"Brother Ross… Brother Ross, look! I can see it—I can see the giant tree!" Mansherry's high-pitched cry of excitement rang across the deck as the morning mist broke apart, unveiling the legendary land that had lived in myths and whispers for generations. Before us stood Elbaph, revealed in the golden light of dawn.
"Woah…" Mansherry gasped, her tiny body trembling with awe as she strained her little neck higher and higher, eyes wide and sparkling. "You were right! The tree—it makes up the whole island… it's so big!"
She pushed herself so far trying to take it all in that she toppled backward off my shoulder with a squeak. I caught her mid-fall, chuckling softly, but even as I steadied her, my own gaze refused to leave the sight before us.
Elbaph was no mere island. It was a mountain rising from the sea, but its crown—the true jewel—was the Treasure Tree Adam, the colossal living monument at its heart. The tree's titanic trunk pierced the heavens, rising so high its crown vanished into the shrouded clouds.
Its enormous branches stretched outward like continents suspended in the sky, layered plateaus that formed entire regions above the island itself. One at sea level, another cradled in the boughs, and a third soaring at the very treetop, lost in the sunlit mist.
The sheer immensity of it all left the Leviathan's crew spellbound. For many, it was too much to take in.
A weathered gunner, a man who had braved sea kings and cannon fire without trembling, now clutched the rail so hard his knuckles turned bone-white. His lips moved, mumbling the prayers of his childhood, words he hadn't uttered since the day he first set sail.
The deckhands—the youngest among them—were not so restrained. They pressed against the rails, pointing, crying out in disbelief, their voices tumbling over one another. Some laughed in exhilaration, others wept openly, unable to explain why tears streamed down their faces. To see such magnificence was to be reminded of how small they truly were.
One of the veteran helmsmen, a man who had once mocked the giants as lumbering brutes, now stood humbled, trembling from head to toe. His lips curved into a quiet, reverent smile. "So this is why they call it the land of myths…" he whispered to no one in particular.
Buffalo, who was never seen without a grin plastered on his round face, stood slack-jawed in silence, the skewered meat slipping forgotten from his hand and clattering against the deck.
Monet, calm and collected even in the face of calamity, found her eyes wide and lips parted—the icy veneer of composure she always wore breaking for the first time since I had known her. Even the stoic gunners, men and women hardened by countless sea battles, leaned forward against the rails with breathless reverence.
Even the ship's cooks, who rarely left the galley, crowded onto the deck. One of them dropped his ladle, broth sloshing across the boards, eyes fixed upward. "How… how do they climb it?" he muttered, half-crazed with wonder. "How do they live up there in the sky?"
And yet, among the thunderstruck silence, there was pride. The giants aboard the Leviathan stood taller, their chests puffed with a quiet satisfaction. For once, they were no longer the outliers on a human ship. For once, the world bent to their scale. It was as if the world had stopped, the sea itself bowing in silence before the land of giants.
And then, amid the stunned wonder of my crew, I noticed Dora. She stood tall, lips curled in a smug smile. Unlike the others, she did not gape. No—this was her home, her people's legacy, and now at last, the giants aboard the Leviathan could show their pride. The same ship that had made their own vessel look like a toy now looked small beside the majesty of Elbaph, and Dora relished in every second of it.
It was not fear that gripped the Leviathan's crew, nor joy, nor even reverence. It was something greater—an emotion deeper than words. The realization that they were witnessing a land that defied the natural order of the world, a place that existed half in reality, half in myth. For many, it was the first time they truly believed they were sailing at the edge of the world.
"You don't seem as surprised as the rest…" I murmured, turning to the ship's elderly navigator. The old man leaned calmly against the railing, his weathered eyes fixed on the horizon. His lips carried the faintest smile, but unlike the others, he was not lost to awe.
"Once before, young master," the navigator said softly, his voice carrying the weight of years. "In my youth, when I was but a deckhand aboard a merchant ship, a storm caught us and threw us onto Elbaph's shores. I never thought I'd set eyes upon it again."
I studied him in silence for a moment, and in my mind's eye I traced the timeline. If it had been during his youth—three, perhaps four decades ago—then he had set foot on Elbaph during the first waves of King Harald's reforms, when the giants had begun turning away from their infamous bloodlust toward a gentler, more open path. Any earlier, and that man would not have lived to tell the tale.
But while the crew marveled at the towering tree, I noticed Leo's gaze fixed elsewhere. His eyes were not drawn upward but downward, to the island's very base.
"Ross…" Leo's voice was low, unsteady with awe. "Is that… is that thing a real sword?"
I followed his stare—and there it was. Buried into the island's foundations, jutting out from stone and earth, was a sword so vast it made even the giants seem like insects. Its colossal blade was anchored in the ground as if the very world itself had been cleaved open and left scarred by its weight.
