"What? You actually went there? That was... I was just bragging, man."
"Falling from a cliff that high would definitely kill you."
"I did break my arm and leg, but that was from falling out of a tree, not a cliff."
After returning to base and completing his mission, Jay immediately went to find the guy who had claimed to survive a fall from a 100-meter cliff, to ask for more details.
But once the man realized what Jay was there for, and that he had actually gone to check out the place, he got flustered and admitted that he'd just been boasting and talking nonsense.
Aside from the place itself being real, everything else had been made up.
Jay wasn't disappointed, though.
Instead, he went to find Buck and gave him a task.
Not long after, Buck returned with a thick stack of wanted posters.
"Boss Jay, what do you need all these for? If I hadn't brought them a couple bottles of good liquor like you told me, those bastards wouldn't have even let me look at them, let alone take them."
Jay ignored Buck's complaints, took the stack of papers, and flipped through them.
Satisfied, he gave a nod.
They were all wanted posters of pirates who had been particularly active in the West Blue recently.
In addition, there were also several reports from civilians submitted to the Marine.
For example, some villages had reported pirate attacks, or someone had witnessed a pirate ship docking on a certain island.
Under normal procedure, once the Marine received such reports, they were supposed to immediately send someone to investigate and eliminate the pirates.
But our great Colonel Hammond only cared about making money.
So, when it came to this kind of thankless work, the 88th Branch Base had always kept its distance.
Each year, in order to meet their "performance metrics," they'd either get lucky like during that sea patrol incident, or just quietly kill a few prisoners in the dungeon and fabricate new pirate identities for them.
If that still wasn't enough, Colonel Hammond would resort to certain... unspeakable methods behind the scenes.
As long as Marine HQ didn't send anyone to investigate, everything would appear perfectly normal.
Jay thought about it carefully and decided that this route, hunting pirates, was probably the fastest way to make money.
He'd start with one job, earn some cash, and get the supplies he needed.
So he set aside an entire day to study all the intel and reports he had gathered.
Eventually, he locked in on a target:
The Iron Hammer Pirates!
This crew specifically targeted undefended villages, and their methods were extremely brutal. After looting all valuables, they would abduct all the women and burn everything else, including the people, down to the ground.
If it hadn't been for a few lucky survivors who managed to hide in a cellar, no one would've even known who the perpetrators were.
Because of these heinous crimes, their captain, Iron Hammer Beck, earned a bounty of 6 million Berries, of which at least two-thirds was due to those atrocities.
It was a classic case of a bounty that didn't actually match the pirate's real combat strength.
Jay chose him as a target for two reasons:
To play it safe, he didn't want anything going sideways.
To have a clean explanation afterward, taking down weaker pirates wouldn't raise suspicion.
If he were to kill off a few pirates with bounties over 10 million Berries, Colonel Hammond would absolutely take notice, and not in a good way.
As for Daz Bones, he was just a hitman. Even though he had some notoriety in the West Blue, he didn't have a bounty, so almost no one actually knew how strong he was.
The final reason Jay chose the Iron Hammer Pirates was simple, they'd plundered a lot of resources and trafficked women. That meant they'd definitely stashed some money somewhere.
With the target confirmed, Jay immediately submitted a request to lead a team to hunt the Iron Hammer Pirates.
When Colonel Hammond received the application, he was stunned.
After a moment of thought, he surprisingly approved Jay's request, even assigning him an old-model small warship.
Technically, a sergeant like Jay wasn't qualified to lead his own team.
But luckily... the 88th Branch Base was garbage enough for this to slide.
None of the other officers wanted to go.
Why bother? That time could be better spent drinking and flirting with women!
Go hunt pirates?
Even if you managed to catch one, do you think you'd get the credit?
Foolish kid.
As news spread that Jay was heading out to hunt pirates, many people sneered, waiting to see him fall flat on his face.
Especially the other noncoms and junior officers.
"Oh, look at you, thinking you're hot stuff."
"We're all trash, but you, Jay, think you can actually go hunt pirates?"
Fine. They were eager to see how this would end.
If Jay came back empty-handed, they wouldn't even need to report him, Colonel Hammond would be the first to tear him apart.
Promotion? Keep dreaming.
Jay was well aware that many were just waiting to laugh at him, but he didn't care what a bunch of losers thought.
He simply gathered Buck and the others who had already joined his little circle and boarded the ship.
Although the old warship wasn't as advanced as the newer models in terms of firepower or speed, it had one upside: it didn't require a large crew to operate.
And whether old or new, marine ships were never built cheaply, so there was no need to worry about quality.
For Jay, that was good enough.
Also, the Marine had no shortage of navigators, something just as important.
"Boss Jay, where are we headed?"
"Here."
Jay pointed at a location on the map in response to Buck's question.
Buck blinked. "Silverfish Island? But… the Iron Hammer Pirates wouldn't dare cause trouble there, would they?"
"You'll see when we get there."
Jay didn't explain.
A few days later, they arrived safely at Silverfish Island.
The island was named after the beautiful silverfish abundant in its surrounding waters, and fishing was the main industry.
According to official intel, the Iron Hammer Pirates wouldn't dare touch a place like this.
"Buck, take the others to buy some supplies. Be back on the ship before 6 p.m."
"Got it, Boss Jay. Want me to send a couple of guys with you to lend a hand?"
"No need."
Jay shook his head and walked off.
As the saying goes, cats have cat paths, rats have rat paths.
The intel at the 88th Base was outdated by several versions of what was actually happening out on the sea.
You couldn't find the Iron Hammer Pirates just based on that old information.
So in times like these, he had to turn to other sources.
For example, the West Blue Assassin Guild!
According to Daz Bones, Silverfish Island housed one of the guild's branches.
As long as you had money, most intel was for sale.
And of course, hiring assassins was also on the menu.
Because of this, Jay had to "borrow" a tiny bit of money from a fellow Marine "comrade" before setting off.
The good news was that intel on the Iron Hammer Pirates' whereabouts wasn't considered high-level information, so it was relatively cheap.
The bad news? "Cheap" was still expensive when you were broke.
By the time Jay walked out of a certain fishing gear shop, his pockets had been cleaned out again.
He couldn't help but curse under his breath.