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Chapter 120is out!!!! +40 advanced chapters monthly
This time, Bai Shui had single-handedly annihilated the entirety of the Savage Beast Pirates. With a contribution of this magnitude, an immediate promotion to Lieutenant Commander wouldn't have been an overstatement.
As long as Fleet Admiral Sengoku refrained from making an official announcement, the rank-and-file Marines continued to speculate, their rumors fracturing into dozens of different versions. However, the most widely accepted and logical theory was that he would be promoted to Lieutenant Commander.
A Lieutenant Commander at Marine Headquarters didn't hold world-shaking authority; if stationed out in the Four Blues, they would merely serve as a local base commander. Despite his overwhelming strength, Bai Shui had only just joined the Marines. There were still protocols and ropes he needed to learn. Letting him cut his teeth at the rank of Lieutenant Commander for a few years before pushing him higher was a sound strategy. After all, with his sheer power, reaching the rank of Admiral was only a matter of time.
But speculation was just speculation. Until Sengoku handed down the official word, no one dared to draw a final conclusion.
Regardless of his official rank, this incident instantly turned Bai Shui into a celebrity at Marine Headquarters. Everyone knew his name now, from the Three Admirals down to the lowest-ranking junior officers and enlisted men.
Becoming famous had never been part of Bai Shui's plan! But since the spotlight was already on him, he decided to just roll with it. He certainly wasn't going to panic over a little notoriety.
After lying in a hospital bed for nearly two weeks, Bai Shui's injuries had basically healed. Almost immediately after, he received his invitation to attend the commissioning ceremony.
This ceremony was an annual tradition at Headquarters, primarily held to officially commission Marines who had been promoted from local branches across the globe, as well as the elite graduates fresh out of the Marine Academy. Bai Shui, of course, was an entirely different breed of recruit. His mere presence made this year's ceremony far more interesting to the masses.
Contrary to the heated debates among the troops, Bai Shui's assigned rank was Captain, not Lieutenant Commander.
The reasoning was simple: Sengoku felt that handing Bai Shui too high a rank right out of the gate was inappropriate. It was better to let him gain two years of practical experience before considering further advancement.
This decision caused a collective sigh of relief to sweep through the ranks. If the rumors had been true, and a complete outsider could be instantly promoted to Lieutenant Commander just by joining up and killing a pirate crew, wouldn't every glory-seeker try to replicate Bai Shui's path? If that became the norm, Marine Headquarters would quickly devolve into a gathering ground for lawless, rogue combatants. If that happened, what would even be the point of the Marines?
The rank of Captain was different. It wasn't a particularly high position, nor did it carry much real authority. Across the world, there were probably ninety-nine thousand Marine Captains, if not a full hundred thousand. It was, in the grand scheme of the military, a very unremarkable rank.
Yet, for a brand-new recruit, starting as a Captain was absurdly high. In a single bound, Bai Shui had vaulted over ten distinct ranks: Seaman Recruit, Apprentice Seaman, Seaman Second Class, Seaman First Class, Petty Officer Third Class, Petty Officer Second Class, Petty Officer First Class, Chief Petty Officer, Master Chief Petty Officer, and Ensign.
It was a harsh reality that many Marines could spend their entire lives shedding blood for Justice, yet never manage to sit in a Captain's chair.
When Bai Shui arrived at the plaza for the ceremony, he instantly became the center of attention. Watched and pointed at by the crowd, he felt a bit like a monkey on display in a zoo. He was young—only twenty years old this year. While that might not make him the most unprecedented prodigy in the history of Headquarters, he was undeniably a genius in his own right.
Moreover, he was the sole anomaly in the entire military whose strength was completely disproportionate to his position. If ranks were assigned purely based on combat power, he belonged squarely in the Vice Admiral tier. And even among the Vice Admirals, he would be considered a heavyweight.
Naturally, this excluded those few legendary, specially-appointed Vice Admirals whose names had terrified the seas for decades. Compared to them, Bai Shui still had a long way to go.
