Although there is no direct exchange, El and Whitebeard have indeed been engaging in a fight. In fact, even without this phone call, after El ends this adventure and returns to the new world, he will challenge Whitebeard.
After all, if he wants to awaken his devil fruit ability, either he practices step-by-step, and then, like the awakening Haki, he can only catch that feeling that invisible feeling to awaken his devil fruit, or he can use a shortcut and fight the strongest man in the world to give himself the pressure on life and death to let his own will complete a sublimation and then force his way into the realm of devil fruit awakening.
El doesn’t want to waste a few years developing his devil fruit ability step by step and then look forward to grasping that feeling one day. He wants to use a method similar to Luffy who continuously fights a life-and-death battle with a strong person and then uses the pressure to enter the devil fruit awakening.
A strong person who awakens their Paramecia devil fruit in this sea is simply too rare.
In addition to Charlotte Linlin, Whitebeard, and Douglas Bullet, El only knows these three people who fit his criteria.
Among these three, Whitebeard and Douglas Bullet are El’s targets, however, Douglas Bullet is still imprisoned in Impel Down and his strength has not reached the level on his first appearance, therefore, between him and Whitebeard, Whitebeard, who is not so old, is El’s first choice.
So naturally, El will not miss this opportunity to fight, if it weren’t for the fact that Carina and the other girls are still young and their willpower is still far from matching their own abilities, making them still a long way to go before awakening their devil fruit.
El even wants to show weakness to Whitebeard so he can have a team battle with the strongest pirate group in the world, so that even if they don’t awaken their devil fruit, their strength would still skyrocket, however, such a top-level war will still come and happen sooner or later, so there’s no need to rush it.
“Jinbe, you also heard our conversation.” After the Den Mushi Mushi is hung up, El looks at Jinbe and said with a chuckle. “Then please take us to see King Neptune Country.”
“Before coming here, King Neptune has already instructed me to treat your Excellency as the honored guest of our Fishman Island and let me come in person to invite you to Ryugu Palace.”
Jinbe came back to his sense and looked at El with a complicated expression, and said, “Your Excellency, I don’t know what deal are you talking about.”
“Don’t worry, it has nothing to do with Fishman Island.” El smiled and said, “Just like what I said before, Shirahoshi is a crew member that I want to recruit before entering the new world since she is a partner that I recognize, then the country where she lives and the people related to her will all be my friends…”
“As for this deal, I want to talk to King Neptune in person.”
“I see!”
Jinbe was silent for a while, then nodded before bowing slightly to El. “Your Excellency, please come with me.”
After finishing speaking, he turned around and took the Fishman guards and walked in one direction while El’s group follow behind.
Not long after, a Ryugu which is the main transportation method and made with a large hull built around a giant oarfish and that is used to transport people flew towards the Ryugu Palace.
After passing through the bubble protective film that separated the water from the surrounding, a palace located deep in the sea suddenly appeared in the eyes of El’s group.
At the entrance of the palace at this time, there was a twelve-meter-high and muscular coelacanth merman with his servants standing and waiting for Jinbe and El group’s arrival.
As king of one of the 170 affiliated countries under the Mary Geoise and known as Great Knight of the Sea and sworn brothers with the strongest man in the world, him personally coming to the gate of the palace and waited for the arrival of a pirate, this kind of behavior seems to show respect for the strong but it fully reflects how sorrowful being weak in this world is.
Just by doing this, you can see how helpless, or in other words, powerless, King Neptune who clearly has the strongest man in the world as his backer, and with him being one of the strongest pirate groups in the world while having the capability to destroy islands such people are treated no different from the gods.
If such people are on the side of justice, they will be restrained by order, which makes them not so frightening, but unfortunately, with his previous action of ignoring the rules in order to achieve his own goals and ambitions, and deter his enemy to make fortune for himself that he can even destroy an island, a kingdom and even extinguish hundred thousand of lives, really intimidate King Neptune.
In particular, El, who is called World Destroyer in front of him is like his good brother Edward Newgate, he can easily destroy islands and his attack that makes him famous is just to deter a pirate that created a super tsunami that destroyed two islands and kills hundred thousand of people.
Hundred thousands of people what concept is this? On the whole fish-man island, there are only so many people. That is to say, if the other party wants, he can easily destroy the entire Fishman Island, and kill all the Fishman and mermaids.
So King Neptune dares not to offend El and if he hadn’t received a message from Whitebeard and Jinbe has already helped him to receive El, he would personally go and bring his son then go down to welcome El’s group.
As for using the Whitebeard Pirate flag to intimidate them, King Neptune did not even dare to think about it, the flag of the Whitebeard Pirates, at most, can only frighten some weak people. If he wants to use this flag to scare a person at the same level as Whitebeard, he will only anger the other party.