Sabaody Archipelago, Grove 71.
On a secluded beach, a three-masted sailing boat lay gracefully at anchor. From its mast hung a white flag, emblazoned with an octagonal umbrella pattern of red and silver-gray—the emblem of the Umbrella Corporation.
In the first half of the Grand Line, many pirates would instinctively steer clear when they saw a merchant ship flying the Umbrella Corporation's flag. This was because the security team on Umbrella Corporation merchant vessels was equipped with sniper rifles and deadly Javelin rocket launchers. Generally, when encountering pirate ships, they would use sniper rifles for targeted assassinations from a distance, and then directly use rocket launchers to blow up the ships at medium to close range.
Sniper rifles might be acceptable, but using Javelin rocket launchers to blow up ships was truly intolerable for pirates! It wasn't that pirates couldn't sink Umbrella Corporation ships with their own mounted cannons in terms of firepower. It was just... the primary goal of pirates attacking other ships on the high seas was to plunder, not for mere slaughter and destruction. After such a battle, people would be dead, ships would be destroyed, and cannonballs wasted, yet they would gain nothing. Any pirate with a relatively normal mind wouldn't do something so utterly useless!
Incidentally, this type of rocket launcher, powerful enough to blow up ships, had officially begun selling under Sephiroth's instructions, with a multitude of buyers. Besides some kingdoms purchasing them to enhance their overall military strength, the largest group of buyers surprisingly turned out to be maritime merchants...
Maritime trade yielded huge profits but also came with significant risks. Besides the complex and unpredictable sea weather, rampant pirates were the biggest threat! The Javelin rocket launcher, with its reusable barrel, cost 50,000 Beli to produce and sold for 1,000,000 Beli. The armor-piercing rounds cost 10,000 Beli to produce and sold for 200,000 Beli.
Even with such high prices, once the Umbrella Corporation's rocket launchers gained the reputation of being able to blow up ships, countless orders poured in... Due to the sheer number of buyers, orders were booked until next year!
Just because the Javelin rocket launchers sold like hotcakes didn't mean other arms dealers didn't want to imitate them... However... even if they racked their brains, they couldn't develop the special alloy metal that Jim created with his ability. Without that alloy, what they produced were mere imitations and couldn't achieve the performance and power of the Javelin rocket launcher at all! The same applied to other Umbrella Corporation weapons that used the special alloy; they couldn't be replicated unless the Umbrella Corporation was willing to sell its raw alloy materials... Therefore, the Umbrella Corporation currently, in the Sabaody Archipelago, could be said to be the undisputed leader in the arms trade. The Grand Line and the Four Seas all circulated weapons produced by it.
Tesoro, dressed in a bright pink suit, rested his right hand on the railing of the three-masted sailing boat and raised his left hand to check the golden watch on his wrist. Only two minutes remained until the agreed two hours... He was extremely curious how Sephiroth managed to rush back to the Sabaody Archipelago from the Dressrosa Kingdom, a distance of nearly a thousand kilometers. Even though his boss often appeared and disappeared mysteriously, as if he could pop up from anywhere, there were still lingering doubts in his heart...
Just then, by the seashore, a thin red light flickered and then vanished. Waves of spatial ripples rapidly folded and compressed on both sides, forming a spatial door two and a half meters high.
Sephiroth, wearing a half-black mask and a blue suit, walked out from the light green world beyond the door. His messy silver hair was still half-wet, which clearly indicated he had just washed it... An intriguing contrast between his casual appearance and his extraordinary method of arrival.
Sephiroth leaped lightly, gliding from the beach onto the deck of the three-masted sailing boat.
"Boss, did you really rush back from Dressrosa?" Tesoro looked at the youth standing beside him with a shocked expression, his eyes wide.
"Yes! I also took the opportunity to shower and change," Sephiroth replied casually, wiping the remaining water from his hair.
"..." Tesoro could only remain silent, utterly dumbfounded.
Sephiroth first observed the more than thirty men in black suits on the ship's deck before asking, "Are these men trustworthy? We can't be careless in this matter."
"Boss, don't worry! They are trustworthy brothers." Tesoro patted his chest with a confident expression, making a metallic 'bang! bang!' sound. That was the sound of the golden armor he created using his Goru Goru no Mi ability, which he wore beneath his clothes.
