Chapter 1113 - 658: Warning to the World
Sedberpis.
The name means stability and peace.
It’s a small island in the latter half of the New World. There aren’t really any towns, just a few small villages, and the total population of the whole island is only a little over a thousand.
A long time ago, there were more than two thousand people, because they were under Whitebeard’s protection.
That man, who was spoken of as terrifying in the outside world, was like a father here, a presence who sheltered them for many, many years.
Until the old man died, the sea fell into chaos, and countless Pirates came "visiting" them, burning, killing, and looting.
In just half a year, the population was cut in half.
It wasn’t until Blackbeard planted his flag here again that they had a brief spell of calm.
But it still couldn’t compare to the peaceful days they used to have. The Blackbeard Pirates were never ones to care much about order; when they came to collect protection fees, they’d eat and take their fill, and if they got annoyed they’d casually butcher one or two people.
Even so, life was still manageable back then; you just had to grit your teeth and bear it.
But starting a while ago, the atmosphere suddenly changed. They started seeing Pirates that even those Pirates from the Blackbeard Pirates couldn’t deal with—crews that would sometimes come here to "pay a visit" and ravage multiple villages.
Afterward, nothing came of it. The Blackbeard Pirates couldn’t handle the situation, but the protection fees still had to be paid. Basically, every time Pirates came to raid, the Blackbeard Pirates’ ship would follow right behind. Whether they could win the fight or not, the villagers still had to pay a tax.
If they couldn’t win, that had nothing to do with them—after all, they were here to collect fees for protection, not to fight on anyone’s behalf.
If they could win, then the spoils of war belonged to them and had nothing to do with this island either. The protection fees would still be collected.
Things like that...
Were bearable if you just endured.
What else could they do?
They couldn’t afford to offend the Blackbeard Pirates, and they couldn’t afford to offend those other Pirates either. If it really came down to it, then when Pirates showed up, they’d just flee to some deserted place; once the Pirates had had their fun and left, they’d come back.
That’s what they’d been doing all this time.
But lately, things seemed a bit different. No Pirates had come visiting for a long while now.
Late morning, the young fisherman Lex dragged his net down to the shore like always, climbed onto a rocky reef, and laid his net out on the beach below, waiting for the tide to rise at the particular time he’d calculated.
At this hour, once the tide comes in, he can haul in at least half a net of fish.
The sea’s resources are abundant; no matter how the Pirates rage, feeding one to two thousand people is not a problem. If only there weren’t such a thing as protection fees...
In reality, they don’t eat all the fish themselves. Most of it is stored away in the fish tanks that every household has, kept until a merchant ship occasionally passes by to buy the goods they need and exchange them for Belly.
The money and some hard currency from the sea are stashed away or hidden, saved up for when the Blackbeard Pirates come to collect protection fees, in the hope it can be used to pay them off.
Of course, if the merchant ship is unlucky and gets robbed, then they can only use fish and whatever food they’ve stored as payment—assuming those haven’t been snatched away by Pirates who appear out of nowhere...
As for when this will ever end...
Who the hell knows.
Lex let out a sigh, sat on the reef, and stared blankly at the sea, waiting for the tide to rise.
People used to fight over this spot. Back then, Lex would curse under his breath and have no choice but to prepare a little wooden boat and head out into the shallows to fish.
After all, if you can get your catch easily, who wants to bother going out to sea?
Now no one fights him for this spot, but he doesn’t feel happy about it at all.
"Kreeee!"
Just as Lex was quietly mired in his melancholy, an eagle let out a sharp cry and entered his field of view.
He watched the eagle in the sky gradually dive; as it flew over the air above his head, Lex noticed there was a strange little box tied to its leg, positioned so its talons could reach it.
As the eagle’s talons touched the box, sheets of paper fluttered down from it, drifting from the coastline all the way toward the village behind him, not far away, and then, seemingly, toward the other villages as well.
Lex watched the eagle disappear. Just then, one of the sheets of paper landed right in front of him. He reached out and caught it—a huge sheet that looked almost like a newspaper—and along with it, a smaller sheet fluttering down from above, only about a third the size of the larger one.
The huge sheet was covered in writing he couldn’t understand at all, like black bars pieced together.
As for the smaller sheet...
Lex only had to glance at it; his pupils shrank to pinpoints. He didn’t even bother with the net anymore—he jumped down from the reef and bolted toward the village, panic-stricken.
"This is bad! No, this is great!"
He shouted as he ran, too flustered to tell whether it was good or bad, so he just yelled both, anything to grab people’s attention first.
Lex’s village sat on a slightly raised hillside not far from the coast. The whole village had only a bit over a hundred people. If you ignored the ruined building at the village entrance, the one that hadn’t yet been repaired and was still charred black...
"Bad news! Great news! Village chief, it’s great news!!"
His shouting quickly drew everyone out. In fact, he hardly needed to explain—those who came out, drawn by the noise, saw the sheets of paper scattered on the ground, and the curious among them picked one up to look. Their expressions almost perfectly matched Lex’s, and they joined the stampede, running alongside him and yelling as well.