"Yours was excellent!"
Ian replied without hesitation. "In my heart, yours sounded the best. The Dark Pill Organization, even though it's called Dark Pill, I saw the light in your heart. Even in darkness, you never forget the light!"
"Alright..."
Robin rolled her eyes. Even though she felt those words were nonsense, she didn't dwell on the name and looked at Ian with a sweet smile. "Then, dear, can you explain the thing with Ain now? Do you think my heart right now is filled with darkness or light?"
"Light! Light! Everyone has a bright future!"
Ian's eyelid twitched, and then his whole body shuddered. He immediately hugged Robin tightly, and before Robin, who was rolling her eyes, could speak, he said with a serious face, "Don't talk. Just kiss me!"
After the Endpoint incident ended, life on Ian's side instead became calm.
Although during this period the Marine Headquarters had kept portraying them in the newspapers as a group of villains who wanted to destroy the New World, until now, they still had not dispatched a large fleet to pursue them.
Of course, thinking about it, that made sense. After all, their current strength was not weak.
A guy who could defeat an Admiral, and a former Chief Instructor from the Marine Headquarters, these two alone were enough to make Marine Headquarters treat the matter carefully.
Moreover, there was also the Tyrant and a Logia Fruit user. Perhaps their overall strength still couldn't compare with that of a Yonko crew in the New World, but in some respects, they could already be considered a major power on the seas that couldn't be underestimated.
And saying it like this, actually, they hadn't done anything big. He just defeated two Warlords, married the Devil Child, almost destroyed the New World, and, as for researching history… whether it was a big thing or a small thing depended on how you saw it.
There were plenty of forces on the sea that researched the history, but as long as they didn't spread it or expand it, it wasn't considered anything unusual.
Therefore, if their strength were weak, Marine Headquarters might launch a Buster Call to wipe them out, but with their current strength, Marine Headquarters wouldn't easily start a war.
If they did… unless they sent three admirals, it would be impossible to erase them.
Although Ian and Instructor Zephyr had indeed made Marine Headquarters lose a lot of face, their current strength was enough for Marine Headquarters to treat them the same way they treated the Emperor of the Sea at New World.
And chances were that Marine Headquarters hadn't even discovered that they were hiding on the Ohara.
Who knew how long it would take before they found them?
According to Instructor Zephyr, Marine Headquarters couldn't possibly focus all their attention on one new force on the sea, nor could they mobilize most of their fleet just to search for one force.
For the Marines, the stability of the seas and the dignity of the World Government mattered more.
So, after resting for several days, Ian once again threw himself into training. The island happened to be in a period of infrastructure development, and many mountains and forests needed to be dealt with, so he trained while leveling mountains, clearing mountain after mountain and forest after forest.
Unfortunately, because of special reasons, Ain could not train temporarily, so only Ace, Enel, and Binz, three rough men, were accompanying him.
Of course, with Ace and Binz's current strength, at best, they could chop down trees.
If they were to try leveling mountains, by the time they finished, the Marines' Headquarters' fleet would already be at their doorstep.
As for Enel, his Devil Fruit abilities were actually useful for this sort of thing; one strike could clear a large area, and he could even blast apart mountains.
And perhaps because he had seen much more now, that guy was consciously tempering his body and compressing his powers, trying to imitate the technique Ian had used earlier, using his lightning to strengthen his body.
Actually, Enel already made a similar move: 200,000,000 V Amaru, he turned his entire body into lightning and raised the voltage to 200 million volts to enlarge his body into a lightning giant.
But that move relied on elementalization, using lightning to pressurize the body.
Ian, meanwhile, strengthened his physical body, so Enel wanted to strengthen himself through pure physique as well.
Unfortunately, while the idea was good, his body and Haki were far too weak; for now, he simply couldn't meet the requirements for physical enhancement.
But Ian didn't interrupt him.
Instructor Zephyr would teach him the basics, and the rest depended on Enel's own understanding.
As for Ace and Binz, Binz was the same as always.
Ace… perhaps the experiences of this period had ignited his passion for training.
Even though he wasn't strong enough to smash mountains, he still insisted on trying, severely slowing down Ohara's reconstruction.
In short, everyone had their own things to do.
Even Zephyr was busy. The recent ordeal had wiped out most of the wealth he had accumulated.
Especially his only marine warship, which he had personally destroyed as a final farewell to his former life in the Marines.
Now he only had a few ordinary large ships left. They could still be used, but compared to marine warships… these regular ships were miles apart.
And since he'd left the Marines, acquiring a warship from the Marines wasn't easy. Before, he could still use connections to obtain a few scrapped warships for modification, but now, who would dare sell him one?
Even his students in the logistics department couldn't pull strings for him now!
Especially since the rumor was that Marine Headquarters' anti-corruption purge had become huge recently, so big that it spread across the seas.
Many high-ranking marine officers had been imprisoned, so who would dare do such things?
But when Zephyr, Ain, and Binz first heard the news, they were confused.
Why was the Marines' Headquarters suddenly cracking down on corruption? In all these years, they had never seen such a thing!
Could corruption in the Marines really be so serious?
They had never heard of it!
But they only felt curious for a moment. Now that they had left the Marines, whatever happened there had nothing to do with them.
As for ships, Zephyr could only rely on himself. He planned to ask Gini whether he knew any good shipyards; he needed a few ships to get by.
115 more chapters on my Patreon/SweetestDeath