Chapter 290: The Navy and the Yonkō
Ryū didn't pick the event world himself this time—there was no guarantee everyone would be happy with his choice, so it made more sense to just screenshot the pop-up and drop it in the chat, letting the members vote on it themselves.
After grabbing two screenshots, Ryū pulled up the full notification, scanned it over on the chat interface, then posted both images straight into the Dimensional Chat Group.
RawrSoFierce: [Image], [Image]. New group event's up—the New Year's Grand Carnival. Anyone who's free is welcome to join. Not joining won't cause any problems, but I'd recommend coming along if you can.
RawrSoFierce: Because once you participate, you get a grand event gift box. If you're lucky, you might pull something really good.
RawrSoFierce: Also, there are three candidate worlds for this one—you all decide amongst yourselves which one to go to. Whichever world gets the most votes, that's where we're headed in two days.
Crazy Diamond: A group event? New Year's, huh! Isn't that basically Japan's New Year's celebration?
Crazy Diamond: I'm in—free gift box, no reason to pass that up. Last time I pulled a 6-star Stand, feeling good about that one. Curious what'll drop this time.
Eternally Seventeen: Yaraya~ a group event? In two days? Sounds like I get another two days off, then.
Edward Newgate: Gurararara! One of the event worlds is old Whitebeard's own world! If you're all coming my way, I'd better start getting things ready in advance!
Senbei Is So Tasty: Why would you be the one getting things ready? We're the Navy—we can prepare our own end just fine.
Edward Newgate: Gurararara, Sengoku old boy, your Navy's budget is already stretched thin as it is. You sure you've got spare coin lying around for this?
Senbei Is So Tasty: Ahem...budget's not a problem. We'll just go rob a few big-name pirates and call it funded!
Little Sphere: Huh, looks like one of the options is my world too? The Wandering Earth... um, I'd honestly recommend nobody come visit my place. There's basically nothing left on me that's edible.
Little Sphere: Anyway, I'm voting One Piece!
[...]
Little Sphere wasn't wrong, honestly. Its world—or rather, its own body—really didn't have anything fun or edible to offer.
Nothing but dirt, ice, and rock, as far as the eye could see. That was about it.
As for the humans still living on it? They could barely keep themselves alive, let alone maintain any kind of entertainment infrastructure.
Ryū understood this well enough himself—he'd read The Wandering Earth, both the original novel and the film adaptation. He knew perfectly well that Little Sphere's surface was, essentially, the middle of nowhere.
Not the nicest thing to say, maybe, but it was simply the truth.
Ryū went ahead and started a group poll, letting the members vote just like they had for the Mid-Autumn Festival get-together—whichever world got the most votes would be the one they used for the event.
RawrSoFierce: Setting up a group poll—whichever world gets the highest support, that's where we go.
RawrSoFierce: Feels a bit fairer this way. Give me like ten, fifteen seconds.
Eternally Seventeen: @RawrSoFierce, hold on, Admin-sama—which group member's world is Jackie Chan Adventures supposed to be? I don't remember it ringing a bell at all. Am I misremembering something?
Kaguya-sama: That world doesn't have any connection to the chat group at all, does it?
RawrSoFierce: It's still a legitimate anime-adjacent world, I guess—decent-enough power system, plenty of magical items and weapons in it.
RawrSoFierce: But yeah, like Kaguya said, that world currently has zero ties to this chat group. Nobody in here is actually from there.
Eternally Seventeen: Ah, I see—here I was thinking it was some member's home world. No wonder it sounded so unfamiliar. I really thought my memory was going.
My True Form Is Cola: Wait, isn't Yukari-senpai's brain supposed to be practically a supercomputer? Even you get memory glitches?
Eternally Seventeen: Well...I've been really into meditation lately, and my brain's been feeling a bit sluggish because of it.
[...]
[Admin "RawrSoFierce" has started a group poll. Please vote, everyone!]
Once the poll went up, votes started rolling in fast—the count practically shot upward in real time.
Less than half a minute later, every single member of the Dimensional Chat Group besides Ryū himself—all nineteen of them—had cast their vote.
Ryū checked the tally and muttered to himself in surprise, "Huh, looks like the One Piece world's actually pretty popular in this chat."
Then again, on second thought, it wasn't that surprising. Just counting members who were actually from the One Piece world, there were already three of them in the group.
Add in all the members who'd picked up One Piece-world techniques on top of that—a fairly large number—and even Yakumo Yukari, that youkai sage, had dabbled a little in Armament and Observation Haki herself.
