One week after Ace rejected the Warlords of the Sea position, Stephie arrived at Swallow Island in the North Blue.
In the first half of the Grand Line, Paradise, Thriller Bark region.
Under Eleco's arrangements, Shining and several accompanying guards landed here.
Their target this time was to approach Moria, one of the Warlords of the Sea, and do business with him.
Since contact had been made in advance, Moria had already sent someone to the harbor to welcome Shining's party.
Waiting at the harbor was a young girl with tied pink twin tails, wearing a crown, holding a wine-red umbrella, and floating in the air—the Ghost Princess, Perona.
At this moment, she was in an out-of-body state, able to fly freely through the air, pass through walls, change her body size, and render any physical attacks completely ineffective as they passed right through her body, yet she herself could still touch physical objects.
(Note: There were scenes shown of Perona serving tea and pastries while in her ghost state, proving she can indeed touch physical objects.)
However, her abandoned physical shell would enter an unconscious state and become immobile, making it vulnerable to attack—and suffering an attack meant curtains.
The spiritual bodies she created could, according to the user's will, pass right through solid objects.
(For example, Perona's Negative Hollows.)
Or they could touch physical things.
(For example, Perona's Mini Hollows / Ghost Bombs.)
Or even do both.
(For example, Perona's Special Hollow / Kamikaze Bomb.)
If her generated spiritual bodies passed through an opponent's body, it would make the opponent's heart extremely negative.
Though this had no effect on someone already profoundly negative by nature (such as Usopp).
Her special ghosts could cause powerful shockwaves, resulting in explosions. Even a small spiritual body possessed enough explosive power to blast a hole in a stone wall.
This ability was one of Eleco's primary targets. My body is sleeping? What does that have to do with my soul?
You can sleep all you want; once he uses Green Blood technology, he'll just live life as a ghost every day. Others can't touch him, but he can touch everything. Heheh, what a top-tier Devil Fruit!
Since they were dealing with envoys sent by a Celestial Dragon, Moria figured sending Perona was the best choice.
First, as one of the Three Top Officers, her status made her suitable as a receptionist to greet guests.
Second, she was basically the only one among Moria's subordinates who had actual looks. After all, who wouldn't want a pretty young girl to greet them?
And finally, her ability—as mentioned before, as long as her real body wasn't found, she was practically invincible.
Thus Moria dispatched her to welcome Shining's party, while also arranging for Absalom, the user of the Invisibility Fruit, to provide hidden backup nearby.
Many people mistook him for a Mink, but he was nothing of the kind.
Absalom was a gorgeously dressed yet terrifyingly hideous long-haired man. His body had been modified by Hogback; his nose, mouth, and jaw were those of a lion, and he constantly emitted beastly roars.
He also possessed the skin of an elephant, the wild strength of a bear and an ape rolled into one, and weighed over 300 kilograms.
To be able to modify a human like that using the Ope Ope no Mi, Hogback was truly a special kind of talent in his own perverse way.
He was also a target Eleco wanted to recruit. After all, as Judge and Eleco had analyzed, merging multiple races' Lineage Factors into a single body tended to cause Lineage Factor collapse.
With a genius like that around, there might just be some surgical breakthroughs.
"The Ghost Princess under Moria, Perona?"
Even though she was already looking right at their greeter, Shining still asked politely.
"Are you the ones sent by Lord Eleco of the Celestial Dragons?" Faced with Shining's inquiry, Perona lifted her chin like a proud peacock, responding with a touch of haughtiness.
"That's right, Lord Eleco hopes to conclude this discussion as soon as possible."
"In that case, follow me. Lord Moria has been waiting for a long time."
For their first meeting, both sides remained calm and composed, making no reckless moves. They both knew very well that the final outcome depended entirely on the results of this conversation.
On one side stood a Celestial Dragon sitting at the absolute pinnacle of worldly power, and on the other was the earliest addition to the Warlords of the Sea, a veteran who had held the title for nearly twenty years—Moria.
One must not underestimate the Warlords of the Sea; after all, this was a cooperative organization recognized by the World Government. To deal with them rashly without the World Government's tacit approval would invite all kinds of unnecessary trouble.
