In late Sea Circle Calendar 1507, the Navy launched a direct assault on Mary Geoise under the command of Benn Ortoren, the acting Fleet Admiral.
After a brutal battle, the God's Knights were wiped out to the last, the Holy Land Guard collapsed completely, and the flag of the World Government—standing over Mary Geoise for more than eight hundred years—fell before the eyes of the world.
The day after the war ended, the Five Elders announced an unconditional surrender and dissolved the World Government.
On the third day, the Marines declared they would hold a worldwide public trial for the Celestial Dragons.
That broadcast drew the attention of the entire sea. In the past, public trials and public executions were always aimed at pirates, rebels, and criminals.
But a live-streamed public trial of the Celestial Dragons, the world's nobles?
When had anyone ever seen something like that?
This was the kind of spectacle that might not happen once in centuries. Of course everyone rushed to watch.
When the broadcast went live, people were stunned by the announcement: the presiding judge for the Celestial Dragons' trial would be Marine Headquarters Vice Admiral Donquixote Doflamingo, code name Flamingo.
The deputy judge was none other than Spandine, the Just, whose reputation across the sea had soared.
Doflamingo serving as judge shocked a lot of people, but the Marines' explanation sounded airtight.
They stated that Vice Admiral Flamingo had been born among the Celestial Dragons of Mary Geoise, and that from childhood he found his family's atrocities unbearable and left Mary Geoise behind. Within the Navy, he was one of the few who knew the Celestial Dragons' crimes and secrets in depth.
On top of that, Vice Admiral Flamingo was known to be upright and to hate evil. He had personally requested the position of judge, and after discussion among the Navy's top brass, his request was approved.
Perfectly reasonable.
As for Spandine, the Just, there was even less to question. He had originally been a senior official in the CP Organization, holding vast inside information about Mary Geoise and mountains of evidence against the Celestial Dragons. And in the eyes of the public, the war between the Marines and the World Government had basically started because Spandine's sense of justice was too strong. Unable to tolerate the World Government's filth and crimes, he defected, sought protection from the Marines, and exposed the World Government's darkness through public broadcasts, which set everything in motion.
Someone so righteous and brave, a living symbol of justice, serving as deputy judge in the trial of the Celestial Dragons' vile clan? Everyone thought it fit. There was no better choice.
Then the broadcast showed Doflamingo getting straight to work, reading name after name from the list in his hands. Each time he finished a name, Marine soldiers would haul the accused Celestial Dragon out of the prison like a dead dog and slam them down in front of the execution platform.
Two executioners stood ready, each holding a massive axe: one for beheading, the other for cutting them in half at the waist.
Yes, the punishment handed to the Celestial Dragons was deliberately brutal. After discussion from every side, many argued their crimes were beyond counting, and letting them die in a single stroke would be far too merciful.
So the executions were split into two stages. First came the waist-cut. Everyone knew what that meant: it wouldn't kill them instantly. It would drag them through unimaginable pain, letting them feel death closing in while terror and despair swallowed them whole.
Only after they'd been made to suffer long enough would the second stage begin: beheading.
In other words, one person, killed twice.
Even then, plenty of people claimed it still didn't come close to matching the evil the Celestial Dragons had inflicted. They wanted it "bigger," "more satisfying," calling for every method imaginable—skinning and stuffing, slow slicing, branding torture, ripping out hearts and lungs, and more.
And the frightening part was how many people agreed.
But in the end, the Marines' high command decided they couldn't go that far. This wasn't some private execution where anything went. This was a public broadcast, and if it became too grotesque, it would stain the Marines' image.
What would people think in the future? "Oh, the Marines? Those are the ones who love slow slicing and boiling people and tearing out organs"?
What kind of justice would that be?
So the top brass overruled the loudest voices. Killing each one twice was enough. There was no need to turn the broadcast into a bloodbath that would cheapen the very word "justice."
