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CHAPTER 26

Alexander was in a bittersweet mood at this moment. The pain of losing his family was enough to suffocate the relief that revenge brought. Just then, Kreegan approached him and put his hand on his shoulder as if he had read his mind.

"I lost my family to pirates plundering, so I can imagine the endless abyss and the relentless hatred inside you. Now that you have accomplished your vengeance, has the fire of hate in you subsided a little?"

"I was momentarily happy when I took the life of Battler with my own hands, but then when I remembered they weren't coming back, the fire came back with it."

"What are you going to do now?"

"I don't know what to do, but I could explore East Blue after I drop you off at your shitty boat."

" I think we made a good team. Do you want to join me in the hunt to eradicate all pirates and bandits? My dream is to make these vast seas safe. I want the hearts of pirates to be filled with terror, not innocent people while sailing on these seas. Gol D. Roger started the pirate era, and I want to start the pirate hunting era. If we can show that pirates are not invincible, many like us will begin to walk in our footsteps."

What Kreegan said made sense to him, too.

"What you say is good, but how are we going to do it by ourselves? Even if we are the strongest in East Blue, you cannot do what you say. If I believe what my father told me when I was little. There are people who live in the Grand Line who can pierce mountains with one punch or change the climate of an island. What can we do alone against these types of people?"

"Yes, even if we could be as strong as them, that's impossible with a handful of men, but if we enter the belly of the beast and try to change or destroy it from the inside, then what happens?"

Alexander thought about it a bit, and it dawned on him.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Are you talking about joining the Marines? I am arrogant, but even I would never think I could change the World government."

"Who said anything about World Government? Do we need World Government to change the world? No, of course not. We need justice to change the world. We need law and order. Marines might have justice written on their back, but most of them don't have justice in their heart. They carry justice like a weight on their shoulder. As long as there are people above justice, Marines cannot be justice. They can only be attack dogs."

Kreegan looked Alexander in the eyes and continued in a steady voice.

"The fact that I want to end the era of piracy is due to the loss of my family, but my real dream is to transform all Marines into people who believe in justice and carry it in their hearts like my father, and this is only possible by joining them. The people should never serve their government; the government should serve the people. In this world, people are afraid of World Government; it should be the other way around, and don't get me started about the Celestial Snakes. We should obey them and pay tribute to them because their ancestors did something good 800 years ago. Do you know they can kill and enslave anyone they wanted to, and nobody would stand up to them."

Alexander knew only a small part of what Kreegan was telling. If even half of what he said was true, what kind of crazy world did they live in? His anger grew as Alexander listened, and Kreegan's words began making more sense.

"Don't you live in East Blue as we do? How do you know all of this?"

"As I said before, my father was a marine, and he would talk about the things he was angry with when he was drunk. Some of it I heard from him, and most of it from people who come back from Grand Line."

"Let's say I joined you; what is your plan? Are we going to go and join the Marines in Logue Town?"

"No, signing up for the Marines would take too long for us to get into any high rank. So, we are going to use the special recruitment rule Marines have. First, we have to conquer East Blue and get as much renown in the Grand Line as possible, but while doing this, we cannot go against World Government. When we got famous, they would invite us themselves, or we could just hint to them we wanted to join. Then, depending on our renown, we could get a rank equal to or higher than a captain."

The more Kreegan talked, the more convinced Alexander became, and he finally decided to join him. At that moment, Kreegan heard a ding sound and looked into his system. The shop had an update, and two new items were added. One was the bag of holding, and the other was the item box. The bag of holding had three cubic meters of space, but the price was impossible for Kreegan at the moment because he needed Sea King leather.

It required 3 square meters of leather and 100 million bellies. The item box only required 100 million bellies, but it was only 1 square meter. Both had pros and cons: only Kreegan could use the item box, and anything put in it could not be stolen. On the other hand, a bag of holding could be used by everyone, and the downside was that there was no safeguard against theft. Anyone who opened its mouth could take the contents.

Hunting a Sea King was a dream for now because the weakest Sea King he ever saw was a Level 4 being. It was the Lord of the Coast offshore of Foosha Village, and we are not even counting that they had to fight it in the middle of the ocean, and even though Lord of the Coast is one of the smallest Sea King, it is still a huge beast. Kreegan at least needs to be Level 4 to even think about fighting it, and even then, he might not be able to beat it.