More than a month had passed in the blink of an eye. On Island 45 of the Sabaody Archipelago, the seashore was imbued with an air of farewell. Sephiroth, clad in his black leather jacket, bid goodbye to the three Boa sisters with a warm embrace. Beside him, ten suitcases and twenty weapon crates stood ready. Through a narrow alley, he helped the Kuja Pirates carry the goods onto the Perfume Yuda, their ship.
In each crate, one hundred million Beli in banknotes were stacked, amounting to a total of one billion Beli. The Amazon Lily Kingdom was a nation heavily reliant on plunder and bounty rewards to meet their resource needs. Though Sephiroth was now immensely wealthy, he knew he couldn't continuously provide unconditional supplies to the Amazon Lily Kingdom. That would be too much of a burden on him and, more importantly, would significantly drag down the performance of the Umbrella Corporation!
Besides, he wanted to help the Amazon Lily Kingdom make changes in their lifestyle. However, he realized, who was he? What qualifications did he have to negotiate with them? Boa Hancock currently hadn't yet attained the rank of empress. Therefore, he could only occasionally contribute his best.
"See you! Sephiroth~!" Boa Hancock lay against the edge of the boat, the wooden railing supporting her body further accentuating the seductive curve of her chest. She waved towards the silver-haired youth who was walking back to the shore.
"Goodbye!" Sephiroth smiled and waved back, watching the Perfume Yuda gradually sail away from the shore and disappear on the horizon.
Good heavens! Hancock's charm is truly growing by the day! Sephiroth murmured to himself. I didn't dare give her a Vampire Bat for fear that I'd be engrossed with her every day, causing my decadent swordsmanship and Haki training to halt, and my strength to stagnate. "Lust" is a steel blade that erodes bones, and Sephiroth thought so deeply... It was a pity that he couldn't stop in this life!
After a while, he turned and glanced at Shakky beside him. He complained with a helpless tone, "Tell me. You, the captain of this pirate group, didn't actually get on the ship. Is this really okay?"
Hearing this, Shakky smiled, pulled a cigarette from her trouser pocket, lit one for herself, and said calmly, "It should be fine, shouldn't it? After this period of training, the three sisters have become very reliable in terms of strength. As long as they don't mess with people like Monkey D. Garp, I don't think there's anything wrong with them in the first half of the Grand Line. Boa Hancock is now acting as the captain of the Kuja Pirates after all, and she always needs a chance to prove herself, right?"
Regarding that, Sephiroth didn't refute it. He was also very clear about the increase in the three Boa sisters' strength. After Rayleigh's training during this period, not to mention the terrifying abilities of the Mero Mero no Mi, Hancock, like him, had mastered the release skill of Conqueror's Haki. She had already mastered all three types of Haki, and the rest could only be improved through continuous hard training. Improvements were continuously being made, and Rayleigh also used this as a reason to announce that Sephiroth had successfully completed his training.
Boa Sandersonia had mastered two types of Haki. Her Armament Haki flow was extremely deadly. Meanwhile, the Sube Sube no Mi fruit gave her the ability to ignore damage from bullets and swords that didn't have Haki imbued. Coupled with the Kami-e she had recently mastered, this extreme evasion technique would make her glide even if it was an attack that usually wrapped Haki. It would be difficult to hurt her directly.
As for Boa Marigold.
The existence of the Goro Goro no Mi gave her Observation Haki an incredibly wide range of coverage, with extremely high-speed movement in her elemental state, and coupled with the terrifying lethality of thunder and lightning, she had now become the most powerful among the three sisters. The strongest existence! Even if she encountered some elite Vice Admirals from Marine Headquarters, she had the power to fight!
Of course, if a weaker Vice Admiral met Hancock, he wouldn't even need to think about it, and he would be instantly turned to stone by the girl! Rayleigh once told Sephiroth privately that if he himself was unarmed and didn't wrap his body in Haki, he would also have the possibility of being killed in an instant by Hancock's power. Regarding this, Sephiroth, who was also a "weakling," expressed tremendous understanding, that all this time, he hadn't put up any resistance to Hancock—which might explain why he was still alive.
Only after bidding farewell to the three Boa sisters did Sephiroth use the Spatial Door and return to the Sabaody Marine Base to resume his "9 to 5" work routine.
During this recent time, he had already tried to assign his Bat Doppelganger to help him start working, while he himself was in the basement of a newly purchased villa, conducting research on lineage factors.
