"Is the information accurate?"
"Absolutely, boss. We used news of a Mermaid slave as bait to draw this information out.
Those idiots actually thought I'd sell my own people for money. Every last one of them got incredibly excited."
"Well done, Karma. But when dealing with those people, remember to stay vigilant. Don't actually treat them like idiots."
"Yeah, I'll remember."
Karma, an octopus Fish-Man, had been one of Whitebeard's pirate captains in the original timeline.
Back in the Fish-Man District, Nereus had once carried out a purge, targeting the Fish-Men who made a living selling their own kind.
Without traffickers, children would never go missing.
That statement was somewhat absolute, but the facts proved that if no one engaged in human trafficking, most missing people would never be far from where they disappeared and could always be found.
Fish-Man Island lay beneath the deep sea. The reason some traffickers could repeatedly succeed also had much to do with the help of these "inside men."
After all, the Fish-Man District had originally been an ungoverned area of Fish-Man Island, and plenty of illegal dealings had taken root there.
Karma had nearly gone down that path himself. Back then, he had still been a half-grown kid, his head filled with nothing but ways to make quick money.
He had happened to encounter Nereus's great purge, which had prevented him from taking that road.
That had actually been Karma's good fortune. If he had gotten involved earlier and become one of them, Nereus would only have killed him without mercy.
That was the difference between what had happened and what had not.
Now, Karma was an undercover agent within their ranks. On the surface, he was a Fish-Man Island resident who sold his own kind, but in reality, he was responsible for