Management

"Boss, we survived?!" Amid the cheers, one of the Cutlass Pirates' officers—a tall, skinny man with a small mustache—asked Captain "Great Bay Blade" William in disbelief.

"Mm..." William wore the same dazed expression, as if he had just woken from a dream.

"We survived!"

"Ha ha!!" The pirates below could no longer hold themselves back and burst into loud cheers.

"Oh yeah!!!" If the Amazon warrior women of Nine Snake Island had not confiscated their muskets, swords, and blades, they would have already thrown their weapons into the air.

They looked around at nothing but foul-smelling men drenched in sweat and decided to forget it.

They celebrated excitedly for a full three minutes. Once they calmed down, however, they exchanged glances and became somewhat dejected.

"Those women were really strong."

"How could they be that strong? Muskets seemed completely useless against them..."

Although the battle earlier had happened in a flash and more than thirty men had been killed almost at first contact, they had still fired their guns.

The muskets of the present day were too weak, not even as powerful as bows and arrows. Their accuracy went without saying; once the smoke rose, no one even knew where the shots went.

It was only natural that they had achieved nothing against the Amazon warrior women.

Yet on a battlefield, stray bullets were the most frightening thing. Even someone with Haki could be shot dead by one if caught off guard.

Of course, the later things went, the more absurd it became. Most people's physiques would only suffer scrapes rather than serious injuries.

But... why?

William and his officers all wore thoughtful expressions. No matter how hard they thought, they could not understand why the other side had spared them. However, there was one thing they understood clearly: the reason they had escaped disaster was entirely connected to that man.

That man held an extremely important position among the Kuja Pirates, and he was interested in them. That was why they had been allowed to live and even had a chance to leave the Calm Belt.

They did not know that if they had possessed a Flame-Flame Fruit, they would definitely have been able to leave the Calm Belt someday. The question was how many of them would still be alive, and how much life they would have left, before they got out.

That man had saved them, but he had other motives. This made the Cutlass Pirates deeply uneasy.

Yet the man making them uneasy was staring at the Flame-Flame Fruit in his hand in torment, so conflicted he seemed about to twist himself into a knot.

"If you're this conflicted, why not just eat it?" Hancock could not bear watching any longer. Reclining lazily against her throne, radiating breathtaking charm, she lay there with her hair draped to one side as she looked at the conflicted Leo and asked.

In her eyes, Leo's physique was simply too weak. Without a Devil Fruit, he would likely find it difficult to survive on these dangerous seas.

But she did not know why Leo was conflicted.

In Leo's view, Devil Fruits existed in this world, but people were not powerful because they had eaten Devil Fruits. Rather, they would be powerful no matter what Devil Fruit they ate, and they would be powerful even without eating one.

Take those CP9 agents, whose training had brought them infinitely close to Haki. They had only eaten a few Zoan Fruits, yet they were unimaginably strong.

People like Dark King Rayleigh could rely on their physical bodies alone to fight Logia-eating Kizaru to a draw. Meanwhile, many people who had eaten powerful fruits did not possess much strength at all. The most typical example was Miss Valentine from Crocodile's Baroque Works. She could freely control her weight, from one kilogram to ten thousand kilograms, yet instead of throwing ten-thousand-kilogram punches, she jumped into the air to crush people with her body.

Using such a powerful ability like that was the clearest example of this: even if the weak ate the best fruit, they might not become strong.

Did he truly possess the heart of a strong person now?

Was he ready?

He did not know, so he was lost, conflicted, and hesitant.

Then he put the fruit back into its treasure chest and increased his training.

As long as it did not kill him, he would train himself to death!

He had made up his mind. Though he was already leaning toward eating the Flame-Flame Fruit, he was not worthy of it yet.

He remembered Luffy's training regimen on Amazon Lily Island. Although he was completely unworthy of training at the same intensity as Luffy, his current workload was indeed far too little.

He had to push himself harder and squeeze out more of his potential.

Even so, his training only lasted from seven in the morning until three in the afternoon. At around three o'clock, he had to take food aboard the lifeboat and head to the Cutlass Pirates.

The Cutlass Pirates had not had a drop of water until now. Fortunately, they did not need to fight or sail. Even the navigator, helmsman, and captain had been given the rare luxury of a day off. They all slept until late morning, and after getting up, they somehow felt even more exhausted. After stretching and exercising on the ship for a while, they all hid below deck to escape the sun.

By then, it was about three o'clock.

Once Leo had finished what he was doing, he had the Cutlass Pirates row the lifeboat over, move the food, and then follow the lifeboat away. The process was too complicated for ordinary Amazon warrior women to understand.

However, as one of the ship's managers, Rindou somewhat understood the arrangement.

That day, she followed Leo aboard the lifeboat as the pirates transported the food. With a cigarette dangling from her lips, she said beside Leo, "I think I understand why you made them move it over first, then move it back."

"Oh?" Leo turned to look at her with interest. "What do you understand?"

"Once we move their food over here, all we need to do is delay their meal by a few hours, and they won't have much strength left to fight. And whether they get to eat on a given day depends entirely on our mood, so we can grip their lifeline tightly. If the food stays on their ship, they can still act on their own and won't have any direct sense of being our prisoners." But if they missed one meal, they would know who was boss.

"Anything else?" Leo knew that this world had no management talent or books, nor did it have the methods of management studies. That was why, with even a little knowledge of management, he had gained such favor at the side of the Celestial Dragons.

But if someone could learn management studies, he would definitely be able to save himself a great deal of trouble in the future.

He could not help wanting to test her.