Chapter 126 New Bounties
"How beautiful!"
As Nico Robin gazed at the moonlit sea, Zane leaned against the railing, watching her from the side.
Seeing the smile on her face, he offered his praise without hesitation.
When it came to an ice queen, her coldness wasn't what people feared; it was the moment she finally smiled.
The contrast between her icy exterior and that smile was incredibly captivating.
"Beautiful?"
Nico Robin turned her head to meet Zane's gaze.
"Is Baby 5 not enough for the Captain?" she asked, smoothing her hair with an air of casual grace.
"Hm? Those are some dangerous words." Zane was briefly taken aback before letting out a soft chuckle.
What exactly did "enough" mean?
What would happen if it were enough, and what would happen if it weren't?
Her question seemed aimed at him, yet it felt as if she had already determined the answer for herself.
"Dangerous? ... Perhaps so. In that case, I'll have to reconsider!" Nico Robin displayed a rare playful side, winking her left eye at Zane.
...
Zane stared at her, momentarily speechless.
"I really can't deal with you. Once you're done reconsidering, don't bother telling me—just show me through your actions." Zane gave a helpless smile and couldn't resist reaching out to pinch her cheek.
Nico Robin didn't dodge or resist; she let him pinch her cheek before turning back to look at the night sea.
However, the gradual reddening of her ears proved that the mature woman's heart was far from as composed as she appeared.
*
*
*
Three days after Gion's death.
The New Riding the Wind and Waves and the escort ship sailed across the sea as usual.
"Over here!"
On the deck, Baby 5 went through her usual routine. When she saw a News Coo passing through the sky, she skillfully pulled a Beli note from her fourth-dimensional pocket and waved it.
The sharp-eyed News Coo immediately displayed its professional standards, banking sharply and diving down to land on the railing across from Baby 5.
"I'll take today's paper!" Baby 5 handed over the Beli.
The News Coo deftly caught the money in its beak, then looked down to retrieve change and a newspaper from the small bag hanging around its neck in one fluid motion.
Baby 5 took the change and the newspaper.
As the News Coo flew away, she flipped open the paper casually.
As the Captain's personal maid, she was responsible for the daily news.
Whenever a significant story broke, she needed to inform her Captain immediately.
Swoosh!
Just as the paper opened, several brand-new bounty posters slipped out, fluttering down onto the deck.
Baby 5 instinctively looked down.
"Eh?!"
The posters scattered across the deck caught Baby 5's eye.
Seeing the portraits on the posters, her expression shifted instantly.
Without hesitation, Baby 5 scrambled to pick them up, then clutched the posters and the newspaper to her chest as she hurried back toward the cabin.
"Captain! Today's paper has our new bounties!"
Thud, thud, thud!
Inside his private training room, Zane was drenched in sweat, throwing heavy punches at a metal block the size of a Poneglyph.
He wasn't using Nen or Haki on his fists; every strike was a raw collision between his knuckles and the metal.
When Baby 5 rushed into the training room, Zane paused mid-motion upon hearing her voice, halting the punch he was about to throw.
"Hand them over."
Zane reached down to grab a nearby towel, wiping sweat as he hung it around his neck. He took the stack of posters from Baby 5.
He looked them over.
Having been organized by Baby 5 on the way in, the very top poster featured Zane himself.
The upper half was his portrait, and the lower half was the bounty amount.
It started with a 2, followed by a long string of zeros.
Units, tens, hundreds, thousands...
Zane scanned the amount, counting nine zeros to be certain.
This meant the bounty listed on the poster was 2 billion Beli.
Previously, after he had taken out that Marine Vice Admiral whose name he had already forgotten, the Marines had issued a 500 million Beli bounty for him.
Now, it had reached 2 billion.
The bounty had quadrupled in a single leap.
Such a staggering increase...
Zane flipped past his own poster to check the others.
Sure enough, the posters below were for Manlong, Baby 5, Nico Robin, and the elites of the Hunting Team like Wyper, Bones, Kamakiri, and Roche.
Each person's bounty varied.
The highest was Manlong, with a bounty of 320 million Beli.
Below him were:
Nico Robin, with a bounty of 250 million Beli.
Baby 5, with a bounty of 170 million Beli.
Wyper, with a bounty of 120 million Beli.
Bones, with a bounty of 100 million Beli.
And various others ranging between tens of millions.
They had really been swept up all at once.
It seemed that over the last three days, the Marines hadn't just been sitting around; they had been investigating the intelligence of everyone on his side.
Zane's expression remained calm as he handed the posters back to Baby 5 and took the newspaper to read.
There were no surprises.
The front-page news was all about him.
To put it simply, it covered his killing of the Admiral Candidate Gion and the Hunting Team's slaughter of numerous Marine officers and soldiers.
Oh, and it also mentioned the matter involving the Happo Navy.
Although the Happo Navy were actually pirates, they were officially recognized as the regular army of the Flower Country.
As the Flower Country was an allied nation of the World Government, the killing of its regular army was naturally added to Zane's list of crimes.
Well... the style of the news was the same as ever.
It was nothing more than "evil pirates massacring righteous Marines and the innocent soldiers of an allied nation."
'Two billion Beli... raising it so much all at once is likely the World Government's way of painting a target on my back.' Zane thought silently.
Many pirates viewed their bounty as a badge of honor; the higher the bounty, the higher they believed their status to be.
This led many pirates to not only massacre civilians but also specifically target their own kind just to increase their bounty.
Using peers as stepping stones to elevate their own standing.
"Go ahead and distribute these posters and the news."
After reading the paper, Zane handed it back to Baby 5.
Killing Gion and seeing his bounty rise was exactly what he had anticipated.
To put it bluntly.
Killing Gion was no different from kicking a hornets' nest.
Given her appearance and status, her position within the Marines could practically be described as a younger version of Shakky.
It didn't even require much thought.
Zane could fully expect a never-ending stream of Marines coming to hunt him down from now on.
Of course.
There wasn't much to be said about such things.
If you play the game, you have to be ready to pay the price.
He killed Gion because Gion intended to be his enemy.
The reverse was also true.
If the Marines actually managed to kill him later, he'd have nothing to say; but if they were killed by him instead, they'd just have to accept their fate.
Once Baby 5 left, Zane took off his towel and continued punching the metal block.
Thud, thud, thud!
Punch after punch.
Every collision produced a heavy, dull thud.
Since obtaining the Rumble-Rumble Fruit, Zane's physical strength had improved at an astonishing rate through the constant hunting of giant Sea Kings.
Logically, with his current strength, even without using Nen or Armament Haki, every punch should be enough to easily shatter a standard warship.
Yet, as he repeatedly struck the metal block, it didn't break or even budge.
This wasn't because Zane wasn't using enough force, but because the metal block before him was a new type of alloy he had developed using the Munch-Munch Fruit's power.