The white canvas caught the wind immediately, snapping taut with a satisfying crack. The sloop lurched forward, cutting a clean line through the harbor water and leaving a V-shaped wake behind.
Argentus took the tiller, gripping the smooth wood and feeling the subtle vibrations of the sea transmitted through the rudder. The sloop responded instantly to his adjustments—sensitive, well-balanced. Good.
He didn't look back at the island. He didn't look at the people standing on the dock, watching him leave with a mix of relief and lingering terror.
Argentus D. Drake's eyes were already on the horizon.
He glanced down at the compass mounted near the wheel—a simple brass instrument he'd taken from the headman's hut. He shifted his course slightly, turning the bow away from the relative safety of the coastal shallows and pointing it toward the open ocean.
Southeast. Toward civilization. Toward opportunity.
Toward the world he intended to take.
(Author's Note: I forgot to mention earlier, but I chose the name "Argentus" because it means "silver" in Latin, representing brilliance, greed, and riches. Yes, it wasn't a random name.)
For four hours, Argentus sat perfectly still on the foredeck.
His legs were crossed in a meditative pose, his back was ramrod straight, and his eyes were shut tight enough that his eyelids twitched slightly with the effort. The wind whipped his coat around him in erratic gusts, and the spray of the ocean misted his face with salt water, but he didn't flinch or wipe it away.
His brow was furrowed in deep, almost comical concentration. The vein in his temple pulsed visibly, throbbing with the effort of his intense mental exertion. His jaw was clenched. His fists were balled on his knees.
To you, the reader, or to any experienced pirate sailing the Grand Line, the scene would look immediately familiar. It was the classic stance of a warrior honing his spirit—the posture of someone refining their Haki, stretching their senses across the horizon to detect distant threats, sea kings lurking in the depths, or enemy ships beyond visual range.
You would assume he was meditating on the flow of battle, or perhaps communing with the rhythm of the ocean itself.
But you would be completely, utterly wrong.
Argentus wasn't sensing anything. He wasn't meditating on the nature of his enemies. He wasn't expanding his Observation Haki or trying to unlock some deeper spiritual truth.
He was stressing out over a name.
The Golden Reaper? No, too edgy. Too try-hard. It sounded like something a teenage pirate would pick.
The Fast Wave? Too literal. Too boring. It told you exactly what it was without any mystery.
The Argentus II? A bit much, even for him. Naming a ship after yourself was the kind of thing emperors did, and he wasn't there yet.
The Silver Arrow? Overused. Probably three hundred ships in the East Blue alone with "Arrow" in the name.
He groaned internally, his face twisting in visible frustration, looking for all the world like he was locked in mental combat with an invisible demon.
Bessie? He physically recoiled at the thought. Absolutely not. That was a name for a cow, not a vessel of conquest.
The Sea Wolf? Taken by a thousand other rookies who thought they were clever.
The Storm Chaser? Dramatic, but it implied he was following storms rather than causing them.
He needed something elegant. Something that implied speed, grace, and a hint of mystery. This boat was going to be his home, his fortress, his escape vehicle, and his mobile base of operations for years to come. Possibly decades.
You couldn't just sail around the world trying to become the richest and most powerful man alive in a boat called The Wooden Bucket.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity of mental agony, a name drifted into his consciousness. It arrived quietly, like a leaf falling on still water.
It rolled off the tongue smoothly. It sounded dignified, yet sturdy. Feminine, but not weak. A name with history, with weight, with presence. A name for a vessel that would carry the future King of the World across every ocean.
Argentus's eyes snapped open suddenly, the intensity vanishing from his expression and replaced by a satisfied, almost smug grin.
He stood up, stretched his back with a series of loud pops, and walked over to a bucket of paint the villagers had left behind—probably meant for hull repairs. He dipped a brush into the white paint, testing the consistency.
With bold, sweeping strokes, taking care to make the letters clear and evenly spaced, he painted the name on the side of the hull in large letters.
SYLVIA.
(Author's Note: It's me again, breaking the fourth wall. "Sylvia" means "spirit of the wood"—it's related to forest gods and nature spirits in old mythology. Seemed fitting for a ship literally made of wood that's going to carry someone trying to conquer the world.)
Argentus stepped back, admiring his work. The white letters stood out cleanly against the dark wood of the hull, visible even from a distance.
"Perfect," he muttered, reaching out to pat the gunwale affectionately like one might pat a loyal dog. "Welcome to the crew, Sylvia. Try not to sink."
For eight days, the ocean was a flat, endless mirror of blue, broken only by the white wake trailing behind Sylvia and the sheer, stubborn force of Argentus's will pushing him forward.
He didn't treat the voyage as downtime or a vacation.
The solitude was absolute. There was no one to hide his strength from, no one to judge his methods, and no one to disturb his brutal training regimen. He stripped his routine down to its rawest, most essential components:
Eat. Train. Sleep. Repeat.
