I Am the Master of This Body!

The biting wind and swirling snow tore open a vast, hollow void.

It was as if a killer whale had opened its maw, teeth bared, to swallow the gale and the snow whole.

A single gunshot rang out, and the pirate with the blood-caked, sunken face was blasted backward by the sheer force, carving a long trench through the snow.

Smoke curled from Conrad's frost-swollen fist as the snow began to fall in thick, heavy sheets once more.

Thud!

The surrounding pirates all rolled their eyes back simultaneously, collapsing into a heap of unconscious bodies.

Rosinante pulled the harpoon from his feathered coat and scrambled up from the snowy slope, shaking his head vigorously. His clown-painted mouth twitched as he muttered, "Conqueror's Haki?"

Familiar memories, yet a different aura.

Conrad turned back, his heroic face clouded by dark lines; the Haki had already gone to his head.

He bared two rows of gleaming white teeth, wanting to speak but stopping himself, settling instead for a benevolent smile that looked utterly terrifying.

"Thank you very much!" Rosinante bowed cautiously, clutching the Op-Op Fruit to his chest, his right hand gripping the handle of the lead-bullet pistol hidden beneath his coat.

When he looked up again, Conrad's back was already disappearing down the mountain.

Rosinante let out a sigh of relief and hurried down the mountain as well, heading toward the west side of Ghost Town.

Thirteen-year-old Trafalgar Law, suffering from the terminal Amber Lead Syndrome, was waiting for him there.

They had left the Donquixote Family and traveled across the North Blue for nearly three years in search of a cure, but it had all been in vain; Law's life was nearing its end.

It was for this reason that he had taken such a desperate risk, defying the Donquixote Family, the Marines, and Doflamingo all at once to steal this Op-Op Fruit.

Not long after the two had departed.

Barrels was helped out of the burning building by his subordinates. Staring at the pirates strewn across the snow, the veins on his bleeding forehead bulged as he roared:

"Drake! You damn idiot, where are you hiding?! You're never around when I need you most! You're clearly stronger than anyone, you coward!"

"My injuries don't matter! Go! Get that five-billion-berry... Op-Op Fruit back!"

"Yes!" The pirate crew raised their torches, brandishing guns and blades as they gave chase.

As evening approached, the snow fell even harder, burying the footprints they left behind almost as soon as they were made.

At the edge of Ghost Town, Conrad leaned against a stone wall, pulling his leg from the deep snow with heavy, labored steps.

He figured this must be the side effect of his first time unleashing his Haki without restraint; the overload had left him feeling utterly drained.

"Are you a child captured by the pirates? Where is your home?" Rosinante caught up to him, taking off his feather coat and wrapping it around Conrad's shoulders.

Conrad's face was flushed crimson, and he exhaled a long cloud of white mist as he continued to push forward.

Rosinante reached out to touch his forehead, his eyes widening as he recoiled as if he had touched a boiling kettle. "So hot! You have a high fever!"

He tried to force a strange smile. "Let me take you to the Marines."

Conrad remained silent, continuing his trek.

"Corazon-san, could he be deaf?" asked the boy, who wore a snow-leopard spotted fur hat and had skin covered in white mineral patterns.

"It's possible." Rosinante looked sympathetic. As the second-in-command of the Donquixote Family, codenamed Corazon, he had been using the power of the Calm-Calm Fruit to feign muteness.

In reality, he had once cried and fled when he was eight years old, having witnessed Doflamingo shoot and decapitate their biological father.

He had been found and adopted by the Marine Admiral Sengoku, becoming a Marine himself. It had taken fourteen years for him to return to the notorious Doflamingo Pirates as a mole.

But this time, in order to save Law, he had stolen the Op-Op Fruit—capable of performing the "Perennial Youth Operation"—and could never return to the Marines again.

Rosinante instructed, "Law, you go to the ship and wait for me first. I'll drop him off at the west coast and come find you immediately."

A Marine surveillance ship was docked at the west coast. He needed to hand over his final intelligence report, which contained a list of the major underworld figures who had been trading with Doflamingo over the years, as well as his next target for invasion.

Trafalgar Law stared at Conrad's back. His pupils were tiny, his eyes almost entirely white, giving him a sinister look.

