After the Pure Gold incident, no one on the Grand Line... no, to be precise, anywhere in the world, dared to question or provoke the Navy anymore.
"As long as the Azure Dragon exists, pirates will never see the light of day!"
Such a saying gradually spread across the seas.
It was a throne built upon the lives of millions of pirates. An entire stretch of sea had been dyed red with blood and corpses, and the stench lingered for months!
Indeed, in order to form the encirclement, tens of thousands of innocent civilians had died before the net closed. This was the one thing pirates could use to sneer at Ron.
Yet it was precisely because of this that they felt genuine awe.
Think about it carefully: if someone could become ruthless enough to treat tens of thousands of civilians as bait rather than living human beings, what attitude would he have toward his enemies?
The more one thought about it, the more terrifying it became.
Yet that was all the battle left in the minds of the world. They saw only Ron's ruthlessness and flawless calculations as the operation's commander-in-chief, rarely recalling what he had done before.
Kizaru was the same.
His impression of Ron—especially his scheming—ran far too deep. He had remembered ever since their first meeting in the Science Unit during Ron's days as a recruit, when the brat had unsuccessfully tried to poach Zephyr's student. This kid was incredibly calculating!
So much so that, as he watched Kaido get pinned down and battered, he suddenly remembered...
Oh, right!
This guy was the monster who had stormed Whole Cake Island alone years ago and killed BIG MOM; who had slain both Whitebeard and Blackbeard during the Summit War, then declared war on pirates before the whole