In the grand banquet hall, Neptune watched Gawain and his group depart, unable to say a single word.
Jinbe stood in front of him, while his sons held onto his tail. He... had no power to act at all.
For a moment, Neptune suddenly wondered: if all of this were real, rather than a performance...
Then he...
Could he really do anything?
After all, whether it was an act or reality, angering the Celestial Dragons would only bring a Buster Call and the destruction of the Fish-Man race!
No one knew how much Neptune considered in that instant. He was the king of Ryugu Palace, the sole leader of millions of Merfolk in this age. He carried far too much on his shoulders.
He thought of how the Merfolk Kingdom was, after all, one of the World Government's affiliated nations, and had been one for two hundred years.
He knew that, as time passed, even without today's events, the conflict between the Fish-Man hawks and doves would only grow more severe!
He knew the hawks could not win. Though they commanded nearly half the strength of the Merfolk world, compared to the entire sea, they were as insignificant as a feather!
If the hawks gained control of Fish-Man Island and then madly declared total war on the human world...
The World Government would only need to send Aokiji aboard a coated boat to sneak to Fish-Man Island's outskirts and unleash a targeted Ice Pheasant. The Fish-Men would be trapped in the deep sea, becoming part of an eternal ice-crystal artwork frozen beneath the ocean!
Would Whitebeard wage all-out war against the World Government for Fish-Man Island?
Perhaps he would. But even if Whitebeard truly went to war, what state would Fish-Man Island, as the battlefield, be reduced to?
And as