Pirate: It’s not a phantom beast, it’s a phantom god!

Chapter 87: Beasts and War (Part 1)

"Yes."

La nodded.

“According to the records left behind, Fenrir Island transports a large amount of food to several surrounding islands every month, and some islands even need to transport fresh water every day.

It seems that this snow-capped mountain on the island is the only place around that can produce a large amount of fresh water."

"Then as long as that place is in our hands, the surrounding islands, no matter who holds them, will have to submit to us.

If we can also control those islands located in important shipping lanes, the rest will be completely invulnerable."

"Yes, is that so..."

As a pirate who roamed the sea all day long, Burfat naturally understood how important and deadly the resource of fresh water was, so his doubts about the La plan were somewhat dispelled.

"And aren't we short of people? Those undefended islands can be used as bait." La added.

"You mean..." Burfat and Jin looked at each other and both understood what La meant.

"Woo-lah-lah-lah! La, you little brat really has a good brain!" Kaido liked this idea very much.

Use undefended islands as bait to lure out those pirate groups hungry for territory.

Once they arrive on the island, it is time for the beasts to interact with them cordially.

At that time, it will depend on their choice whether to enter the warm family of beasts or the warm big stomach of “beasts”.

As for those who voluntarily surrender, we can directly allocate an island to them and let them use their own pirate group to guard the Island of Beasts.

In this way, "the enemy is transformed into our own, and the dilemma is resolved."

"Transforming the Hundred Beasts from a single, expendable, unstable armed force into a more advanced force capable of self-sufficiency and even stable resource production is the first step and the foundation.

After all, it’s difficult to build a skyscraper on unstable land.”

La continued to talk.

"The second step is to invest the resources you have in certain areas in a stable environment and then wait for them to bear fruit."

"Um... could you please explain it more clearly? You're talking about building a building and planting flowers, and I'm confused."

Some of Burfat's classmates who could not follow Teacher La's ideas raised their hands at the right time.

"Okay, I'll try to use fewer metaphors from now on."

The small teacher readily accepted the advice and explained it bluntly:
"What I mean is that Hundred Beasts will completely take over the management of its subordinate islands, just like the 'World Kingdom', taking control of everything from internal personnel appointments to external economic and trade affairs, and establishing a kingdom called 'Hundred Beasts'.

Then, we can use this more efficient system to bring together more people, more money, and more raw materials to do what we want to do.”

"Like building bigger ships and stealing more money?"

Hearing Burfat's simple speech, Rao Shila couldn't help but sigh in his heart.

"Almost, but according to the ultimate goal of the Beasts, it should be to build a comprehensive weapons production factory."

In fact, after accumulating sufficient resources, the best next step should be to build a complete industrial system from heavy to light.

But Ira calculated that with the current territory and resources, it was completely impossible to support an industrial revolution in all areas.

Therefore, we can only settle for the second best and concentrate resources in the single field of military industry in order to achieve a technological breakthrough.

This is essentially a helpless compromise due to insufficient resources and technological accumulation.

After all, a single industrial system is doomed to fail in the long run. Without the influx of fresh capital from other fields, technological exchanges will eventually be trapped in bottlenecks and become stagnant.

Of course, these can all be solved later...

"Do we produce our own weapons? That would be nice, but is it necessary?"

"Wouldn't it be more convenient to just buy from or rob the arms dealers? You know, the New World is short of everything except arms dealers."

What Burfat said was true. The New World was almost the area with the largest weapons throughput in the entire ocean.

“It’s not difficult to obtain arms in the New World, but we need to do more than just build a weapons factory and use them ourselves.

Our ultimate goal is to monopolize the entire ocean weapons market, or at least the mid- to high-end market."

The real purpose of Pu is not the weapons themselves, but the market and war derived from the weapons.

"You mean changing careers to become an arms dealer?" Jhin quickly grasped the point.