"How… how could anyone wield a weapon that size?" Leo whispered, his throat dry, his knuckles white as he gripped the railing. "Even Dora—even with ancient giant blood—she's just a speck compared to that blade. Who could have possibly…"
His words trailed into silence. I had no answer. None. The sight of that monstrous weapon sent a chill down my spine—not from fear, but from something far more primal. It wasn't dread that gripped me; it was exhilaration. That sword, buried deep into the roots of Elbaph itself, was not a relic—it was a declaration.
Whoever, or whatever, had once wielded such a weapon… they were no mere giant. They were a force that defied reason, a being that dwarfed even legends. And instead of shrinking back, my blood burned. My fists ached. My very soul roared.
For in that instant, I knew one truth: I wanted to stand before beings like that. I wanted to test myself against the monsters who could raise weapons that split the sky.. So I turned, searching Saul's face, hoping for some shred of truth or legend he might know.
But the gentle giant only shook his head, his expression solemn, almost reverent. The absence of knowledge spoke louder than words—if even Saul, with his roots in Elbaph and a lifetime of stories, had no answer, then this was not just a mystery. It was something older. Something forgotten.
And so the colossal sword stood there, unmoving, a sentinel of a bygone age—an enigma even amid the grandeur of Elbaph.
I could always inquire more about the history of that colossal sword once I reached Elbaph, once I sat across from King Harald himself. He was the only one who might hold the kind of truth that could not be found in tavern tales or bedtime stories.
Speaking of Harald, I stretched my senses outward, letting my observation haki sweep across the shoreline—and there it was, his presence. Immense, steady, unyielding. Like a mountain that breathed. He was waiting near the pier, his aura as clear as the morning sun, standing not far from Ida's bar.
"I did not expect King Harald himself to be waiting to receive us…" I muttered, my brows furrowing. "He doesn't strike me as the sort to practice false modesty just because I carry a bounty that makes the world tremble. This isn't diplomacy, and I certainly sent no official word of our arrival."
After all, our visit wasn't meant to carry the weight of banners or treaties. I had only placed a call through the transponder snail to Saul, ensuring that our entry into giant waters did not ignite needless conflict. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Yet there he was—the King of Giants, waiting on the dock.
Saul, towering beside me, broke into a sheepish smile and scratched the back of his massive head. "Well… I may or may not have… in passing… mentioned to King Harald that the princess of the Tontatta tribe was among your party."
The grin that followed told me everything. And suddenly it all made sense. Giants never forgot debts of blood and honor. Perhaps common folk might have let such memories slip away into the haze of centuries, but the royal line? No. The royals of Elbaph would remember the old battles—when the Tontatta and the Giants had once fought shoulder to shoulder against a common foe. Bonds like that, even buried under ages, were not so easily broken.
****
Ryugu Palace, Redline
Inside the grand study of the Ryugu Palace, a chamber so sacred that only the royal family of Fishman Island had the right to enter, an intruder now sat.
A man cloaked in shadow lounged upon the ornate coral couch, legs crossed as though he were not a trespasser but the rightful master of this chamber. His hood was drawn low, its weave absorbing the glow of the crystal chandelier overhead, casting his features into darkness.
The light dared not touch him, as if even radiance itself bent away from his presence. Behind the couch, another cloaked figure stood—silent, immovable, a sentinel whose aura was more akin to a blade at the throat than a man.
Before them stood King Neptune, trident gripped tightly in his colossal hands, its shaft darkened by a coating of armament haki. His towering frame shielded his heavily pregnant wife, Queen Otohime, and their three young sons huddled behind him, eyes wide and trembling. His every muscle was taut with strain, not from fear alone but from the dreadful awareness that these two men had breached the palace's heart—the innermost sanctum—without raising even a whisper of disturbance.
And worse… Neptune recognized the one seated before him. He had seen that man only once, in the Holy Land of Mariejois, but the memory was etched into him with scar-like permanence. A figure whose authority rivaled even the Gorosei. A man whom even other Celestial Dragons whispered about with reverence and dread.
For a fleeting moment, Neptune's instincts screamed at him to summon the palace guard, to roar an alarm through the corridors—but those same instincts, sharpened by survival, told him the truth: if he did so, his family would be reduced to corpses before a single soldier arrived.
The seated man tilted his hooded head, his unseen gaze sliding across Neptune's bloodline, pausing just long enough on Otohime's swelling belly to make Neptune's grip on the trident whiten.
"King Neptune…" The voice was calm, unhurried, smooth in tone but cold beneath the surface. "I am not here to harm you or your family. Sit down. I'd rather not have a pregnant woman forced to stand. And look at your sons—they are terrified by the way you wield your trident. Do we truly want one of them to scream? That would make things… unnecessarily ugly."
