You Are Their Hero

Over the next month, Leon turned himself into a plowing machine, sweeping indiscriminately through all the surrounding seas with Foosha Village as the center.

"The brutal Navy bandage man uses unimaginably bloody methods to kill every pirate who crosses his path..."

The rumors about Leon in the East Blue grew fiercer and fiercer, his image nearly evolving into some kind of terrifying legend.

But Leon's actions did yield decent results.

Though time was limited and they couldn't expand the sweep across the entire East Blue, the rapid spread of news forced the once-boisterous pirate forces in the East Blue to lie low.

The seas temporarily fell into calm.

"Brother Bogard, we've been out almost a full day, right?"

"And we haven't run into a single pirate crew."

Leon yawned lazily from his deck chair.

"This sea has been pretty much cleared out. We'd probably have to go farther out to find any trace of pirates..."

Bogard pulled out a nautical chart and drew a larger circle beyond the one already marked.

"Let's leave it at that." Leon rolled over. "Captain Garp said we're heading back to headquarters in a couple of days."

"We've done enough. The rest is up to the East Blue Navy branch."

When this East Blue cleanup operation first started, Leon had taken the lead in fighting pirates, hoping to gain practical combat experience.

But maybe it was because the Great Pirate Era had only just begun.

The pirates' strength was wildly inconsistent. Aside from a few with bounties who had some real skill, most were just reckless fools swinging their swords wildly with nothing but brute force.

Bored, Leon handed the spotlight to the Navy soldiers on the ship.

These elite headquarters troops, rigorously trained, were a crushing blow to ordinary pirates whose weapons were already rusted.

By the later stages, pirates would flee at the mere sight of a Navy warship's silhouette.

With so many captured pirates, Leon and his crew even temporarily set up camp on an uninhabited island to hold them.

Among those pirates were some who hadn't committed any crimes yet—adventurers who'd set sail just to find treasure.

Too lazy to sort them out one by one, Leon handed them all over to the Loguetown Navy branch, which would do a quick screening before shipping them in batches to Judicial Island for trial.

"Huh? Brother Bogard, isn't that a merchant ship up ahead?"

"Why's it dodging us? Should we check it out?"

The stoic Bogard said nothing, silently tipping his hat lower.

Over the past month, they'd run into plenty of slave ships from various kingdoms. Leon always swore those slave traders were pirates in disguise.

He never gave them a chance to explain before punching them to pieces.

Now no one dared to come near their warship...

If it weren't for Garp backing him up and the merit of wiping out so many pirate crews, Leon might have ended up on Judicial Island alongside the pirates he'd captured...

As dusk fell, the Dog Head Warship returned to Foosha Village.

"Red-Haired Shanks and Buggy the Clown should be in the East Blue right now..."

"Too bad we didn't cross paths. I'd have liked to test the strength of the Face King and the Luck King..."

Leon disembarked with regret. The village had prepared a grand banquet to send off Garp.

"Leon's back!"

Cheers erupted, and the banquet began.

"Catch."

Garp, sitting by the bonfire, tossed Leon a bottle of rum. Leon sat beside him, grabbed a large bone-in chunk of meat, and stuffed the whole thing into his mouth.

"HAHAHAHAHA!"

Back in his hometown, Garp's laughter grew even freer. He slapped Leon's shoulder without hesitation, his hand greasy with oil.

"Kid, why aren't you dancing?"

"I saw several pretty young girls winking at you, hahaha."

Leon chugged down a bottle of rum. Maybe because the brewing process was rough, the taste was a bit bitter...

"This year, I have to fully control the nuclear radiation inside me!"

Leon silently resolved.

Garp was already tipsy, his words slurring.

"I really don't get what they see in you—a weird little kid wrapped in bandages who won't show his face."

"Back in my day, when I was young..."

Alright, I get it now—Dragon didn't just pop out of a rock.

Unwilling to listen to Garp's boasting any longer, Leon stood up and accepted the crowd's invitation, joining them in a hand-in-hand dance.

A sleepless night passed.

The next morning, a hungover Garp, relying on his inhuman physical condition, stood energetically on the warship's bow to bid farewell to the people of Foosha Village.

It was worth noting that before leaving, Garp rejected Leon's proposal to build a structure made from the piled heads of pirates—what Leon called a "Kyongwan"—to intimidate other pirates.

"I believe this sea can maintain peace under the Navy's protection."