Dressrosa.
Aleus still didn't know that Big News Morgans had set his sights on him and had spread the news about what had happened in Dressrosa through secret private channels. He was still at the Donquixote Family's welcoming banquet, drinking with Joker, who had left for a while and then returned.
But even if he knew what Morgans was up to, it wouldn't faze him.
It was going to get out sooner or later. A day earlier or later made no difference for now. Besides, Aleus didn't dislike being famous. The things he'd said earlier while chatting with Doflamingo about how he hated being watched by monsters like the Four Emperors and the like—
He hadn't meant them.
They were just two liars, both full of lies, deceiving each other.
Of course, neither of them had managed to fool the other. They both knew the other wasn't some simple-minded fool who was easy to trick, and neither was a good person whose heart overflowed with kindness and goodness. If one of them happened to fall into the water, the other wouldn't reach out to help. They'd first make sure it wasn't a trap, then gleefully kick him while he was down.
"Jinbe, Prince Aleus, how do you plan to deal with that Fish-Man? For ability users like us, a Fish-Man who can dive into the deep sea whenever he likes is no pleasant opponent—especially one on the level of a Shichibukai."
Doflamingo asked.
"About that... We'll figure it out when the time comes! We don't even know where the Sea Knight is right now, so any plan of action would be nonsense."
Aleus replied evasively.
That was—
A complete and utter lie.
He already had a rough plan for taking away the Sea Knight Jinbe's position as one of the Shichibukai. He simply had no intention of sharing his plans with Doflamingo. They could shoot the breeze together all they liked, but when it came to actually doing anything, he didn't want the infamous troublemaker Joker sticking his nose in.
"Fufufufu!"
Doflamingo laughed and dropped the subject, moving on to talk about the ill-fated position of Whitebeard Pirates Second Division Captain. Including Gion, "Blue Horn," who had recently died of an illness, the Whitebeard Pirates had gone through five or six Second Division Captains.
It was practically as if the position were cursed. No one could hold on to the post of Whitebeard Pirates Second Division Captain.
"Blue Horn" Gion—
He was a formidable fighter with a bounty of 955 million Berries, one of the Whitebeard Pirates' pillars. Yet, it seemed that even someone as powerful as him couldn't be killed in battle at sea. In the end, he had contracted an incurable disease—
"...He really was unlucky."
Doflamingo passed judgment on the dead Whitebeard Pirates captain.
Unlucky?
Or was the post of Whitebeard Pirates Second Division Captain truly cursed? In a world where all kinds of strange Devil Fruits appeared one after another, a curse wasn't impossible.
Doflamingo's comment brought it all up, and Aleus couldn't help thinking of the memories buried deep in his mind. If he remembered correctly, Kozuki Oden—the powerful man who had spent time with both Whitebeard and Roger—had also been a Whitebeard Pirates Second Division Captain. In the end, he had met his fate in the Boiling Pot Execution.
After that, the Whitebeard Pirates' Second Division Captain had changed repeatedly. By the time Gion took the position, every one of them had died. And the future Fire Fist, the Pirate King's son and the future Pirate King's older brother—a man with such an impressive pedigree—would ultimately die with a hole through his chest.
"Now that you mention it, you're right. The Whitebeard Pirates... really haven't had much luck."
The conversation began to drift aimlessly.
If you set aside all your biases and looked at Doflamingo simply as a conversation partner, you'd find that Joker was actually quite good company. A former Celestial Dragon, the king of Dressrosa, one of the Shichibukai, a broker in the Dark World... He could always find a topic that interested people and keep a conversation going.
Joker hadn't become the Dark World's broker through strength alone.
"Two liars."
Violet sat in a corner, secretly watching the two men chatting nearby with her Devil Fruit ability. She muttered under her breath.
Violet... Or rather, Princess Violet, formerly of the Riku Royal Family of Dressrosa, had been forced to join the Donquixote Pirates and serve Doflamingo to protect her father's life. She had taken the name "Violet" and worked as an assassin within the family.
She was a Glint-Glint Fruit user, with the ability to read a person's current thoughts. To be clear, she could read only what someone was thinking in the present—not their memories.
Now, she was using that ability to peer into Aleus and Doflamingo's thoughts. And then... the endless layers of lies frightened her. Out of every ten things they said, five were meaningless nonsense, four were lies, and the last was half-true and half-false.
She hadn't seen thoughts so utterly unworthy of eavesdropping in a long time.
"Men are all good-for-nothings. They're all shameless liars."
She cursed softly, venting a little of her frustration, then carefully recalled her earlier conversation with Aleus. He had directly exposed her identity as a princess. Her identity wasn't a secret, but within the family, only the senior members who had been there longer than her knew who she really was.
She didn't believe it was a coincidence that he had somehow learned her identity. The only reasonable explanation was that Aleus had already investigated the Donquixote Family.
If that was true—
Didn't it mean that the Black Prince really did have designs on the Donquixote Family? The hope that had lain dormant in her heart for so long began to shine again.
Maybe—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 to power, as long as she and her father could escape the Donquixote Family's control and free their country from Doflamingo's grasp...
That was what she dreamed of.
But it was only a dream. Aleus had made it clear that, for now, he wasn't interested in Dressrosa, and she didn't think she had enough leverage to change his mind. Especially now, with the traitor Monet having been sent to her side by Doflamingo.
It seemed—
She could only keep waiting, patiently waiting for true light and hope to dispel the dark clouds hanging over Dressrosa.
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