Professional Tool Person

"The Foggy Sea Area?"

Morgans froze for a moment, then felt a surge of relief.

Thank goodness.

In that short while, his mind had already come up with all sorts of sufficiently insane plans for Buggy.

Like setting fire to Mary Geoise, provoking the Marines again at Marineford, or causing another commotion at Impel Down.

It seemed that whenever he was around this man, even the craziest ideas started to feel ordinary.

The only problem was that almost every one of those ideas would get them killed.

Fortunately, Buggy had only brought up the Foggy Sea Area.

While they had been getting swept up in the madness, the other man had actually grown more reasonable.

How ironic.

The Foggy Sea Area was apparently a place on the Grand Line with plenty of strange legends.

But as the head of the intelligence business, Morgans also knew that aside from being the lair of one of the Shichibukai, Gecko Moria, it was connected to a piece of history that had been erased.

"The Foggy Sea Area? That's a terrifying place. Countless Pirate Ships disappear there every year."

Morgans hopped down from the second deck of the Grand News.

The Grand News was the name he had given his ship.

Though the Grand News was about a third smaller than a normal pirate sailing ship, it had everything it needed: a Captain's Cabin, a chart room, and a lookout post.

Its unusual construction also gave it a shallow draft, allowing it to sail freely even through the crisscrossing waterways of the Sabaody Archipelago.

The trade-off was that it didn't handle storms as well.

To make up for that, Morgans had built high bulwarks along the sides of the Grand News.

Well, they made it look more like a penguin's wings.

"But since the area has no magnetic pull, I really have no idea how we'd set out for it."

"After all, this is the Grand Line."

Morgans looked a little troubled. He had Eternal Poses for plenty of islands, which should have been enough to meet most of Buggy's sailing needs.

But the Foggy Sea Area was an exception. Its elusive location and terrifying tales of ghosts and other strange beings had made it infamous across the Grand Line.

Trying to find it by searching blindly would have been a long shot.

"I see."

Buggy furrowed his brow, wondering if he should change targets and just set fire to Mary Geoise instead.

More precisely, his real target was Captain John, resurrected from the dead aboard Moria's Ghost Ship in the Foggy Sea Area.

That was the compromise they had reached.

Joker would cause chaos, and Buggy would chase treasure. As for the college student—

Give him a piece of gold as big as his face and he'd be so dazzled he wouldn't know which way was up.

There was another important clue, too: the bracelet Luffy got from Captain John after defeating Moria.

It was actually a marker for Captain John's treasure.

If things had gone according to the original story, he should have been in Impel Down by now, getting that thing from Luffy, right?

There was nothing he could do about that now.

With his current "achievements," the moment he showed up anywhere near Marineford,

all three Admirals would come charging at him like mad dogs.

That actually sounded pretty fun, too.

The corner of Buggy's mouth curled up, and he felt a little eager.

Had they figured out how to make his Bounty Order yet?

Still, Buggy was convinced that Captain John's corpse itself held other clues.

Another reason was that

there were so many people who had once appeared in the same place on that Ghost Island.

That was pretty interesting, too.

Buggy felt like he was starting to understand the appeal of a good mystery.

Of course, it would be even more fun if he were the one creating the mystery for everyone else.

"Is it the Florian Triangle? I remember something about that place."

Arne, who had been fiddling with the camera, finally remembered his original goal.

"When I was on my last Pirate Ship, I accidentally sailed into that area."

There was still a trace of lingering fear in Arne's voice.

"There was a gigantic Black Shadow in the fog, terrifying beyond words. We only brushed past its edge, and several people on the ship vanished without a trace!"

The fear of something completely incomprehensible and unknown had sunk deep into his bones.

Arne had only felt anything like it once before, when someone else had been around.

Well, that was when the red-lipped man in front of him had stepped out of an iron cage and said he was a good person.

"You actually survived that?"

Morgans looked astonished.

"Uh, afterward, we tied all the survivors together with a rope and didn't dare let go until the sky grew bright again."

Thinking back on it, Arne still felt a little awkward.

A whole group of rough men squeezed together, and the smell—

He had no desire to relive it.

"But because that experience left such a strong impression, I made a point of noting our position on the Log Pose at the time."

"The island our Log Pose was pointing toward was Sabaody Archipelago."

"Hmm. If we had an Eternal Pose for Water 7 and one for Sabaody Archipelago, I'm sure I could find that sea area!"

Arne's eyes suddenly shone with the light of a professional Tool Person.

What he had learned most from the old adventurer was how to locate the small islands that didn't appear on charts or Log Poses. Those were the places adventurers loved to visit most.

Using two fixed points to find an unknown location was something he was good at, too.

The only slight problem was that an Eternal Pose made specifically for a single island was incredibly expensive.

The World Government and the Marines kept a tight hold on them.

"Eternal Poses?"

As if remembering something, Buggy pulled open his stomach like a drawer.

Inside were more than twenty little glass-ball-like Poses. Every bit of empty space was crammed with small, neatly shaped explosives.

Who would put all that stuff inside himself?!

Arne was stunned, and a few dark lines appeared on his forehead.

"If you don't have any, we have some here, too."

Secretary Gull came out from the back carrying a box packed full of Eternal Poses and Log Poses marked with various routes.

For a moment, Arne felt like he was the clown.

Damn, he'd forgotten that one of these two was an Underground Emperor with deep resources, while the other had just ransacked a Celestial Dragon's vault. They were swimming in money right now!

Water 7 and Sabaody Archipelago were both important islands in the first half of the Grand Line. Arne found not only those Poses, but two or three extra ones as well...

Morgans also provided a general sea chart.

He seemed to think that laying low in the Foggy Sea Area might not be such a bad idea after all.

As for the terrifying legends—

Wouldn't there have to be people who made it back alive for those legends to exist?