Sengoku had personally appraised the combat prowess of Raen, the captain of the Savage Beast Pirates, and concluded that slapping a 300 million Berry bounty on his head would not have been an exaggeration in the slightest.
A pirate worth 300 million Berries was not an existence an average Vice Admiral could casually suppress. Only the most distinguished veterans among them—men like Onigumo, Doberman, Dalmatian, and Yamakaji—could stand against a threat of that caliber.
And right at the exact moment Bai Shui was attending his commissioning ceremony, far away in the East Blue, in a quiet place known as Foosha Village, the son of the Pirate King Gol D. Roger—the man cursed as the "Child of Sin"—Portgas D. Ace, finally set out to sea.
The ceremony was held in the grand plaza of Marineford, the sprawling square that faced the open ocean. Over a thousand people were in attendance. Aside from junior officers like Bai Shui receiving their Captain commissions, there were also field officers and flag officers awaiting their promotions.
Under normal circumstances, this batch of junior officers wouldn't receive much attention. The crowd's eyes were usually glued to the flag officers—the Generals and Admirals who formed the true combat backbone of Marine Headquarters.
Glancing among the higher-ranking officers, Bai Shui spotted a few familiar faces. There was Vergo, the "Demon Bamboo" who would one day be utterly dismantled by the "Surgeon of Death," Trafalgar D. Water Law. There was also X Drake, the brilliant Rear Admiral destined to one day defect and become a pirate.
As for the rest, Bai Shui didn't have much of an impression of them. He only remembered the major players.
The Marine top brass presiding over the event included Fleet Admiral Sengoku, Garp, Admiral Kizaru, and representing the Vice Admirals, Onigumo and Momonga.
The ceremony proceeded with rigid military precision, entirely by the book. It took exactly thirty minutes before Bai Shui's name was called. He was the very last junior officer to be commissioned, and simultaneously, the youngest of them all.
As Bai Shui stepped onto the stage, the gaze of the entire plaza locked onto him. Being stared down by over a thousand pairs of eyes was genuinely an uncomfortable sensation; even someone as composed as Bai Shui couldn't help but feel a phantom chill crawl down his spine, raising the hairs on the back of his neck.
When he was handed his official uniform, he didn't button it up meticulously like the other junior officers. Instead, mimicking the swagger of the Three Admirals, he simply draped the heavy coat over his shoulders.
The instant the Marine coat settled onto his frame, a powerful gale swept in from the sea, snapping his sleeves in the wind and tousling his hair. He looked every bit the image of an untamed youth in his prime.
A wave of gasps rippled through the crowd below, predominantly from the female Marines.
Technically speaking, as a mere junior officer, he absolutely did not have the right to wear his uniform with such casual disregard for regulations. But considering his status as a pure powerhouse, Sengoku simply turned a blind eye to it. Otherwise, that specific style of wearing the coat was a privilege strictly reserved for field officers and above.
As for the two massive characters for "Justice" emblazoned on his back, Bai Shui genuinely felt nothing. Protecting the people? That was nothing more than a bad joke. What were the Marines, really? They were nothing but the attack dogs leashed by the World Government. Protecting the citizens was just an incidental side-benefit of protecting the World Government's true interests.
If the core interests of the Marines or the Government were ever truly threatened, one only had to look at history to see if these soldiers would still "protect the people." Admiral Akainu was the perfect example. To ensure that Nico Robin's mother and the scholars of Ohara were permanently silenced, Akainu had wiped the entire island off the map. How many innocent civilians had been living on that island? Did Akainu hesitate for even a second? Not at all.
It wasn't until he actually put the coat on that Bai Shui realized why they never seemed to blow off in the wind. There were specialized, magnetic-like clasps hidden inside the collar and shoulders that firmly anchored the fabric to the wearer's body.
Scattered throughout the plaza, mixed among the ranks of Marines, were dozens of reporters from various world media outlets.
