This country exudes a dark aura. Despite being of the Fur Race, their presence here doesn't draw any particular attention from others.
Compared to those modified humans with nails in their heads, the bandaged zombies, wicked witches, vampires, and the like, the appearance of the Fur Race seemed rather cute.
This is the festival of this country, and as travelers, they arrived just at the right time.
Lanterns carved from pumpkins were piled along the streets. Apart from the different art style, the liveliness here could rival the fire festival of Wano Kuni.
"The iced pumpkin juice is ready. Please enjoy."
A waiter dressed like a vampire brought up the pumpkin juice. The celebration coincided with the pumpkin harvest season, so the streets were filled with various pumpkin products.
"Why isn't Dad back yet?"
The roasted turkey had been served, but Hatch was nowhere to be seen. Earlier, he said he was going to the restroom, but he never returned.
"He's not in the restroom, and Uncle Hatch is nowhere to be found, the restaurant's staff didn't notice him either, after all, there are quite a few... werewolves around here."
Zeraora glanced around helplessly. The vampire and werewolf costumes were the most common, with many people wearing wolf headgear and such.
"This guy... just wait till we get home and I'll deal with him..."
The fork in Ling's hand was distorted with her grip, indicating that Hatch wouldn't have a good time once they got home. But for now, the priority was to find out where Hatch had gone.
"Setsuna, you stay here with Aunt, I'll go look for Uncle."
"Alright."
...
Meanwhile, Hatch had arrived at a place filled with crosses. From the wreaths and tombstones, it wasn't hard to tell that this was a cemetery. This country's feature was that cemeteries were not isolated but scattered within residential areas.
You could see similar cemeteries whether near ordinary homes or beneath the castles of nobles.
What led Hatch here was a white ghost. He had just seen the ghost pass through a child's body, and then the child suddenly knelt down, muttering that they shouldn't exist in this world.
This piqued Hatch's interest, and he chased the white ghost to this place. However, here he didn't see any other ghosts but rather a few people digging up graves.
It wasn't just one grave; many graves were surrounded by such strange people. After they dug up the corpses, they checked if the bodies were intact. If not, they discarded them; if they were, they carried them away.
Even though this country was hosting a themed event, Hatch felt a cold sweat, thinking it might be haunted.
Moreover, at that moment, those strange people seemed to have noticed him and started heading toward him.
"Hey, hey, could this be some kind of performance act..."
He even saw some people's hollow eye sockets. The situation looked eerie, and those strange people paid him no mind, lifting their wooden sticks, shovels, and other tools to attack him. It was their command to eliminate anyone who saw them.
Of course, Hatch wouldn't just take a beating without fighting back. With a casual swipe of his hand, he sent one of their heads flying.
Hatch didn't expect that he would end up killing someone like this, but he soon realized he was wrong. The head he sent flying was groping to reattach itself.
"Damn, there are really zombies here! I need to tell them quickly..."
Seeing the headless and armless zombies that didn't even bleed, yet still coming toward him, he suddenly remembered the supposedly exorcising salt that a witch had sold him earlier.
With a try-it-and-see attitude, he threw a handful of salt at the approaching zombies, and surprisingly, it worked.
The scattered salt flew into the zombies' mouths, and a black substance immediately spewed out from one of their mouths. The surrounding zombies, seeing the salt in Hatch's hand, stopped in their tracks and even retreated.
"Ha ha, Ling and the others always said I bought useless things, but it looks like this salt really works! Retreat! Back off for me!"
At this moment, Hatch demonstrated what it meant to bully by relying on salt. With this bag of salt in his hand, he actually managed to carve out a path. However, just as he was about to leave, a large figure blocked his way, seemingly unafraid of him.
Seeing this, he grabbed another handful of salt and tossed it, but this time it had no effect.
"Hee hee hee, I'm not one of those zombies. Who would have thought there'd be a member of the Fur Race here? Let me see if I want your corpse or your shadow?"
Moonlight Moriah, with a bounty of 320 million Belly.
Though he hadn't yet recruited Hogback under his command or greatly expanded his zombie army, he had already begun collecting powerful corpses and shadows for future preparations.
After losing to Kaidou, with all his subordinates dead in battle, Moriah fled to the West Sea after stealing the corpses of strong figures like Ryuma. After a period of decadence, he believed he had figured out the reason: as long as the subordinates are undead, he won't lose anything.
Thus, he began searching for powerful bodies to create zombie soldiers. But ordinary corpses weren't meaningful, so he quietly searched all over the West Sea for the bodies of once-powerful figures.
The challenge was quite high. Some countries preferred cremation, and the speed of corpse decay was so quick that his ability couldn't turn skeletal frames into soldiers. Eventually, he found this place, a country accustomed to preserving bodies in formaldehyde or mummifying them.
Earlier, he had been gathering information on deceased strong figures, and with the onset of Halloween, he started his grave-robbing activities.
But he suddenly discovered a fleeing shadow. When Moriah arrived, he caught sight of Hatch using salt to drive back the zombies.
The Fur Race is much stronger than ordinary humans, both in terms of shadows and corpses.
A large pair of scissors appeared in his hand, and the snipping sound, coupled with the surrounding background, seemed a bit terrifying.
"Hand over your shadow!"
Testing the opponent's strength through battle, if strong, take the shadow; if weak, take the body. The large scissors split into two blades, swinging toward Hatch.
But hearing Moriah say he wasn't a zombie, Hatch was instead not afraid anymore. He'd only been wary earlier because he heard that zombies could infect people. However, Moriah, this big guy, was someone he dared to fight back against.
If Kaidou were here, he would notice Moriah was much weaker than a few years ago. Back then, his body techniques could even match Kaidou to some extent, but now he would surely be instantly defeated by Kaidou. He couldn't even immediately overcome someone of Hatch's strength.
If it were him a few years ago, he wouldn't need Fruit Abilities either, not in this way. Realizing that Hatch wasn't easy to deal with, Moriah was planning to activate his Fruit Ability, but at that moment, a bolt of thunder suddenly descended from the sky...