"Ahhh!!"
"You… you can't do this!!"
"Let me go! I swear I won't tell anyone!!"
"I can help you, I really can! Please, don't kill me...Gah!"
"I was the one who taught you Rokushiki, you bastard! You think you can beat me...Argh!"
"Please, I'm begging you, spare my life!!"
The prison block descended into a cacophony of screams and desperate pleas. Prisoners scrambled away from the approaching figure, crawling backward over the frozen ground, their faces masks of terror. Some, driven by rage and fear, tried to fight back.
It made no difference.
Kai, his face a cold, emotionless slate, moved through them with his crude katana. Wherever he went, a single slash would send a sword aura attack over ten meters long ripping through the air. A single attack would cleave through the doors of three or four cells at once.
Many of the prisoners inside didn't even have a chance to run. They were bisected along with the very bars that were meant to contain them.
A few others, either through sheer luck or because they possessed considerable strength of their own, managed to survive his initial attacks. As their cell doors were blasted open, they charged out, hoping to overwhelm him with a surprise counter-attack.
But the Kai they were facing now was not the same man from a few days ago. His Observation Haki, honed by two days of constant, life-or-death combat, was no longer in its infancy. It had reached a profound level of mastery.
Every single prisoner who rushed out of the cells, their every lunge, their every swing, their every desperate scream, was perfectly predicted by Kai. He met their charge with an unfeeling calm, and one by one, they were effortlessly cut in half.
He moved like a phantom of death, a whirlwind of perfected techniques.
Rokushiki.
Shave. He vanished from one spot and appeared in another.
Finger Pistol. A flick of his finger sent a compressed air bullet through a man's skull.
Tempest Kick. A casual kick launched a blade of wind that tore through a group of attackers.
Moon Step. He leaped into the air, kicking off nothingness to gain a superior angle.
Paper Art. His body flowed like paper, evading attacks that should have been impossible to dodge.
Iron Body. On the rare occasion an attack came close, his muscles hardened to the consistency of steel, deflecting the blow.
He combined all six techniques with his peerless Observation Haki and his own monstrous strength. Every step he took, every move he made, every time his hand rose and fell, another corpse was left in his wake.
No one could withstand his assault.
A flick of his finger left a hole in a man's head.
A simple swing of his sword left a bisected body on the ground.
The slaughter continued, relentless and absolute. Pleading was useless. Kai's face remained cold, his actions brutally efficient. He was like the God of Death himself, reaping the lives of these prisoners as if they were nothing more than weeds in a field. He never paused, never hesitated.
Escape was impossible. Their speed was no match for Kai's. His powerful body, augmented by Shave, was already incredibly fast. When combined with the predictive capabilities of his Haki, any attempt to flee was a death sentence. The very moment the thought of retreat entered their minds, they created a fatal opening.
It was a completely one-sided massacre.
As Kai carved a path through the cells, his dozen followers stood guard at the perimeter, ensuring no one could slip past them and escape into the wider prison.
To them, Kai's movements were terrifyingly fast, almost… elegant. He was a Master Swordsman capable of cutting steel, blessed with inhuman strength and speed, and guided by a powerful Haki. Few of his victims lasted more than a few seconds. Even those who managed to land the first attack either hit nothing but air or were cut in half for their trouble.
His allies could only watch in a mixture of awe and horror.
"This is… this is terrifying!"
"To think his strength has already reached this level!"
"When we all ganged up on him before, he wasn't even using his full power."
"He's a literal god of death…"
"Swordsmanship, martial arts, strength, speed, and that incredible Observation Haki… I can't believe he achieved all of this in such a short amount of time."
"If a monster like him gets out of Impel Down… the entire world is going to feel it."
"Tsk tsk… but the stronger he is, the better it is for us, right?"
"That's true. His strength is our ticket to freedom. I'm starting to think that even Magellan might not be his match anymore."
"Don't be so sure. Magellan's Poison-Poison Fruit is dangerously tricky."
"I just hope he can master Armament Haki before we make our move. It would make dealing with Magellan a hell of a lot easier."
"He probably can't. His will isn't strong enough…"
Even as they spoke, they were shaken to their core. They knew the men Kai was slaughtering were not weak. The lowest bounty among them was 100 million Berries. There were pirates worth 200 million or more in that crowd. Yet, in front of Kai, barely any of them could last ten seconds.
What truly made them afraid, what chilled them to the bone, was his growth rate. They all remembered the boy who had been thrown into their midst just two months ago. He had been strong, but nothing like this.
Now, he was killing the hardened monsters of the Freezing Hell as easily as a butcher slaughters pigs.
Soon, it was over. The screams died down, replaced by a heavy, profound silence. Everyone in the surrounding cells had been killed.
The air was thick with the stench of blood. Kai's followers moved quickly, using the snow to cover the bloodstains and digging a large, shallow pit to bury the bodies. The ground was a mangled ruin of sword cuts and craters, littered with whole and incomplete corpses. The pristine white snow was now a gruesome shade of red. The intense cold was already freezing the blood where it lay, stopping it from spreading further.
The smell of so much death attracted the wolf packs from the forest. They crept to the edge of the clearing, their eyes glowing in the gloom. But the moment they saw the lone, shirtless figure of Kai standing amidst the carnage, they whimpered and fled back into the darkness. They remembered the hundreds of their own kind that had died at his hands. They were intelligent animals. They knew this was a predator they could never hope to challenge.
After the last body was buried, Kai stood alone in the silence for a long time, his crude katana held loosely in his hand.
He felt… uneasy.
Two months ago, he was a normal person from a peaceful world. He had never even killed a chicken. Now, he had just slaughtered over a hundred people.
He told himself that they were pirates, that they were criminals who deserved to die, that he shouldn't feel any burden.
But they were still people.
Killing the guards, killing the wolves… it felt completely different from this.
But as the wave of unease and revulsion washed over him, he felt something else. A profound change, accelerated by his unique ability.
This battle.
This slaughter.
His reward for this experience was multiplied by one hundred.
In his mind, it was as if he had just lived through this horrific massacre one hundred times over. The shock, the horror, the grim necessity, it was all amplified, compressed, and hammered into his very soul.