Luffy was no longer the Luffy he had been a year ago.
A year ago, when they had first entered the New World, the Revolutionary Army had happened to be carrying out its amnesty across the land.
Back then, Galdino had already predicted that the road ahead would be extremely difficult, with vast numbers of pirates flooding into the Grand Line's New World.
The pressure on them would be immense.
Galdino had been right.
What followed had been a sporadic adventure of battling their way through obstacle after obstacle, cutting down enemies as they went, until Luffy and the others arrived atop Zunesha.
And because of Borsalino, they had stayed here for over ten days. After pestering Borsalino for a long time, they had finally moved him. Then they had waited for Doflamingo, the Heavenly Yaksha, to arrive.
Yet through all the fighting along the way, as well as Galdino's guidance, Luffy had begun to skillfully wield Armament Haki and Observation Haki. It could be said that Galdino had replaced Rayleigh as an indispensable mentor on Luffy's path to growth.
He was unquestionably Luffy's big brother.
When they faced Doflamingo and Gecko Moria's Shadow Samurai and thread puppets, most of them had no particularly good solution.
In truth, everyone's abilities matched poorly against Doflamingo. Threads that could neither be cut by blades nor smashed by brute force were a natural counter to hand-to-hand fighters.
Unless one possessed a Logia Devil Fruit or an exceptionally powerful Paramecia Devil Fruit, the Thread-Thread Fruit—which did not seem particularly impressive—had actually been developed to an extreme by Doflamingo.
Ordinary people already found it difficult to defeat him.
Otherwise, he would not have become such a strong contender for the next of the Four Emperors.
But in the end, heroes like Luffy, who could not