Clearly, compared to the fact that Ren had left a commemorative scar on Kaido, the first thing Charlotte Linlin noticed was the winged creatures that could fly.
An army had always been her pursuit.
Back then, in order to assemble the world's strongest giant mercenary army, she had wanted to marry one of her daughters to a prince of the Giants, while also mending the rift between herself and the Giant race.
But infuriatingly, that girl had dared to run away on her own, betraying the family.
Although she had tried to patch things up by substituting another sister in her place, the deception had still been exposed.
As a result, her relationship with the Giants had worsened, and she had lost any chance of obtaining Elbaf's powerful military strength.
Even so, Charlotte Linlin had never given up on her ambition, and within Totto Land she had built up a Homies legion.
But it still was not enough, far from enough.
She longed for an even more special, even more powerful army!
And so, those angels bearing twin wings entered BIG MOM's field of attention.
As for the Donquixote Family entrenched in Dressrosa, since they were in the New World, she knew a thing or two about them as well.
In terms of strength, their members were fairly capable—only a little weaker than the members of her own Homies legion.
However, the creatures that had appeared during the Dressrosa incident possessed power great enough to crush those officers, along with special weaponry.
And they could fly, which was an advantage all its own.
That made Charlotte Linlin want to learn more, to see whether they were the kind of army she wanted.
Faced with BIG MOM's order, the tall, sharp-faced middle-aged man in heavy makeup—
the Candy Minister of Totto Land, and the eldest son of the Charlotte Family, Charlotte Perospero—felt his scalp go numb.
He had no choice but to say in a roundabout way, "Pirates who've made a name for themselves like this aren't the obedient type.
And I heard Red-Haired Shanks is also very interested in this man—though the kind of interest he has is treating him as an enemy."
Generally speaking, those who received invitations to the tea party were either talents Mama had taken a liking to, or forces worth establishing ties with.
The strength of Demon Ren had now been verified in this incident, and it was obvious Mama was also interested in those winged creatures.
But... the Demon Pirates had a huge problem attached to them: Red-Haired Shanks!
Before Shanks responded to the matter, it had even made the front page once.
At the time, Mama had thought Red-Haired was simply too idle, bothering with some brat for no reason.
But now, that connection had to be taken seriously.
"Shanks, huh? The Four Emperors are rivals to begin with! Sooner or later, the four of us emperors are going to fight over the position of Pirate King!"
Charlotte Linlin let out a cold laugh, then said, "Send someone to make contact with this brat. Learn as much as possible about these winged creatures.
Then decide our next move based on how he responds."
"Understood, Mama."
Perospero let out a sigh of relief, because Mama saying that meant there was no need to send an invitation.
Their goal would be to investigate those winged creatures before Red-Haired Shanks killed Demon Ren, and then decide whether to seize them or buy them.
Meanwhile, in the waters of the New World,
Shanks silently looked at the newspaper in his hand.
"Captain, are we making a move?"
Beckman asked in a low voice.
"No. There's no need. Since I agreed to the three-year promise, there's no reason to break it."
Shanks examined the words on the newspaper, and his thoughts drifted back to his first meeting with Ren in the East Blue.
Although it had been revenge through sheer bullying of the weak by the strong, that guy had not retreated.
He had thrown everything he had into that punch against him, and only then used his Devil Fruit power to escape.
And now, in the revelations surrounding Dressrosa, he had boldly made a move against Kaido of all people—and still escaped unscathed.
His growth rate was astonishing, and his potential beyond imagination.
But more importantly, he had spirit.
That earlier threat, in a sense, had probably only been a means of survival.
Which meant his intelligence was not weak either.
The fundamental reason behind the three-year agreement was most likely that Ren believed he would be able to defeat him after that time.
But... Shanks did not believe he would lose.
Most importantly, he did not want to gamble with Yasopp's family, or the families of his other crewmates.
The Devil Fruit powers Ren had displayed were incredibly varied. No one knew whether he really did possess some sort of ability to find people.
"Just wait. A man like that will come to find me himself."
That was the judgment Shanks made.
"More importantly, we still need to keep an eye on what Blackbeard is doing."
In the New World, where the Whitebeard Pirates were stationed, aboard the enormous ship, Whitebeard lay silently in his chair basking in the sun.
His family on deck moved busily back and forth, making the place feel alive with activity.
The nurse beside him, who had been reading the newspaper aloud, stopped at just the right moment, having finished this round of reading.
"So another thorn has appeared in this world?"
Whitebeard cast a cool glance at the photo in the paper, then shook his head and stopped paying attention.
It was only giving Kaido that brat a little lesson. That alone was not enough to make him someone worth paying attention to.
"Captain, you should be on your IV drip."
"Not today."
"But your body—"
"I'm not at death's door yet. Bring me the booze!"
Whitebeard rose impatiently and took a barrel of alcohol from one of his men.
It was an ordinary barrel of liquor, but in his enormous hands it looked more like a cup.
