"Do you think my dream is pretty casual?"
Roman spread his hands and looked at the others on the deck.
"But there's no helping it. Dreams and all that usually have a great deal to do with one's past."
"Whether it's an idol, a friend, parents, or a benefactor... be it strength, knowledge, or dreams, people inherit them generation after generation."
"You all have precious memories, but my past..."
"Roman, what happened before—"
This world was full of tragedies... Nami stepped forward, considering how to comfort Roman, but Roman had already raised a hand to stop her.
"You misunderstood, Nami."
"My past, you could say... was very happy."
?
Then why the hell were you acting all profound?!
Faced with his companions' expressions that plainly said, Are you messing with us?, Roman shrugged.
"How should I put my past..."
"An ordinary family, an ordinary life, ordinary days..."
"Whenever I wanted something to eat, I'd make a call... and a Den Den Mushi would deliver it to my door. (Takeout.)"
"Whenever I wanted to watch something, I just moved my fingers and it appeared before my eyes—novels, anime... even operas. (A phone.)"
"If I was bored out of my mind and wanted to exercise, I could follow coaches... instructors to train my body. Boxing, fitness, shooting... (Online fitness.)"
Hey, hey, hey, there was nothing "ordinary" about that, okay?!
Zoro, Nami, Sanji, and Usopp were all too stunned to even complain. In this chaotic world, only nobles... no, not even royalty necessarily enjoyed that kind of treatment, right?
"Every day was peaceful, a quiet life. The worst injury I'd ever suffered growing up was accidentally cutting my finger..."
"As for fighting, death, and things like that, I could only see them on television or in newspapers..."
Looking at Roman's bored expression, everyone could barely restrain the urge to punch him!
Was this the legendary case of not appreciating one's blessings?
With a background like that, he was already—
"Anyway, that was what my past was like."
"I had plenty of random daydreams, but they were only dreams."
"Then somehow, I ended up at sea and became a pirate..."
"Thanks to all the books I read when I had nothing better to do, plus the fighting and swordsmanship I learned for fun, I barely managed to get by as a pirate..."
Big brother, your strength was worth tens of millions in bounty, and you called that barely getting by?
Then what were they? Apprentice sailors?!
Other than the thick-skinned Luffy, everyone else had run out of things to complain about.
"Because I never had any unforgettable regrets, I never really had a dream."
Roman summed up his "crossing over."
"Things like beating up the Four Emperors and stomping on the Three Admirals... I thought about them occasionally, but they had no grudge against me, so I had no motivation. After a few minutes of enthusiasm at most, I'd forget all about it."
Nami, Zoro, Usopp, and Sanji exchanged glances.
They got it! Roman was just some bored royal brat with nothing better to do.
"Anyway, I actually envy you all."
Roman finally got to the point. "You have goals worth striving for your entire lives, and you never waver. I really envy that! Compared to you, I'm just a dead fish drifting with the current."
"But today is different."
Roman spread his arms as if embracing the world.
"I want to see the moment your dreams come true. Maybe there'll be laughter, maybe tears, maybe only melancholy, maybe even emptiness. But—"
"I really want to see it with my own eyes!"
Well, if he had to put it into words, that was Roman's "dream."
"Hehehe~~~"
"Roman, you said a whole bunch of things I don't understand."
Luffy pressed down his straw hat, then looked up at Roman with a bright smile.
"So you want to see 'One Piece' too."
"It's decided. I'll make your dream come true!"
"Fine, Luffy, that interpretation works too."
Roman shrugged. After speaking of his past, he seemed to feel much lighter. Keeping secrets from his past while trying to connect with others had always felt rather ridiculous. But:
"Heh heh heh, there's still plenty I learned from books before. Like revolutionaries, the Five Elders, the Void Century, and... even—"
"Even One Piece and the Blue Sea, I—"
Roman deliberately dragged out the word "I." As Luffy and Sanji wore expressions begging him not to spoil anything, Roman's face suddenly turned solemn.
"I don't know either."
???
"I'll beat you up, you know! You really want us to beat you up?!"
"Hahaha, I was just scaring you. It's not like I'm an encyclopedia~~~"
Inside the cabin, everyone sat together around a table, where a nautical chart from the Buggy Pirates was spread out.
"The entrance to the Grand Line is a mountain."
"A mountain?" X4
"Even I find it hard to believe, but if the location on this map is correct, the entrance really is at Reverse Mountain, by the lighthouse ahead..."
"Are we supposed to crash into a mountain?"
Faced with four blank stares and Nami's uncertainty, Roman tapped the table.
"Not crash into the mountain. We're getting ready to 'climb' it."
???
"Up ahead is the Red Line. The Four Seas converge here through canals..."
"The powerful currents from the Four Seas push seawater to the mountaintop, where they merge into a single current flowing down—the starting point of the Grand Line."
Roman began using his "book knowledge" to explain things to them.
"The entire Grand Line circles the world once, which means..."
"Wow, look! It's completely calm over there~~"
Usopp leaned against the window and looked into the distance.
"Then why do we have to take such a weird route?" Zoro raised a question. "Why not just go around to the south..."
"The answer lies in that calm sea."
"That's the Calm Belt. The Grand Line is sandwiched between two regions known as the 'Calm Belt.'"
"As the name suggests, there's no wind in the Calm Belt. Sailing ships can't move an inch there, but more importantly..."
Roman pointed toward the area Usopp was looking at through the window. Though rain poured over the waters where they were, not far away the sea was completely calm beneath a blazing sun.
Outside, the raincoat-clad Paper Puppet, White Knight, was steering the ship. The Golden Merry had naturally strayed here from its course because Roman had deliberately directed it.
"No matter how much I tell you about how dangerous and powerful the Grand Line is... you have no concrete idea of it. So—"
Rumble, rumble, rumble—!
Amid a thunderous roar, the entire Golden Merry pitched violently! Like a pitiful leaf tossed about on raging waves, and once they finally regained their footing, Luffy, Zoro, Usopp, and Sanji rushed outside. Then:
"What the hell is that?!" X4
Four... no, three faces frozen in stunned disbelief.
Because poor Usopp had already foamed at the mouth and fainted.
In the calm sea beside the Golden Merry, a group of... several hundred meters, perhaps even a thousand meters long? Gigantic Sea Beasts surfaced! Even the parts of their bodies above water looked like endless chains of rolling mountains!
The Golden Merry, carrying Roman, Luffy, and the others, was like an ant beside giants before these Sea Beasts. It was so tiny that it could not even draw their notice.
"A specialty of the Calm Belt: gigantic Sea Kings."
Behind the dumbfounded trio, Nami clinging to the cabin door in tears, and the unconscious Usopp, Roman slowly emerged.
"Now you understand why everyone obediently takes the Grand Line."
"Roman—"
"Turn around, turn around!!"
"Forget all that..."
"B-Big brother..."
Even the trio who feared neither heaven nor earth felt their souls crack from terror! Before monsters hundreds or even thousands of meters long, whether fists and feet or blades and swords, they were not even worthy of scratching the beasts! And if those monsters merely rolled over...
Their only fate would be burial beneath the sea.
Before they even said anything, Roman had already directed White Knight to steer the Golden Merry in an arc. Touring the edge of the Calm Belt was only meant to show them the terror of the Grand Line, not to actually court death.
—Though without Roman, it was hard to say whether Luffy and the others might have gone looking for trouble in a nest of gigantic Sea Kings...
"All right, let's head for Reverse Mountain."
Grand Line, here we come!
Before you continue