In truth, the original Warlords system involved many competing interests, having been proposed by the former Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.
This was something Eleco only discovered after specifically investigating it upon becoming a Celestial Dragon—a detail never mentioned in the original story.
Let's talk about the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. This position refers to the supreme commander of the World Government's Army, Navy, and CP intelligence agencies.
Governance generally rotated among these three institutions.
However, due to the unique geographical and environmental factors of the world, by the current era, the Army—once formed by twenty kingdoms—had gradually been reduced to little more than guard dogs and gatekeepers for the Celestial Dragons, existing purely for superficial show.
The only branch that could still put up a decent showing was probably the Army of Alabasta.
On top of that, there was a ridiculous complication: they all answered only to their own respective monarchs. Who cared about some allied Army Commander-in-Chief?
Consequently, the Army Commander gradually faded out of the competition for the top tri-service position.
This left the role to rotate exclusively between the Navy and CP, which was why the two institutions had always been at loggerheads, thoroughly looking down on each other.
The previous Commander-in-Chief of the Three Armies had originated from CP.
His tenure happened to coincide with Roger kicking off the Great Age of Pirates, which greatly elevated the status of the Navy.
Moreover, according to the rotation system, barring accidents, the next Commander-in-Chief would come from the Navy—specifically the incumbent Fleet Admiral, destined to become the future Commander-in-Chief of the Three Armies: Kong.
Therefore, to trip Kong up, he proposed this disgusting policy.
At the same time, because CP itself served as the lapdogs of the Celestial Dragons, this move would provide the Celestial Dragons with a few handy black-gloved enforcers and personal cash cows.
Thus, his policy was quickly approved by the World Government.
As a result, the Warlords selected were more bizarre and unhuman than the last, thoroughly sickening everyone.
Not only that, but to suppress the Navy during his tenure, he utilized the Zephyr incident to hint both openly and covertly that the Navy harbored ulterior motives.
Coupled with the genuine institutional problems within the Navy at the time—an estranged Admiral in Zephyr, and Garp who refused promotion to Admiral—everything rested entirely on Sengoku's shoulders.
Yet the World Government demanded a Navy that simply obeyed orders.
Thus, subsequent Admirals were all subjected to a political test.
Akainu and Aokiji faced the Ohira incident test, while Kizaru faced the Fisher Tiger attack on the Holy Land test.
Then, a major event occurred in the year 1506 of the Sea Circle Calendar, causing the original Commander-in-Chief of the Three Armies—the one from CP—to take early retirement.
That year, the Fish-Man hero Fisher Tiger scaled the Red Line with his bare hands, set fire to the Holy Land, and freed all the slaves.
Through intentional information-gathering, Eleco learned that an even madder mastermind had been pushing things along behind the scenes: the Army Commander-in-Chief, whom most people had already forgotten.
At the time, he was deeply aggrieved that the allied Army had been reduced to Celestial Dragon watchdogs and was gradually being swallowed up by CP to become a subordinate department, frustrating a man with ambitions to climb higher.
Coincidentally, Tiger's arrival at that moment gave him hope.
He pulled off a frame-up, publicly claiming that the Chief of CP had entanglements with Tiger and had deliberately lured him in.
One had to understand that the Army only guarded the perimeter of the Holy Land, whereas CP was divided into internal and external divisions. Internal CP—namely CP0—took orders directly from the Celestial Dragons, while external CP investigated various intelligence.
For a Fish-Man to get that close to the Holy Land and successfully invade it must have meant the outermost CP had failed to gather proper intelligence.
After all, the edge of the Red Line was still some distance from the Holy Land; no matter what path Tiger took, he shouldn't have been able to breach it so easily.
In reality, the Army Commander-in-Chief had greased the wheels, and once Tiger started burning the Holy Land, he sent trusted men to obstruct the CP agents.
His goal was simply to strike a heavy blow against CP and prevent or delay the Army from being devoured by them.
And so Tiger's mission succeeded smoothly.
The scene at the time was utter chaos. As mentioned earlier, the Army mostly answered to their own monarchs, so everyone adopted a each-man-for-himself attitude during the crisis.
To protect their status, the Chief of CP sent CP agents to deal with the slaves, but someone still had to protect the Celestial Dragons, right?