Bai Shui's undeniably cool, wind-swept moment on stage was naturally captured by countless flashing cameras. The journalists had already drafted their headlines on the spot.
"The Most Handsome Captain in Marine History!" "The Most Privileged Captain!" "The Strongest Captain Ever Commissioned!" "The Fastest Promotion in Headquarters!" With sensational titles like these, the papers were practically guaranteed to fly off the shelves. The general public would undoubtedly develop an intense curiosity about this Captain who had suddenly burst onto the scene out of nowhere. How on earth did a lowly Captain manage to completely overshadow the promotions of Commanders and Vice Admirals? People would want to know.
Once that curiosity was hooked, the papers could start serializing special features detailing Bai Shui's battle records, ensuring peak sales for weeks.
However, because Bai Shui had stolen the show so thoroughly, the crowd's enthusiasm for the subsequent promotions of the field officers and flag officers took a massive nosedive. What was supposed to be a grand banquet celebrating the senior brass turned into an awkward afterthought. Many high-ranking officers, who had spent days preparing their speeches, were forced to mutter a few hurried words, grab their coats, and awkwardly exit the stage.
As a result, quite a few of these senior officers quietly 'remembered' Bai Shui in their hearts, shooting him highly unfriendly glares as they stepped down.
Jealousy was inevitable. Wherever there are people, there is politics. They wouldn't stoop to playing dirty, petty tricks behind his back—they were Marines, after all, men who wore the mantle of Justice. But just because they wouldn't stab him in the back didn't mean they were going to be warm and welcoming.
Humans are pack animals. Being deliberately excluded and denied recognition by your peers is usually a miserable experience, and some might view Bai Shui's blatant disregard for building connections as a sign of immaturity. A truly 'mature' man would know how to play the game and smooth things over.
Bai Shui, however, couldn't care less.
If these people didn't want to include him in their circles, then fine. Someone, eventually, would. He refused to believe that once his strength reached catastrophic levels and his rank skyrocketed, these same people wouldn't be begging him to join their factions.
And just like that, the commissioning ceremony came to an end.
The person who left the deepest impression on the world was, without a doubt, the newly minted Captain Bai Shui. Leaking out alongside the news of his promotion was the confirmed report that he had single-handedly slaughtered the Savage Beast Pirates.
The world was stunned.
How old was Bai Shui? Only twenty! Yet he already possessed the raw power to hunt down and execute a great pirate equivalent to a 300 million Berry bounty. Give him a few more years, and wouldn't he be a prime candidate for the Admiral seats?
The heavyweights of the pirate underworld began to pay very close attention to this rising Marine star, while countless lesser pirates permanently burned Bai Shui's face into their memories.
After the ceremony, Bai Shui was granted a private, closed-door meeting with Sengoku.
The rank-and-file Marines were dying of curiosity to know what was said, but Sengoku didn't leak a single word, and no one had the guts to investigate. Still, the mere fact that Bai Shui received a private audience with the Fleet Admiral was enough to make the other soldiers green with envy.
They watched Bai Shui walk into the office with a bright smile, only to emerge later looking utterly miserable, with a face as sour as a wronged daughter-in-law.
What had Sengoku actually said to him? It wasn't anything overly complicated—he just ordered Bai Shui to undergo a mandatory five-month recruit training camp.
If it had been under any normal instructor, Bai Shui would have been thrilled. The problem was the instructor in question: Garp!
Who was Garp? The Hero of the Marines. The monster who treated young Luffy like an unkillable cockroach during "training." Falling into Garp's hands meant Bai Shui could kiss any notion of a comfortable life goodbye.
Even though he knew training under Garp would result in an explosive increase in his strength, just thinking about the old man's infamous 'methods' made him involuntarily shudder.
Garp had inflicted a psychological shadow on him that was simply too deep.
