The seas grew more chaotic by the day.
News that the Roger Pirates had obtained a vast hoard of gold from the Golden Land drove the Great Pirate Era, whose fervor had begun to fade, to new heights.
Years of Navy effort went up in smoke.
The outbreak of the Battle of the Golden Sea also tied down much of the Navy's fighting strength.
That made its task of suppressing unrest across the Four Seas far from easy.
The Navy could not possibly redeploy Sakazuki and the others to the Four Seas now.
If it did, there would be nothing to keep the many pirates on Jaya Island in check.
For the World Government, limiting how much gold the factions on Jaya Island could extract from the Golden Sea was a line that could not be crossed.
It was also a line the Celestial Dragons and every Affiliated Nation refused to cross.
That position was unshakable.
They would never stand by while outsiders took a treasure they considered theirs.
And to prevent that, they needed the Navy.
Under those circumstances, the Navy found itself increasingly unable to cope with the turmoil spreading across the seas.
The growing number of pirates was only part of the problem.
Wars between kingdoms and rival factions were making the chaos worse.
Behind the scenes, NESTS was causing upheaval of its own.
Addictive drugs spread across the seas, draining the pockets of countless people.
They hastened their users' decline.
The greater the chaos, the better these drugs sold.
Many people, uncertain whether they would have enough to eat from one day to the next, turned to them for solace.
The World Government and its Affiliated Nations had publicly classified the drugs as contraband.
But all their efforts were in vain.
The contraband flowed through the