Three days later, when Loa received word that Charlotte Linlin was willing to take part, he also learned the details of that battle.
Having others deny you was nothing to fear, as long as you kept believing in yourself. But what if you started doubting yourself too?
That was the truly frightening part.
Loa could guess some of what Shanks was thinking. It wasn't that Shanks couldn't swallow his pride or see how things stood. As a pirate, and the most imposing man in the world, he was trying to preserve the last shred of dignity pirates had left.
In Charlotte Linlin's words, he was being obstinate!
As for the miracle he was hoping for...
Loa tapped the desk and murmured, his expression calm, "That won't happen."
Just as he had predicted, two years would be enough for everything to settle. This was a twisted world that hid behind the grand-sounding word "dreams."
If everyone wanted to know the truth...
Then he would give it to them!
Just then, a knock sounded at the door.
"Come in!"
Caesar, whom he hadn't seen in some time, walked in. Rubbing his hands together, he bowed and scraped before Loa. "Shurororo! Lord Loa, good news!"
"Oh? What good news?"
Loa raised an eyebrow. "Haven't you been working on a new Death Realm lately? Did you succeed?"
In the original story, Caesar had not completed his weapon of mass destruction, Death Realm, until two years later. But Crocodile's Plague powers had already made the weapon look pathetic. Even the biochemical virus used on Whole Cake Island had been developed from those powers.
But Caesar was not a man who gave up easily.
Not even Vegapunk's scientific genius had completely cowed him, and Plague alone certainly wouldn't. So while refining his Devil Fruit transfer experiments,