Chapter 147: The Gathering Storm Over God Valley

Thanks to three years of steady growth, all 56 islands across the Sweets Sea have now been fully developed.

The Fishman population living in the Sweets Sea has soared to 2.7 million.

Karl selected 500,000 from among them to form five Fishmen Corps.

These five corps spend every day doing nothing but training, training, and more training.

They’re the backbone of the main army, kept in reserve and never roped into other activities.

Karl wanted to make sure that, when it was time to use them, they’d strike with their sharpest edge.

Over in Wano, things never slowed down either. For three years, Karl funneled massive amounts of Seastone to the world’s oceans, pulling in a mountain of funds. Aside from what Vegapunk and others needed for research, the rest of the money was invested into all 56 islands of the Sweets Sea.

During these years, he never stopped buying slaves from across the world to bolster the population of each island.

All of this was laying the groundwork for his final plan.

The Navy didn’t just sit on their hands during these three years.

While they avoided any big moves, they kept up plenty of smaller actions.

Since the massive conscription plan didn’t pass, they settled for a handful of smaller recruitment drives, mainly to replace the Vice Admirals they’d lost.

Still, no new Admirals managed to rise from the ranks.

Yet after countless clashes with the Rocks Pirates these three years, the Navy had forged an elite force of 100,000 seasoned soldiers.

Every one of them had battle experience from at least ten fights.

Now, you could say both the Navy and the pirates were ready for war.

Inside Cake Island—

Karl was holding his final war council, calling all the core members into the grand conference hall of Cake Castle.

He turned to Krell, standing before him.

“Have you found John’s treasure stash yet?”

Krell answered from below.

“We have, Lord Karl.”

“The Fishmen scouts reported that John often goes to a small islet, about thirty nautical miles northwest of Beehive Island.”

“So, when John was away from the island, our Fishmen snuck ashore and found piles of gold and jewels hidden inside.”

“But to avoid alerting John, they didn’t go in any deeper.”

Karl nodded. Now that he knew the location of John’s treasure, he could help himself to Rocks’ riches. He couldn’t hide his satisfaction.

“Well done.”

“This one’s down as your chief merit. You’ll get 10,000 points for it.”

Then he glanced left, toward Jennifer and Smith.

“We’re about to launch a major battle, and our destination is God Valley in the West Blue.”

As Karl spoke, he picked up a file and handed it to Krell, who then passed it over to Jennifer and Smith.

The two of them immediately started flipping through it.

They’d both trained for this day. Their Devil Fruits were nearly awakened now.

That alone showed how hard they’d worked these last three years to master their Devil Fruit powers.

Meanwhile, Karl hadn’t just sat back either. At the very least, he’d managed to snag the Castle Fruit that once belonged to the Capone Family.

He’d fed that Castle Fruit to White Tiger.

In those three years, White Tiger had worked tirelessly to develop his Blitz Tiger abilities. Finally, he’d awakened a sliver of Sacred Beast blood and learned how to freely change shape.

Now, he could shrink down to palm size or transform into a towering tiger hundreds of meters tall.

But when he shrank, it was the most efficient way to conserve strength. At full size, he could only hold out for about an hour.

After White Tiger grasped this skill, Karl chose him to be the Castle Fruit’s new wielder.

He would head into God Valley with Jennifer and Smith, while thousands of fiercely loyal Fishman soldiers would hide in White Tiger’s body, waiting.

Once Karl saw they’d received and read the file, he spoke again.

“There’s a map in there—a map showing the general location of things inside God Valley.”

“If you study it, you’ll find the safest path to sneak into God Valley.”

“Let me stress this again: your mission is to grab the goods and get out immediately.”

“I hope you’ve mastered your Devil Fruit abilities by now.”

“I don’t want to hear you reporting failure right in the middle of battle.”

With that, Karl stood up and delivered his final orders.

“I’ll take most of the forces out for this battle. Krell, you’ll stay behind—one, to look after Cake Island; two, because I’m not too worried about the Wano situation.”

Krell stood at attention and saluted.

“Understood, Lord Karl.”

Then Karl reached out a hand to Linlin. She smiled faintly and extended her right hand in return.

The two of them walked out of the castle, heading toward their next destination: Beehive Island.

A letter from Rocks had already arrived.

The most important thing now was to reach Beehive Island, then use Golden Lion’s Float-Float Fruit to fly straight to God Valley and kick off one of the greatest battles in pirate history.

Meanwhile, uprisings were breaking out all across the Red Line. Admirals and the commander-in-chief, who were meant to attend the God Valley ceremony, were all held up pacifying the chaos.

Even when they’d just finished quelling one rebellion, another would break out the moment they caught their breath, running them ragged across the entire Red Line.

That was all part of Rocks’ plan. By leaking word of the God Valley incident to the right factions, he gave them what they saw as a golden chance: with neither army nor air force admirals on the Red Line, now was the perfect time to sweep away their enemies. So, attacks broke out everywhere.

Karl and Charlotte Linlin, along with Ledfield and the others, arrived at Beehive Island within hours thanks to Skypiea’s transport.

“Linlin, take one last look at Beehive Island.”

“We might never come back here again.”

Linlin nodded silently.

Once the group landed on Beehive Island, they didn’t linger and headed straight to the conference room.

Davis, Ledfield, and Borsalino were left waiting quietly up on Skypiea.

Inside the meeting room, Rocks was already waiting. Not long after Karl and the others arrived, the rest trickled in as well.

Rocks stood, gazing at everyone with a deep, meaningful smile.

“Hahaha!”

He let out a booming laugh before finally speaking.

“I think most of you know why I called you here.”

“That’s right. While the Celestial Dragons are busy with their ceremony, I plan to strike at God Valley.”

“This has always been my one and only plan all these years.”

“There’s nothing more to say.”

“Let’s move out!”

With a grand wave, Rocks led the way.

Karl, Golden Lion, Linlin, Newgate, Silver Axe, Wang Zhi, John and the rest followed right behind.

Their massive fleet had been waiting out on the open sea for a while now.

Rocks boarded the Jibeck first and took his place at the head of the ship.

Karl and the others followed onto the Jibeck.

Golden Lion swept a hand through the air, and thousands of ships began floating up, drifting toward God Valley in West Blue.

“Moshi, moshi.”

“Rocks has set sail.”

“Understood. Everyone, be careful out there.”

God Valley!

Fleet Admiral Hill stood on the soil of God Valley, looking to the side at Kong, Sengoku, Zephyr, and the others.

His face was grave as he spoke, voice heavy with meaning: “War is coming.”