The current structure of the New World had changed very noticeably. Among the top powerhouses, Harald and Nereus both had their own ambitions and had long since stopped playing the pirate game.
Red Count Redfield was a lone wolf who never recruited companions and had no need for followers.
The Roger Pirates were much the same, not recruiting subordinates on a large scale.
Although the Whitebeard Pirates accepted recruits, Whitebeard himself had no ambition for domination and was only gathering family members.
Kaido was also recruiting and was highly ambitious, but at present, neither his fame nor his strength was great enough, leaving very few people willing to join him.
Excluding the pirates who had been thrown into prison or died at sea, the only “companies” in the New World with the brightest prospects were Wang Zhi of Fullalead Island, Big Mom of Whole Cake Island, and Golden Lion of the Flying Pirates.
However, Wang Zhi had recently tightened his screening process and announced that he would not be accepting newcomers for the time being. Big Mom’s reputation, compared to Golden Lion and the others, was still considered second-tier.
As a result, Golden Lion became the place countless pirates chased their ambitions toward.
Now that news had spread that Golden Lion’s expansions always ended in failure, many pirates suddenly found themselves with nowhere to go, which in a sense further intensified the chaos of the seas.
Amid this state of chaos, time arrived at the beginning of Sea Circle Calendar Year 1516.
Over the past years, Fishman Island had protected the deep sea with endless iron and blood.
Countless shattered pirate ships and pirate corpses declared to the world what kind of existence lurked within these deep waters.
The countless battles had turned the Neptune Army into an even more elite force. However, during these two years, Nereus had not continued expanding the army, because what he wanted were elites, not cannon fodder.
While maintaining its original scale, the Neptune Army’s combat experience had increased tremendously.
A few more gravestones had appeared within the Sea Forest, burying the soldiers who had fallen over the years.
Battles were not child’s play. Casualties would always exist. Intense training could reduce the death rate, but it could never eliminate it completely.
Moreover, the vast majority of these casualties occurred during sea surface battles and land battles. Don’t fight Fishman Island underwater, and don’t provoke Fishman Island’s rules; this had already become common consensus in many people’s minds.
At this very moment, inside Ryugu Palace, the three-year-old Chloe was carrying out a certain kind of training.
A target painted with the World Government’s cross flag had been placed fifty meters away. Chloe held a fireball in one hand and was currently aiming at it.
“Hey!”
She hurled the fireball with all her strength, but it traced an arc through the air and struck the target beside it instead, while the target directly in front remained completely unharmed.
Nanamo casually drew another X on Hermes’s body, apparently using Hermes as a scoreboard, and there were already ten marks on him now.
“You missed again, my dear little sister. All ten fireballs failed to hit the target. But you did successfully kill ten other enemies. Did you do it on purpose?”
She truly could not understand what was wrong with Chloe’s accuracy. Every shot hit a target, yet never the one she was aiming at.
“Ugh…”
Chloe said nothing, but her puffed-up cheeks showed how unwilling she was. Staring at the target ahead, Chloe flapped her wings and flew into the air, while the flames behind her burned even more intensely.
“Blazing Phoenix • Chaotic Feathers!”
As Chloe swung both hands, a large number of fireballs rained down from the sky onto the ground. After failing at precision sniping, she simply gave up on it altogether and switched to saturating the target area with overwhelming firepower.
With the aid of the aerial bombardment, the target in the center was ultimately annihilated. Chloe then clapped her hands and revealed a satisfied smile.
She glanced at the situation below her feet before slowly descending while flapping her wings.
Chloe had practically mastered flying and swimming at the same time, and neither was much slower than walking.
“I hit it.”
Clap clap clap~
“Very nice, very impressive…”
Watching the shooting range get completely destroyed, Nanamo applauded from the side in encouragement. For some reason, she felt that this little sister of hers carried some violent tendencies in her genes.
Perhaps it was because of Amphitrite. Whenever she raised children, hatred education was unavoidable.
Celestial Dragons were all b*stards, the World Government was the greatest evil organization, and they should all be burned down in the future. This logic had already become deeply rooted within Chloe.
“Sister…Nanamo, stop resting… time to train!”
Some words were still unclear, but the sentence itself was complete enough. After destroying all the targets, Chloe was now dragging Nanamo by the arm, intending to pull her back to the training grounds.
“Your mother was a training maniac back then… so why did you also turn into a training maniac?! Listen carefully, your control over flames still isn’t good enough. You need to learn fine control. This time, you’re not allowed to use area bombardment, you have to perform precision strikes.
“That way, in the future, you’ll be able to use area bombardment to carry out precision strikes.”
Nanamo directed Hermes to set the targets back up again. She had stayed here to train with Chloe, and originally she thought it would be a very easy task. After all, what burden could there be in accompanying a three-year-old child to practice martial arts?
That little bit of strength posed no threat to Nanamo. She only needed to go through the motions and correct Chloe’s movements and force application techniques.
However, Chloe had perfectly inherited the Lunarian race’s stamina and endurance, and simply did not want to rest at all.
“Mommy… likes hard work, Chloe isn’t tired either!”
Chloe waved her arms around. From the fact that there was not even a drop of sweat on her forehead, it was obvious that this level of training truly had no effect on her.
“Nanamo, I told you to teach her combat, not slack off at the side.”
“Dad! I’ve already taught her for six whole hours! I only wanted to rest for a bit. Chloe just has way too much energy!”
Hearing Nereus arrive, Nanamo knew she could finally clock out, but she still hurried to explain everything that had happened beforehand.
Nanamo did not know whether little children lied or not, but she was certain that children could make things up out of thin air.
Because their understanding of the world was still incomplete, sometimes they would describe what they saw as something entirely different, or treat dreams and imagination as reality.
If Chloe were the one explaining things, she might end up saying that Nanamo had done absolutely nothing all day.
But before Nereus could say anything, Nanamo’s Den Den Mushi suddenly rang.
“Hello, Katakuri? What is it?”
“Nanamo, it’s me.”
“M-Mama?”
Hearing the voice from the Den Den Mushi, Nanamo froze for a moment. Privately, she had only remained in contact with Katakuri and the others. According to them, Charlotte Linlin had long since forbidden anyone from mentioning her name.
Yet now she was actually calling through Katakuri’s Den Den Mushi. That was clearly abnormal.
“Nanamo… help me pass a message to Nereus. That b*stard Roger is heading toward Fishman Island again. Sink that bstard to the bottom of the sea! The terms… can be negotiated…”
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