He had heard from Rosinante that it was this boy who had saved him, allowing him to successfully obtain the Op-Op Fruit and shove it into his mouth, effectively saving his life as well.

"Alright, hurry back." He wrapped his sweater tightly around himself, turned the corner, and walked away quickly.

Rosinante nodded, trotted over to Conrad, and crouched down. He patted his back and said with a weird grin, "Get on."

Conrad didn't understand the words, but he understood the gesture.

Before he could refuse, Rosinante grabbed the black feather coat and hoisted him onto his back.

Rosinante looked thin, but he was taller than two Conrads put together; carrying a boy was no effort at all, and his long legs sprinted through the snow.

"Burning up like this... how long have you had this fever?"

Conrad blinked, staring into the vast, swirling snow.

He wasn't sick; he was thinking, recalling the plot developments of this catastrophe.

When a person is deep in thought, it is inevitable that their brain will heat up.

When Zhang Sanfeng of Wudang preached the Taiji Sword, he once said: forget half, forget the greater half, and to forget everything is the highest realm—the principle of winning without moves.

Conrad, however, was gifted with extraordinary talent; he had always possessed a photographic memory, capable of gaining new insights through constant review.

Yet at this moment, this supreme talent had become his shackle; he could not recall the specific details of an anime he had watched a mere five years ago.

"When does the Donquixote Family land? Which direction are the Marine warships coming from? Who is leading the squad?"

Conrad's temples throbbed with a burning, searing pain. His memories were hazy and indistinct; he knew exactly what he was trying to think of, but he simply could not remember the details.

Rosinante sensed that Conrad's back felt like a furnace and quickened his pace. "We're almost there. Just hold on a little longer. There's a doctor on the Marine ship; they'll definitely be able to cure you."

Bang!

Conrad shoved hard, rolling off Rosinante's back and into the snow, his face flushed so red it looked as if it were dripping blood.

"Impossible! It's my own memory—how could I not recall it?"

He laughed, a loud, booming laugh. This would not defeat him.

The brain! It could not hide his memories from him!

"I! I am the master of this body!" Conrad slammed a palm onto the Baihui acupoint at the crown of his head, forcing his Haki inward. "Memory! I command you to emerge!"

Boom!

Pitch black, blinding white, and a ceaseless, droning hum.

In an instant, his senses sharpened. Conrad's vision shifted from the external to the internal; countless images in his mind arranged themselves into rows of library shelves.

The pages of One Piece flipped rapidly, and the food he had just gorged himself on was quickly broken down and absorbed to supply blood to his brain.

The images became increasingly vivid, as if he were there in person. Every blade of grass, every tree, every word, and every action—even the sounds echoed within his mind.

Watching Conrad ramble incoherently, Rosinante grew anxious, fearing that the fever had burned his wits away.

He gazed toward the coastline at the foot of the mountain, where the masts of the Marine surveillance ships had already appeared from behind the cliffs.

Beneath the snow-covered treetops along the shore, small squads of Marines carrying rifles and wearing cloaks were faintly visible, raising their binoculars as they trudged toward the island, struggling through the ascent.

Rosinante grabbed Conrad's wrist and pulled with all his might, but he couldn't budge him. Thinking that since they were so close, he might as well go directly to hand over the intelligence documents and have the Marines come to the rescue.

But before he had gone far, a voice suddenly came from behind, clear and distinct, cutting through the howling wind.

"Don't go any further. Come back."

Rosinante turned in shock and suspicion to see that the blood had drained from Conrad's face, his black eyes clear as mirrors.

"You can speak?"

"I can now." Conrad spun the harpoon in his hand, raised it high above his head, took a step, and exhaled as he threw it.

The harpoon cut through the wind and snow, soaring past Rosinante and flying straight toward a Marine with a mushroom haircut and sunglasses in the uphill squad.

Clang!

The sound of the impact was sharp and resonant.

The Marine in sunglasses didn't change his expression, his arm—covered in a matte metallic sheen—blocking and swiping the weapon aside.

The harpoon snapped, the flying shards piercing through three of his fellow Marines and embedding themselves into a thick tree trunk.

Three corpses stained the white snow red, their blood trickling and pooling together.

"Corazon? You can speak?"