The So-Called World Is Just a Fishbowl

Boom!

This time,

Garp was genuinely frightened.

His terrifying aura erupted in an instant, reducing all the surrounding rubble to powder.

If the Five Elders were still the highest authority in the open,

then God's Knights were the absolute secret of the World Government.

They were a Sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of all Celestial Dragons, and even the upper ranks of the Navy.

They were the arbiters responsible for judgment.

They possessed the privilege of executing Celestial Dragons.

In this world, the number of people who knew that name could be counted on one hand.

"Shut up!"

Garp rushed over and covered Kahn's mouth with one hand.

That large hand was trembling.

Cold sweat ran down his temples.

He looked around. Even though this was a deserted cliff, even though there was not even a bird within ten miles,

he was still afraid.

"You little bastard..."

"Are you trying to die?"

"Are you trying to get Ace and Luffy killed right now?"

Garp kept his voice low, so low it sounded like he was roaring from within his throat.

"Let those words rot in your stomach!"

"Never! Never say them a second time!"

Kahn broke free from Garp's hand.

He wiped the saliva from his mouth in disgust.

"What's there to panic about?"

"There's not even a Den Den Mushi in this dump. Who could hear us?"

Kahn looked at Garp's terrified face, the amusement in his eyes deepening.

"Old man, is this the extent of your nerve?"

"You get scared stiff just from hearing a few names?"

"Then what if I said..."

Kahn leaned close to Garp's ear.

His voice was soft.

So soft it was like a breeze.

"Deep within Pangaea Castle."

"In the great hall where even the Five Elders must kneel."

"That throne covered in weapons, the one said to be impossible for anyone in this world to sit upon..."

"The Empty Throne."

"There's actually someone sitting on it."

Thump.

Garp's heart skipped a beat.

In that instant,

the Navy hero who had ruled the seas for decades felt all the blood in his body freeze.

That name.

The taboo among taboos.

A being he did not even dare think about.

Imu.

Kahn did not say those two words.

But his description was even more despairing than speaking the name aloud.

The master of the Empty Throne.

The true ruler of the world.

That ghost who had lived for eight hundred years.

Even the wind by the cliff seemed to stop.

Garp's eyes, usually narrowed into slits, were now wide open.

They were filled with bloodshot veins.

He held his breath.

Even his terrifying aura had been completely withdrawn, like a beast suddenly encountering its natural predator and instinctively concealing every trace of its presence.

He looked at Kahn.

As though he were looking at a ghost from hell.

The Empty Throne.

Someone sat in that seat.

What did those words mean?

They meant the "equality" the World Government had preached for eight hundred years was a joke.

They meant the world supposedly governed jointly by two hundred affiliated nations was actually the private property of one person.

They meant absolute dictatorship.

Even at Marine Headquarters, only people at the fleet admiral level were qualified to touch the edge of this secret.

Even Sengoku might not know the exact truth.

Yet this nine-year-old brat.

This bastard who spent every day lounging in the East Blue, basking in the Sun.

He actually knew.

And he said it so casually, as if they were discussing what color underwear the village idiot next door had worn today.

"You..."

Garp opened his mouth.

It felt as though a wad of cotton had been stuffed down his throat, dry and painfully scratchy.

"How did you know?"

His voice was hoarse.

He was no longer that bold Navy hero.

He was merely an old man with fear clamped around his throat.

Kahn flicked the apple core in his hand into the sea.

He watched it arc through the air before falling into the water with a plop, kicking up a tiny splash.

"Does it matter?"

Kahn asked in return.

He did not answer directly.

Because there was no way to explain it.

He could not exactly say he had learned it from reading manga in his previous life.

"To the ants crawling across this sea, who that person is, or whether they sit in that seat, makes no real difference."

Kahn stood up.

He brushed the dust from his backside.

His movements were slow.

Yet they carried an oppressive presence that could not be ignored.

"Old man."

"Do you think the person sitting on that throne is terrifying?"

"Do you think that eight-hundred-year-old ghost is the god of this world?"

Kahn let out a scornful laugh.

A disdainful curve appeared at the corner of his mouth.

That disdain was not an act.

It was arrogance born from the depths of his bones.

"Then do you know?"

"When you climb out of this fishbowl and look upward."

"You'll find that the so-called Red Line is nothing more than a threshold that is slightly rough underfoot."

"The so-called Grand Line is nothing more than a slightly swifter drainage ditch."

Kahn raised his head.

His gaze pierced through the clouds.

Through the atmosphere.

And stared directly at the blazing Sun hanging high overhead.

Within his golden eyes, it seemed as though an entire galaxy was reflected.

"Old man."

"Have you ever been up there?"

Kahn pointed at the sky.

Not at Mary Geoise.

But higher still.

Beyond ten thousand meters in the air.

Beyond the atmosphere.

The vacuum.

The universe.

Garp froze.

He instinctively looked up at the clear blue sky.

"Up there?"

"Sky Island?"

"No."

Kahn shook a finger.

"Higher than Sky Island."

"So high there is no air."

"So high you cannot hear a single sound."

"So high that your Haki and your fists are as insignificant as a speck of dust before that endless darkness."

Kahn's voice became somewhat distant.

As though it were drifting in from somewhere far away.

"A couple of days ago, I flew up there once."

"I wanted to see the whole world."

"So I kept flying upward, upward."

"I passed through the clouds, through thunderstorms, and even through that layer of ozone that blocks ultraviolet rays."

"Everything around me turned pitch-black."

"There was no wind."

"There was no gravity."

"There was only the Sun, terrifyingly huge and blindingly bright."

Kahn spread his arms.

As though he were embracing that boundless expanse.

An almost obsessed expression appeared on his face.

It was the awe only someone who had seen the universe with his own eyes could possess.

"I looked down."

"Guess what I saw?"

Kahn turned to look at Garp.

"I saw a blue sphere."

"It was beautiful."

"And tiny."

"The Red Line you all fight over until your heads are bloody looked like a red earthworm lying across that sphere."

"The Calm Belt you consider forbidden territory was as thin as two strands of hair."

"And as for that Mary Geoise..."

Kahn held out his little finger.

He gestured at something the size of a sesame seed.

"It didn't even count as a white speck."

"I had to squint and search for ages just to make sure it wasn't a fly that had landed on it."