Still, what gave him some headaches was that the Bat Doppelganger was under the influence of the Vampire Bat's bestiality, and if he didn't divert attention from manipulating it, it would subconsciously hide in dark corners or engage in instinctive hunting and predation, while its prey would be the Marine soldiers at the base. On several occasions, when Sephiroth was too focused on the study of lineage factors, the bat clone was ready to hunt Marine soldiers and suck human blood. If he hadn't found something wrong with the clone's emotional changes in time, he would have stopped it. He might have been charged with killing his comrades by the Marines!
Sabaody Archipelago, Marine Headquarters, in an office.
Sephiroth leaned back in his office chair, crossing his legs, and with both hands, he picked up the documents on his desk and casually flipped through them. From time to time, he would sign and confirm, or provide appropriate solutions. For this kind of daily task, he usually spent one to two hours a day, and he could finish everything. For the rest of his working time, he would exercise in the gym or return to the villa's basement and conduct research.
Dong-dong-dong!
Outside the closed door, there was a knock, and Sephiroth, without raising his head, shouted, "Come in!"
"Report! Colonel Sephiroth, Brigadier General Kesha has something to discuss with you, and he asks you to make a trip to his office."
Frank, standing at attention, saluted Sephiroth, and as he looked at the former, his eyes were filled with a touch of fear and unease. Some time ago, because he didn't knock, he entered Sephiroth's office. Before he could react, he was knocked down by Sephiroth and pressed to the ground. The other party first opened his mouth, revealing his blood-sucking fangs, roaring viciously at him like a wild beast, and warned, "I hate impolite men! Next time, if you dare to enter without knocking, I'll let you know what pain is."
Since that incident, the soldiers of the Special Unit, when they met Sephiroth, were much more respectful and polite in their demeanor. In fact, what those Marine soldiers didn't know was that on that occasion, it was purely the Bat Doppelganger losing control and instinctively wanting to hunt. Had it not been for Sephiroth's timely reaction, Frank would have certainly died with all his blood sucked out!
"Okay, I know!" Sephiroth waved, signaling that Frank could leave, and Frank, as he left, carefully closed the office door.
After quickly approving the documents in his hand, Sephiroth rose and left his office, went up to the fifth floor, and knocked on Kesha's office door.
Dong-dong-dong!
"Come in!"
Brigadier General Kesha, who was in his office chair, responded, adding only after seeing that it was Sephiroth who had walked in, "Close the door."
Hearing this, Sephiroth said nothing and closed the office door with the back of his hand. After he sat down, Kesha laughed and took a cigar from a box and handed it to him.
"Sephiroth, have you encountered any difficulties in your work recently?"
"Uh!? Well... some small twists and turns, but they were all resolved by me."
"That's fine!... That's good!"
Brigadier General Kesha then got straight to the point after the two politely inserted some routine, unnutritious small talk.
"I hear that two of your special operations force warships seem to be badly damaged? Would you like me to replace you with two new warships?"
"New warships..." Hearing this, Sephiroth raised his eyebrows slightly, and he slowly lowered the cigar he held in his mouth. He remembered very clearly that his special operations department's two medium-sized warships had just been launched less than two months ago, and he usually didn't use them many times, so both warships were still 90% new, and they were damaged or something, even more nonsense!
Conventional Marine warships come in three types: small, medium, and large. Their costs vary. Due to the need to install expensive Seastone into the hull, the cost of a medium-sized warship is as high as more than 300 million Beli.
Sephiroth thought about it, and he understood what calculations Brigadier General Kesha was playing! Falsely reporting losses, moving things left and right, and manipulating the world! The other party was probably colluding with other corrupt Marine Generals to conduct warship exchanges, fabricating something out of nothing and falsifying data, thereby embezzling money used to make warships!
Public money, better earnings.
As long as you have enough false data and then pretend to be good, you can trick them and make a lot of money easily!
And "replacing warships" was just one of the punishable tricks.
"Yes! I just ordered myself three new warships, and what's the relationship between the two of us? There's never a good thing I'd forget about you. Right?"
Sephiroth, who had figured everything out, immediately burst out laughing, "Hahaha! Then I'll thank you first! It's truly a blessing to have such a good boss like Brigadier General Kesha who cares about his subordinates!"
"That's it! That's it! Hahaha!"
In this manner, the two of them exchanged remarks. Through various discussions, both reached an agreement to embezzle public funds! People who didn't know would think they were just having a regular work conversation.
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