stood up straight and calmly felt the presence of the surrounding air. Countless air currents swept across her skin. She raised her longsword, which was also accompanied by the air currents. There was also a strong turbulence caused by the bone spear cutting through the air. Her body was directly facing the white bone spear coming towards her. The sharp tip of the sword was clearly visible. The tip of the longsword in her hand, which was guarding the middle, was slightly raised and then suddenly pointed down.

"Inch Slash! Shatter the Void!" The sword tip strikes a small area, destroying everything in front of it and spreading infinitely forward until the power is exhausted.

"Whoosh!" The bone spears that the opponent shot at seemed to be controlled by an invisible force and suddenly stopped in mid-air. They slowly disintegrated and fell to the ground with gravity, forming a row of small mounds made of bone fragments.

"How is this possible!" The bone spears he had launched had only ever been knocked away or broken; there had never been anything like this that shattered so silently.

"Thank you! You've made me understand once again the importance of air. Every object has air within it, and as long as they can communicate, nothing is indestructible." Mabi slowly stepped forward, her longsword gently tapping and shattering all the flying bone spear shadows.

"Impossible! Bone hammer! Heavy blow!"

"Inch Slash! Shatter the Void!" Mabi gently raised his sword and struck the massive hammer that was pressing down. Countless forces rushed straight into his body and spread to the surface, causing cracks.

"Impossible! How could bone armor, which is supposed to be harder than steel, possibly be defeated!" The massive body crashed to the ground!

No one answered, and even if someone did, he would never hear it again.

"Huff! Huff!" Mabi slowly exhaled. Her moves seemed simple and easy, but she had to precisely control every muscle to make the most of them. If she continued like this, she wouldn't be able to hold on for much longer. This kind of technique was too physically demanding.

Chapter 23 A Painful Experience! A Salted Fish Becomes a Support Role

"You're asking for death!" Mabi, who had caught up, swung her sword and beheaded a crew that was on the verge of death. These ordinary crew members were no match for these vicious pirates. Every time they swung their weapons, they hesitated and dared not strike forward. They held back their attacks, which could have been fatal, resulting in their crew members being wounded. The pirates, on the other hand, delivered fatal blows with every strike, without any spare strength, and launched a second attack without stopping.

Mabi looked at the crew members who had dropped their weapons and were trembling, and some of them were clinging to trees and vomiting violently, and asked them questions.

"What's wrong? Has Ford never led you guys to kill anyone?"

The team members, having recovered, saw the beautiful black-and-white maid girl in front of them desperately trying to maintain their weak image, determined not to lose face in front of a woman.

"No, we used to only work as escorts for merchant guilds. We offended a kingdom while trying to save our first mate and were wanted by the World Government, so we switched to being pirates. Before, because of Captain Ford's reputation, no pirates dared to offend us, and we rarely took action. This is the first time we've participated in a battle where people have died. Our captain often taught us to win people over with virtue, so we dared not harm them!"

Upon hearing his explanation, Mabi immediately understood what was going on—just another victim of persecution. The subsequent explanation was so shocking that Mabi covered her face with one hand, unable to look him in the eye. "How did my attempt to explain it change so drastically?" she thought.

This idiot! I taught you to win people over with virtue, but this isn't the kind of virtue you're talking about! It's good that you're an idiot yourself, but now you're educating a bunch of idiots on your own crew. Aren't you just digging your own crew into a hole?

Do you believe me?

Immediately, the crew members looked at each other, and considering the captain's previous attitude towards the maid girl, they all nodded in agreement.

"We believe! We believe in Sister Mabi."

Mabi nodded at the serious attitude of the people opposite her, but to the crew, it looked like a beautiful girl smiling and nodding at them. The satisfied smile, combined with the sunlight shining directly from behind, made them feel like a goddess had descended.

"In that case, would you believe me if I said that winning people over with virtue was something I taught your captain?"

"letter!"

"Okay! It's right to believe it."

Maby was pleased; she hadn't expected the crew Ford had trained to be so easy to talk to, completely unaware that they already treated her like their mistress.

"What I said about gaining virtue is like having a weapon in your hand. Since you've already drawn your weapon and are ready to fight, you have to beat them until they submit. Only those who remain are truly human. If they don't submit, they're not human yet; you have to keep beating them until they become human. Whether they're alive or dead doesn't matter, because only by living can you truly win people over with virtue. If you can't win people over with virtue, then what's the point of winning people over with virtue?"

"What do you mean you don't understand? Sister Maggie, could you explain it in simpler terms?"

One of them opened his bewildered eyes and asked hesitantly, "This is too profound for me to understand."

Hearing his words, Maggie stepped forward, patted him on the shoulder, and smiled slightly; "Brother, you only know that in this world, only the living can win people over with virtue, the dead are not needed."

The people around them shuddered and exclaimed in unison.

"Yes, Sister Maggie!"

Mabi plunged her sword into the ground and said coldly:

"Now, collectively use the weapons in your hands to insert them into the corpses. Use all your strength to insert them and feel the sensations transmitted from the weapons. That is the fleshy sensation you will feel when you kill the enemy in the future. You should feel the pain if you were stabbed in the body. If you don't inflict this pain on the enemy, then this pain will be transferred to yourselves."

A group of people immediately gathered in front of the corpses, looking at each other while simultaneously pushing forward, none of them wanting to get hurt.

The sounds of clashing swords rang out one after another.

"Now everyone has it! Attack the surviving enemy according to your original arrangement. Only the victor has the right to use virtue to subdue others."

"Yes, Sister Maggie!"

They changed their previous timid demeanor, accelerating or slowing down as they advanced to find teammates to coordinate weapon combinations and replenish the teams that were still undecided.

Maggie watched their transformation with satisfaction. The ruthlessness they displayed was a world of difference from before. It seemed Ford hadn't given up on their daily training; all that was needed was a trigger. There was no need to worry about them anymore; these were just twenty or thirty small-time pirates, enough for them to practice on. And those pirates who had bullied Luffy and the others were at the very top—that was the main battlefield.

"May Sister Mabi rest in peace!"

Upon hearing these words, Maggie suddenly felt uneasy, having previously been too preoccupied with disappointment to care. She angrily retorted:

"I'm a man!"

"Hehe! Where can you find such a beautiful maid!" the crowd below chuckled.

"Damn it! These beasts, they forgot about me after just two days and decided not to bother with me."

"Rubber rubber! Rocket launcher!"

"Ghost Slayer!"

"Thousand Shadow Slash!"

"Shooting!"