...
Night fell. Deprived of the sunlight from the surface, Fish-Man Island welcomed the evening.
Although the moon and stars couldn't be seen like on the surface, there were plenty of bioluminescent deep-sea creatures.
These glowing creatures of various colors drifted above Fish-Man Island, creating a dreamy scene akin to a starry sky.
Outside the Prison Tower near Ryugu Palace, a large number of shackled New Fish-Man Pirates were being escorted inside by the Neptune Army.
Not far away sat a large group of human pirates who had previously been kidnapped and enslaved by Hody's gang.
"The Fish-Man District is finally completely cleared out."
Standing outside the gates of Ryugu Palace, Neptune spoke as he watched the busy guards in the distance.
"Once Hody's crew is fully locked up, let's release all those captured human pirates."
"Release them? Are you kidding me? That's a ready-made labor force. Why would you let them go?"
Allen rolled his eyes at Neptune with a look of disdain before continuing.
"And those fish-men—locking them in prison means you have to provide them with food and water every day."
"Why waste the money? Reforming the Fish-Man District is a massive project. Why leave tens of thousands of free laborers sitting around doing nothing? Drag them all out to work."
Hearing this, Neptune was left utterly speechless. He stared blankly at Allen and stammered, "This... aren't those humans your compatriots? Treating them like slaves..."
"Stop joking. Humans are everywhere. There's no such thing as 'compatriots' everywhere you go. Don't force your fish-man ideals onto humans."
Allen shot him a dismissive glance and added, "Anyway, the Fish-Man District must be fixed up within a month. If you have the guts to not use them, suit yourself. But the work has to be done by someone, and if it's not them, it'll be the citizens of Fish-Man Island."
"..."
Neptune fell silent for a moment before saying, "Then let's have those pirates do it."
Whether it was Hody's crew or the captured human pirates, very few of them were decent people anyway.
The matter of Fish-Man Island becoming Allen's territory was already set in stone, and Neptune had no real say in refusing it.
Secondly, while purging the island today, Allen had inadvertently solved a massive problem for him.
That was the convenient killing of Decken IX.
Because of that bastard's sick, twisted courtship, Shirahoshi had been forced to live in hiding inside the Hard-Shell Tower all this time. Now, she was finally free.
Neptune considered this a massive favor owed to Allen. Fish-Man Island would eventually need to seek the protection of a major power anyway, so using this as a stepping stone to board Allen's ship wasn't a bad idea.
He just didn't know how to explain this to the Whitebeard Pirates in the future.
Neptune sighed helplessly. Thinking about this gave him a massive headache.
Fortunately, Marco and the others weren't petty people. As long as he explained the situation clearly, it shouldn't be a huge issue.
As for fully opening up Fish-Man Island...
Fish-Man Island had always been in a semi-closed state.
As a mandatory transit point connecting the first and second halves of the Grand Line, Fish-Man Island inevitably had to deal with pirates. They had always adopted an attitude of neither rejecting nor welcoming them.
Although Neptune also wanted fish-men to have the right to live on the surface, he hadn't actually done much to make it happen. At the very least, he couldn't compare to Queen Otohime.
Ultimately, he couldn't bring himself to actively extend signals of friendship and trust to humans like Otohime did.
As a result, the easing of relations between Fish-Man Island and humans had seen no real progress over all these years.
Perhaps Fish-Man Island really did need sweeping reforms.
Although it came with immense risks, at least now they had Allen backing them up. Ordinary pirates wouldn't dare run wild here.
"The Fish-Man District is just a trial. Let me make this clear right now: if the results are poor, I will not completely open Fish-Man Island to the outside world," Neptune said with a firm tone.
There would definitely be a lot of trouble at the beginning. Allen had fully anticipated this.
Discrimination, bullying of fish-men, and the kidnapping and selling of merfolk were impossible to eradicate completely. That was just normal.
Humans slaughtered each other every single day, but did that mean contact between humans should be banned? Impossible.
"Conflicts between different races will always exist. Any effort to deny the objective reality of racial differences is doomed to fail."
"You just need to do your best to contain the conflicts. Leave the troubles you can't handle to us," Allen stated.
Ruling through fear wasn't the best policy, but it could solve ninety percent of their problems.
Anyone who dared to cause trouble in his territory would be turned into a candied apple and hung at the entrance of Fish-Man Island. As long as the methods were brutal enough, people would naturally be terrified.
