Change

"Seeds of hope?" Shanks murmured.

"Yes, hope lies with the next generation!"

Shanks nodded in agreement with Ryan's words.

He had truly witnessed too much suffering and too many tragedies in his life. Otherwise, he would never have said that there was no such thing as peace or equality in this world. Those words showed just how thoroughly Shanks had despaired of the world.

Sometimes, knowing too much was not a good thing.

The more you understood, the more pain you felt. The more you knew, the more torn apart you became!

Yet the more you knew, the more truths you came to understand.

For example, society's darkness, twisted human nature, moral decay, and so on.

But what pained people was not those negative things themselves, but their own helplessness. Because they would realize that they could change nothing, and some people would not dare to face it.

Take Count Patrick Redfield, for example. Because of his innate Observation Haki, he could hear people's inner voices. While that helped in battle, the darkness buried deep within people's hearts also disgusted him. So he chose to run away, remaining alone without a single companion by his side. Because he knew companions were not worth trusting. Perhaps he had trusted others before, but he had seen too much and heard too much!

Fujitora was the same. Unable to bear the ugliness of this world, he gouged out his own eyes. How was that not another form of escape? Yet although Fujitora had run away, he had also been searching for hope all along, and Ryan was that hope.

The Shanks of the original history had been much the same. Powerless to change everything, he had placed his hope and future on Luffy.

"Actually, hope lies with you too, Ryan!" Shanks said seriously