"Instructor."
Isca walked over, bent deeply at the waist, and bowed in greeting.
Vice Admiral Dolo's actions had left her feeling deeply alienated from the Navy, but they hadn't destroyed her commitment to justice. She didn't fully agree with Instructor Zephyr's "justice without killing"—after all, she'd turned her targets into pincushions with the long sword in her hand on many occasions.
But that didn't stop her from continuing to respect Instructor Zephyr, a venerable elder worthy of respect.
"Isca..."
Zephyr shifted his gaze from Aleus to the student he had once taught.
"Leaving the Navy... isn't the end of the world. Justice has nothing to do with your status. Even if you leave the Navy, you can still hold fast to the justice in your heart."
As a former admiral of Navy Headquarters and now the chief instructor for new recruits, Zephyr had learned the whole story not long after Vice Admiral Dolo was escorted back to Navy Headquarters. In the name of justice, Vice Admiral Dolo had recklessly harmed ordinary civilians during one pirate-hunting operation after another. Isca's parents and friends had been among his victims.
It was undeniably infuriating.
Even Sakazuki, the representative of the Navy's hardliners, had expressed his disgust with Vice Admiral Dolo through a Den Den Mushi.
Justice wasn't something you achieved by harming innocent civilians.
The reason Sakazuki had resolutely chosen to bombard Ohara's evacuation ship all those years ago was that he believed Ohara's residents weren't innocent. They had violated the World Government's ban and studied the Poneglyphs, whose history was considered forbidden. Their deaths, he believed, were the consequences of their own actions.
Vice Admiral Dolo, on the other hand, had simply used justice as a pretext to indulge his destructive desire for revenge against pirates.
So,
After the higher-ups had discussed