"Indeed, weapons are the most visible aspect of war. Perhaps a sharper sword or a musket with a longer range can, at some point, change the course of a nation."

"To put it in an exaggerated way, whoever controls the weapons controls the war."

"What we need to do is to take control of this initiative into our own hands."

"That's a pretty sharp point of view. I've never thought about that." After listening to La's argument, Jhin also felt it was feasible.

"But making munitions is no simple matter, La."

Kaido is actually the most sober one at this time. As a pirate who has been on the sea for many years, he knows that it is not easy to monopolize the arms market.

You must know that there has always been only one largest arms dealer in this ocean, and those so-called big arms dealers in the underground world are mostly just white gloves.

"I understand that this is a difficult matter, but it depends on our own efforts and we are not without a chance."

"I have collected and observed the weapons on the market today, and found that both the style and power are almost the same as those decades ago.

This means that even after decades, arms dealers still haven't completed upgrading their weapons, at least on the surface."

Because of the relationship between Haki and Devil Fruits, people in this world tend to pay more attention to high-end personal combat power, while weapons such as swords and guns tend to emphasize a casual attitude of "as long as they can be used."

Of course, there are some so-called magical weapons like famous swords, but they are more like icing on the cake to personal martial arts.

Even if an ordinary person gets a famous sword, he cannot become a swordsman overnight. A true swordsman can split mountains and seas even with a fruit knife.

As for the "ancient weapons", they were completely regarded as legends, and everyone just wanted to look for them all over the world instead of creating one themselves.

Moreover, the world government, as the largest arms producer, also seems to be intent on restricting the development of weapons or technology.

Although they conducted all kinds of experiments in private, there were very few results that were actually put on the table.

After all, the fact that there are too many and too advanced weapons stored by the civilian population will also have an impact on the stability policy they have always pursued. It is enough to maintain a number that can barely meet the consumption of internal fighting.

It is precisely this somewhat distorted market situation that gives La the confidence to catch up and break through.

After visiting Sean's laboratory, La realized that the technological level of this world is not as backward as it seems.

However, most advanced technologies have not been promoted and applied on a large scale, but have instead become the entertainment of a few people.

"And this is our opportunity."

“In fact, we can spend five to ten years, pooling all our resources to complete an iteration of existing weapons and turn Baishou into a world weapons factory.

Then completely occupy the blue ocean of the arms market."

……

After La finished speaking, there was silence again.

"..."

"This is not something that can be just talked about. Do you have any detailed plans?" Jhin's question was still sharp.

"This involves a series of issues including capital planning, talent recruitment, site selection, laboratory construction, raw material acquisition, worker recruitment, information confidentiality, channel establishment and market capture.

I'm sorry I can't submit a detailed and reliable plan in such a hurry, I only have a rough framework at the moment."

La said bluntly, picking up a few more sheets of paper from the stack in his hand and handing them to Jin.

Kaido and Burfat also glanced sideways, but after seeing the densely packed handwriting, they both withdrew their gaze and secretly sighed in their hearts:
[The handwriting is so beautiful!]
After reading it quickly, Jin said that this was indeed just a rough architectural plan without any specific details.

Of course, the fact that just the simplest architecture contained so much content was beyond Jin's imagination.

Everyone also expressed their understanding of this.

Although La always strives for perfection in her work, it is unrealistic to ask her to come up with a practical plan that involves many aspects in just half a day.

Honestly, it's incredible that La was able to grasp the situation of each island to such an extent in such a short period of time, and thus formulate a rough plan for the pirate group for the next ten or even several decades...

It also cleared the clouds and brought everyone's understanding of the development of power to an almost new level, which completely exceeded Kaido's initial expectations.

Originally, Kaido summoned La and the others just to discuss the next steps, but he didn't expect La to give him a big one.

It feels like you're still in the Axe-killing stage when you suddenly use the acceleration sync.

Burfat even suspected that La was a monster in the form of an ordinary person who had eaten the Human-Human Fruit.

(End of this chapter)