Coby's argument didn't require a rebuttal. It required acknowledgment, which was harder.
The Celestial Dragons had never had any interest in human flesh. Food of that quality was beneath the dignity of their palates. But efficiency wasn't about method — it was about scale. Coby consumed people one at a time, with patience, like a connoisseur. The system that the Marine served had been consuming people wholesale for eight hundred years. By any reasonable accounting, the Celestial Dragons had devoured more than Coby ever would, and had done it without the decency of a doctrine to justify themselves.
The bones of every race pressed into service — willingly or otherwise — to sustain the holy land of Mary Geoise would fill it to the brim. The World Nobles had been built on that foundation from the beginning. Their complaint against Coby wasn't a moral one. It was a territorial one.
"I'll grant that the Marine has a long history of failures." Kuzan's voice was even. "But people who dwell only in the past eventually lose sight of where they're going. That's not a Marine I want to be."
It wasn't a comfortable position. He had lived inside the contradiction long enough to understand exactly how uncomfortable it was. The years of half-giving up — the years when Robin had slipped through his hands again and again not because he lacked the ability to catch her, but because he lacked the will to close the distance — were a part of the record he couldn't erase. The Marine had done terrible things. Its sins weren't washing out with this sea or any other.
But Artoria Pendragon had offered something different: not an erasure of the past, which was impossible, but a direction for the future. For a violent organization, the argument was simple — whoever holds the knife long enough and uses it correctly eventually earns the right to rewrite what the knife stands for. Future generations remembered numbers, not weight. The dead became statistics, cold and untextured. Once the Marine came to power on its own terms, a careful severance from the World Government — not a dramatic break, but a gradual unthreading — would let the institution step ashore clean. Or clean enough.
Artoria was already doing it. Not openly. She avoided missions that would cost her reputation, and when political pressure forced her hand, she didn't wear the uniform for it. She had also moved against the newspapers — systematically shutting down dozens of branch outlets, working to blunt the reach of Morgans and his World Economy News Paper. The birdman had survived so far because he had learned to never appear in his human form at public functions. Every banquet, every summit, every event, he came in his bird shape and kept his real face off the record. He maintained multiple substitutes and had memorized several escape routes from any venue he entered. The precautions of someone who understood exactly how motivated Artoria was to find him.
"What you say sounds better than it sings." Coby lifted a blood-red lotus petal to his mouth and bit into it slowly, thinking. He was in no hurry. Debate extended the moment, and the moment was serving him fine. "The people of God Valley died for nothing. And before God Valley, there were others — hunting grounds, one after another, going back as far as anyone cares to look. Were those lives not lives?"
Kuzan's expression shifted — a small thing, but visible. Garp's apprentice. He hadn't been at God Valley, but he knew what had happened there. Any Marine who had been close to Garp for long enough knew the shape of it, even if the details remained sealed.
Helmeppo didn't know the original event — it was before his time, buried in classified history. But he knew God Valley 2.0.
He didn't want to think about it. The memory arrived anyway.
A recent assignment, classified as a standard escort operation. It hadn't been. The venue had been designated by the Five Elders — Wano Country, surrounded by Marine warships under orders that had nothing to do with justice. Celestial Dragons with combat training, competing for points. Citizens reduced to targets. A prize system built around how many you could bring down, with a particularly excellent Devil Fruit waiting for whoever scored highest. The God's Knights there to ensure the bloodiest of the younger generation proved themselves properly.
His sword teammates had died one by one. He could still see it in the middle of the night — the sequence of it, who went first, the sounds. He had survived because the final boss of that operation had decided someone needed to leave and report. Helmeppo had been selected for that privilege. He stood now, golden Arhat light still faintly present on his skin from the earlier fight, and did not look at Coby.
"God Valley is history." He said it flatly, without warmth. "And after the disasters of recent years, the Celestial Dragons are frightened enough that they won't be running that particular game again any time soon."
The hunting tradition had developed gradually — a solution to a problem that the Celestial Dragons hadn't articulated but felt clearly. They had everything. From birth, material needs were met before they could be named. The spiritual emptiness that accumulated in that kind of life had no natural outlet. Someone had devised the hunts as a pressure release. Non-member countries were designated as fair game. The World Government issued the warships. Citizens of those countries had their status reduced on paper, which meant their deaths didn't require paperwork. The Celestial Dragons with enough physical capability to participate came and competed. Families with something to prove sent their children. The God's Knights handled the cleanup.
That was how God Valley had ended. The original event had gone sideways — a three-way collision the organizers hadn't anticipated, which had allowed a portion of the slaves to scatter in the chaos. Most of them had survived only to live in hiding for the rest of their lives, unable to name what had been done to them without becoming targets again.
Coby bit another petal from the lotus stem and chewed it, unhurried.
"Wano Country was chosen as the venue a few years ago, from what I know." He didn't bother adjusting his tone for the subject. "That particular farce did not result in the destruction of the samurai country. It resulted in serious damage to the Celestial Dragons. The Marine casualties in the chaos were a fraction of theirs."
The Five Elders had committed something that could only be described as self-inflicted sabotage by designating Wano Country for that game. Whatever they had expected the venue to produce, what they had actually produced was a version of God Valley where the prey fought back at a scale that couldn't be contained. God Valley 2.0 — the same concept, the same machinery, and catastrophically the same outcome, except this time the damage had fallen mostly on the side that had organized it.
Whether that outcome was justice or merely consequence, the distinction felt thin standing inside the Infinity Castle.