Chapter 169: You Can't Leave, You Have to Rule Us!
"Marine Admiral... Zephyr..."
"Just pretend you never saw me. If worse comes to worst, you can pretend I was Nereus in disguise."
Leaving this sentence behind, Zephyr ignored the Neptune Army soldiers in the royal palace and used Geppo (Moonwalk) to leave the area.
Nereus's disguise ability had never been publicly displayed. Zephyr was just saying it casually, but to the ears of these personal guards, it carried another layer of meaning.
"Was that His Majesty in disguise? Could it be... His Majesty wants to frame the Marines for this?"
"Impossible. This is a national war, not an assassination. Why would His Majesty impersonate someone else at a time like this? Maybe I saw wrong, and that was just some... Zephyr look-alike monster.
"Forget about him. I'll go report this to His Majesty; the rest of you split up and secure the entire royal palace!"
The personal guards executed their missions as planned. Meanwhile, Nereus also received their report: a mysterious powerhouse suspected to be Zephyr had beaten them to the punch and attacked Chaplin.
"Zephyr, you finally couldn't hold back, could you? It seems the Doel Kingdom was enough of a handful of salt on the wound."
Eliminating a high-ranking Marine combatant was inherently troublesome, but simply making Zephyr leave the Marines wasn't particularly difficult.
If Nereus didn't interfere with those pirates and let them kill Zephyr's wife and child like in the original timeline, it would force Zephyr to step down from the front lines.
If he then found a powerful individual to kill Zephyr's students and sever his arm while he was an instructor, and finally had the World Government draft that pirate as a Warlord of the Sea, Zephyr would highly likely be pushed to the other extreme.
But that radicalized Zephyr could only be considered a ticking time bomb.
The New World wasn't just inhabited by pirates, but also a massive number of civilians and quite a few Marine branches.
Zephyr's ultimate plan would be to blow them all to the sky. Nereus didn't want that kind of extremist fanatic.
Slowly peeling back the truth layer by layer, exposing the bloody reality right before Zephyr's eyes—this was the true objective. And judging by the current situation, the results were quite good.
The soldiers currently fighting were the cream of the crop of the Neptune Army. Having a basic mastery of Haki could be considered their minimum requirement.
In an environment like the Four Blues, these eight hundred men swept through like there was no one to stop them, rapidly crushing the defensive lines formed by the Doel Kingdom's royal army.
With the news of Chaplin's death and the freed slaves taking up arms to join the battlefield, the scales of victory had long since indicated the winner.
Accurately speaking, before this war even began, the scales had already tipped.
This so-called national war lasted less than an hour before it was declared over.
And Zephyr had also returned to the sky near his warship.
"You certainly did quite a few things under my name."
"I have no idea what you're talking about. I was merely executing the World Government's order to mediate the war."
"Right, right. Now it's time for you all to make your entrance. Eight hundred men is enough to destroy the higher-ups of this kingdom, but as for subduing the entire royal army, I'll leave that to your Marines."
Nereus naturally had his own methods, but they were rather simple and crude. A single sweep of Conqueror's Haki could knock the entire country out cold.
But this method only treated the symptoms, not the root cause. He would either have to arrest them all or kill them all; otherwise, he'd just have to deal with them again when they woke up.
That method was handy for annihilation operations, but not suitable for post-war governance. With so many Marines here, it would be a waste not to utilize their labor.
Zephyr's "no killing" principle left massive hidden dangers when dealing with pirates, but in times like this, it was actually very useful. The soldiers trained by Zephyr were most adept at handling this kind of "public security issue."
With the Marines' intervention, the war-torn Doel Kingdom quickly returned to peace.
As for the vast majority of ordinary citizens—the commoners below the nobles but above the slaves, or rather, the "slave reserves" who could be reduced to slavery at any moment for any reason—they actually didn't feel much regarding this national war.
The war ended far too quickly. From the alarm sounding at the sight of the Ryugu Kingdom's ships to the announcement of Chaplin's death, barely an hour had passed in total.
And regarding the future, they were equally numb.
Chaplin's ascension wasn't a traditional inheritance; he had also seized the throne through war.
For the newly risen noble class, Chaplin's ascension brought them massive benefits. But for these ordinary people, their lives in the kingdom hadn't changed.
Slavery still existed, even harsher than before; it was just a different ruler sitting on the throne.
This was the customary tradition on the sea: a change in management, but the same old practices. What a kingdom would become was usually decided solely by the person sitting on the throne.
Right now, the original royal army was disbanded, and those newly freed slaves didn't know where to go.
A portion of the bolder ones had already taken advantage of the chaos to rush to the coast, wanting to board ships and sail away, escaping the trouble-filled Doel Kingdom.
But a significant number of the old and weak remained, looking in Nereus's direction.
Obviously, Nereus was the leader of the enemy army. Now that the enemy had not only won but also had the assistance of the Marines, this man should rightfully be the new master of the Doel Kingdom.
This master's orders would undoubtedly decide their future.
At this moment, they didn't appear too panicked. No matter who the King was, it wouldn't affect their continued existence—it was merely a question of how severely they would be exploited.
However, upon seeing that Nereus wanted to leave without sending anyone to take over the country, they actually panicked.
"T-This Lord! Where are you going?"
"Back to my own country, of course. I only came here because of the King of this nation. Now that the chief evil has been eliminated, there is naturally no need for me to stay."
"B-But... if you don't rule here, who will rule here..."
"What? Do you really want me to stay?"
According to the negotiations between the World Government and Nereus, they didn't care if Nereus killed Chaplin and destroyed the original royal family.
But if Nereus were to directly annex this place, it would be inappropriate. After all, both were member nations. They couldn't just watch one nation swallow another; it would be impossible to justify to the outside world.
However, if the people of this country proactively requested Nereus to stay and help them, then it wouldn't matter.
Helping a new regime quickly restore its national system was perfectly acceptable.
The original noble class had no right to speak, and among these commoners, there were quite a few slaves. They naturally hoped he would stay, especially since many Neptune Army soldiers had participated in liberating them.
In the eyes of these people, no matter how Nereus's people ruled this place in the future, it would be better than letting those original slave owners rule.
After all, if an escaped slave fell back into the hands of a slave owner, the outcome was easy to imagine...
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