The news that the Nightfall Pirates had established themselves on Saint Louis Island spread across the world a week later.
For an entire week, the Christi Kingdom had tightly blocked all information. However, even the most thorough news blockade had its limits.
An event of this magnitude simply could not remain hidden forever.
Especially with Morgans, the infamous "Big News" journalist, involved. He had almost certainly learned about the situation very early. However, at Teach's request, he deliberately delayed publishing the report for several days.
By the time the major powers of the world finally received the news, the events had already settled.
The annexation of three kingdoms.
The unification of Saint Louis Island under the Christi Kingdom.
And the transformation of the Christi Kingdom's political structure.
Anyone with even a basic understanding of politics could see the truth.
All of it was the work of the Nightfall Pirates.
A powerful nation had effectively fallen under the control of a pirate crew. Inevitably, this reminded many people of an earlier precedent.
Years ago, Kaido and the Beast Pirates had gained control of a powerful country.
Because of the immense resources of that nation, the Beast Pirates developed several times faster than other pirate crews. With both wealth and manpower secured, their growth had been explosive.
Now, something similar had happened again.
By the time the world learned the truth, everything was already finished.
No one had expected the Nightfall Pirates to make such a massive move. In one stroke they had obtained a super-large island, the full power of a major nation, and vast resources, all without suffering meaningful losses.
Looking back, the signs had always been there.
The Nightfall Pirates had already declared the Sageros Sea as their territory.
"Wisdom Angel" Mostima had occupied Parage Island, the large island closest to the Christi Kingdom. Because of that, many people had believed Parage Island would become the pirates' main base.
Yet Saint Louis Island sat near the center of the Sageros Sea.
After completely securing the surrounding waters, they helped the Christi Kingdom reunify the island. The kingdom itself cooperated almost immediately.
The entire operation moved so quickly that no outside power had time to react.
Clearly, this was not a spontaneous decision.
It had been planned for a long time.
The Nightfall Pirates, or more precisely the Dark Emperor, Marshall D. Teach, had likely set their sights on Saint Louis Island years earlier.
Many observers could not help but marvel at the depth of Teach's planning.
The Nightfall Pirates themselves paid little attention to outside speculation.
Now they possessed a stable base.
They had completely secured the Sageros Sea, and every kingdom within that sea had chosen submission.
Each year, the tribute collected from those nations amounted to tens of billions of Berries.
The entire Sageros Sea had effectively become the Nightfall Pirates' private backyard.
The next stage was development.
Development for Saint Louis Island.
Development for the Sageros Sea.
And development for the Nightfall Pirates themselves.
In the capital of the Christi Kingdom, construction continued at full speed on the palace that would belong to the Nightfall Pirates.
The building was already more than halfway complete. Before long, Teach and his core crew would move into their new headquarters.
Meanwhile, Mostima had officially assumed the role of Supreme Executive Officer.
The Christi Kingdom's cabinet had also been established.
It consisted of nineteen members, including Mostima himself.
Among the remaining eighteen ministers, nine were appointed by the Nightfall Pirates and nine were representatives of the Christi Kingdom.
With Mostima included, the pirates held a slight majority in cabinet votes.
The ministers of the Christi Kingdom had already expected this arrangement.
However, one thing surprised everyone.
The representatives of the Nightfall Pirates were not pirates at all.
Instead, they were individuals whom the crew had recruited from somewhere unknown.
After working alongside them, the Christi officials quickly realized something.
These people were highly educated, extremely intelligent, and clearly experienced in political strategy.
They were elite administrators.
In truth, these individuals had been "borrowed" from the Dark Council in the West Blue.
Seventeen members of the council's strategic planning department had volunteered to travel to the New World.
Because the cabinet had limited seats, nine of them took official positions while the remaining eight worked behind the scenes.
For professional strategists, that arrangement was perfectly acceptable.
