Chapter 93: Noble Status

Nami looked at the empty space by her side, and her heart sank at once.

She followed the direction in which the scavengers had gathered and searched carefully for Garen’s figure. Sure enough, she caught sight of him, striding forward at full speed with his greatsword in hand.

At the sight of that silhouette, so swift it seemed almost ready to whip up a sandstorm in its wake, Nami could only cry out anxiously,

“Garen! Come back here!”

“Don’t be reckless!”

But the only answer she got was Garen’s figure growing smaller and smaller in the distance.

“This is bad, this is bad...”

Nami’s face went instantly pale as she muttered under her breath.

“That idiot Garen! At this rate, we’re all going to become wanted criminals.”

Though she was cursing his impulsive behavior, there was not a trace of hesitation or retreat in her eyes.

After only a moment’s pause, Nami threw caution to the wind and rushed after him without the slightest regard for her own safety, hurrying straight toward the lone figure that had already charged far ahead.

Even as she took that step, she was already thinking about what name she and Garen’s future pirate crew ought to bear.

But Garen was not nearly as reckless as Nami imagined.

His steps were steady, and his expression remained calm.

Though he had promised Garp that he would know his limits and keep to the line, he had never said he would simply turn a blind eye to everything.

In truth, Garen was highly rational at the moment, and his furious intervention still fell within his own understanding of “knowing his limits”:

While his present strength was not enough to let him run wild before the royal nobility of the Goa Kingdom, his battle prowess, which already dominated the East Blue, was more than sufficient to give him the right to speak as an equal to those nobles, or even to press them down a notch.

Just as Garp, whose strength stood at the summit of the world, could curse the Celestial Dragons without the slightest restraint, Garen now had no reason whatsoever to swallow his anger before the nobles of some small East Blue kingdom.

At the very least, the Celestial Dragons could summon an admiral with a single call, whereas the nobles of the Goa Kingdom probably could not even get the East Blue Navy to show up;

and even if they somehow did call the East Blue Navy...

its highest-ranking officer, Smoker, happened to be Garen’s friend.

And if they asked for help from even higher up?

The one who would come was still Garp.

A local gang leader and a naval commander “colluding” with each other—how utterly dark and lawless.

If something irritated him, he would simply strike. What could those nobles possibly do to Garen?

The “outrageous acts” Garen had promised Garp he would temporarily restrain himself from doing included, but were not limited to, riots, seizing power, ransacking homes, public denunciations, show trials, executions, and hanging people from lampposts.

So...

“Everyone, stop!”

With one hand, Garen raised his greatsword high above his head and stood apart from the teeming crowd, his shout pealing like thunder.

The cry, fierce with fury and heavy with authority, rang through the entire scene in an instant, reaching every ear clearly.

Whether it was the townsfolk, faces twisted as they brandished their weapons, or the scavengers who had lost their reason and were madly fighting over scraps, all were startled into a brief freeze by that thunderous impact.

They halted their movements and looked up with some fear toward the source of the voice, where a tall knight in splendid armor came into view.

His noble, dazzling attire stood in glaring contrast to the surrounding scene of flying refuse and filth strewn across the ground.

Everyone wore expressions of astonishment, and the townsfolk looked even more shocked.

Garen paid no mind to their faces. He simply drew the lifted greatsword back to his chest and tightened his grip on the hilt.

Facing these people, who had spent years living under a system of rigid class segregation until their humanity had long since been worn away, Garen had never intended to solve the problem with a single roar. From the moment he charged over, he had already been prepared to use force.

The blade tip subtly turned toward the well-dressed townsfolk, and he took a few more steps forward.

Yet before Garen could even strike, their preemptive reaction terrified him out of any appetite for battle:

After carefully sizing up Garen’s attire and exchanging several glances with one another, the townsfolk finally...

all dropped to their knees before him.

That was not enough; they also cried out together in an incomparably respectful tone, “Lord Garen!”

The scavengers nearby, seeing this, could not help whispering among themselves:

“That knight... could he be a great noble of the Goa Kingdom?”

“I don’t know.”

