"I've never hidden my attitude toward pirates, Mr. Dorrag — you should be well aware of that."
Rorschach folded his fingers together in front of him and said in a casual tone.
"Indeed."
Dorrag nodded.
As a Revolutionary Army leader who paid close attention to Rorschach, of course he had learned all about Rorschach's deeds.
In fact, Sabo had even organized the Revolutionary Army's staff and specifically tallied up how many pirates Rorschach had arrested since joining the Navy and how many he had killed.
When they saw the final numbers they'd arrived at, everyone was shocked.
You don't know until you count, and once you count you're stunned.
Since Rorschach joined the North Blue branch up to now, the number of pirates who had died at his hands had exceeded an astonishing 55,000 people!
Among them, in the Prince Kingdom of the North Blue, he personally killed nearly four thousand pirates.
In the battle at Spring Queen City he alone wiped out almost ten thousand pirates.
And the most terrifying was the recent Great G1 Sea Battle, where with a single thunderous strike he slaughtered over forty thousand pirates on the spot.
Rorschach now was called the nemesis of pirates and a pirate killer by people all over the world.
In the eyes of pirates he was, after Fleet Admiral Akainu, the Navy's most ruthless and decisive great devil!
Vice Admiral Lanlin's name was the most widely and loudly spread throughout the North Blue and the Sabaody Archipelago.
In places like the Capital of Seven Waters, Spring Queen City, and the Saintting Island of Alabasta, whenever pirates saw a qilin statue standing at the harbor they would turn and leave without a word.
That led many kingdoms and cities in the Sabaody Archipelago to start erecting qilin statues.
This was done spontaneously by the people; no one forced them.
Because they believed the qilin divine beast could suppress the sea, eliminate evil, and intimidate pirates.
As for the pirates Rorschach had arrested alive, their number was pitifully small.
Fewer than a hundred.
Dorrag had his people look into the backgrounds of those men.
They belonged to the Dikarban Pirates, a filthy pirate crew roaming the Sabaody seas, freeloading wherever they went.
But aside from freeloading and, occasionally driven by envy, roughing up some unlucky kingdom nobles or restaurant owners, they had not committed mass murder of civilians or similarly horrendous crimes.
Perhaps precisely because of that, Rorschach spared them instead of slaughtering the Dikarban brothers on the spot.
Nowadays, almost every major organization across the globe regarded Rorschach as a hawkish rising star in Akainu's faction, believing that he upheld the same kind of absolute justice as Akainu.
But from Dorrag's understanding of Akainu, pirates like the Dikarban crew would be a dead word in his hands — they would be burned to ash by magma on the spot.
That man would send those two brothers straight to hell to freeload forever.
To this day, the outside world had never seen a pirate captured alive by Akainu's hands.
Even when exchanging for a bounty, he would bring back a head.
Akainu and Rorschach were both decisive killers, but the justice each practiced had some differences.
Or rather, Rorschach's justice wasn't as extreme as Akainu's.
Some large-scale slaughters were arrows loosed because they could not be held back.
War will bring death.
What surprised Dorrag was that Rorschach had once recruited several pirates into the Navy.
For example, four members of the Heart Pirates and the captain of the Giant Pirates.
All their pirate records had long since been turned over and examined by Dorrag's people.
The Heart Pirates' captain, Trafalgar Law, a Surgery Devil Fruit user and a survivor from the Frefans Kingdom, had once spent time under Doflamingo's command.
Later he formed his own pirate crew but didn't leave the North Blue; he stayed there for a long time working as a doctor.
Then, during the Prince Kingdom incident, for reasons unknown, he cooperated with Rorschach to resolve that incident and joined the Navy.
Now he had become a rear admiral at Navy Headquarters and was one of the rising stars of the new generation — called the Death Doctor.
From this it was clear that Rorschach did not completely reject all pirates.
He only targeted those pirates who did evil.
If some hadn't committed crimes and were capable of reform, he wasn't unwilling to give them a chance to live.
Thinking that, Dorrag changed the subject.
"What do you think about the great pirate era Roger ushered in?"
Rorschach turned his head and looked at Dorrag. "Mr. Dorrag, were you present when Roger was executed?"
"I was there. Not only me — many people, many of today's famous great pirates, were there then." Dorrag nodded.
"Then why do you think Roger insisted on creating this so-called great pirate era? Didn't he know doing so would bring greater chaos to the world?" Rorschach put his hands behind his head, his gaze landing on the flickering oil lamp.
"I've thought about that too." Dorrag said in a low voice. "I believe what Roger wanted to do was probably similar to me: to use that great treasure he spoke of to try and overturn the World Government's rule."
