Bounty Amount Announced, 3.5 Billion Beli!

Docked at the Marineford pier, the Dog Head Warship now held only a few sailors on duty and Leon, still wrapped up like a mummy.

Lying in the empty medical bay, Leon finally let out a sigh of relief.

Over the past few days, the ship's medic had kept using his injury treatment as an excuse to sneakily examine his body structure.

That obsessive gaze sent a chill down Leon's spine every time he thought about it...

He finally understood why ancient sailors used to keep a few sheep on board...

With few people left on the ship, Leon got out of bed and planned to stretch his legs outside.

Because of the Godzilla inside him, Leon's body was a walking nuclear radiation source.

To keep the sailors from randomly developing leukemia or cancer during the voyage, Leon mostly stayed in the medical bay, minimizing physical activity to reduce radiation leakage.

As for Garp, who often loafed around the medical bay claiming his injuries from the fight with Shiki hadn't fully healed...

Leon had asked Garp, under the pretense of concern, if he felt any discomfort. The answer he got was:

"You little brat, you looking down on me!?"

Alright, Hero Garp was a tough one.

Godzilla was an atomic monster that fed on Nuclear Energy, but Leon, fused with Godzilla as two sides of one being, didn't have an organ like an atomic furnace in his human form to absorb and convert Nuclear Energy.

Still, after this period of adaptation, Leon could now stay awake without radiating heat, and he believed it wouldn't be long before he could control the nuclear radiation leaking from his body.

Going further, by adapting and reshaping his human form through Godzilla's lifeform traits, it might even be possible to develop moves powered by Nuclear Energy...

Wrapped head to toe in bandages and moving clumsily, Leon wobbled into the ship's main cabin.

Inside, a large display board plastered with wanted posters caught his attention first. At the very top, two obvious blank spots showed where posters had just been torn off.

Only one wanted poster remained, pinned above all others.

One of the three legendary pirates, known as Whitebeard—Edward Newgate!

Bounty—5,046,000,000 Beli!

That staggering string of numbers made Leon click his tongue in amazement.

After all, in the pirate world, there was no standard system for ranking strength. Though the Marines had a Doriki Value system to gauge power, it was only used in limited circles.

On this sea, there were martial arts, swordsmanship, marksmanship, Devil Fruit abilities, and the three types of Haki...

A Haki master might not beat a Devil Fruit user who hadn't trained Haki. A Devil Fruit user could still die from gunfire or cannonballs...

For the Marines, rank roughly reflected a person's strength level.

For pirates, it was even simpler—the numbers on their wanted posters showed how dangerous they were.

Monkey D. Luffy's 1.5 billion Beli bounty had earned him the title of the Fifth Emperor of the Sea.

5,046,000,000 Beli for Whitebeard...

Good thing Whitebeard had no ambition to be king. If this era's Whitebeard, wielding the Tremor-Tremor Fruit and unburdened by old wounds, actually went all out, everyone would be feeling the terror of the sky shattering and the earth splitting...

Facing a monster like that, unless Leon could hit him head-on with Atomic Breath in Godzilla form, he didn't think he had a chance of winning.

The Nuclear Energy inside him wasn't enough for another Blue Lotus Nuclear Blast, and there was no Mothra in this pirate world to sacrifice herself and trigger Godzilla's Burning Form.

At the end of the day, Leon was just too weak.

Because of this strange symbiotic relationship, his frail human form couldn't bring out Godzilla's full power.

Unless...

Leon was willing to abandon his human form, turn into Godzilla, and find a volcano to hibernate for hundreds or thousands of years.

By the time he emerged, Im would probably already be beaten to a pulp by Luffy. Even if Luffy failed, by then the next Joy Boy would be showing up...

In a way, that counted as Leon giving it his all.

Let's see who lives longer.

"Why am I going off track like this..."

Leon pulled his wandering thoughts back on course.

The most important thing now was to boost his strength as fast as possible, using Godzilla's influence and adaptation on his human form.

Leon's current physical talent was no less than Big Mom's, known as the "Iron Balloon" with the strongest talent in the pirate world, and he would only get stronger.

That made accepting Garp's invitation to join the Marines the best choice for now.

No matter how good the talent, it was useless if it couldn't be turned into real power.

Even though the Marines had completely become the Celestial Dragons' lackeys and dogs, joining Marine Headquarters was still one of the best starting points a time traveler could find.