“Even those people from the royal city have knelt... should we kneel and salute too?”

“Of course! Being rude to a noble is no small offense!”

After a round of discussion, the scavengers also one after another prostrated themselves before Garen, each face filled with fear and panic.

Even the one or two young men among them who still showed a look of resentment were quickly pinned flat to the ground by the people beside them.

Garen stared in stunned disbelief.

And Nami, who had rushed after him in a panic, saw precisely this bizarre and uncanny scene.

Breathing heavily from her desperate pursuit, Nami recovered a little and then looked at Garen in great surprise.

“What happened?”

“I have no idea...”

Garen scratched his head with an innocent look.

“I just showed up, and they all dropped to the ground.”

“When did this title of mine, ‘Knight of Justice,’ become so useful?”

Garen and Nami looked at each other, discussing the matter in hushed voices for quite a while, yet they could not figure out the reason.

Meanwhile, the townsfolk and scavengers still knelt respectfully on the ground.

“You all...”

Garen was not used to such a scene, so he said to them, “You can all get up now!”

“Yes!”

The first to answer was the excited voices of the townsfolk.

They quickly rose from the ground, then carefully brushed the dust from their bodies, and only after making sure they were clean did they dare move a little closer to Garen.

Watching the fervent expressions on their faces, Garen grew even more uncomfortable.

He could not help asking, “Why are you all so excited to see me?”

One of the leading townsfolk immediately replied,

“We’re just small folk from the border town. How could we ever imagine we’d have the chance to meet someone as noble as Lord Garen!”

Garen vaguely understood what they meant:

in the eyes of these townsfolk, he seemed to be some kind of exalted figure.

But Garen still felt somewhat bewildered:

he knew all too well that, in the eyes of the fools of the Goa Kingdom, only bloodline counted as noble, and someone like him, who had made his name through force, should not have been able to receive this degree of... flattery.

Could it be because of the influence of Wallace’s family background?

After turning it over in his mind, Garen could only find this one plausible explanation.

Yet the fawning expressions on the townsfolk’s faces only grew thicker. Though still standing, they all bent at the waist like camels.

Garen did not know how immense the power of his face was in their eyes:

although these townsfolk were royal city residents who stood above the scavengers, in truth they were merely commoners from the border town on the very lowest rung of the contempt chain inside Goa Royal City, worlds apart from the nobles of the upper town.

After all, the noble lords would never personally run outside the city walls to do the backbreaking work of hauling garbage away. These brightly dressed border folk were in fact nothing more than low-ranking laborers with a somewhat nicer outward appearance.

But despite their lowly status, they usually did their utmost to look down on the country bumpkins outside the city, seeking the intoxicating sense of superiority that came from those who had nothing at all; and when facing the high nobles, they would flatter with equal excess, wagging their tails like household dogs, feeling unimaginably honored if they could be granted even the nobles’ scraps.

Those who flatter upward will inevitably trample downward; those who trample downward will inevitably flatter upward. In the Goa Kingdom, this principle was carried to perfection.

And Garen, a “Celestial Dragon in disguise,” was clearly the uppermost among the upper nobility—a god to these border-town commoners, before whom they bowed in reverence.

Garen felt intensely ill at ease under those worshipful eyes and finally could not help saying,

“Why are you all treating me with such respect?”

“I’m not some noble!”

The leading border-town commoner immediately replied with a ingratiating smile, “Lord Garen! With your noble status, how could you...”

Before he could finish, however, a companion beside him grabbed him at once.

That companion said sternly,

“Mind your words. Didn’t we say Lord Garen is here in the East Blue incognito this time?”

According to the widely circulated Record of Garen’s Secret Visit in the Goa Kingdom:

Garen was a world noble who had grown weary of life among the gods and, hiding his name, had come to the common world seeking to make a mark.

One crucial point in that story was that Garen himself wished to remain anonymous.

“Oh!”

The leading border-town commoner immediately came to a sudden realization, then said with mounting excitement,

“Lord Garen, please rest assured!”

“I will definitely not reveal your identity as a Celestial Dragon!”