Rorschach shook his head when he heard that.
"Mr. Dorrag, you didn't hit the mark."
"Oh? Then what do you think?" Dorrag raised an eyebrow.
Rorschach sneered. "Roger did what he did simply to make the seas chaotic — to cover his true purpose by muddying the waters. Although his goal may have been the same as yours, to overturn the World Government, his intention from start to finish had only one thing: to wait for the so-called savior of fate to appear, someone who would train and emerge from the chaos of those seas, and then, with the help of some guardians he had already arranged, save this world."
"A savior? What savior?" Dorrag was stunned.
Rorschach studied Dorrag's face and found that his expression didn't seem fake.
Could it be that Dorrag really didn't know who Roger was waiting for?
No — with Dorrag's knowledge of this world, it was impossible for him not to have heard the legends of the Sun God Nika and the savior Joyboy.
After all, Bear (Dai Xiong) was one of the Bakaniya tribe who most revered the Sun God Nika.
As Bear's close friend and comrade, Dorrag not knowing Nika would be unlikely.
Or perhaps he knew of Nika and Joyboy's legends but didn't know that before Nika awakened, the Rubber Fruit was on his son?
Maybe Dorrag really didn't know that.
But Red-Haired Shanks certainly knew very well.
Otherwise, how could he have conveniently snatched the Rubber Fruit that Foxfoz was escorting, delivered it to Windmill Village in the East Blue, and placed it on the bar counter at the tavern?
It was almost as if he were directly saying he was waiting for a fated person to become that savior Roger was also waiting for.
Come to think of it, Ace seemed to have been in Windmill Village at the time, right?
Who knows, if Ace had been in that tavern and wanted to eat that Rubber Fruit, would Shanks have stopped him or let him eat it?
So sometimes Rorschach himself wasn't clear whether Roger and Shanks were waiting for the savior that meant the Rubber Fruit, or waiting for Luffy.
He felt the Rubber Fruit seemed a little more important.
"What are you thinking? Do you know who Roger was waiting for?" Dorrag's curious voice interrupted Rorschach's reverie.
"Of course — your son." Rorschach, still daydreaming, blurted it out instinctively.
"My son?" Dorrag's eyes widened. "You mean… Luffy?"
"Uh… yes. Your precious son, Monkey D. Luffy."
Rorschach scratched his head; now that he'd said it, he might as well lay his cards on the table.
Better to get Dorrag to bring Luffy into the Revolutionary Army.
If he was to be a savior, well, then why not inherit his father's cause and take over Dorrag's position as the new head of the Revolutionary Army?
That way Rorschach could avoid confronting Garp's precious grandson later.
After all, both Garp and Dorrag had done him a great favor; he didn't want it to affect his attitude toward pirates.
Seeing Dorrag's stunned face, Rorschach continued, "You've probably heard Bear tell you the legend of the Sun God Nika and the savior, right? The awakening of the Rubber Fruit on Luffy is the Zoan Mythical-type Devil Fruit of the Sun God Nika form. In other words, he is the savior Roger was waiting for — the much-anticipated Joyboy. Haven't you seen Luffy wearing Roger's straw hat? Shanks even lost an arm for him out in the East Blue — yes, it was bitten off by a sea king more than ten meters long."
Seeing Dorrag still dazed, Rorschach stood up, stretched lazily — his bones cracked and popped — picked up a jug of wine from the table and walked toward the stone house's wall.
"Mr. Dorrag, I've said what I had to say. If you don't want Luffy to be caught by me later and locked up in Impel Down, I suggest you capture him early and bring him into the Revolutionary Army to train properly. He has a lot of potential — after all, he's your son and Garp-old-man's grandson."
"If he insists on being a pirate and commits unforgivable crimes, I won't be merciful. If the Celestial Dragons and the World Government are the root of this world's chaos, then pirates are the spreaders of chaos. Whether they sail in the name of freedom or are ambitious rogues, they're uncontrolled factors of disorder."
"To a certain extent, what I want to do is similar to what you want. I don't want to end up on the opposite side from you in how we handle pirates in the future."
"Oh, by the way — I left some money in a hole on the cliff at Knock Up Stream; it's the 'sky gold' Gaji prepared for the World Government. Find some time to retrieve it — consider it a small contribution from me to your current cause.
Also, while you're working yourself to change other people's fates, don't be too hard on your own people; improve the rations a bit. Your Revolutionary Army's food is so bad, be careful the lower ranks don't quit and desert."
End of Chapter)
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