After a back and forth with my crew members I eventually convinced them to turn the ship around. By that I mean I told them to turn around and I wouldn't take a no for an answer.
They were concerned that Kaido's crew would be in hot pursuit of us, and as they suspected when we turned around we were met by a fleet of Kaido's ships. However, much to my crew's surprise, they didn't attempt to attack us or stop us. Rather they just sailed right past us, much to the shock of my crew.
We continued back to Onigashima completely unimpeded. When we returned we noticed that what remained of Onigashima was practically deserted. I insisted on searching the island to find out what was going on.
"Leo, you haven't recovered yet. You need to rest. What are you even looking for here?" Celeste asked me.
"Oh, just shut up." I was getting tired of her incessant badgering, and I had important business to do.
Eventually I found a mound with a rock that had Kaido's name carved into it. I guess one of his crew members at least had enough decency to bury Kaido before they got out of here.
I had Yuma get me some booze and I poured some out over his grave. "Looks like we won't be able to share a drink again. I know you did a lot of evil stuff and you were probably a pretty bad guy, but still, I can't bring myself to hate you. My only memory of you was of our incredible fight, they say men can communicate better with fists than words." I stopped and scratched my head awkwardly. "I don't know what I'm trying to say, I'm not good at these sort of things. I guess I'm just sorry we won't have a chance to talk again. Anyway rest in peace."
As I was saying my goodbyes, someone appeared behind me. "You and I might be the only ones who will actually mourn him." A man said.
I turned around to see who it was. It was Kaido's (now former) second in command King. "I thought everyone else had left already." I said.
"Most of them are gone, but I managed to convince some to stay. I even managed to wrangle in a couple members of the Tobbi Roppo. Though they're only sticking around because they're afraid of me. For all intents and purposes, the Animal Kingdom Pirates are done for."
"Eh, sorry I didn't mean to cause so much trouble."
"It's fine. At the end of the day this is probably what Kaido wanted the most. To be defeated by a worthy opponent." King said. "I thought Kaido was the strongest, but he was finally defeated. It's my intention to keep what's left of the crew together but I don't really now what to do now. To that end I was hoping that you could do me a favor."
King was kinda making me feel bad, so I felt sort of obligated to help him out. "Eh, yeah ok what do you want?" That being said I wasn't a fan of doing favors for people I have other stuff to do.
"We followed Kaido because he was the strongest, if you beat him then you must be the strongest now. What I'm saying is, we would like to fall under your banner."
"Yeah that's fine I don't care just don't cause me any trouble." This was something I shouldn't have agreed to so quickly but honestly I just wanted to do whatever got this conversation over with the fastest. "But whatever you do you guys can't stay here. If you want to fly my flag, you can always go to Baima Island."
"I expected that to be a deeper conversation, but I'm glad we could come to an agreement." King said. "By the way, we just set Yamato free. Were you still interested in marrying her? Because we could definitely set that up."
"What? No that was just…" I stopped to think about it for a second. "Eh, I'll get back to you on that, we'll table that for now."
We ended up leaving Wano after I paid my respects to Kaido. Our next destination was Elbalf because I was pretty sure that was where the final Road Ponyglyph was. Though, I wasn't really sure because I wasn't up to date with the One Piece manga. After all, it had been 20 years since I had come to this world. At this point my memories of my past life are starting to fade, so I can't remember as much of the story as I used to. At this point it probably doesn't matter much anyway.
Either way, we end up going to Elbaf. Unlike Luffy and his crew I didn't receive an especially warm welcome. I'd never met any of these guys before, so there's no reason why they'd be happy to see an Emperor of the Sea on their doorstep. Then suddenly, Hajrudin and his crew spoke up on our behalf.
I honestly forgot that I did actually meet him at Dressrosa. They wanted to know why I was there and I told them that I wanted to talk to Scopper Gaban. The final Road Ponyglyph's location was supposed to be known by the man with burn scars. I guess I'm not sure if that's him or not but either way he's actually been to Raftel, so I'm sure he'd be helpful either way.
As we had a meeting with him to discuss whether or not he'd help us or not, somewhere else someone was having a meeting of their own.
Inside the throne room of the Isekai system two men discussed their own plans.
"Sir, I'm sorry to report this but, he has defeated even Kaido. His power has far exceeded our expectations." The system said to a man on a throne. "But! There's nothing to worry about. We still have the World Government who we manipulated into sending some of their strongest forces to go after him."
"HAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHA!" The man on the throne just laughed as he stepped down from his seat. "That doesn't even matter now. If he's defeated Kaido then we can only assume that none of the others that we've sent after him would be a match for him. For all intents and purposes, we can say that he is the strongest man in this world right now. It's pointless to send anyone else from this world after him now."
"A-Are you certain sir?" The system man asked nervously. "Surely, surely you are not suggesting that we just give up and let him obtain the One Piece and achieve his goals unimpeded?"
"No, no, no. That's not what I mean at all. I merely said that no one in THIS world could stop him." The System king said as he turned to look his subordinate in the face. "I'm sure you understand what I'm saying, in other words you have a new guest to attend to."
A wicked and twisted smile broke out across the system man's face. "Yes sir, I understand completely." He then stood and bowed before leaving the room.
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