So the final tally came out to: The Wandering Earth — 4 votes. Jackie Chan Adventures — 0 votes. One Piece — 15 votes!
That added up to all nineteen members having voted, everyone except Ryū himself, the Admin.
The Wandering Earth didn't even come close to a fraction of One Piece's numbers.
Well, that settled it—One Piece world it was.
Honestly, Ryū had personally been leaning toward Jackie Chan Adventures. He was pretty curious about some of the magical items from that world—they'd always seemed like they'd be fun to mess around with.
But the event only ran for three days. Three days was nowhere near enough time to actually find anything.
Things like enchanted talismans—he wasn't even remotely familiar with how their energy signatures worked. Even sweeping the area with Observation Haki like a radar wouldn't turn up anything useful.
The single most broken item from that world, in Ryū's opinion, had to be the Book of Ages.
Too bad it could only rewrite the history of its own world, not any other. Which meant bringing it back with him would be completely pointless.
It'd probably just end up as some useless book sitting on a shelf.
Maybe he could use it as a notebook? Jot down a diary entry or two?
Once he thought it through that far, the whole world started feeling kind of boring to him.
One Piece world wasn't bad either, honestly. He'd already been there once before, back when he killed Blackbeard—shouldn't be much of an issue going back. What Ryū was really looking forward to, though, was watching Whitebeard—the strongest Yonkō in this new world—meet Fleet Admiral Sengoku in the flesh. He was curious what kind of bizarre chemistry that meeting would produce.
If someone happened to snap a photo of Whitebeard and Sengoku shaking hands, wouldn't that shake the entire world to its core?
Sengoku would probably get hauled in front of the Five Elders for questioning after that.
Then again...none of that really mattered. At Sengoku's current power level, the World Government probably couldn't actually take him down even if they tried. Throw Kizaru into the mix, and those two alone could go toe-to-toe with the entire World Government.
And that's not even counting the fact that Sengoku, as Fleet Admiral of Marine Headquarters, would likely have Garp, Aokiji, and the rest of the Navy's top brass standing behind him.
That was a force every bit as terrifying as the World Government itself—arguably more so.
Marine Headquarters was still technically under the World Government's thumb, sure, but only because the Government controlled the Navy's financial lifeline. Without the Celestial Dragons' money bankrolling them, the Navy would struggle just to keep the lights on.
But the day Sengoku secured his own independent source of funding, things could change dramatically.
After all—at the power level Sengoku was operating at now, would he really keep playing lapdog to the Celestial Dragons?
Ryū doubted it. He was fairly sure Sengoku had already stopped taking them seriously a while back.
...Though, was it maybe a little unhealthy for him to be scheming about all this in his spare time?
Ryū shook the stray thoughts out of his head.
RawrSoFierce: [Image] Looks like the event world's officially settled—Whitebeard, Sengoku, and Kizaru's world, the One Piece world. Or, as I mentioned before, "One Piee" world.
Eternally Seventeen: Come to think of it, this'll be my second time visiting Whitebeard-ojii-sama's world, won't it!
My True Form Is Cola: Eh? Yukari-senpai's been to Whitebeard-ojii-sama's world before?
Eternally Seventeen: Yaraya~ yeah, went there once with Admin-sama, back when we were dealing with an illegal reincarnator. What was his name again...something-beard? Can't remember. Ugly guy, though, I remember that much.
Eternally Seventeen: Also stopped by Fish-Man Island while I was in the One Piece world that time. Brought back some Sea King meat that I still haven't finished eating—kept it fresh a whole year using a special preservation method.
Street-Corner Illustrator: A WHOLE YEAR?! And it's still edible?! Please tell me that hasn't turned into zombie meat by now?
Eternally Seventeen: Um...probably not? I think?
Edward Newgate: Gurararara! In that case, old Whitebeard's going to get everything squared away right now—we'll set aside an entire island fresh off the new world as the group event's entertainment base.
Admiral Kizaru: Ahh...heading over to see Whitebeard's real hand, are we? Sengoku-san, should we bring Sakazuki and Kuzan along too?
Senbei Is So Tasty: ...Bringing those two along, are you trying to start a war? Even the two of them together would probably get thrashed by Whitebeard.
Senbei Is So Tasty: Honestly, Whitebeard wouldn't even need to lift a finger himself—Kaguya alone could teach them some manners.
Senbei Is So Tasty: Though, come to think of it, because of you and me, the Navy's relationship with Whitebeard's crew has gotten pretty strange lately.
[...]
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