Since Tesoro acquired the Goru Goru no Mi, he had worked extremely hard to develop this Devil Fruit, and the results were quite good. With the golden armor he created using his abilities, ordinary firearm bullets could no longer harm him in the slightest! This led to a significant increase in his strength; even if he faced pirates with bounties of tens of millions of Beli, he could defeat them with relative ease. However, regarding Busoshoku Haki and Kenbunshoku Haki, he was still a bit confused...
"Then, let's depart!" Sephiroth ordered.
"Boss, where are we heading...?" Tesoro asked, a slight confusion.
"It doesn't matter where we're headed, as long as it's against the wind!"
"Ah! This..." Hearing this, Tesoro scratched his head with a puzzled expression, not fully comprehending the strange instruction, but still issued the command to his subordinates: "Sail against the wind!"
Sails were raised, the three-masted sailing boat weighed anchor and slowly sailed away from the shore, heading towards the towering Red Line in the distance.
After sailing for a certain distance, a pair of black fleshy wings suddenly unfurled behind Sephiroth. He flapped them gently a few times and flew towards where the three-masted sailing boat was heading. On the boundless blue ocean, Sephiroth drew the Butcher's Blade from his waist, aimed it at the air not far away, and successively unleashed three red sword energy slashes, forming the character for 'work' in the air.
Crack! As he reached out and pushed, two spatial door panels slowly opened inwards, revealing a strange light green world within the door. Inside the opened spatial door panels, there was a spatial cube about seventy meters high, forty meters wide, and over a hundred meters long—a pocket dimension built with the power of his Paramecia-type Doa Doa no Mi.
The sea could render Devil Fruit users helpless and cause them to drown, but it could not negate their abilities. Therefore, even if Sephiroth acted shamelessly towards the sea, he could only endure in silence. As the seawater flowed in, the three-masted sailing boat also slowly sailed into this temporarily constructed spatial dock.
Tesoro and the crew standing on deck stared at the light green space presented before their eyes with expressions of utmost horror. What kind of monstrous power must one possess to be able to create such a place?
Flapping his wings and flying in the air, Sephiroth first closed his eyes and sensed the vampire bat located in the Dressrosa Kingdom. After waiting for a moment, when the temporary spatial shift reached a certain location, he swung his Butcher's Blade at the air again, cutting out the same 'work' character.
Whoosh-! In the vast blue ocean, with a slight tilt, seawater from within the green space flowed out, and the three-masted sailing boat also broke through the surface of the sea, raising a large expanse of white waves, and landed heavily on the sea's surface, as if appearing out of nowhere.
"This...?" Tesoro stood on deck, turned and looked around. Seeing the almost invisible Red Line in the distance, the horror on his face was uncontrollable. "The latter half of the Grand Line... the New World!" he murmured, realizing how far they had traveled in a blink of an eye.
Sephiroth flapped his black, fleshy wings, letting his body slowly land on the ship's deck. Only then did he let out a long sigh, slightly exhausted. The larger the temporary space he constructed using his Doa Doa no Mi ability, and the further the distance he traveled by folding space, the more stamina he consumed. Just arriving here from the Sabaody Archipelago, crossing the Red Line, had consumed over half of his stamina... He needed to develop techniques in the future that were more efficient and consumed less stamina!
After recovering from his shock, as a businessman, Tesoro's mind immediately connected this matter to business. He said excitedly, "Boss, this is amazing! If you use this ability for sea transport, our Umbrella Corporation's sea trade will surely dominate the entire ocean!"
"Nonsense! I don't want to work hard every day just for that little bit of money..." Sephiroth immediately curled his lips and retorted impolitely, making Tesoro look a little awkward. "Do you really think I don't need to spend a lot of stamina to use such a large-scale spatial movement?"
Sephiroth rested for about three minutes, finally recovering his stamina to peak condition by expending a large amount of stored lifespan. After this, he repeated the same trick, placing the three-masted sailing boat into the temporary space again.
After four consecutive spatial shifts, the people on the three-masted sailing boat saw the Dressrosa Kingdom appear on the distant horizon, majestic with its stone architecture. At Sephiroth's instruction, everyone sailed the ship to the East Coast and docked temporarily.
After waiting for a while, Scarlett finally arrived, bringing Kyros and twenty elite Royal Army soldiers. They boarded the three-masted sailing boat, and departed the port with them, heading towards the destination Sephiroth had set, a mission that would shape the future of the Umbrella Corporation in the New World.
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