All of them were young, highly intelligent, and eager for challenges. Working directly for the mysterious powers behind the Dark Council was an opportunity they could hardly refuse.
However, one notable figure had not come.
Abraham Keizer.
Teach had originally wanted the Dark Council's chief strategist to join them in the New World.
Keizer himself had not refused, and the Dark Council certainly would not deny Teach's request.
But the organization had only existed for a few short years, and its foundation was still unstable.
There was still too much work that required Keizer's leadership.
So he chose to remain in the West Blue for the time being.
The Supreme Executive Officer of the Christi Kingdom served a four-year term.
After four years, Mostima would step down.
That position had already been reserved for Keizer.
As soon as the cabinet was established, a series of new policies were announced.
In truth, these policies had been prepared long before the political transition.
The Christi Kingdom was enormous. Traveling across it required a great deal of time.
Because of this, the government decided to build a railway network that would span the entire nation.
With trains connecting major regions, members of the Nightfall Pirates could travel from the center of the kingdom to its borders in a short period of time.
A vast territory had advantages.
But it also had disadvantages.
Fast transportation would link distant regions, accelerate the movement of people and goods, and greatly stimulate economic development.
At the same time, a large number of engineers and workers were dispatched to Parage Island.
Parage Island had become the second most important island controlled by the Nightfall Pirates. Most members of the crew were stationed there.
On the island, a huge section of land had been marked for construction.
Teach had been planning this project for a long time.
A gigantic pyramid-shaped arena.
The Battle Pyramid.
This arena would serve two purposes.
It would be a place for combat.
And it would be one of Teach's most important money-making machines.
The structure needed to withstand attacks from extremely powerful fighters without collapsing.
Therefore, it would be built using rare and exceptionally durable materials.
Even a Marine Vice Admiral would struggle to destroy it.
The cost of such a project was enormous.
But the Nightfall Pirates had both money and manpower.
And with the Christi Kingdom under their influence, resources were abundant.
As Teach once joked, if they did not spend their mountains of gold, were they supposed to let it gather dust forever?
Under Shakky's management, the intelligence network quickly established a headquarters in the capital city of Gretel.
Through that network, large quantities of gold were gradually converted into Berries.
Within a short time, the crew gained hundreds of billions of Berries in usable funds.
Of course, even that was not enough to fully build the Battle Pyramid.
The initial construction budget alone was estimated at eighty billion Berries.
Most of that cost came from rare metals and valuable resources such as Seastone.
The required materials were worth as much as a massive gold mine.
Still, with control over an entire sea and access to the Dark Council's trade routes, Teach had many ways to acquire them.
Geographically, the Sageros Sea lay in the southern part of the New World, near the Calm Belt.
Once ships crossed the Calm Belt, they would reach the West Blue.
Research had already begun on embedding Seastone into the hulls of ships.
Because Sea Kings feared Seastone, ships equipped with it could travel safely through the Calm Belt.
This technology was not particularly complicated.
No one had simply thought of using Seastone that way before.
Meanwhile, a shipyard in the Christi Kingdom was being renovated.
Its new purpose would be the construction of specialized pirate ships for the Nightfall Pirates.
These ships would also use propulsion systems similar to naval warships, allowing them to cross the Calm Belt with ease.
As for Seastone itself, most of the world's supply came from Wano Country.
Fortunately, the Sageros Sea lay relatively close to Wano's surrounding waters.
Through various connections, Teach could purchase raw Seastone at a surprisingly low price.
However, raw Seastone required purification.
Wano possessed abundant deposits but lacked the industrial technology needed to refine them.
Therefore, the raw material would be transported to the Sageros Sea, where specialized factories would process it.
Teach had already sent representatives to negotiate such cooperation.
The eighty-billion-Berry budget was only the beginning.
The final cost could easily exceed one hundred billion.
To most people, such numbers were unimaginable.
Yet the potential profits were just as enormous.