The words struck like a dagger of ice. They were neither threat nor plea but a quiet assertion of dominance.
Neptune's gills flared as he weighed his choices. Even without blades drawn, he understood the truth: he could not match these two intruders. Not the sentinel who stood like a mountain of death at the cloaked man's back, and certainly not the one who spoke with such casual authority, seated as though the palace belonged to him.
The man sighed softly, almost with disappointment, and lifted his hood. Revealing Saint Figarland Garling.
He looked younger than Neptune remembered him, perhaps in his forties—yet he radiated the monstrous strength of a man far beyond such trivial measures of time. His features were sharp, regal, his golden hair falling in waves that gleamed like firelight. His eyes, however, betrayed him: glacial and merciless, brimming with a superiority so absolute that warmth could not exist within them. This was not a man. This was a god, born and raised to believe that all beneath him were lesser beings, tools, or vermin.
"I assure you once again, King Neptune," Garling spoke with a smile that never reached his eyes, "I am not here to harm you or your family… so sit."
It was no request. It was a command.
Queen Otohime, trembling but resolute, grasped Neptune's massive hand. With a gentle tug she pulled him forward, forcing him to relent. Keeping her sons close, she guided her husband to the coral couch opposite the Figarland. The trident, reluctantly, was set beside Neptune within easy reach.
Garling's lips curved faintly. "Ah, forgive me. I nearly forgot." He gestured to the silent sentinel behind him. "This here is my associate, a true scion of the Donquixote family."
At that name, Neptune and Otohime's eyes widened—hope flashing in their gaze. But realization dawned almost instantly, draining that hope.
Garling chuckled, reading every flicker of thought across their faces. "Ah, I see it. You thought of those Donquixotes—the vermin who play at piracy. Do not delude yourselves. My companion is not among that rabble. He is of the true Donquixote bloodline, the blood of gods."
His voice sharpened, cutting away any softness. "So let me offer a warning—utter the names of those filthy pretenders in my presence, even once, and I will not be responsible for what follows."
The weight of the threat pressed down upon the chamber like a suffocating tide.
Neptune exhaled slowly, forcing calm into his chest, lowering his voice into a deep rumble as he asked, "Then tell me, Saint Garling… why would a man of your station—equal to the Gorosei themselves—skulk into my palace in the shadows of night like a thief, jamon?"
His words were sharp, lined with restrained fury. Fury not for the trespass, but for the audacity of this so-called god to stand within reach of his family, to glance at them as though they were possessions to be appraised.
Queen Otohime, despite her fear, placed her hands upon her belly and forced her lips into a strained smile. "Lord Saint Garling… if we had known someone of your stature intended to grace Ryugu Kingdom, we would have prepared a welcome of unparalleled grandeur."
Garling's eyes flickered to her, and for a moment, contempt glimmered openly. He sneered softly. To him, it was laughable—this fish-woman, heavy with child, daring to play diplomat, daring to pretend this was a meeting between equals. Lowly creatures, he thought. Always pretending at civility, always forgetting their place.
"Like how you greet those pirate filths? No, thank you."
Saint Figarland's lips curled, his voice dripping with disdain as he waved off Otohime's goodwill like one might swat away an insect. The very notion of honor from her mouth seemed offensive to him.
King Neptune's gills flared, his massive frame tense as a drawn bow. He refused to let the man across from him steer the conversation unchallenged. "Saint Figarland," his voice rumbled low, steady but edged with restrained fury, "you should already know what happened the last time the World Government thought to threaten Fishman Island… or have you forgotten whose flag it is that flies above the Ryugu Kingdom?"
His trident gleamed under the chandelier as he leaned forward, casting a shadow over his sons. "If harm should befall my family, it will not be long before the world's eyes turn upon you—and fingers point to the World Government itself. Tell me, have you considered those consequences?"
The name behind those words lingered heavily in the chamber. Whitebeard.
For the first time since his unannounced arrival, Figarland Garling's composure cracked. His expression soured, the smile thinning as though curdled milk had touched his lips. He knew well of whom Neptune spoke—and it was not a name he enjoyed hearing. That name commanded respect even among the so-called gods. But the sourness passed quickly. A new smile formed, colder, sharper.
"Heh…" Garling chuckled, voice like a blade sheathed in silk. "You don't really believe that Newgate will come running every time you whimper at shadows, do you? That old man cannot stand guard over every weakling who hides beneath his beard. No—forget that. I did not come here to trade threats about your current… allegiances."
His glacial gaze swept over the royal family once more before settling back on Neptune. His words slowed, deliberate, heavy. "I came here to offer you—and more importantly, your entire race—a choice or say an oppurtunity."
The chamber's air thickened. Neptune gripped his trident tighter but did not interrupt. He knew this was the moment that mattered.
