Arceus's Pirate Journey

Chapter 770: Chapter 769: Queen’s Moment of Decision

He never expected that one day Who’s-Who would defect, and do so completely, using him up entirely.

Not bothering to remember past ties, he was treated as a stepping stone for promotion.

If he put himself in Who’s-Who’s shoes, he would do the same, but when it was him who ended up unlucky, he couldn’t accept it.

”Is that so? Well, that’s really troublesome.”

Though saying it was troublesome, Tesoro still clapped his hands, and behind him appeared a golden statue, with flowing patterns on its body.

”Golden Divine Fire!”

Tesoro used Haki as an energy source, transmitted through the special patterns inside the golden statue, to generate high-temperature, high-density energy that rapidly expanded, eventually evolving into a laser attack, burning everything below Knight’s head to ash.

He couldn’t let Knight die without a trace; what he needed was for Knight to quietly perish here, but the people behind him needed to know what happened, otherwise, it wouldn’t serve as a deterrent.

”That should be dead enough now, even if it’s a Logia-type, they can’t survive if only a head is left.”

That very evening, Morgans’ newspaper published a news piece about a tourist who accidentally fell into the water while drunk and was unfortunately swallowed by a Sea Beast. When the rescue team found him, they only saw the remains of his face.

The Grand Tesoro expressed its apologies and stated it would strengthen the ship’s patrol work in the future, while also reminding other tourists not to overindulge to prevent tragedies.

The news spread widely, and the Heavenly Celestial Dragon instructing Knight understood what Tesoro was doing. This act of establishing authority displeased them, but on the contrary, the other two Heavenly Celestial Dragon families had no reaction.

They even jointly suppressed the subsequent actions of this family, openly protecting Tesoro’s behavior, since Tesoro brought them significant profits every year.

Outsiders trying to meddle with their affairs was already displeasing to them; they just lacked evidence and a reason to intervene. Now, it gave them an opportunity to exert force.

The Heavenly Celestial Dragon weren’t entirely united, as various conflicts often arose due to interests and preferences. As long as it didn’t harm the overall interests, the higher-ups wouldn’t intervene, but those matters were unrelated to Tesoro.

...

Although there were some minor mishaps, Who’s-Who’s abilities were further recognized later on. During the time at the Grand Tesoro, he caught quite a few problematic individuals; his previous undercover and counter-intelligence were not in vain.

At the same time, he learned another principle: you can’t rely too much on your own young lady, or rather, not completely trust her.

Once she set a new goal, she indeed strived to achieve it, but the process could be quite complicated, and sometimes she might do some unnecessary things.

For example, at the Grand Tesoro, no matter how you looked at it, she was just playing around.

More than that, he couldn’t even understand the mindset of the Hundred Beasts Officials. At this time, he held a small notebook in his hand, recording some of Yamato’s discussions with the officials before she left Ghost Island.

Torture them severely until they can’t take it anymore, then they will naturally speak. This was King’s suggestion. In his view, as long as the torture was harsh enough, someone would eventually confess, but such confessions often came from coercion.

However, what puzzled Who’s-Who was that King’s method was of a relatively ”gentle” type.

Suspicious individuals should be directly killed, this was Queen’s suggestion. He spared no effort in maintaining the security of the pirate crew.

As for Shaina, the seemingly gentle person gave an even more violent outcome than King. In her view, this kind of attempt to infiltrate was utterly disrespectful, especially for the followers of Arceus, where a special scrutiny was present.

Genuine followers weren’t an issue, but fake followers might find themselves burned to ashes.

After reviewing those suggestions, Who’s-Who felt it was a miracle that he’d come this far. There seemed to be quite a lot of abnormal individuals in this pirate crew.

With Yamato’s adventure vacation and his test journey nearly over, before leaving, he saw one of Yamato’s accomplishments.

She had taught a parrot how to speak, but it only learned one sentence.

”Help, I’ve been turned into a parrot.”

Listening to the parrot’s slightly panicked tone, he didn’t know how to evaluate this behavior.

Yamato had only set out with him for the test; after that, everything was entirely left to him. She had already returned to Ghost Island ahead of time, while Who’s-Who was painstakingly investigating whether anything was amiss on the peripheral islands, Queen was facing a very difficult decision.

...

”Is the information confirmed?”

”Confirmed, Brother Queen. Your banana plantation seems to have encountered a problem, with quite a few banana trees already infected.”

”Burn the infected ones and the surrounding banana trees.”

”They’ve already done that, but it didn’t work. In a few days, the nearby bananas will still become infected, and the infected banana trees will completely wither in a few days... They have already sent the samples for you to review.”

As he said this, a subordinate handed Queen a special small box, containing samples of the diseased banana trees.

This was the major trouble Queen was currently facing, his banana plantation was having issues.

Though after moving to Wano Kuni his orchard was relocated, Wano Kuni’s terrain was limited, not all of it could be given to him for fruit cultivation.

On the limited land, there were a large number of Berries and valuable medicinal herbs that needed to be cultivated, so Queen’s private plantation occupied only a small part.

To meet external sales and internal supply demands, the Hundred Beasts had numerous plantations outside, among which this banana plantation was the one Queen valued most.

After all these years, the cultivation technology there had long matured, and he didn’t need to worry about it usually, yet unexpectedly, an accident occurred today.

Queen brought the sample into his laboratory, and after some analysis, still found nothing wrong.

He even enlisted Nightin to help analyze, but still obtained no results. There was nothing wrong with the samples, only traces of something that had once existed.

”No, still no results. The cells inside these plant bodies have been destroyed by something, but no information was left behind.”

Setting down the equipment in his hands, Nightin gave his final conclusion.

”Could it be they naturally died during the long transportation process?”

”It’s not impossible, but if that’s the case... only by going to the island itself can we understand what happened.”

”It doesn’t feel right, I feel like this is a conspiracy...”

Queen had an ominous premonition, the more he thought about it, the more it seemed like a situation intended to lure him out.