At first, Rowan had also been curious about who this so-called "important person" was—someone so utterly indifferent to human life.
The moment he heard it was the Celestial Dragons, his face lit with understanding.
Of course. So it was that pile of trash.
He glanced at the sobbing Old Jack with a trace of sympathy. A perfectly good family had been completely destroyed by a single trip.
The Celestial Dragons…
"They really are a bunch of garbage."
He said it quietly, low enough that only Nico Robin and Hashirama Senju heard him.
But just then, a set of footsteps approached.
A broad-shouldered young man with white hair suddenly walked over and dropped heavily into the seat across from Rowan.
Rowan looked up and recognized him at a glance.
The white-haired man had two cigars clenched in his mouth. He wore a thick white jacket left hanging open, with sea-green fur trim around the collar, cuffs, and hem. A pair of goggles hung around his neck.
It was Smoker, the Marine captain of Loguetown.
"Kid, where are you from?" Smoker asked bluntly, sizing Rowan up from head to toe.
Rowan replied calmly, "What does that have to do with you? I'm not a criminal, am I?"
Smoker let out a cold laugh. He hadn't expected this guy to be prickly too.
"You're not a criminal," he said, "but let me warn you—don't become one. And don't cause trouble in Loguetown. If you do, I'll arrest you myself."
Hearing that, Rowan looked at Smoker curiously.
"I have a question. In your Marines' eyes, is everyone who isn't a Marine either a criminal or a criminal in the making?"
"Huh? What kind of stupid nonsense is that?" Smoker frowned. He clearly didn't understand why Rowan would say something so ridiculous.
"If that's not the case, why are you here warning me?"
Rowan shot back, "We don't know each other, and I've never even met you before. Why not warn someone else? Why me? Do I look like a bad guy or something?"
That last question wasn't directed at Smoker.
It was directed at Robin.
Smoker sneered. "Don't tell me you think I didn't hear what you said just now."
Rowan paused.
Smoker stared at him, leaning forward slightly. His stern face flickered in and out through the smoke, giving off an intense sense of pressure.
"You're not the first person to call those people trash."
"But the ones who dare say that are never ordinary people. Ordinary people would never say something like that."
He pointed to the other customers around them—the ones who had gone pale the moment the Celestial Dragons came up and didn't dare say another word.
"Real ordinary people look like them."
"But you're different. When you said that, your eyes were calm. There wasn't a trace of fear or reverence."
"No—not only did you have no reverence, you looked down on them from the bottom of your heart. You despise them. You don't see them as lofty or untouchable. To you, they're just garbage."
"Even the Admirals and the Four Emperors wouldn't show that kind of total contempt."
"Someone like you is, without question, an extremely dangerous element."
"Now tell me—do you still think there's a problem with me warning you?"
Rowan was genuinely surprised.
He hadn't expected to run into Smoker in a tavern, much less for Smoker to have such sharp powers of observation.
In Rowan's impression, the guy had always just been a hot-headed thorn in the Marines' side—famous for being unruly and unyielding, rough and direct, with no patience for noise or stupidity, and prone to acting recklessly.
But seeing him now, it was obvious the manga's portrayal had only shown one side of him.
The man might be rash, but his eye for detail was genuinely impressive.
"Alright, I'll admit it—you got that right," Rowan said after coming back to himself. "But don't worry. We're not going to cause trouble in Loguetown. We're not even in the mood to."
"Good."
Smoker nodded in satisfaction, but inwardly grew even more cautious of the man in front of him. Someone who looked down on the Celestial Dragons from the bottom of his heart and saw them as trash was an outright heretic in this era.
A man like that was dangerous.
If Rowan had a bounty on his head, or if he were a pirate, Smoker would never have let someone like that go.
After getting his answer, Smoker was about to leave.
But before he did, there was one more thing he wanted to know.
"What gives you the right to look down on them?"
Hearing the question, Rowan froze for a moment.
Yeah.
What gave him the right to look down on the Celestial Dragons?
They weren't good people, sure, but that didn't mean just anyone could look down on them.
And not all Celestial Dragons were useless trash or garbage fit to be burned.
The Five Elders were Celestial Dragons.
The God's Knights were Celestial Dragons too.
Not only were those people immortal, every last one of them was hundreds—thousands—of times stronger than he was.
Any one of them could kill him hundreds of times over without effort.
So with a gap that wide, what exactly gave him the right to look down on them?
Was it just because he was a transmigrator?
That was part of it, maybe—but not all of it.
The reason he despised the Celestial Dragons wasn't just because he was a transmigrator.
It was because he came from a civilized society.
Because he came from an ancient nation with five thousand years of history.
Because he was someone born under the red flag and raised under the red flag.
The World Government liked to call itself civilized, but in his eyes, they were nothing more than a pack of arrogant, lawless, decadent, brutal savages.
He had every right to look down on them.
Maybe in terms of raw power, he couldn't compare to the God's Knights, or the Five Elders.
But he had the ability to walk across worlds.
He had companions who shared his goals.
He had countless worlds standing behind him.
The God's Knights were strong.
The Five Elders were strong.
And the hidden master behind the World Government, Imu, was even stronger.
So what?
Across the countless worlds out there, people stronger than them were everywhere.
Just because he lagged behind today didn't mean he would always lag behind.
In fact, Rowan had complete confidence that one day he would become so strong that crushing the God's Knights, the Five Elders, and even Imu would be effortless.
So yes—
he absolutely had both the right and the ability to look down on that pile of burnable trash.
The moment he worked through that thought, Rowan felt instantly refreshed, as though even his soul had become clearer.
At the same time, some invisible force poured outward from the flow of his thoughts in every direction.
Boom!
A low, muffled roar exploded through the air.
Black-red lightning erupted from Rowan as the center and swept outward in all directions.
The atmosphere trembled. The sky shook. The clouds above Loguetown were torn apart in an instant.
An invisible shockwave carrying crushing pressure rolled across the entire town like a collapsing mountain and a raging tsunami.
Smoker, who took the full brunt of it first, felt his mind go blank.
Then his body gave out beneath him, and he collapsed.
~~~
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