Chapter 267: Alternation
Grand Line, Marinford Island.
As a world-renowned vacation destination, the island has countless hotels, casinos, smoke houses, auction houses, and streetwalkers’ alleys.
Delicacies, fine wine, beauties… all things humans find enjoyable are available here.
Every day, countless royalty, nobles, tycoons, and other upper-class people gather here, and even Celestial Dragons frequently visit, making it a veritable den of extravagance.
Golden Glazed Pavilion—the tallest, grandest, and most luxurious building on Marinford Island, an ultimate entertainment venue that combines all the aforementioned entertainment spots.
Of course, the consumption there is also the highest on the entire island.
The Belly that the guests who come and go here spend every minute equals the total income of an ordinary salaried worker for half a year.
In one of the resplendent private rooms, the patriarch of our Mediya Family was sitting smugly on a sofa made of Sea King leather, puffing away on cigars with the others in the room.
“Phew~”
“Cough! Cough cough!”
After coughing a few times, he extinguished the expensive cigar that he had only taken one puff of, and Caspar said in a disdainful tone:
“Everything else about this place is passable, but the cigars are too low-class, smoking them feels like wood chips.”
“Far inferior to that batch from the West Sea a while ago.”
“Right, Staff Officer Singh?”
“Thru-thru-thru~ Mister Mediya, that batch was royal tribute from the West Sea Tobacco Kingdom, several times more expensive than gold of the same volume, and only a few come out each year.”
A man wearing a military uniform, with dark brown skin and a big belly, was sitting beside Caspar, quite comfortably enjoying the service of two graceful beauties at his side.
“Although the cigars provided here are inferior in quality, they are already the highest grade available in the Grand Line.”
As he spoke, this deputy staff officer of the Navy Logistics Department had the beauty at his side take a puff of the high-end cigar in his hand, then feed it to him mouth-to-mouth.
“Well~ Anyway, I just can’t get used to this stuff.”
“It makes me cough.”
“Better wait for the next time to get those West Sea guys to offer a few more cases~”
Watching the other man’s interaction with those old women made Caspar frown, so he turned his head away and looked at the drunken and extravagant crowd outside the window.
“Speaking of which, we’re riding on your coattails here, Spandine. I didn’t know you had connections over in the West Sea.”
As Caspar’s words fell, everyone in the private room looked toward Spandine, who was standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling window with his hands behind his back and a smile on his face.
It was he who had acted as the go-between for Caspar, Singh, and other high-ranking military officials, weaving this web of interests, and he himself had profited handsomely from it.
Hearing someone call his name, Spandine turned his head and said with an undiminished smile on his face.
“It’s nothing, just that there have been some changes in my work lately, so I’ve had more contact with people from the West Sea.”
“Mobilization in work… Did you smoothly take over from that old thing Jolly?”
Singh, who knew something about Spandine’s department, asked curiously.
“Not exactly.”
“Hm? What’s going on? Wasn’t enough Belly stuffed in?”
Singh paused his breast massage and asked somewhat worriedly.
He wasn’t worried about Spandine’s future, but if he was transferred to another department now, it might affect his arms smuggling business with Caspar.
“No, it’s an order from even higher up. They seem to want me to take charge of a CP department, not sure which CP yet.”
“CP?!” *2
Even though it involved CP, such a sensitive intelligence department, which should be top-secret internal information, Spandine casually let it slip.
This sudden promotion beyond his level seemed to make him a bit carried away.
“That’s right, apparently the original candidate died unexpectedly in that battle a few months ago, so they’re having me take over… By the way, I have the Beasts Pirates to thank for this~”
Picking up the wine glass on the table, Spandine raised a toast to Caspar from afar.
“You mean that battle… Plenty of frontline grunts died in that battle too, so all the funds allocated from above went to pensions, and I didn’t get a single Belly!”
Thinking of his arch-rival, the other deputy staff officer in charge of pension payouts who got a brand new luxury villa right after, made Singh grit his teeth.
Watching that guy pocket the money hurt more than losing it himself!
“Well~ But it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. The weapons the army couldn’t afford were directly resold to those West Sea mudlegs, netting several times the profit.”
“That gang called… Capone Al, they sure spend freely.”
He shifted his fat body a bit to pull himself out of the sofa, and also raised a glass of red wine to Caspar.
“Haha~ After all, we went through hell and high water to ship the goods from the ‘New World’ to that backwater in the West Sea. How could they not show some appreciation?”
Caspar said smugly, thoroughly enjoying the subtle flattery from the two.
Before this, these two had been dismissive toward him. If he hadn’t offered enough profit, they wouldn’t even bother meeting him.
They purely treated him like a money-delivering lapdog.
But after that campaign in the Fenrir Sea Area three months ago ended, these two’s attitudes suddenly changed.
Though they had no intention of spitting out any of the profits they’d swallowed, at least their attitudes improved by more than a notch, and they even proactively invited him here for a vacation.
『Hmph~ Who would’ve thought those Beasts Pirates barbarians could be useful.』
Swirling the red wine in his glass, Caspar pondered in his mind how to further extract value from the Beasts Pirates.
……
At the same time, a pirate ship with an exaggerated design and a dragon-shaped prow docked at the dock on Fenrir Island.
By now, the shore was already crowded with people waiting to greet them, and even Kaido himself came out personally, standing at the front of the welcoming group.
Smack!
Black leather boots stepped onto the bluestone ground of the dock.
A pirate wearing a black captain’s coat, half a mask, and sporting a fierce jaw looked at the grand welcoming party and grinned, revealing a mouth full of sharp teeth.
“Uro-ro-ro-ro, sa-shi-bu-ri-na~”
Kaido stepped forward first, greeting the other enthusiastically, then glanced at Wright also in the group—his look clearly saying ‘Now we can go get the wine, right?!’
Seeing the other sigh helplessly and lead people toward the wine cellar, Kaido smiled in satisfaction.
Then he went straight up, threw his arm around the shoulder of this old acquaintance whose demeanor had changed dramatically, and boasted enthusiastically:
“This time I’ve prepared fine wine you wouldn’t even dare dream of, just waiting for you!”
“Hana-zō!”