His physical training was grueling.
Every morning, he tied a thick hemp rope around his waist, knotting it securely and tethering the other end to a reinforced cleat on Sylvia's stern. Then, without hesitation, he jumped into the sea.
For hours—sometimes three, sometimes five—he would swim against the ocean currents, dragging the entire sloop behind him like a beast of burden. He turned his body into a living engine, his arms and legs churning through the water with mechanical efficiency.
The salt water stung every cut and scrape on his skin. His muscles screamed in protest, burning with lactic acid. But he didn't stop. He didn't slow down. He didn't allow himself to rest until his lungs felt like they were filled with molten iron and his vision started to blur at the edges.
When he wasn't dragging the ship, he dove.
He would take a massive breath, filling his lungs to capacity, and plunge straight down into the depths. He dove deep—far past the point where the sunlight faded and the water turned from blue to black. He subjected his body to the crushing pressure of the deep ocean, forcing his bones and muscles to adapt, to compress, to endure.
Down there, in the crushing dark where most men would panic and drown, he hunted.
He didn't use a fishing rod or nets. He used his bare hands and his Observation Haki, sensing the subtle movements of massive tuna and juvenile Sea Kings through the water. When he detected prey, he would explode forward with a burst of speed, catching them with his hands before they could flee, then dragging them thrashing to the surface for his next meal.
But the physical toll, as brutal as it was, was nothing compared to the mental strain.
Argentus forced himself to keep his Observation Haki active constantly. Not just for a few minutes during meditation, but for hours at a stretch. He pushed the ability until his head throbbed with a migraine that felt like a railroad spike being slowly driven into his skull.
He deliberately drained his Haki reserves to absolute zero, forcing his spirit to recover faster each time, gradually expanding the size of his reserves like a muscle being torn down and rebuilt stronger.
He even tried experimenting with Armament Haki, though he didn't know the proper technique. He would visualize his arms turning black like Garp's had during their training, trying to coat them in that mysterious metallic sheen while lifting the ship's heavy iron anchor like a dumbbell.
It didn't work. Not yet. But he kept trying.
By the evening of the eighth day, he was utterly exhausted. His body was battered, covered in new bruises on top of old ones, his hands raw and bleeding from rope burns.
But he was also harder. Denser. Stronger than he'd been when he left the cannibal island.
He pulled himself onto the deck of Sylvia one final time, shaking the seawater from his silver hair like a dog. He grabbed a rough towel and dried himself off, then looked out toward the horizon, expecting to see another endless stretch of empty water.
Instead, he saw a shadow.
It started as a smudge against the setting sun—easy to mistake for a cloud or a trick of the light. But as Sylvia cut closer, driven by favorable wind, the shape resolved itself into something solid.
Green peaks rising from the water. White sandy beaches. The distant, geometric shapes of human structures—buildings, walls, docks.
A slow smile spread across Argentus's face, transforming his exhausted expression into something predatory and satisfied.
It was the destination he had chosen before he'd even left Dawn Island, back when he was still covered in Garp's bruises and Ace was teaching him how to navigate by the stars.
The silhouette of the island was distinct, unmistakable. Unlike the jagged, wild profile of Dawn Island with its dangerous cliffs, or the flat, hostile layout of the cannibal island he'd just conquered, this place breathed tranquility.
Gentle slopes rose from the coastline, covered in lush, verdant forests that swayed in the ocean breeze. As Sylvia drew closer, the wind shifted direction, carrying a scent that Argentus recognized immediately: the crisp, dry smell of bamboo and tilled earth. The smell of civilization.
He navigated the sloop carefully into a small, unassuming harbor. There were no Navy warships anchored here, thank the sea. There were no pirate galleons flying skull-and-crossbones flags either. Just small fishing boats bobbing gently in the calm tide, their nets hanging to dry in the sun, and a few locals mending sails on the dock.
Argentus tossed the mooring line onto the weathered wooden pier with practiced ease and leaped over the rail in a single fluid motion, his boots landing silently on the sun-bleached planks.
He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with air that didn't taste purely of salt and sea spray.
The atmosphere here felt different. It wasn't heavy with fear like the cannibal island, or thick with greed like the slavers' ship. The air here was sharp—clean and purposeful, like a blade fresh from the whetstone.
He had arrived at Shimotsuki Village.
He gave Sylvia's hull one last affectionate pat, double-checked that the cabin door was locked tight to protect his stolen fortune, and began to walk inland with the easy confidence of someone who belonged.
The village itself was simple, almost aggressively traditional in its architecture.
Low wooden buildings with sloped tile roofs lined clean dirt streets. Paper lanterns hung from eaves, ready to be lit when evening came. A few shops displayed their wares in open-air stalls—vegetables, dried fish, bolts of cloth.
People walked through the streets with calm, purposeful movements. Farmers returning from fields. Women carrying baskets of laundry. Children playing with wooden swords in the alleys, their laughter bright and unafraid.