He reached up and adjusted the hat on his head.
The Navy hat, dusted with a little dirt, held fast to its post. The stark black letters spelling "MARINE" made the man's identity clear: he was a Marine, one of the three Admirals of Navy Headquarters, and one of its greatest weapons.
He stood at the bow, back straight, planted on the deck like a stubborn rock that no amount of pounding could bend.
The roar of cannon fire came from every direction. Smoke swept up by the wind still held the heat generated by the shells as they flew. The black, hot wind whipped the Seagull Flag hanging from the top of the mast, and ash-like dust drifted down through the air.
The acrid stench of sulfur from the burning flames filled his nostrils. Decades had passed, but the smell was still just as sharp.
He had gradually grown from being unable to stomach it to not caring.
Still,
he didn't like the smell.
The smell of war and death.
If people knew that Akainu, the most ruthless and cold-blooded Admiral in Navy Headquarters, actually didn't like war at all, probably fewer than one in a thousand would believe such a "joke." But the truth was that Sakazuki didn't enjoy war one bit.
He knew that among the Marines in the lower and middle ranks, opinions of him were divided. Those who hated him thought he was a heartless butcher, an executioner who would even turn on his own men and civilians. But he didn't care.
The booming cannons, the raging fires, the swirling smoke—they only forced him to throw himself into war: to start it, wage it, end it, and keep this seemingly endless vicious cycle going.
To achieve peace, one had to wage war.
That was the