Chapter 87: Beasts Pirates And War (part 1)
“That’s right.”
La nodded.
“According to the records left behind, Fenrir Island transports large amounts of food to several surrounding islands every month, and some islands even require fresh water to be shipped there daily.
It seems that the snow mountain on the island is the only place around that can produce large amounts of fresh water.”
“So as long as that place is in our hands, those small islands around, no matter who controls them, will have to bow down to us.
If we also control those islands located on important sea routes, the rest won’t be able to stir up any waves at all.”
“I see, is that how it is…”
As a pirate who roams the sea every day, Burufaruto naturally understood how important and vital fresh water was as a resource, so his doubts about La’s plan were somewhat dispelled.
“And aren’t we short on manpower? Those undefended islands can serve perfectly as bait.” La added.
“You mean…” Burufaruto and Ember made eye contact, both understanding La’s intention.
“Uro-ro-ro-ro! La, you brat, your brain really works well!” Kaido was very pleased with this idea.
Use undefended islands as fish bait to lure those pirate crews craving territory.
Once they arrive on the island, it will be time for the Beasts Pirates to have a friendly exchange with them.
At that time, whether they join the Beasts Pirates’ warm family or end up in the Beasts Pirates’ warm big stomach depends on their choice.
As for those who come to us on their own, we can directly allocate an island to them and let them use their own pirate crew to guard the Beasts Pirates’ island.
In this way, “turn enemies into our own, and dilemmas resolve themselves.”
“The first step, and the foundation, is to transform the Beasts Pirates from a single consumption-type unstable armed faction into a higher-level faction form capable of self-sufficiency and even stable resource production.
After all, it’s hard to build skyscrapers on shaky, unstable land.”
La continued to speak eloquently.
“The second step is, on the premise of a stable environment, to directionally invest the controlled resources into certain fields and then wait for them to bear fruit.”
“Uh… La, can you explain it more clearly? One moment you’re building buildings, the next you’re planting flowers—I’m totally confused~”
Burufaruto, somewhat unable to keep up with Teacher La’s train of thought, timely raised his hand to signal.
“Alright, I’ll try to use fewer metaphors from now on.”
The petite teacher readily accepted and explained straightforwardly:
“What I mean is that the Beasts Pirates will fully take over the management of subordinate islands in the future, just like Whole Cake Island—from appointing internal personnel to handling all external economic trade, establishing a nation named ‘Beasts Pirates’.
Then, relying on this more efficient system, concentrate more people, more funds, more raw materials to do what we want to do.”
“Like building bigger ships and robbing more money?”
Hearing Burufaruto’s simple remark, even La couldn’t help but sigh inwardly at that moment.
“Something like that, but according to the Beasts Pirates’ ultimate goal, it should be building a comprehensive weapon factory.”
In fact, after accumulating enough resources, the optimal next step should be to establish a complete industrial system, prioritizing heavy industry before light.
But according to La’s calculations, with the current territory and resources, it’s completely impossible to support an industrial revolution across all fields at once.
So they can only settle for the next best thing by concentrating resources in the single field of military industry to achieve a technological breakthrough.
This is essentially a helpless compromise due to insufficient resource and technology accumulation.
After all, a single industrial system is doomed not to last long; without fresh input from other fields, without technical exchange, it will eventually be trapped in a bottleneck and become a stagnant pool.
Of course, these can be slowly resolved later…
“Producing weapons ourselves? That’s good, but is it necessary?”
“Wouldn’t it be more convenient to just buy from those arms dealers or rob them? You know, the New World lacks everything except those who resell arms.”
Burufaruto was telling the truth; the New World is almost the area with the highest weapons throughput on the entire sea.
“In the New World, getting arms is naturally not difficult, but what we want to do is more than just build a weapon factory for our own use.
Our ultimate goal is to monopolize the entire sea’s weapons market, at least the mid-to-high-end market.”
La’s true purpose is not the weapons themselves, but the market and wars derived from weapons.
“You mean switch to becoming an arms dealer?” Ember quickly grasped the key point.
