News Blackout

A Navy Warship sailed against the current, its flag looking as though it had been burned. Only half of it remained, fluttering in the wind.

"You negotiated with them?" Norton asked in surprise after hearing Swain's account.

Swain set down his coffee and leaned back in his chair, his movements growing more assured. "Yes. Otherwise, I would have wiped the Marines off the map that day!"

Destroying Marine Headquarters would have been easy for him. He only needed to create a tsunami on the scale of a natural disaster. Even Aokiji would have struggled to stop it.

But...

If Swain had actually done that, Red-Haired would certainly have intervened. It seemed Red-Haired was searching for some kind of balance.

A balance among the world's many conflicts.

At the thought, a mocking smile crept across Swain's face.

He thought Red-Haired's approach was wishful thinking. Rule by the Celestial Dragons had already left this world rotten and riddled with wounds.

The common people had suffered enough under the exploitation of those above them. The rate at which pirates had multiplied in recent years made that plain.

Adventurers like Luffy were one in ten thousand!

If anyone bothered to count, they would probably find that most pirates had taken to crime after the Heavenly Tribute drove their families to ruin.

There were only two ways to change things: revolution or rebuilding the world from the ground up.

Unlike Dragon, Swain had chosen the second path.

He would tear apart every established order, rip away the facade of peace, then rebuild the world.

The road ahead was long, but he would keep searching for a way forward.

Attacking the Holy Land had only been the first step in his plan. There was still a long way to go.

Norton was talking a mile a