Suppressing all those chaotic thoughts, Kuro pretended not to care as he seized on a key piece of information in Koza's words and asked casually:
"You mentioned Ms. Nico just now? Who is she? She sounds very prestigious. Is she a member of the resistance organization, like you?"
The surname Nico was just a name to ordinary people on these seas.
But to someone like Kuro, who placed extreme importance on gathering intelligence, it rang like thunder in his ears.
If he had still been holed up in Syrup Village in East Blue, working as a butler, perhaps he would still have been that frog at the bottom of the well.
But after leaving East Blue and traveling all this way, he had gained a very deep understanding of the World Government's structure.
He had recorded the names of those major figures in his mind.
At Mary Geoise University in the Holy Land, the head of the history department, the World Government's most authoritative historian, had the surname Nico.
Koza had no idea what twists and turns were going through Kuro's mind. Like a fanatical idol chaser, he answered truthfully:
"Ms. Nico was brought here by Mr. Crocodile. She's an extremely important comrade of ours. She's a great female scholar with knowledge as deep as the sea. We all admire her so much!"
Koza looked toward the distant bonfire, his expression becoming more solemn and devout than ever before:
"It's precisely because of Ms. Nico's careful teaching, and her analysis of history, that I became even more convinced that the road we're walking is the right one!"
"Brother Kuro, you might think Alabasta is very prosperous right now. But Ms. Nico told us that this is all false prosperity."
Koza waved his fist, passionately expounding on his ideals:
"A nation