Ah, weren't there still Army guards? Hehe!
The Army Commander-in-Chief then struck first, playing the victim before the Five Elders, claiming his post was merely nominal, that these soldiers only took orders from their respective kings, and that his hands were tied—it wasn't that he didn't want to help the CP agents.
Combined with his slander against the Chief of CP and the pressing need for a scapegoat, the former Commander-in-Chief of the Three Armies was thus forced to step down early.
The Navy, meanwhile, enjoyed an unearned windfall: Kong was promoted to the new Commander-in-Chief of the Three Armies, Sengoku became Fleet Admiral, and Akainu and Aokiji—having passed the Ohira test and matured—became the new Admirals.
The remaining Admiral seat was reserved for Kizaru, pending his passing of his own test: resolving the Fisher Tiger problem.
Since that year also marked the birth of the Mermaid Princess, and the World Government had long since prepared for the birth of Poseidon, sending Kizaru to deal with the Fish-Man hero Tiger served as a probing test.
As it turned out, Kizaru slacked off every day and successfully avoided dragging himself into trouble.
Of course, the fallout from this incident went far beyond that; all three branches of the World Government were suppressed.
The Army was reduced entirely to gatekeepers, the Fleet Admiral had to anchor himself at Headquarters to reinforce the Holy Land at a moment's notice, and CP had it even worse!
Though their loyalty was renowned, paranoia among the Celestial Dragons ran rampant!
If I hand close personal defense entirely over to you guys, what if those powerhouse CP agents suddenly rebel one day, or get controlled by the enemy? Wouldn't I be done for?
Therefore, their combat strength had to be curtailed, ensuring at the very least that the defending Army guards could hold out until reinforcements of Admiral level or higher, or God's Knights, arrived.
Following this, the ranking of personal combat strength across the three branches became: Navy > CP ≥ Army guards. Furthermore, only special personnel from the Navy were permitted to come to the Holy Land for reinforcement—such as those above Admiral rank, along with Garp and Zephyr. Though the chances of Garp or Zephyr ever coming were practically zero.
Only after this system was established did the Celestial Dragons feel secure once more.
And this was precisely why CP's combat power ended up so lackluster later on.
Rob Lucci, no doubt everyone has heard of him? He was hailed as CP's strongest genius in 800 years, and indeed he was.
At a tender age, he had already mastered all six Rokushiki techniques. Looking across the entire pirate world, those who could achieve this at that age were exceedingly rare.
Yet he was simply unlucky enough to join during the era when CP was being suppressed. At least his senior Foxy could still enjoy the delicious taste of an Ancient Zoan fruit!
Moreover, comparing various plot developments, one can clearly see that before this incident, CP's combat power—even field agents, let alone CP0—was vastly superior to later generations of CP.
All of these hidden secrets from the original story were only brought to light thanks to the information Eleco gathered after becoming a Celestial Dragon.
Now let's talk about Moria. In truth, before he was defeated by Luffy, everyone in the pirate world assumed he was a top-tier powerhouse.
Back in the day, in his hot-blooded youth, he could trade blows with Kaido when they were both young. Though he ultimately lost, to outsiders, he merely lost a crew of ship-handling subordinates.
What did that matter to the vast majority of people? Such underlings were as numerous as grains of sand to a powerhouse.
Furthermore, he had been fighting on the enemy's home turf, and even so, Kaido failed to finish him off.
As for his lineage, he also possessed Onis' bloodline—one of the strongest combat bloodlines in existence.
That massive physique alone was enough to put immense pressure on any enemy.
On top of that, he had won the recognition of the World Government, holding the title of Warlord as he hunted down pirates everywhere. Who wouldn't believe he belonged among the top-tier powerhouses?
Coupled with his later feat of bringing back Oars—with a body as gargantuan as a mountain, how could that possibly be hidden from the world's eyes?
And his Devil Fruit ability could grant shadows to corpses, bringing them back to life.
With all these misunderstandings piling on top of one another, Moria, who gradually degenerated into a shut-in otome-style recluse, ended up becoming the ultimate freeloader.
However, Eleco wasn't here to wake him up and give him some grand epiphany like Crocodile had experienced, restoring him to his prime.