The Five Elders Descend

While Kizaru held off the forces at Marine Headquarters, the Expeditionary Force in the East Blue advanced at incredible speed. Their objective was clear: concentrate their attacks on Marine Bases and the capitals of the various kingdoms.

Half a day passed, and the kingdoms of the East Blue began falling one after another. The Marines, nobles, and royals who managed to escape began using their own channels to appeal to Marine Headquarters and the World Government for help.

Around the same time Sengoku received the news, the World Government also received intelligence from the East Blue.

The Five Elders could no longer sit still. Before, Kizaru's strength and ideas had merely crossed their bottom line. Now, however, the Expeditionary Force's invasion of the East Blue amounted to an open declaration of war against them.

This was absolutely intolerable! The World Government had to launch a powerful counterattack—and one that would succeed.

Otherwise, if the factions across the seas saw the World Government's weakness and helplessness, the rule and order it had spent more than eight hundred years establishing would be shaken, or even collapse!

"Dispatch troops to the East Blue immediately. We absolutely cannot let it fall into the hands of the rebels," Jaygarcia Saturn Saint said sternly.

"All the elite forces of the Marines are trapped at Headquarters. It's already too late to send them there," Saint Ethanbaron V. Nusjuro said calmly.

"The situation in the East Blue is urgent, but the core of this rebellion is the man named Shimura Kizaru. If we can eliminate him at Marine Headquarters, the rebels' morale will take a severe blow and might even collapse entirely," Saint Marcus Mars analyzed.

His words immediately won the agreement of the other four.

Rather than hastily dispatching troops to suppress a massive rebellion in the