If the project succeeded, the Battle Pyramid could easily generate tens of billions of Berries every year.
For comparison, the Dark Council alone had earned fifteen billion Berries in profit during a single quarter.
That meant sixty billion per year, and the number continued to grow.
According to the design plans, the Battle Pyramid would be a colossal structure shaped like a pyramid.
It would contain eighteen floors.
Each floor would have a different height, since stronger fighters would compete on the higher levels.
Every floor would be roughly two hundred meters tall.
That meant the arena itself would rise approximately 3,600 meters into the sky.
With the addition of the base foundation, the final height would approach 3,800 meters.
As the levels rose higher, the number of arenas on each floor would decrease.
However, the arenas themselves would become larger.
The eighteenth floor at the very top would contain only a single arena.
The bottom floor would contain one hundred and eight arenas.
In total, the Battle Pyramid would contain 672 arenas.
Teach's ambition was obvious.
He intended to transform the Battle Pyramid into the center of the New World.
A sacred land for combat.
In addition to arenas, the complex would include massive spectator stands, entertainment facilities, and residential areas for fighters.
Parage Island itself would eventually develop into a huge metropolis built around the Battle Pyramid.
The entire structure would cover tens of square kilometers.
Its scale was comparable to a small island.
Even with thousands of workers and assistance from pirate crews, construction would require a full year.
Fortunately, the Nightfall Pirates had no shortage of manpower.
When the arena finally opened, it would undoubtedly shock the entire world.
Teach already had a plan to make the Battle Pyramid globally famous.
When the time came, the name "Battle Pyramid" would dominate the headlines.
Of course, not all projects were public.
Some operations were hidden completely from the outside world.
One of them was a secret research base.
Under the leadership of Otto, the facility would initially be located on Saint Louis Island.
With Teach and his crew present, the island was one of the safest places in the world.
Even so, certain projects required even greater secrecy.
The research into life-mechanical technology and the development of the Super Soldier Serum were both crucial to the Nightfall Pirates.
The serum in particular could throw the entire world into chaos if it became public knowledge.
Because of that, Teach planned to build another hidden research facility.
Not on land.
But in the sky.
Long ago, sky islands did not exist in this world.
They were created after the arrival of the Lunarians, who used advanced technology to generate Island Clouds and the White-White Sea.
Teach had already obtained that technology from Birka, though he had previously ignored it.
Now it finally had a purpose.
He intended to build a second research base tens of thousands of meters above the ocean, hidden within dense cloud layers.
Few people would ever imagine searching the sky.
Fortunately, the technology itself was not extremely complex.
The floating sky island nation Weatheria had inherited a portion of that knowledge and used it for meteorological research.
Even Nami's Clima-Tact weapon was derived from the same technological principles.
Therefore, manufacturing machines capable of generating Island Clouds would not take long.
Meanwhile, Otto had begun exploring another ambitious project.
Using life-mechanical technology, he hoped to create a massive intelligence network.
Something similar to the Homies created by Charlotte Linlin, better known as Big Mom.
Mechanical birds.
Mechanical dogs.
Even mechanical eyes hidden throughout the territory.
Such creations could easily be built.
The real challenge was control.
All of them would need to be connected to a central system, something similar to a main computer.
This system would track intruders, identify targets automatically, and potentially issue attack commands.
In other words, a primitive form of artificial intelligence.
Something similar to the Pacifista developed by Dr. Vegapunk.
But even more advanced in its long-term vision.
Otto had already made some progress.
Inspired by Lunarian technology, he believed the project could be completed within three to five years.
Considering that the World Government had invested enormous resources and relied on the genius of Vegapunk to create the Pacifistas, Otto's timeline was actually quite impressive.
Still, one key problem remained.
Unlike the Pacifistas, which possessed a certain degree of autonomy, Otto's life-mechanical creations still lacked true independence.
For now, they were only tools.
But Otto intended to change that.