Ignoring the nurse's attempts to stop him, he gulped it down fiercely.
The nearby crew members—or rather, family—didn't try to stop him, because they all knew their old man was in a terrible mood.
A whistling sound came from the sky.
Whitebeard paused mid-drink. Setting down the barrel, he saw blue flames.
Marco, with his pineapple-like head, emerged from the flames, his expression far from pleasant.
"..."
Whitebeard said in a deep voice, "No news?"
"Ace is still pursuing him, and he's stopped answering the Den Den Mushi... but we can still track reports of his whereabouts."
Marco frowned in worry. "Are we really going to let Ace keep chasing that bastard Blackbeard?
That guy lay low for who knows how many years. Hardly anyone understands his true strength, and now he's gotten a Devil Fruit too..."
"Let him go... Ace won't come back unless he kills Blackbeard."
Whitebeard closed his eyes, tossed aside the empty barrel, and grabbed another one.
The nurses wanted to stop him, but Marco held them back.
"Let it be for today."
Marco shook his head as he watched his old man drink himself gradually into a stupor.
He knew what had happened earlier had hit his old man hard.
They were supposed to be one family, yet over a single Devil Fruit, one of them had ended up poisoning and murdering another.
Blackbeard... what in the world were you thinking? If you wanted that fruit, why didn't you just talk to Thatch?
We were all one family. If you'd talked, there would've been a chance. But instead, you killed Thatch outright...
Marco's own mood sank with the thought.
He truly could not imagine that Teach—the man who had always seemed the gentlest and least ambitious in the crew—would do something like this.
At that moment, one of the Whitebeard Pirates' commanders came over.
It wasn't because of any major incident. Rather, he wanted Marco to handle some affairs in place of the captain.
As one of the Four Emperors' forces in the New World, the Whitebeard Pirates occupied nearly half the islands in the New World.
Including all affiliated fleets, they had close to fifty thousand men.
Every day, all kinds of things happened.
And because they all belonged to one great family, many matters had to be decided by the "parent."
But in his current state, their old man obviously couldn't work.
So Marco had to step in.
Unexpectedly, however, what Marco needed to deal with this time was not an internal matter of the crew.
Instead—
"A deal from the Revolutionary Army? A way to restore Whitebeard to his prime?"
Marco frowned, unable to make sense of the message that had been passed along through their channels by the Revolutionary Army.
His old man was known as the strongest man in the world, possessing terrifying power said to be able to destroy the world.
That was common knowledge across the globe.
So what exactly did the Revolutionary Army mean by sending such a proposal?
"Reject them. Tell them to get lost!"
Considering the Revolutionary Army's scale and influence, Marco's method wasn't excessively rude.
Once he gave that order, the Revolutionary Army officer waiting on one of Whitebeard's territories was driven away.
Compared to the reactions of the Four Emperors, Marine Headquarters had already begun a meeting.
Admiral Kizaru, who had returned, sat in one corner of the conference room, with a pair of nail clippers lying on the table in front of him.
In theory, he ought to have been leisurely trimming his nails.
But... Sengoku's dark expression clearly wasn't going to give him that chance.
"So what you're saying is, because of some inexplicable method like that, you failed and came back?"
"I didn't want that either, but... that's just what happened."
"...Kizaru, are you joking with me?! With Haki at your level, you could still be affected by a Devil Fruit ability?"
The corner of Sengoku's eye twitched as he slammed a palm onto the conference table.
"No, this time I didn't feel myself being affected at all. That situation happened very abruptly.
That brat was more troublesome than expected. But I did handle the other matters properly."
Kizaru scratched his head, not quite sure how to describe it.
He had been using Haki the entire time while fighting Kaido, but in that moment, there had truly been no way to counter it.
It wasn't that Haki could not negate the effects of a Devil Fruit ability.
It was that he had not sensed himself being affected at all.
There had only been a faint sense of something being off, and given the circumstances at the time...
All he could say was,
either that brat's Devil Fruit powers had gone beyond even Awakening,
and the activation was so covert that his Haki had failed to counter it—
or it simply wasn't a Devil Fruit power at all, but something else entirely.
Yet with Borsalino's experience, even he could not determine what exactly had caused it.
"That's enough."
Tsuru spoke at just the right time, stopping Sengoku from pressing the matter further. "There are already too many strange things happening around Ren.
Under those circumstances, something like this appearing is not all that unbelievable. After all, his Devil Fruit powers have already displayed multiple abilities across different directions.
And in this Dressrosa incident, new abilities were exposed again, along with all sorts of other issues.
Among Demon Ren's Devil Fruit powers, the aspect related to natural disasters has clearly grown to a much greater scale than before.
At first, it could cover at most a single island. Then it began affecting the seas around an island. And now, it has become thunderclouds covering a range of several hundred kilometers.
Clearly, this man is still growing at high speed—faster even than I predicted."