While Araki remained in the Florian Triangle, building the new Thriller Bark Pirates, terrifying undercurrents gradually began to stir in the outside world.
Crocodile, one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea, had been defeated, and after his plot to steal a country was exposed, he was locked away in Impel Down. Replacing him was a pirate who had previously been all but unknown—Blackbeard Teach.
Judging by that name alone, no one would have taken him seriously. But once his history was made public, the entire sea erupted in uproar.
This man had actually once been a member of the Whitebeard Pirates, and he had stayed with the Whitebeard crew for a full twenty years, yet he had not a single beri of bounty on his head!
That alone would have been one thing. But the reason he had managed to persuade the World Government to grant him the title of Seven Warlords of the Sea was that he had betrayed the Whitebeard Pirates, killed Thatch, the captain of the Fourth Division, and even captured Fire Fist Ace, the captain of the Second Division, who had come to hunt him down!
In other words, he alone had cost the Whitebeard Pirates two of their top-ranked captain-level officers!
What did it mean to be a captain under Whitebeard?
They were all powerful figures who could run rampant even in the New World. The top five captains in particular could be called the strongest among the strong, the elite among elites.
And Blackbeard had dealt with two such great pirates all by himself!
Not only that, he had even handed one of them over to the navy for a public execution.
For a time, every discerning person on the sea understood that ever since the structure of the Four Emperors and the