CH280 "ELEGY OF THE BARGAINING DEMON"š
Ren's actions left Yamato stunnedā she had never imagined someone could stoop so low, especially when it involved Ace.
"You bastard!" Yamato's voice cracked with fury as her eyes blazed. She turned to Ren, her glare sharp enough to cut steel. "I really thought you were different from the rest of the Beasts Piratesā¦ I was wrong."
She had once felt a spark of respect for Renā after all, he had helped save Ace. But that feeling had evaporated in an instant.
"Believe whatever you want," Ren replied coolly, a hint of mockery in his tone. "I never claimed to be one of the good guys. Fire Fist Ace? Sooner or later, he'll be an enemy like the rest. You think I'd let my guard down around him?"
Ren shrugged, as if the betrayal meant nothing.
With a smirk tugging at his lips, he added lightly, "Yamato, you wouldn't want your friend to suffer because of a rash decisionā¦ would you?"
Ren's threat hung in the air like poison. "If you so much as try to run without MY permission, I'll crush Ace's heart myself."
"You vileā" Yamato's voice trembled with rage.
She stared him down, hands clenched at her sides. Her whole body tensed, and the urge to strike him surged within her.
'If only I could smash his face with My mace right now...'
Ren arched a brow, an amused smirk tugging at his lips. Without bothering to lift his gaze, he called out, "Dr. Oceanusā bring it."
A shrill, unsettling laugh echoed through the air. "Jie hee hee, Lord Ren, I've got it right here!"
From the shadows emerged a tall, wiry figure, his gait uneven, his smile disturbingly crooked. In his gloved hands, he carried a strange, translucent cubeā its surface gleaming faintly under the dim light.
Yamato's breath hitched. Her eyes widened in disbelief as the cube was handed to Ren.
Inside, suspended like a morbid artifact, was something unmistakably organic. Veins, faint and pale, curled like threads through the semi- transparent jelly. The object pulsed. Slowly. Rhythmically.
A heart.
Still beating.
"Aren't you supposed to be Kozuki Oden?"
Ren's voice sliced through the tension like a blade. He locked eyes with Yamato, who stood stiff with anxiety, her breath shallow.
"I heard Oden danced like a fool for five years," he continued coldly. "All to protect the innocent from the Beast Pirates."
He took a step closer, a cruel smile curling his lips.
"So tell me, fake Oden... will you endure humiliation for two years? Three years? Can you live with that kind of disgrace?"
"You bastardā!" Yamato's voice cracked, fury surging through her.
Her expression twistedā face flushed red, fists clenched so tight her knuckles turned white. "I won't yield! No matter what you do, I will not give in!"
"Oh?" Ren tilted his head, amused. "We'll see."
Before the words settled, Dr. Oceanus appeared from the shadows. Without a word, he hurled a limp figure out from the inner chambers like discarded trash. The body hit the ground with a sickening thud.
"Bang..."
Yamato's eyes narrowed. She didn't recognize the personā but something about it sent a chill crawling up her spine.
Ren's gaze turned icy. He shifted the weight of the heart he held in his palm, inspecting it like a predator toying with its prey. Then, without hesitation, his fingers tensed.
And he squeezed.
A soft, broken sound escaped the man's lipsā
"Ahā¦ ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhā¦"
His body coiled like a leaf in the wind, trembling beneath invisible agony. Each cry was a note in a sorrowful symphony, echoing through the cold, indifferent air.
Yamato's eyes widened, struck by a sudden, awful clarity.
"Is thatā¦ Ace's heart?"
Ren's lips curled into something dark, something that resembled a smile but held none of its warmth.
"No," he said, voice like frost over still water. "Not this oneā¦ but the next? Who's to say?"
He cradled the strange, trembling object in his hand like a sacred offering, yet his grip was cruel.
"I only meant to show you what becomes of the heartā¦ when touched by the world's violence."
And then, with the calm of a man lighting a lantern, he summoned flame.
From the hollow of his palm, fire unfurled like a blooming lotusā bright, golden, and merciless.
Under Yamato's gaze, sharp as winter steel, the heart was kissed by fire.