"Rosward Charlos!" Doflamingo called out another name.
At once, a man came dragging out, sobbing so hard he was practically choking, piss and shit running down his legs. He was limp as mud, and the Marines had to haul him by force and slam him onto the execution platform.
"You are guilty of genocide against sentient races. In your short thirteen years of life, you personally bullied one hundred and sixty-four people to death, and indirectly caused the deaths of one thousand six hundred and twenty…" Doflamingo read out the charges, excitement flashing in his eyes.
In truth, the crimes of these Celestial Dragons were all more or less the same. And the death tolls uncovered by investigations weren't exactly precise either. But they were never inflated. If anything, they were undercounts. By the time the long list finally ended, Doflamingo flicked his hand impatiently.
"Public judgment. Sentenced to death twice."
Spandine checked the record beside him, then announced crisply, "Death twice. Execute immediately!"
Rosward Charlos' screaming didn't matter. The first executioner swung once and cleaved him at the waist. Charlos howled, his upper body twisting and thrashing on the platform, even trying to crawl away.
It was useless. After they let him stew in agony long enough, right when he was about to go slack and run out of breath, the second executioner brought the axe down and lopped off his head.
...
"Next!" Doflamingo barked without pause. "Shepherd Jalmack!"
Another Celestial Dragon was dragged out. One look at Rosward Charlos' body, chopped into pieces, and Jalmack fainted on the spot.
The execution didn't stop for that. A Marine walked up with a bucket of ice water and dumped it over his head, forcing him awake so he could meet death with a clear mind.
This public trial and execution was set to run for more than a week. Reading charges one by one, then cutting them in half and taking their heads, took time. And there were a lot of Celestial Dragons. Without ten days, eight days at minimum, there was no way to get through them all.
While Doflamingo presided over what he called justice and revenge, Mary Geoise had far more going on than a single broadcast.
Tesoro strode through the Abode of the Gods in a hurry, dripping in gold and silver. Gemstone rings covered all ten fingers. Sunglasses, slicked-back hair, a Justice cloak over his shoulders, and not a second to spare.
Around him, Marines moved in and out nonstop, swarming like ants. A rough count put at least ten thousand Marines working inside the Abode of the Gods alone.
Ortoren had only brought fifty thousand elite troops to take Mary Geoise, but once it fell, reinforcements from Marine Headquarters arrived almost instantly. Now the number of Marines on Mary Geoise was enormous, and still climbing.
Tesoro stopped in front of a massive estate and pressed, "You still haven't finished clearing this place out?"
"Vice Admiral Tesoro, we're moving as fast as we can," a logistics Captain said, sweating through his uniform. "We'd basically wrapped up, but the detector found another cellar right as we were leaving. It's full of stored valuables. We're cataloging it now…"
As they spoke, the estate's plaque was clearly visible beside them.
Figarland.
It was obvious what the Navy was doing: a full-scale seizure across all of Mary Geoise. Not just the Celestial Dragons in the Abode of the Gods. Every noble on Mary Geoise was, one way or another, a diehard pillar of the World Government. One counted as one, all of them got stripped.
And the wealth they'd pulled together in just three days was already horrifying.
Shandora, the old City of Gold, had once provided Ortoren with staggering riches. And now there was Mary Geoise, the Holy Land that had hoarded the world's finest for more than eight hundred years. The fortune sitting here was beyond imagination.
You could say every leaf and blade of grass in the Abode of the Gods was "noble." In a Celestial Dragon's home, even something as trivial as the doormat at the door was a luxury item worth a fortune.
There were nineteen Celestial Dragon families on Mary Geoise. They started with the Figarland clan, and after three days they still hadn't finished. And even so, based on what Tesoro had in hand, this haul alone could fund the entire Navy for at least a year.
What kind of concept was that?
Tesoro could only think: no wonder. A group that had sucked up the world's wealth for eight hundred years would look like this. Forget all of Mary Geoise, he estimated that cleaning out the Abode of the Gods by itself could support the Navy at its current size for twenty-five years.
