The Cursed Whitebeard Pirates' Second Division Captains

Dressrosa.

Aleus had no idea that Big News Morgans had already set his sights on him, spreading the events in Dressrosa through private underground channels. He was still at the welcome banquet hosted by the Donquixote Family, drinking with Joker, who had stepped away for a while and just returned.

But even if he knew about Morgans' moves, he wouldn't bat an eye.

Sooner or later, word would get out anyway. A day earlier or later made no real difference for now. Besides, Aleus didn't hate the feeling of fame. His earlier chat with Doflamingo about hating the attention of monsters like the Four Emperors?

That was never meant to be taken seriously.

Just two liars trading deceptions with each other.

Of course, neither fooled the other. Both knew the other wasn't some simple-minded fool easy to trick, nor some saint brimming with truth and goodness. If one of them happened to fall into the water, the other wouldn't lend a hand—only, after confirming it wasn't a trap, would gleefully throw stones at the drowning man.

"Jinbe. Prince Aleus, how do you plan to deal with that fish-man? For Devil Fruit users like us, a fish-man who can dive into the deep sea anytime is no pleasant opponent—especially one at Shichibukai level."

Doflamingo asked.

"That kind of thing... we'll deal with it when the time comes! We don't even know where the Sea Knight is right now. Any action plan is just bullshit."

Aleus brushed it off with a vague answer.

That—

Was, of course, a complete lie.

He already had a clear plan for how to strip the Sea Knight Jinbe of his Shichibukai status. He just wasn't about to share his strategy with Doflamingo. Shooting the breeze here was fine, no matter how wild the talk got, but when it came to real action, he didn't want Joker—that notorious troublemaker who loved stirring up chaos—sticking his nose in.

"Fufufu!!"

Doflamingo laughed, dropping the topic and shifting to a new one. He brought up the ill-fated position of the Whitebeard Pirates Second Division Captain. Counting the recently deceased Blue Horn Gion, the Second Division had changed captains five or six times now.

It was like the position was cursed. No one could hold onto the Whitebeard Pirates Second Division Captain's seat for long.

Blue Horn Gion—

A heavy hitter with a bounty of 955 million Berry, one of the pillars of the Whitebeard Pirates. Yet even a powerhouse like him couldn't die in battle. In the end, he fell to an incurable disease—

"... Really bad luck, huh?"

Doflamingo passed judgment on the fallen Whitebeard Pirates captain.

Bad luck?

Or was the Whitebeard Pirates Second Division Captain's seat truly cursed? In a world full of bizarre Devil Fruits, being cursed wasn't impossible.

Dragged into this topic by Doflamingo, Aleus couldn't help but let his mind wander to the memories buried deep in his head. If he remembered right, Kozuki Oden—that beast who had sailed with both Whitebeard and Roger—had also been the Whitebeard Pirates Second Division Captain. And he ended up dying in a Boiling Pot Execution.

After that, the Whitebeard Pirates Second Division Captain kept changing, all the way to Blue Horn Gion, and every single one of them died. Even the future Fire Fist, the Pirate King's son, the future Pirate King's brother—a man with roots that hard—still ended up pierced through the heart.

"Now that you mention it, it really is true. The Whitebeard Pirates... their luck hasn't been great!"

The conversation drifted aimlessly.

If you set aside all preconceptions and just looked at Doflamingo as a conversation partner, you'd find Joker was actually a pretty good one. As a former Celestial Dragon, king of Dressrosa, one of the Shichibukai, and an underworld broker in the Dark World... he always found topics that kept people interested and kept the talk flowing.

Joker didn't rely on just his fists to hold the title of underworld broker.

"Two liars."

Violet sat in a corner, secretly using her Devil Fruit ability to watch the two men chatting in another corner, muttering under her breath.

Violet—or rather, the former princess of the Dressrosa Riku royal family, Her Highness Violet—had been forced to join the Donquixote Pirates to serve Doflamingo in order to protect her father's life. She went by the alias "Violet" and worked as an assassin within the family.

She was a Glint-Glint Fruit user, capable of reading a person's current thoughts with her mind-reading ability. Emphasis: it only read thoughts in the present moment, not memories.

Right now, she was using that ability to peek into the minds of Aleus and Doflamingo. And then... she was stunned by the layers upon layers of lies. Out of every ten words from these two, five were meaningless chatter, four were outright lies, and the last one was half-truth, half-false.

It had been a long time since she'd seen thoughts so worthless to pry into.

"Men are all trash. Every single one of them is a bastard who lies without blinking."

She cursed softly, venting a bit of her frustration. Then Violet seriously replayed her earlier conversation with Aleus. He had directly called out her princess identity. Her status as a princess wasn't some top-secret intel, but within the family, only the old-timers with more seniority than her knew who she really was.

Finding out her identity by coincidence? She didn't buy that. The only reasonable explanation was that Aleus had already investigated the Donquixote Family.

If that was the case—

Didn't that mean the Black Prince really had some designs on the Donquixote Family? That thought made the long-dormant hope in her heart bloom with light once more.

Maybe, just maybe, she could use Prince Aleus's power to overthrow the Donquixote Family's rule over Dressrosa. Even if she couldn't restore the Riku royal family's rule, as long as she could leave the Donquixote Family's control with her father and free this country from Doflamingo's grip...

That was her fantasy.

Just a fantasy. Because Aleus had already made it clear he had no interest in Dressrosa for now. And she didn't think she had enough leverage to make him change his mind—especially now, with that traitor Monet sent by Doflamingo to watch her.

As expected, She had to keep waiting. Patiently waiting for the true light and hope to dispel the dark clouds hanging over Dressrosa.