Chapter Eighty-Three: Gone in an Instant

A corpse came flying straight at her.

Aibie’s eyes twitched violently as she ducked with ease, letting the twisted, shrimp-like body sail past.

She could dodge bullets, let alone corpses.

Still, there was no need to be that disgusting.

Bang!

Another corpse, eyes wide open in death, came hurtling in.

To be exact, it was only half a corpse.

Scattered across the ground were bandit bodies; some had died from bullets through the temple, others had been split clean in two by Mode’s blade.

And Mode was clearly not the kind to be particular.

A single kick was all it took, whether the target was whole or halved.

“You...!”

As another half-body came flying, Aibie twisted aside in time to avoid it.

But the blood shaken loose from the corpse still splashed onto her face.

“Usopp!!!”

Aibie glared furiously at Mode.

What answered her gaze was still a half corpse.

Suppressing the rage boiling in her chest, Aibie dodged that broken body and strode toward Mode with long steps.

What met her next was, once again, a half corpse.

Mode knew that Aibie, who could even evade bullets, would never be struck by a mere corpse.

But who could say whether the blood might splash into her eyes?

Before close combat began, any possibility, however slight, was worth trying.

So with another lift of his foot, another half corpse sailed toward her.

Thus Aibie kept sidestepping the flying bodies, slowly closing the distance.

What a pity, Mode thought, that although he had splashed blood across her face, it had not hindered her vision in the slightest.

When the distance between them was about to shrink to within ten meters, Mode decisively stopped advancing.

At last within striking range, Aibie, who had been building her fury all this time, bared a savage expression and unleashed her strongest move at him.

Daisy.

Her rapier instantly burst forth with a dense spray of needle-like brilliance, enveloping Mode head-on.

“Crazy woman. Times have changed.”

Mode stared coldly at the incoming blade light.

Compared with that day in the Ax Tavern, he felt no pressure at all now.

Then, having clearly read the line of her attack, Mode gave a plain, unadorned diagonal slash.

Dark Raven’s near-retired blade plunged without hesitation into the dense flurry of sword light.

Clang!

The sword radiance, blooming like a daisy, was instantly burned away into a fleeting spark.

The slender, fierce rapier was sent sharply upward by a single cut.

“What?!”

The force transmitted through the blade made Aibie’s pupils contract sharply.

As the sparks from the collision died out, a tidal sense of danger surged over her face.

Years of close-combat experience drove Aibie, in that split second, to throw caution aside and snatch back the rapier that had been knocked aside.

She knew all too well that if she failed to recover in time, the fight would end in an instant.

In that flash of lightning, Aibie made the most correct decision.

But it was too late.

Mode’s blade was faster than she had imagined.

A speed devoid of technique, a speed born purely of physical prowess.

In her eyes, a streak of steel arrived as promised.

Aibie’s heart skipped a beat.

Then a chill spread across her front.

Mode’s expressionless face slammed hard into her field of vision.

Sshk!

Blood sprayed into the air!

Mode’s blade swept through Aibie’s body as he passed beyond her.

As they brushed past one another, Aibie caught the scent of blood mixed with gunpowder.

Puh-tsh!

Mode turned at once and drove his blade into Aibie’s back.

Finishing blows were a good habit.

One Mode had always valued.

The blood-stained blade burst through Aibie’s chest.

Pierced clean through by the sword, Aibie’s body jolted violently, then tightened and arched back as she let out a miserable cry of pain.

The fatal pair of strikes rapidly drained her strength.

Her rapier slipped from her hand and fell to the ground, and her legs went weak, nearly buckling beneath her.

At that moment, Mode stepped forward, reaching out with his left hand to hold her around the waist.

While steadying her body, he used a touch of force to draw her gently into his arms.

At the same time, the longsword that had pierced her chest drove all the way through.

Aibie gave another scream of agony. The pain of the blade tearing through her organs made her arch her fair neck, her head tilting back to rest against Mode’s shoulder.

Her long hair, stained with plenty of blood, fell loose around her.

At this knife-edge between life and death, Aibie felt the warmth and closeness from behind her. Struggling, she turned her head to meet Mode’s cold, sidelong gaze.

She reached out as if to touch his face, but with strength failing her, she could only clutch at the front of his clothes instead.

“If... if...”

Before she could finish, she suddenly leaned forward and brushed her lips against his cheek in a fleeting kiss.

“Hahahaha!!”

After making that wildly inappropriate move, Aibie used up the last of her strength to burst into a clear, mad laugh.

Mode paid it no mind and simply withdrew his blade, stepping back.

The frenzied laughter came to an abrupt halt.

Aibie collapsed to the ground, blood spreading beneath her.

The light in her eyes faded at a speed visible to the naked eye.

In a daze, memories buried deep in her soul rose up before her.

Before her eyes was a figure fleeing in panic.

In her ears rang the eager laughter of pirates.

Aibie’s consciousness slowly sank into darkness.

Mode glanced at Aibie’s corpse, then raised a hand to the fleeting, careless imprint of lips on his cheek.

He had intended to wipe it away at once, but for reasons unknown, he stopped himself.

Then he lowered his hand and slowly closed his eyes.

Within the blackness of his vision, the Hunter’s Notebook, edged in pale light, appeared out of nowhere.

Above the cover, specks of white stars fell downward in a meteor shower, swiftly gathering on the right side of the swordsmanship requirement to form a star frame.

Once the frame took shape, a thread of starry dust trickled down like sand in an hourglass from the upper point to the base, and the flow was extremely fast.

The moment it touched the bottom of the frame, the faintly glowing dust turned black in an instant.

Before long, the blank space inside the frame had been filled to one third with black stardust.

“Not only formed a star frame, but filled a third of it too.”

Mode was pleasantly surprised.

Although star-level growth was faster in the early stages, it should not have been this fast.

Perhaps it was because the prey in the world of pirates was generally of higher quality.

To the onlookers around him, Mode’s act of closing his eyes to examine the spoils looked like that of a ruthless man savoring the aftermath after ruthlessly destroying a flower.

“...”

In silence, the spectators grew even more wary of him.

Someone as dangerous as this would be best avoided in the future.

A moment later, Mode opened his eyes and turned his gaze toward the battle over by Lafitte.

Lafitte’s figure moved like a dragon, charging back and forth through the crowd.

He was actually suppressing dozens of elite pirates from Aibie’s crew all by himself.

Watching Lafitte always manage to dodge attacks converging from beyond the edge of his vision at the very last instant, Mode’s eyes could not help but narrow slightly.

“Observation Haki?”

Mode watched the battle for a while.

Seeing that Lafitte had already cut the enemy forces by more than half in no time at all, Mode praised him inwardly and decisively slipped away.

By the time Lafitte had slaughtered every last member of Aibie’s crew, Mode was nowhere to be seen.

Lafitte did not care. He slowly slid his sword cane back into its sheath, then glanced at Aibie’s corpse.

“Heh...”