The end of the war did not mean peace had arrived. This was merely the calm before the storm.
Rocks could barely wait any longer. Hades could sense the urgency and excitement within him.
The Rocks Pirates seemed far from satisfied. After that epic battle in which they utterly crushed the World Government and the Marines, they began expanding their forces once again.
They seemed intent on starting another great war, thoroughly extinguishing the Marines' apparent momentum toward recovery.
In just six months, the Rocks Pirates had expanded to 150,000 men, twice their original number.
Frenzied pirates began launching small-scale raids across the world, constantly causing trouble for the Marines and the World Government.
The entire world was like a powder keg. Having already suffered devastating losses, the Marines could only wear themselves out responding to attacks.
With his knowledge of the bigger picture, Hades knew this was merely Rocks's plan to mislead the World Government and the Marines.
The aim was to drain the strength of the World Government and the Marines while scattering their troops and fighting forces, drawing them all into the Four Seas and the first half of the Grand Line.
Even core members of the Rocks Pirates like themselves had been fooled.
The turmoil engulfing the world seemed to have nothing to do with Hades.
He sailed aboard the Farazul, touring various parts of the New World.
He wanted to see some of the magnificent sights of these seas that he had never witnessed before. Things he had once wanted to do but found inconvenient were now possible!
In the first half of the Grand Line, the commercially thriving Fiorella Kingdom, backed by the Celestial Dragons, had also begun expanding its military.
Hades visited his child there, the son he had fathered with Fiorella Maso.