...
"Hello?" Tesoro answered, still in the middle of everything. It was Hina's Den Den Mushi.
"At this pace, it'll probably take half a year just to inventory all of Mary Geoise," Tesoro said. "Yes. Report it to the Admiral exactly like that."
"No, we can't. If we dump that much gold, antiques, and other high-value goods onto the market all at once, the world economy will collapse into chaos. This wealth can't be distributed quickly. It has to be centrally managed, new systems put in place, and then slowly digested…"
"Five years? No way. Fifty years still wouldn't be enough to digest all of it!"
While Tesoro was buried in seizures and ledgers, Lucci and Smoker were leading large Marine units through Mary Geoise's residential districts, sweeping street by street. If they saw someone, it didn't matter who they were or whether they'd been proven guilty. They were arrested first, sorted later.
Mary Geoise was under total martial law. The Navy intended to do a complete population audit.
First, seize assets and wipe out the families of criminals among the nobles and major merchants, the World Government's core loyalists. Then stabilize the ordinary residents.
And finally, free every remaining slave.
Within Pangaea Castle, inside the vast assembly hall originally built to host world conferences, Marine high command had gathered alongside several noble houses that had followed the army—great nobles who had been summoned long ago by Ortoren—as well as representatives of the Revolutionary Army.
The hall was deafening with noise. Voices overlapped from every direction as arguments and proposals flew back and forth.
Looking more closely, one could see Fleet Admiral Sengoku and Vice Admiral Garp, both of whom had been missing from the Holy Land for days, standing among the crowd and voicing their opinions as well. The Supreme Commander, however, was nowhere to be seen. He had all but withdrawn from the political stage by this point.
After Fleet Admiral Sengoku was successfully rescued, Ortoren, ever loyal, immediately stepped down from his temporary position as "Acting Admiral" and formally restored Sengoku to his original post as Fleet Admiral.
But after the battle at the Holy Land, anyone with eyes could tell that this had been an act of deference on Ortoren's part.
Once the current chaos settled, Ortoren's promotion to Fleet Admiral was practically a done deal.
"We can't uproot everyone in the West Blue in one sweep, but they need a hard warning."
"The West Blue is a sea dominated by the mafia. If we're establishing a new World Government, we absolutely can't allow that kind of system to continue. Otherwise, what justice are we even talking about?"
"The royal families and nobles of the West Blue nations have been suppressed and bled dry by the mafia for years, their authority trampled. This is the perfect opportunity. We should deploy troops using the New World garrison model to help these countries eliminate mafia influence, and at the same time establish a ruling order that benefits us."
"The West Blue isn't urgent. The East Blue is the real priority. Even though the Five Elders have publicly announced the World Government's unconditional surrender, resistance in the East Blue is still extremely stubborn. We need to clean out the entire upper echelon there."
"Exactly. More than six hundred years ago, the East Blue was completely brought under the World Government's control, top to bottom. For centuries, it's been their foundation. It has to be thoroughly purged, replacing the rulers and noble classes of every kingdom."
"Don't dress it up so nicely. Let's be honest—we haven't gotten our share of the meat yet, have we? So they're the ones we'll carve up."
Whether it was the East Blue or the West Blue made little difference to these victors. The North Blue and the New World were Benn-sama's power base, and no one dared touch them. As for the South Blue, it was woven through with the Revolutionary Army's vast network. With the Revolutionary Army already seated at the same table, it wouldn't look good to be too greedy and snatch food straight off someone else's plate.
And so, the nobles of the North Blue, the New World aristocracy, and the nobles elevated through military merit all turned their attention squarely toward the West Blue and the East Blue.
A purge—an all-out purge—was inevitable.
All disloyal nobles and ruling classes had to be wiped out and replaced with loyal nobles like themselves. Only then could they continue to serve Benn-sama properly.