"Aokiji, I know you're upset, but you need to understand something – right now, we don't have a better method."
Akainu spoke expressionlessly.
Hearing this, Aokiji turned his head away in displeasure.
He knew the reality of it all, which only made him angrier.
"Relax, I've prepared plenty of sacrifices. Thankfully, Impel Down has an abundance of prisoners. Otherwise, I really wouldn't know where to get so many."
Akainu sneered coldly as he looked back at the twenty or so warships behind him, all filled with prisoners.
In total, there were nearly a hundred thousand of them.
They were all prisoners from Level 1 to Level 5 of Impel Down.
Akainu had forcibly ordered them all to be brought here.
To ensure cooperation, he had even ordered them to be sedated beforehand.
"Where is this place? Why are there so many weird pillars?"
"Mama, I want to go home!"
"Take us back to Impel Down!"
"Damn Navy!"
Now that the prisoners had regained consciousness and saw their surroundings, they were utterly terrified.
They cursed non-stop, desperately wanting to escape, but there was nowhere to run.
They were all shackled anyway.
"Damn it! Is this really the end for me, the Great Captain Buggy?!"
Among the noisy prisoners, Buggy's red nose was especially eye-catching as he clutched his head, crying and wailing.
"Akainu-san! All Marines on the prisoner ships have been evacuated!"
A Marine ran over to report.
"Good."
Akainu said calmly, then used Moonwalk to leap onto the warships filled with prisoners.
Seeing Akainu approach, the prisoners fell silent instantly, stunned speechless.
"You worthless trash… rotting away in prison is just a waste of money. At least now, your lives can serve some purpose."
Akainu looked down upon all the prisoners as if a god overlooking mere mortals.
These prisoners were all pirates, who knew how many heinous crimes they had committed.
To Akainu, they were nothing but garbage.
Sacrificing them required no hesitation.
"Akainu, what the hell are you doing?!"
One prisoner mustered his courage and shouted at him.
"Heh… you'll find out when you're about to die."
Akainu sneered.
At the same time, both his arms transformed into magma.
The magma expanded in volume, and under Akainu's control…
It morphed into two massive arms.
He controlled these giant magma arms to grab onto two warships at once.
The ships instantly ignited and melted, but Akainu didn't care. He lifted them up effortlessly.
"Die, you trash. And you too, monster of the Vampire Factory – eat your fill and get the hell back where you belong!"
After shouting, Akainu hurled the two warships towards the massive tentacles.
After throwing two, he immediately grabbed two more and repeated the process.
He continuously fed these prisoners into the mouths of the giant tentacles.
"AAAAHHHHHH!!!"
Being suddenly thrown into the air, the prisoners screamed in terror, completely helpless.
At this moment, the giant tentacles, previously standing tall, seemed to sense something approaching and twisted their bodies.
They had no eyes, yet it was as if they could sense humans flying towards them.
They opened their gaping, fang-lined maws to devour them mid-air.
"Damn it, the Navy is just feeding us to these monsters!"
"Damn you Navy bastards, this is too cruel!"
"I'll haunt you even if I become a ghost!"
Realizing what Akainu was doing, the prisoners were petrified, cursing him with every breath.
But no matter how much they cursed, it was useless.
They could not escape the fate of being devoured.
Many tentacles sensed humans flying towards them.
They bent their bodies, mouths wide open, swallowing the prisoners one after another.
"Ah, it's like an all-you-can-eat monster buffet."
Seeing this, Kizaru couldn't resist making a dark joke.
"Hmph."
Aokiji lowered his head in disgust, unable to keep watching.
In less than a minute, over twenty warships and roughly a hundred thousand prisoners had been fed to the giant tentacles – the entire sacrifice complete.
After finishing, Akainu returned to the main ship, eagerly scanning the surroundings, waiting to see the result.
Everyone else watched nervously as well.
Looking around several times, they saw no reduction in the number of tentacles.
Anxiety spread through the fleet.
If even sacrifices didn't work… what could they possibly do?
"They're moving!"
Suddenly, Aokiji shouted.
Everyone instantly perked up, staring at the tentacles.
They saw the massive tentacles starting to retract, slithering back to where they came from.
As they retreated deeper, their towering forms slowly disappeared beneath the sea.
Seeing this, everyone's faces lit up with relief – it seemed the sacrifice worked after all.
"I told you, this was the best method."
Akainu smiled in satisfaction.
"Don't get cocky. We can't just keep sacrificing a hundred thousand people every time."
Aokiji coldly reminded him.
"Of course not. Remember what the screen showed? In reality, only a few hundred or thousand were eaten. That means, as long as the Vampire Factory doesn't go berserk, we probably only need to sacrifice a few hundred people at regular intervals."
Akainu said dismissively.
"That's still hundreds of people… if it's daily, that becomes tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands over time."
Hearing how casually Akainu said it, Aokiji grew even more displeased.
"There's no shortage of pirates in this world."
Akainu replied coldly.
He had long decided – they would use pirates as sacrifices.
"And if we run out of pirates to sacrifice?"
Aokiji pressed on with another question.
"We'll deal with that when it happens."
But even Akainu couldn't answer that one.
"Eh, that's odd."
Just then, Kizaru's puzzled voice sounded.
"There are still quite a few tentacles that haven't gone down."
He pointed to the ocean surface.
Indeed, some of the tentacles remained upright, showing no signs of retreating.
"What is going on?!"
Seeing this, Aokiji's face darkened.
"Was the sacrifice still not enough?!"
Akainu's expression finally changed.
"Damn it… a hundred thousand wasn't enough… how many do they want?! We don't have any sacrifices left!"
Aokiji shouted furiously.
But Akainu remained calm, turning his gaze towards a Marine.
"Tell me, how many Marines did we bring on this operation?"
"Ah… to escort so many prisoners, we mobilized Marines from all branches, borrowed men from Impel Down, and even brought trainees… about a hundred thousand in total."
The Marine quickly replied.
"Excellent."
Hearing this number, Akainu smiled faintly.
"Then aren't there still sacrifices left?"
Upon hearing this, both Aokiji and Kizaru's faces changed dramatically.
Especially Aokiji – he immediately turned around and summoned ice spears with his powers, hurling them straight at Akainu!
(End of Chapter)
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