As Robert, Hilbert, Lazuli, and the others made good progress on their respective missions, Lind's West Blue Strategy had gained a solid foundation.
The next step was to steadily develop their operations in the West Blue, strengthen their foundations, and challenge the existing order until accumulated changes brought about a fundamental transformation.
Unfortunately, no world could escape Murphy's Law. No one knew whether tomorrow or disaster would arrive first.
Kuld certainly hadn't expected his life to end so abruptly. Nor had Lind expected that someone the World Government had failed to deal with despite pouring enormous manpower and resources into the effort...
Would actually be taken down by a mere bounty hunter. More absurdly still, that bounty hunter was, in a sense, one of his own subordinates.
Although Lind had devoted most of his energy and resources to the West Blue Strategy lately, his operations in the other seas had never stopped.
In Paradise, besides the Supernova pirates and rising stars of the Navy, Lind had also deployed plenty of bounty hunters.
In fact, those bounty hunters had enjoyed the greatest success of all the forces he had planted in Paradise.
With help from Lind's undercover agents among the pirates and the Navy, Paradise's bounty hunters had steadily expanded by wiping out its "local pirates."
They had built up considerable reputations and wealth.
Not long ago, while Lind was launching his West Blue Strategy with great fanfare, the Spark Project's officers in the other seas had refused to sit idle and begun operations of their own.
Several of the more successful bounty hunters in Paradise had even joined forces to establish a bounty hunters' guild-the Hunter's Heart.
Besides the Navy's bounties on various pirates, the Hunter's Heart also accepted all sorts of commissions, much like the adventurers' guilds in the