Of course, no matter how much he internally protested, he was a Marine now. Sengoku's words were absolute orders, and as a Captain, Bai Shui had to obey. Furthermore, Garp was one of the very few surviving apex powerhouses from the previous era. Earning his personal guidance was concrete proof that Sengoku thought incredibly highly of Bai Shui.
If he didn't, he would never have allowed Bai Shui to undergo Garp's hellish regimen. Did people think just anyone had the right to be beaten up by Garp?
From the day Garp made his name until now, you could count the people he had personally trained on one hand: Admiral Aokiji (Kuzan), Luffy, Ace, Koby, and Helmeppo. When Garp took on a student, he didn't look at natural talent; all he cared about was sheer willpower and absolute resolve.
Before actually seeing Garp, Bai Shui had managed to keep his composure. But for some inexplicable reason, the moment he spotted the old man standing at the Marine port, an overwhelming urge to punch him directly in the face surged up inside him.
Naturly, considering he had absolutely zero chance of winning that fight, Bai Shui swallowed the impulse.
This time, Bai Shui was to follow Garp for five months of 'secret' training. As for the location? Bai Shui could guess it with his eyes closed. Aside from Foosha Village, there was nowhere else Garp would go. It was the ultimate two-for-one deal: Garp could spend time visiting his grandson, Luffy, while simultaneously beating Bai Shui into shape. Plus, he could introduce the two of them, fostering a bond between them. Why wouldn't he?
Garp wasn't stupid. He knew Bai Shui's future achievements would be staggering. By forging a connection now, Bai Shui might look out for Luffy when the boy eventually set sail, making Luffy's future journey just a little bit smoother.
When the news officially broke that Bai Shui would be personally trained by Garp for five months, Marine Headquarters practically boiled over. Even Admiral Aokiji openly complained that it felt incredibly unfair.
Everyone in Headquarters dreamt of being mentored by Sengoku or Garp, but neither of the old legends had ever expressed any desire to groom a successor. Yet now, a brand-new junior officer—a guy who was essentially a freelancer just a few weeks ago—had managed to secure the exact thing they had spent their entire lives chasing.
How could they not be furious? How could they not be in an uproar?
Of course, anger was just anger; no one was foolish enough to let jealousy blind them to military law. It just meant a lot of people felt deeply unbalanced and would curse Bai Shui's name under their breath from time to time.
Aboard the warship.
"I say, Old Man Garp," Bai Shui drawled, leaning back lazily with his hands interlaced behind his head. "What exactly are you planning to teach me these next five months? Don't tell me you're just going to run off to play with your grandson halfway through and leave me hanging!"
A faint trace of red crept onto Garp's weathered face. Bai Shui had hit the nail perfectly on the head. "Bwahaha! How is that possible? You're overthinking things, kid! Why would I ever do something like that?"
His words betray his heart, Bai Shui thought, looking at the old man's forced laughter.
"Forget it. I already figured you wouldn't have an actual lesson plan prepared. So, I went ahead and made one myself." Bai Shui reached into his shirt. "Take a look at this schedule. If there are no glaring issues, we'll just train according to my plan. Sound good?"
He pulled out a small, neatly folded piece of paper and tossed it to Garp.
Garp caught it and unfolded it, expecting a dense, meticulously detailed timetable. Instead, he found only a few words written in sharp, bold strokes:
"Learn Rokushiki: Kami-e and Tekkai. Train Taijutsu and Haki!"
"I say, Bai Shui, you brat," Garp muttered, his brow furrowing in genuine confusion. "Why aren't you learning Rankyaku, Shigan, or Geppo? Don't you think they're powerful techniques?"
He couldn't understand why Bai Shui would selectively choose only two of the six styles while actively ignoring the others.
"Geppo, Shigan, and Rankyaku might be incredibly useful for other people," Bai Shui replied calmly, opening his eyes to meet Garp's gaze. "But to me, they're completely redundant. They wouldn't add any real value to my combat style; they would only drag out my training time. Since they're useless to me, why would I waste time learning them?"