Ohara was not particularly far from Mary Geoise.
After sailing for a little over ten days, the island finally appeared on the horizon.
“It certainly stands out.” Doflamingo stood on the deck, gazing toward Ohara in the distance.
His posture was perfectly straight, giving him an alert and commanding presence.
He wore a burgundy suit with his pink feather coat draped over his shoulders.
One hand rested in his trouser pocket while the other held a cigarette.
Whether it had always been one of Doflamingo’s habits or some lingering effect of the transmigration, he rarely went anywhere without a cigarette in hand.
“It does,” Vergo agreed from beside him.
“You only need one glance to know that’s Ohara.” Vergo was unusually tall as well, although nowhere near as extreme as Doflamingo.
At present, he stood around 2.3 to 2.4 metres tall.
He wore a white checked shirt, and his naturally cold expression gave him a rather intimidating appearance.
Ohara’s most distinctive feature was impossible to miss.
A colossal ancient tree rose from the centre of the island, its enormous canopy covering much of the land beneath it.
It was the Tree of Knowledge, celebrated as one of humanity’s greatest repositories of history and culture.
The closer the Flamingo drew to Ohara, the more ships appeared in the surrounding waters.
The island was clearly far busier than Doflamingo had expected.
The people of the West Blue also seemed surprisingly friendly.
When the Flamingo passed a fishing boat, several fishermen aboard even smiled and waved at them.
“Fuffuffuffu… It seems my reputation hasn’t reached the West Blue yet,” Doflamingo said with a laugh.
In the North Blue, his name alone was enough to terrify people.
In June of the previous year, Doflamingo had personally punished two partners involved in one of the Family’s smuggling operations on Jonathan Island.
He had hung them from the harbor, sliced the flesh from their legs piece by piece, and thrown it into the water for the fish.
Then, after stopping the bleeding and treating their wounds just enough to keep them alive, he left them hanging beneath the sun for three days until they died.
Their offense had been simple.
They had pocketed money that did not belong to them.
The actual amount had been insignificant.
The Donquixote Family operated in the shadows, and anyone who wanted to survive in the underworld needed to be ruthless, vicious, and feared.
For that reason, Doflamingo occasionally committed deliberately brutal acts to reinforce his reputation.
He wanted everyone who dealt with the Family to remember exactly what would happen if they betrayed him.
Ultimately, however, the need for such displays came down to a lack of overwhelming strength.
If Doflamingo possessed power comparable to Whitebeard’s, he would not need to prove his cruelty at all.
Few people would dare provoke him in the first place.
“Our operations in the West Blue are still small,” Vergo replied calmly.
“It’s hardly surprising that no one recognizes us.” The North Blue was known as a sea of villains, filled with disorder, brutality, and criminal activity.
The West Blue was not much more peaceful.
Mafia culture flourished there.
Much of the population carried the air of gangsters—charming on the surface, but never far removed from violence.
Even an ordinary fisherman working at a harbor might have some distant relative, neighbor, or family connection tied to a mafia organization.
Nearly everyone in the West Blue was connected to organized crime in one way or another.
The Donquixote Family intended to expand its business throughout the world, and the West Blue was naturally included in those plans.
As a result, the Family had already conducted extensive research into the region.
According to incomplete estimates, the West Blue contained more than fifty thousand mafia groups of varying sizes.
Most were structured as families and operated across the sea’s many islands and kingdoms.
Aside from a small number of places such as Ohara, almost the entire West Blue had some degree of mafia influence.
Anyone hoping to conduct major business there would find it nearly impossible to avoid dealing with them.
At the summit of this vast criminal network stood the organizations known as the Five Families of the West Blue.
Doflamingo had little interest in four of them.
The Capone Family, however, struck him as a promising potential partner.
Since he had already come to the West Blue, he hoped to meet with them if the opportunity arose.
After all, in approximately twenty years, Capone Bege would rise within that family and become the West Blue’s one true Godfather.
Under his leadership, the Capone Family would bring the region’s mafia under its control.
At present, the Donquixote Family’s primary business was smuggling, along with a collection of other smaller criminal ventures.
Doflamingo, however, had always wanted to diversify.
In particular, he wanted to enter the arms trade.
He had made several attempts in the North Blue, but they remained minor operations and had never developed into anything substantial.
The reason was simple.
Germa Kingdom controlled much of the North Blue’s weapons market.
Its technology was highly advanced, and its weapons were far more competitive than anything the Donquixote Family could currently produce.
In terms of history and resources, the Donquixote Family had very little foundation.
It had existed in its current form for only seven or eight years.
Germa Kingdom, on the other hand, possessed centuries of history.
Even in decline, it was not an opponent that could be displaced overnight.
Doflamingo was not afraid of Germa, but he was certainly wary of it.
The situation in the West Blue was different.
Each of the Five Families possessed considerable power.
According to the Donquixote Family’s investigation, the Capone Family alone had existed for more than three hundred years.
Its resources and influence ran deep.
Because of the region’s widespread mafia activity, the West Blue also possessed a thriving weapons market.
The Capone Family controlled more than thirty percent of that market and maintained established production lines, weapons factories, and distribution networks.
Doflamingo hoped to form a partnership with them.
He wanted to import weapons from the West Blue and sell them throughout the North Blue, establishing the Donquixote Family as one of the region’s leading arms dealers.
It did not matter that he lacked his own production facilities for now.
The first step was to build the distribution network.
He could sell weapons manufactured in the West Blue, compete with the Vinsmoke Family for market share, and eventually replace those imported goods with weapons of his own.
Doflamingo was not joking when he said he intended to become the ruler of the world.
To realize an ambition of that scale, timing, luck, personal strength, and organizational power were all indispensable.
The timing was already favorable.
The next two decades would be an age of violent upheaval.
Fate and opportunity would be hidden within those changing tides, waiting for those capable of seizing them.
Doflamingo would not be the only one competing.
Countless heroes, monsters, and ambitious figures would rise across the seas and clash for supremacy.
Luck was impossible to control.
Still, Doflamingo doubted his own fortune could be considered poor.
He possessed Conqueror’s Haki, a gift found in only one among millions, and he had experienced a transmigration so unlikely that most people would never encounter anything similar across countless lifetimes.
As for personal strength, he had never allowed himself to become complacent.
He trained constantly, pushed himself forward, and searched relentlessly for every possible path toward greater power.
That left the final requirement.
An organization powerful enough to support him.
There was an old truth about the criminal world.
Being able to fight was useful, but strength alone did not decide everything.
Influence, manpower, wealth, and connections mattered just as much.
Patrick Redfield was unquestionably powerful.
But what had solitary strength truly given him?
By comparison, most Celestial Dragons were helpless weaklings, yet they could summon a Marine admiral with a single command.
That was the power of status and influence.
Building an organization required both money and connections.
For the past several years, Doflamingo had been accumulating both.
Whether he eventually became a pirate or chose another path entirely, he would need a strong foundation if he wanted to advance quickly without losing his footing.
The Flamingo soon docked at Ohara’s harbor.
Doflamingo descended from the ship with measured, elegant steps.
It had taken him considerable effort to correct the wide-legged, swaggering walk that came naturally to his body.
Ohara felt different from every other island he had visited.
He noticed it almost immediately after stepping onto the dock.
Even the laborers unloading cargo displayed the island’s unusual scholarly atmosphere.
While resting on wooden posts between jobs, some of them casually discussed academic theories and historical speculation.
Doflamingo listened in surprise.
Ohara truly was an island of scholars.