Armament Haki, Awakening!

"I only made three requests, and you can only meet one of them?"

"Then make me a smaller one. Oh, and will the hull be made from Adam Wood? Ordinary materials probably won't be sturdy enough. I'm worried it'll fall apart someday."

As he listened to Xia Luo, Zol Cruz's expression darkened further and further. He refused without hesitation. "Not even a smaller one. We don't have it, plain and simple!"

"As for Adam Wood, that's even more impossible. This stuff isn't any cheaper than gold. Building a warship out of it would cost several hundred million at minimum—more likely over a billion. We don't have that kind of budget. Unless you pay for it yourself, we can help you build it without charging extra."

Zol Cruz nearly rolled his eyes. He had never seen someone so shameless. The moment Xia Luo opened his mouth, it was either gold or Adam Wood. What did he think Zol Cruz was, a wish-granting frog in a fountain?

Outrageous!

"Fine."

Zol Cruz's decisive refusal had been entirely within Xia Luo's expectations. He had only been asking for an outrageous price to begin with.

In the end, after some haggling from Xia Luo, Zol Cruz finally relented and agreed to use the best materials within his authority to build it for him.

To put it bluntly, Zol Cruz simply did not want to offend Xia Luo, a rising new star of the Marines.

Besides, none of the conditions he had agreed to for Xia Luo violated the rules. They merely counted as preferential treatment and were still within regulations.

After leaving the shipyard—

"Sigh, the Marines are too stingy. They won't even give me a little gold, and there's no Adam Wood either. Bad review!"

Xia Luo had always lived by one principle: if