Targeting East Blue! Setting Sail
Not many people knew that Leo was leaving. Only the core members and the leading merchants knew about it.
So when they departed, the only people who came to see them off were the pirate crew's officers and those merchants. To keep up morale, even the officers had not been notified.
This was, of course, a matter of secrecy. It was simply to prevent the soldiers from leaking information to spy agencies lurking in the city while chatting during procurement runs.
Because there were so few people aboard, the entire ship was instead loaded with large quantities of food and rum as ballast.
This was only the most basic ballast measure. In more extreme cases, they would simply use rocks for ballast.
Before leaving, Leo had always regretted that none of the merchants had managed to obtain the Devil Fruit he had offered a bounty for. If he had eaten a Devil Fruit, he might have gained some ability to protect himself. Even if Nico Robin and Enel were not by his side, he would not have had much to worry about.
But on second thought, everyone on this ship was a Devil Fruit user. He could not help but feel fortunate that he had not eaten one. At the very least, there was still someone who could swim.
Empress Hancock had been deeply worried, her brows tightly furrowed. She simply could not accept that Leo was going on such a long journey without her at his side.
It truly left her uneasy. In her eyes, aside from him and the officers of the Kuja Pirates, everyone else had only recently joined. She could not fully trust them, nor could they guarantee Leo's safety.
But in Leo's heart, the Kuja Pirates and the Spade Pirates