“That’s right. Weapons are the most direct aspect of war.
Perhaps a sharper long sword or a flintlock pistol with greater range can change the course of a country at a critical moment.”
“Exaggerating a bit, whoever masters the weapons masters the initiative in war.”
“And what we have to do is grasp that initiative in our own hands.”
“A very sharp viewpoint. I’ve never thought of these things.” After hearing La’s argument, Ember also felt it was feasible.
“But making arms isn’t simple, La.”
Kaido was the most clear-headed at this moment. As a great pirate who has roamed the sea for many years, he knew well that monopolizing the arms market was no easy task.
You know, the biggest arms dealer on this sea has always been just one, and those so-called big arms dealers in the underworld are mostly just frontmen.
“I understand it’s difficult, but where there’s a will, there’s a way. We’re not without opportunity.”
“I’ve collected and observed the arms on the current market and found that whether in style or power, they are almost identical to those from decades ago.
In other words, even after decades, those arms dealers still haven’t upgraded or updated their weapons—at least not on the surface.”
The people of this world, due to Haki and Devil Fruits, tend to focus more on high-end personal combat power, and for weapons like swords and guns, they emphasize a casual attitude of “as long as it works.”
Of course, there are things like famous swords, so-called divine weapons, but those are more like embellishments to personal martial prowess.
Ordinary people can’t become swordmasters even if they get a famous sword, while true great swordmasters can split mountains and seas even with a fruit knife.
As for “Ancient Weapons,” they are completely treated as legend; everyone just thinks of searching the world for them instead of recreating one themselves.
Moreover, the World Government, as the biggest arms boss, seems to intentionally restrict the development of weapons or rather technology.
Although they’ve conducted all sorts of experiments privately, the results actually brought to the table are few and far between.
After all, too many and too advanced weapons stored by the public would impact their long-standing stability policy; maintaining just enough quantity to satisfy internal strife consumption is fine.
And it’s precisely this somewhat distorted market reality that gives La confidence in catching up and breaking through.
After seeing Sain’s laboratory, La understood that this world’s technological level isn’t as backward as it appears on the surface.
It’s just that most advanced technologies haven’t been promoted and applied on a large scale, instead becoming self-entertainment for a few.
“And that’s our opportunity.”
“In fact, we can spend five to ten years, pooling all resources, to iterate on existing weapons, turning the Beasts Pirates into a world weapon factory.
Then thoroughly occupy this blue ocean of the weapons market.”
……
After La finished speaking, the scene fell silent again.
“…”
“This isn’t something you can achieve by just moving your lips. Do you have a detailed plan?” Ember’s question remained sharp.
“This involves funds planning, talent recruitment, site selection, laboratory construction, raw material acquisition, worker hiring, information security, channel establishment, and market seizure—a series of issues.
I can’t provide a detailed and reliable planning document on short notice; currently, I only have a rough framework.”
La stated frankly, picking a few more sheets from the stack of papers in his hand and handing them to Ember.
Kaido and Burufaruto also glanced sideways, but upon seeing the dense handwriting, they withdrew their gazes and secretly marveled in their hearts:
『The handwriting is really beautiful!』
Ember skimmed through it at a glance and confirmed it was indeed just a rough architectural planning document, without too many specifics.
Of course, the fact that even the simplest framework contained so much content greatly exceeded Ember’s imagination.
Everyone expressed understanding.
Although La always did things perfectly, expecting her to produce a practical plan involving many aspects in just half a day was indeed unrealistic.
Truth be told, for La to grasp the situation of the subordinate islands to this extent in such a short time and formulate a rough plan for the pirate crew’s next decade or even decades…
And to dispel the clouds, bringing everyone’s understanding of faction development to a realm that could almost be called entirely new—this had completely exceeded Kaido’s initial expectations.
Originally, Kaido had gathered La and the others just to simply discuss the next action, but La directly gave him a big one.
It felt like everyone was still in the stage of ax king head-chopping, and you directly accelerated into Synchro Summon.
Burufaruto even suspected if La was some monster who ate the Human-Human Fruit, Commoner Form.
