The giant, ink-stained finger hovered above Arthur like a pillar of divine judgment.
Everything had stopped. The screams of Blackbeard's crew, the crackling of the dark Haki, even the ticking of the System in Arthur's brain—all of it was frozen. Time itself hadn't just paused; it had been suspended by a higher authority.
"Arthur, don't move," the Older Luffy whispered. For the first time, his voice wasn't filled with the arrogance of a King, but the desperation of a survivor. "If the Pen touches you, your existence won't just end. You will be 'Retconned'. You will have never been born."
Arthur looked up, his Eye of Calculation trying to process the entity above him.
[CRITICAL WARNING: Illegal Entity Detected]
[Identity: The Great Mangaka / The Illustrator]
[Level: ERROR - Cannot Quantify]
"A retcon?" Arthur rasped, his throat feeling like it was filled with dry ink. "I've spent my life balancing ledgers. You're telling me the Universe is just going to... erase the debt?"
Suddenly, the finger moved. It didn't strike Arthur; it tapped the air.
Rip.
The sky above the New World literally tore open like a cheap parchment. A giant eraser, as white as the moon and as cold as the void, descended from the tear, scrubbing at the horizon. Arthur watched in horror as the island they were on—Blackbeard's stronghold—began to fade into white nothingness. The pirates, the gold, the buildings... they were being rubbed out.
"He's cleaning the panel," Luffy growled, his Conqueror's Haki flaring in a futile attempt to push back the white void. "He's erasing the 'glitch' that we've created!"
"I am NOT a glitch!" Arthur roared. He didn't use a sword. He didn't use Haki. He reached into his mind and activated the Level 10 Authority he had stolen from Ren. "System! If I am the Accountant, then I demand an Audit of the Creator!"
[Processing Request...]
[Warning: Auditing the Source is a Suicidal Action]
[Compiling Global Data... 10%... 40%... 90%...]
The System screamed in Arthur's ears. His nose began to bleed a thick, golden liquid—the blood of the System itself.
"You want to erase me?" Arthur shouted at the sky, his eyes turning into glowing violet prisms. "Then you'll have to erase the whole story! I haven't just stolen Ren's power; I've tied my life force to the One Piece itself! If I go, the treasure goes! The ending you've been drawing for 25 years... vanishes!"
The giant finger paused. The eraser stopped just inches away from Luffy's face.
The silence that followed was more terrifying than the explosion. Then, a voice boomed—not from the air, but from the very fabric of reality. It sounded like the scratching of a pen on paper.
"YOU ARE A FICTION THAT HAS LEARNED TO COUNT, LITTLE ACCOUNTANT."
"And you're an artist who's become too attached to his masterpiece," Arthur countered, his heart hammering against his ribs. "But a masterpiece without an ending is just a waste of ink. Let us exist, and I'll give you an ending that will make the gods weep."
The white void began to recede, but the tension didn't fade. The Finger descended further, pressing against Arthur's forehead. It didn't crush him. It uploaded.
Arthur's mind was suddenly flooded with images: The Void Century, the true identity of Joy Boy, and a terrifying secret about the "Empty Throne" that even Imu didn't know. It was too much. His brain felt like it was melting.
"Arthur!" Luffy grabbed him as he collapsed.
"I see it..." Arthur whispered, his eyes wide and vacant. "The 'One Piece'... it's not a treasure. It's a Contract."
Before Luffy could ask more, the world around them shattered. They weren't in the New World anymore. They weren't in the Void.
Arthur opened his eyes and found himself standing in a place he recognized from his previous life. A modern office. High-rise building. Glass walls.
But outside the window wasn't Tokyo or New York. It was the Grand Line. Ships were sailing through the sky, and giant sea kings were swimming past the clouds.
A man was sitting at the desk in front of him, his face obscured by a pile of sketches. He was holding a pen.
"Welcome to the Editorial Department, Arthur," the man said. He didn't look up. "We've been waiting for someone to fix the budget of this world."
Arthur looked down at the desk. There was a file with his name on it. But next to it was a small, vibrating Den Den Mushi.
The snail spoke in a voice Arthur knew all too well—the voice of Imu.
"Arthur... did you really think you were the only one who could talk to the Author?"
Suddenly, the floor beneath Arthur turned into a giant mouth, and the office began to scream.
[TO BE CONTINUED]