"I'd wanted to trade a few blows with Brother Shane!"
Rayleigh was middle-aged now, but had yet to grow old.
Shane was nearly seventeen, so naturally, they could call each other brothers.
For pirates, unless one was eleven or twelve and the other seventy or eighty, they were generally no more than a generation apart.
"What! Does facing me make your Haki useless, Rayleigh?"
Linlin was like an empress of the weather.
She delivered a vertical slash.
Flames and lightning poured in, transforming it into Maser Saber.
The force of it made Kaido rather envious. He dreamed of mastering Conqueror's Coating day and night!
Seeing that he fell short even against Gaban's Armament Haki, his gaze immediately grew much more forlorn.
He had thought himself ten times stronger than before, only to discover upon meeting formidable opponents that he still had a long way to go in Haki and swordsmanship.
Not everyone experimented on themselves, much less used Devil Fruits like venomous creatures bred to fight one another, stimulating their potential to hasten the awakening of their abilities.
To them, the speed of Shane's growth was simply abnormal.
That was why many in the Roger Pirates believed Shane was certainly no young man.
He was very likely Rocks returned from the dead.
There were so many Devil Fruit abilities that, if this were true, everything would make sense.
Even Golden Lion and Whitebeard had entertained similar suspicions before.
Vice Captain Kaido had also spent a long time doubting Shane's true identity.
It was precisely because of this connection that their hostility toward Shane deepened.
Rocks!
He was an overlord who left no room for anyone else.
It could be said that Rocks could accommodate any ambitious pirate, except Roger.
Roger's ambition was to be utterly unrestrained, doing whatever he wanted.