Garling leaned forward now, no longer lounging but owning the room with the sheer weight of his presence. "Two hundred years. Close to two centuries have passed since the Ryugu Kingdom was graciously offered a seat at the World Government's table despite all your transgressions and brutality. And yet—" he gestured lazily toward the king with an almost mocking flourish, "you still fly a pirate's jolly roger above your palace as though it were a banner of pride. Two hundred years, and your people continue to wallow in bitterness, clinging to grievances while spitting upon the hand extended to you."
His tone hardened, laced with false reason that was more dangerous than any open hostility. "You wail of injustice, and yet it is your island that serves as the highway for smugglers, brigands, and every piece of human refuse that dares to cross the Red Line. You host pirates, protect them, and then complain when the World Government looks upon you with suspicion. Tell me, King Neptune—do you not see the contradiction? Do you not see why your people suffer?"
Neptune's jaw clenched, but Garling did not let him speak. He pressed the advantage, his voice growing sharper, almost righteous in tone.
"We offered you salvation. A permanent military stronghold. Security. Order. You refused. Again and again you hid behind excuses, speaking of independence, of peace, of harmony. And yet—" his sneer deepened, venom seeping through the mask of civility—"you dare dream of life on the surface, of equality with humankind, while rejecting every opportunity to prove yourselves worthy of it. Such… dual standards. Such hypocrisy."
The chandelier's light shimmered off Garling's golden hair, casting his features in stark, divine sharpness, his contempt laid bare. His words twisted history itself, reshaping the truth into a narrative where the Fishmen were ungrateful children biting the hand that fed them, while the World Government stood as the spurned benefactor.
To Neptune, every syllable reeked of poison. But to anyone outside this room—to men swayed by the Figarland name and bloodline—his speech would sound like reason, like justice. And that was what chilled Neptune most of all.
Figarland's gaze shifted, cold and unblinking, toward Queen Otohime. His words, when they came, were a blade wrapped in velvet.
"It is no secret to anyone that you play both sides, my lady. On one hand, you clasp hands with pirates—hiding under their banners, calling them saviors. On the other, you extend your hand to the World Government, begging support to carry your people to the surface. Admirable in its desperation, perhaps. But foolish." His lip curled faintly, eyes glinting with disdain.
"You should already know which path offers your race a true, sustainable future. A pirate's protection?" He scoffed, low and venomous. "Even the greatest of them will die within a few decades, swallowed by time, cut down by rivals, or betrayed by their own greed. But the World Government…" His voice lowered, carrying a weight that filled the room like a cathedral bell. "…the Government has stood unshaken for close to a millennium, shaping the world, maintaining order, defining the very truth upon which all other truths rest. I suppose anyone with the faintest sliver of intellect can see which choice leads to survival."
"Enough." Neptune's voice rumbled like a distant earthquake. His trident shook faintly in his grip, not from weakness, but from the anger he restrained for the sake of his family cowering behind him. His gills flared as his eyes narrowed on Garling. "Why don't you stop circling and say what you mean, jamon?"
Figarland leaned back, entirely unshaken, almost amused by Neptune's fire. He spoke with deliberate slowness, every word like a hammer striking into stone.
"Very well." His smile was thin, his teeth gleaming in the dim light. "As I said… I bring an opportunity. A gift. Everything your kind has dreamed of for two centuries."
The silence was suffocating as he listed them out, each promise a poisoned jewel.
"A sanctuary—a kingdom your people may call their own, vast and secure. The chains of exile broken. And more… the World Government itself will formally, irrevocably, declare the Fishmen race to hold equal rights as humans."
Gasps slipped unbidden from Neptune's sons. Even Otohime's breath caught, her heart leaping at the words she had fought her whole life for—words so tempting, so dangerous.
But Neptune's instincts screamed. He gritted his teeth. "And in return?"
Garling paused, letting the silence hang. He wanted them to feel it—to ache for what was about to be stolen. Then, softly, almost casually:
"…And in return," he said, his smile widening, "you will deliver me the head of one of two men."
The weight of the room shifted. Even the air seemed to recoil.
"Either Donquixote Doflamingo… or Donquixote Rosinante."
The chandelier's light flickered across his face, making him look less like a man and more like some divine judge passing sentence.
"You want your dream, King Neptune? Then kill one of the false Donquixote heirs. Only then will I grant your race what it has sought for two hundred years."
Neptune's grip on his trident tightened until the steel groaned, his teeth baring in fury. Every muscle screamed at him to drive his weapon through this smug godling's chest, but his family's lives hung in the balance. Otohime's trembling hand pressed against his arm, her eyes wide with both horror and impossible options.
Garling saw all of it—saw their hesitation, their anger, their conflict—and his smirk widened. He wanted them to squirm.
"Choose wisely, King Neptune. Choose quickly. For in this world, history remembers only those who bend the knee to the hand that writes it."