The Grand Line, New World.
The turmoil within the World Government had little effect here. Even without its internal troubles, its influence in the New World had been next to nonexistent.
So even as the Antonio Family and the Five Elders fought tooth and nail, life in the New World carried on at its usual unhurried pace.
With the Yonko holding sway, no pirate could do much to change that. Days passed quietly.
Probably quietly, anyway...
On the vast sea, a Pirate Ship sailed steadily onward. Judging by its course, it was headed for the ship of the legendary World's Strongest man: the Moby Dick!
Yes, the sea was as peaceful as ever!
"C-Captain, are you really going to challenge Whitebeard?"
The speaker was Ace's aide, a brown-haired, middle-aged man about his height. He could laugh in the face of an attack by several Navy warships, yet the goal of this voyage filled him with dread.
Ace was powerful. He was not only a Logia Devil Fruit Powers user, but wielded the Flame-Flame Fruit, whose offensive power was exceptional. Add in the fighting skills he had honed since childhood, and ordinary great pirates could not last a single exchange against him.
But!
"That's Whitebeard, the World's Strongest! Won't you reconsider?"
"World's Strongest?" Ace suddenly smiled. "Not necessarily."
"Uh..."
Come to think of it, Whitebeard might not actually be the World's Strongest anymore. Leaving aside that terrifying Great Dragon with a ten-billion-Beli bounty, even Ulysses, whom Loa had defeated, seemed no weaker than Whitebeard.
A year ago, when he had gone to pull Ace from the sea, he had seen it himself. So many terrifying figures, each powerful enough to dominate a corner of the New World, had been reduced to dried husks by a red figure in mere minutes.
Even