A screamā terrifying, soul-deepā rushed out from the lips of the pirate used as a vessel for this lesson.
He had once been a living Being also. Now he was a shadow set ablaze, dancing in agony.
Then...nothing.
The cries vanished, swallowed whole by silence.
Ashes drifted down, soft as snow.
Where the heart had been, only cinders remained.
And with them, the last breath of a forgotten soul.
Tension Beneath Ashes
"Youā¦ bastardā¦"
Yamato stood rigid, rage simmering beneath the surface like magma under cracked earth.
Her teeth clenched.
Her fists shook.
Eyes locked on Renā burning with silent fury.
Ren didn't flinch.
Instead, he smiledā a slow, poisonous curl of the lips.
"From now on," he said, voice like iron wrapped in silk,
"If Fire Fist Ace's life matters to youā
you'll do exactly as I say."
The sound of Ren's hands clapping echoedā mocking, final.
Yamato's breath hitched, her chest heaving like a beast restrained.
She wanted to lunge, to strike, to silence that smug mouth.
But Ren leaned in, eyes cold,
voice calmer than a winter grave.
"Try anything foolish,
and I'll crush Ace's heart in my hand.
He'll feel every second of it."
Yamato's voice cracked like thunder through grit.
"I'll never submit to you."
Her eyes, now blood-rimmed, narrowed.
Ren stepped closer.
"Refusal isn't a right you have," he said,
"Not unless you want Ace screaming your nameā¦
as he dies."
Yamato trembled. Not from fearā
but from fury, from helplessness, from the weight of it all.
Ren?
Unshaken. Cold as a blade before the strike.
He approached Yamato with measured steps.
Yamato's face twistedā with rage, sorrow, doubtā
a storm of emotion Ren watched
with quiet satisfaction.
Ren met the Yamato's gazeā
a face carved from moonlight, eyes aglow like embers.
And into that fire, he spokeā not loudly, but close,
his breath brushing Yamato's ear like smoke before a burn.
"I've made a decision," he murmured,
the words sliding out like silk over steel.
"Every night, from now on,
you'll come to my room.
On time.
To dance."
The command lingered in the air like incenseā bitter and sweet.
"Oh, Kozuki Odenā since you wear that name like armor,
then dance, as Oden once did.
Bare your dignity,
as he did.
Endure."
A cruel smirk curved on Ren's lips,
a serpent whispering from a throne of ash.
"Doesn't it thrill you, Yamato?
To live out the script of your beloved Oden?
You are trembling alreadyā
is it shame, or something else?"
Yamato's jaw tensed, fists clenched like a storm held barely at bay.
Her pupils contracted, Her whole frame vibrating with fury.
"You bastardā¦"
The words were knives thrown at shadows.
Ren only tilted his head,
as though amused by a child's tantrum.
He stepped closer, calm as poison,
his gaze like a blade drawn lazily across skin.
"Don't mistake this for conversation," he said,
his voice low and dangerous.
"I'm not asking.
I'm commanding."
A touchā
Ren's fingers lifted Yamato's chin, mockery glinting in his gaze.
Ren's laughter sparkledā playful, cruel.
"SILLYā¦ FOOLā¦ YOUR HIGHNESS,"
he said, each word a twist of the knife,
"Learn your place."
She was drowningā
not in water, but in myth.
Kozuki Oden's ghost wrapped around her psyche like chains forged from obsession.
It was no longer admiration.
It was indoctrination.
And love?
That fragile thread could never untangle such tightly wound delusion.
This wasn't just devotion.
It was a sickness.
She needed to beā unmade.
Reconstructed.
Each fracture in her mind, realigned with precision.
Not by affection, but by control.
'She's been poisoned,' he thought, coldly.
Too far gone to be reasoned with.
She would need to be reprogrammed.
"Despicableā¦ shamelessā¦ bastardā!"
Yamato's voice cracked like thunder across the calm ocean.
And thenā
"Boom.... Boom...."
The rhythm of defiance.
The pounding of a heart that refused to yield.
But the BARGAINING DEMON only smiled.
Because training had just begun~.
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In this fanfiction I am unable to upload any pic. Does anyone know why.