Gern had not lied.
Back then, he had only recently been transferred to G-3 in the New World, and still possessed some youthful inexperience and sharp ambition.
Alongside the hard-line Sakazuki, then still a captain, he had faced Golden Lion Shiki at the absolute height of his power!
How overbearing Golden Lion had been then!
He had come alone, striding through empty air, wielding Oto and Kogarashi with contempt for all before him.
The pressure that had struck them felt as though the entire sky were bearing down, suffocating them.
That had also been the first time Gern had sensed death so clearly.
The first time he had tasted the near despair of being crushed by absolute power.
Had Zephyr, who possessed admiral-level strength, not returned to reinforce them in time, the consequences would have been unthinkable.
And so, that shudder of impending death, together with Golden Lion's domineering figure as he laughed wildly, tore apart the earth, and cut through everything,
had been seared into Gern's path of growth, becoming one of the forces that drove him to keep growing stronger until he reached the summit.
It had also given him his first instinct for a clash between kings and awakened his Conqueror's Haki.
But...
Gern drew himself out of his thoughts and compared the high-spirited admiral of the Flying Pirates in his memories, who had reigned over the skies,
that great pirate who had contended with Roger and Whitebeard and ushered in a legendary age,
with the old man before him, who had hidden in the East Blue for twenty years, whose hair and beard remained golden but could not conceal the toll of time,
who even needed to rely on the hollow "IQ" plan to sustain his ambitions...
The two figures, one remembered and one real, one