In Allen's plan, the Fish-Man District would eventually become a gray area integrating various entertainment industries, specifically catering to passing pirates.
Meanwhile, Fish-Man Island itself would be transformed into a dreamlike underwater theme park designed to attract ordinary tourists.
There was no need to make rules like banning pirates from the island. As long as the different types of entertainment were zoned properly, the people arriving would naturally be filtered.
Pirates would obviously prefer to stay in the Fish-Man District, where they could eat, drink, gamble, and whore to their hearts' content.
There would be no restrictions on them visiting Fish-Man Island either. After all, how much trouble could someone who genuinely enjoyed an amusement park really cause?
Coupled with foreign trade focused on exporting various deep-sea specialties, the future Fish-Man Island was guaranteed to become Allen's ultimate cash cow.
...
Over the next two days, Allen and his crew enjoyed a leisurely time on Fish-Man Island.
Between their excursions, Allen discussed many details regarding the island's development with Neptune.
It wasn't until the plan was fully laid out and a massive amount of details were explained that Neptune belatedly realized he had been completely drawn into the ideal future Allen painted.
He also realized that Allen hadn't just come up with the idea of developing Fish-Man Island on a whim. He had a concrete plan and a wealth of implementation details.
Some of the concepts were so advanced that even Neptune couldn't understand them, forcing him to hand the discussions over to his Minister of Finance to coordinate with Allen. It was hard to imagine that a pirate could know so much about economics.
To Allen, this was nothing more than a revolutionary advantage brought by a different era. The concepts he introduced were just basic market common sense that anyone in the modern world could talk about.
But here, it was more than enough to crush the understanding of most people.
During these two days, news of the Summit War had spread overwhelmingly across the world, and Fish-Man Island naturally received the reports regarding the Whitebeard Pirates.
Among the news, Whitebeard's death caused considerable panic on the island.
However, upon learning that Ace had been rescued and the rest of the commanders had successfully retreated from Marineford, the panic among the island's citizens subsided somewhat.
Neptune took this opportunity to announce that Fish-Man Island had reached multiple cooperative agreements with the Demon Lion Pirates and the Donquixote Family, meaning they would be under the protection of two additional Warlords of the Sea alongside Jinbe.
Hearing this news, the panic among the citizens completely dissipated, leaving only sorrow and regret for Whitebeard's sacrifice at Marineford.
That's right, Allen had pulled Doflamingo into this as well.
Dressrosa was managed exceptionally well by him. Although there was darkness hidden beneath the prosperity—such as the underground toys and the Dwarves—Doffy's capabilities were undeniable.
He already had a mature system in place, which would be highly beneficial for the rapid development of Fish-Man Island. Thus, Allen straightforwardly brought him into the fold.
In the future, he planned to conquer even more territories and establish further cooperative relationships with Doflamingo.
Although Allen didn't have a great impression of Doffy personally, as a business partner, he was an incredibly reliable ally.
By noon on the third day, Allen and his crew, who were preparing to leave Fish-Man Island, were invited to Ryugu Palace for a farewell banquet.
Just as they were about to set off from the mermaid cove, following the arrival of Fukaboshi and his brothers who had come to invite them, several mermaid guards rushed over in a panic.
"Bad news, Prince Fukaboshi! And Lord Allen! Something terrible has happened at Ryugu Palace!"
Before they even landed in the cove, the guards shouted in panic the moment they saw Allen's group.
Fukaboshi frowned upon hearing this and quickly asked, "What happened at Ryugu Palace? Are Royal Father and Shirahoshi alright?"
"No! His Majesty and the Princess are fine, but subordinates of a Four Emperors have arrived!"
"There are two weird-looking guys claiming to be under Big Mom's orders, and they want to claim Fish-Man Island as their territory."
"They made a bunch of demands and said that if we don't agree, they'll destroy Fish-Man Island!"
The guards landed on the shore and hurriedly swam forward to report.
Hearing this, the expressions of the three princes changed drastically.
Beside them, Allen couldn't help but frown as well.
Big Mom's speed was way too fast. Whitebeard had only died the day before yesterday, and her subordinates were already here today.
He had just finished discussing so many plans with Neptune. If he didn't step up now, wouldn't it be a massive slap in the face?
"What a buzzkill of an old hag. Let's go."
Allen stepped forward, taking the lead to jump onto the oarfish mount used for receiving guests.
It was just a Four Emperors' subordinates. The Emperor herself hadn't even come. Who did they think they could scare?