Navy and Mercenaries

Daddy heard the name Warship Island and thought of the Millennium Dragon, but he didn't believe its bones could be used to make an elixir of immortality.

If that stuff existed, the Celestial Dragons would have come to seize it long ago!

Only people in the East Blue, the weakest sea, would believe in that legend.

As for Apis, who had the power of the Whisper-Whisper Fruit, she was no use to Daddy either!

The Devil Fruit power was practically useless. It only let her talk to animals, and all it did was convey her thoughts into their minds.

She couldn't read what animals were thinking. They had to willingly communicate with her before she could understand their voices and thoughts.

It couldn't hear the thoughts of humans or some other species, either, let alone carry on complex conversations or issue commands.

It was even more useless than Chopper, who had eaten the Human-Human Fruit: Commoner Form!

The main problem was that Apis was weak, had no special abilities, and was far too young. She was completely unsuited to the brutal Big Daddy Pirates.

So Daddy couldn't be bothered to waste time looking for them. Besides, the Millennium Dragon might not even have flown back to Warship Island yet.

"Head straight for Reverse Mountain!"

Daddy had no intention of stopping at Warship Island. There was no point in staying in the East Blue any longer. There were hardly any worthy opponents.

The Big Daddy Pirates' atrocities might already have drawn the attention of Marine Headquarters. They had to leave the East Blue as soon as possible and enter the Grand Line.

That way, the Marines couldn't trap them in the East Blue.

Otherwise, if Marine Headquarters sent a Marine Vice Admiral to blockade the waters around Reverse Mountain, the Big Daddy Pirates would be sunk.

"Understood!"

Nami also wanted to stop at Warship Island and see what made it special, but she didn't dare disobey Daddy's order.

The Dreadnaught Sabre sped toward Reverse Mountain.

Several days earlier, Nelson Royale, commander of the East Blue Marines' 8th Branch, had received orders from Marine Headquarters. He was to send out every warship and blockade the waters before Reverse Mountain, indiscriminately bombarding any pirate crew that tried to pass through in the coming days!

The portly Nelson Royale was used to this sort of assignment. The 8th Branch was the East Blue's last line of defense.

Like Brannew, commander of the 77th Branch, he held the highest rank available to East Blue Marines: Commodore. Although branch Marines ranked three grades below those at Headquarters, he was still one of the most powerful people in the East Blue!

In theory, even Smoker—the Marine officer who had been demoted from a Headquarters captain to a captain at the Loguetown branch—had to salute him.

Though within Marine Headquarters, his rank as an East Blue branch commodore was equivalent to that of a Headquarters lieutenant commander.

"Adjutant! Call in all those scum mercenaries. We're going to blockade and bombard the area for a whole week!" Nelson Royale shouted. He knew there were powerful fighters among the pirates, so to reduce Marine casualties, he hired reckless Pirate Hunters and mercenaries willing to risk their lives for money to help defend the area!

"Yes, sir!"

The 8th Branch fleet set out at once, and several mercenary crews with modest reputations in the East Blue boarded the warships.

If they hunted pirates with bounties on their own, they could collect the bounties as well as the commission paid by Commodore Nelson Royale.

That made a number of Pirate Hunters and mercenaries regulars for Nelson Royale. They liked this straightforward Marine commander.

As far as these mercenaries were concerned, the job was a hundred times better than being a Marine. Marines only hunted pirates as part of their duties, and didn't get nearly as much extra Beli.

The Marines envied the mercenaries' generous earnings a little, but whenever they fought pirates, the mercenaries were the first to charge in, and their death rate was high. So the branch's laid-back Marines weren't interested.

The most capable bounty hunter Nelson Royale hired was Cyclone Eric. He had eaten the Paramecia-type Scythe-Scythe Fruit, which let him compress the air to a high degree and create slashes like scythes.

Their power rivaled a swordsman's Flying Slash.

His reputation in the East Blue was even greater than that of Pirate Hunter Roronoa Zoro. After all, he had been active for years, and he was strong.

Cyclone Eric was a lawless man who put profit above everything else. If the reward was high enough, he'd do anything.

In the original story, he mercilessly killed Commodore Nelson Royale and a large number of branch Marines to get his hands on the dragon bones.

Now, before Reverse Mountain,

the sea was littered with the wreckage of pirate ships. Over the past two days, the 8th Branch fleet and its mercenaries had defeated seven or eight pirate crews sailing from Loguetown.

Cyclone Eric was tallying up his earnings from the job. In just a few days, he'd already earned more than twenty million Beli in bounties and commissions.

He was very pleased with the payout. If only the Marines organized missions like this more often.

Though he was quite strong, he had to admit that the Marines' warships and firepower, together with their large numbers of soldiers, gave them a huge advantage in hunting pirates.

If he pursued pirates on his own, he was terribly inefficient. It usually took him weeks or even a month to catch a pirate crew, and sometimes he came up empty-handed.

He didn't dare steal a faster Marine warship, either. So he could only work out an arrangement with the Marines, earning his own money while taking advantage of their ships and superior numbers.

He didn't want to become a pirate and spend every day being hunted by the Marines. And he had even less desire to join the Marines and be bound by all sorts of rules. He liked things the way they were: free to work as a bounty hunter.

He'd made a name for himself throughout the East Blue, and even the commander of the 8th Branch had to show him some respect.

"Eric, the Big Daddy Pirates are our main target this time! Are you confident you can handle them?

"If not, we can bombard them first, then let them slip away by accident. We've already done well enough on this mission!"

The portly Commodore Nelson Royale spoke with some concern. According to the intelligence they'd received over the past two days, the captain of the Big Daddy Pirates might be even stronger than Smoker, the Marine captain in Loguetown.

That made Nelson Royale wary—and afraid.

He knew Smoker's true strength. Smoker was a genuine Headquarters captain, a direct subordinate of Zephyr, the Marine Headquarters chief instructor, and a Logia Devil Fruit user.

If even Smoker couldn't handle Daddy, then a weak East Blue branch commodore like him had even less chance of dealing with the Big Daddy Pirates.

"Don't worry, Commodore Royale! With your Marines' firepower and my Devil Fruit power, we can definitely send the Big Daddy Pirates' ship to the bottom of the sea. Then all we have to do is beat them while they're down!"

Cyclone Eric grinned slyly, his face sharp and mean. He was a bounty hunter who understood the principle of "sink the ship first, then deal with the pirates"!