Sea Calendar 1509.
Minion Island.
The bitter winter was fierce, and the pure white snow drifting from the sky had turned the entire island into a silver-clad landscape.
In an abandoned town, atop a mountain, laughter, curses, and shouting echoed from within a large villa blanketed in snow.
"Hey! Drake! Go get the booze!"
A burly man over two meters tall with short brown hair barked toward the corner of the room.
"Coming..."
Hearing the rebuke, the young man with an X-shaped scar on his chin—Diez Drake—responded.
His eyes were numb and lifeless. Like a walking corpse, he left the villa and headed for the underground wine cellar to fetch the alcohol.
The man who had shouted at him was his father, Diez Barrelus. He had once been a marine officer and studied under Zephyr, with a bright future ahead of him. But after graduating from the Military Academy, he had witnessed all kinds of darkness within the Marines.
As a result, Diez Barrelus lost faith in justice, abandoned his principles, left the Marines, became a pirate, and took up murder, arson, plunder, and rape.
Looking at the pirate underlings gathered around him, Diez Barrelus seemed to think of something. He immediately picked up a small wooden box beside him and took out a red fruit with a red skin covered in spiral patterns. Smiling, he said:
"Hahaha! Guess how much this fruit can sell for?... I hear it's worth five billion Beli! Hahahaha!"
At that, one of the pirate underlings immediately sneered.
"What a joke. Have those World Government idiots lost their minds?"
"If we got that kind of money, we wouldn't need to be pirates anymore..."
"Hahaha!"
"Hahaha! Exactly! Exactly!"
Barrelus carefully examined the Op-Op Fruit in his hand as he explained:
"Think about it. As long as