The Last Jerry

Jelly and the others finally arrived at the office building. Seeing Rogge sitting in the lobby, they did not care about what had happened here. It was just that a wild man wearing a sweater stood beside Rogge, leaving them utterly bewildered.

"Yo, you finally made it. Finished looting?" Rogge asked.

"Not bad. As expected of a commercial trade island, the landowners here are really rich," Ham said with a sigh.

"There are still more than a billion Beli downstairs. They did not even move it. I only just found out that all the wealth they accumulated over the past year is here," Rogge said with a smile.

"More than a billion Beli?" The other five looked at one another after hearing Rogge. The sudden windfall left them dazed for a moment.

With more than two billion Beli appearing out of nowhere, deciding how to spend it would not be easy. Having too much money was troublesome too.

"Who is this guy?" Simon asked, staring at the wild man.

"This guy?" Rogge hesitated, rubbed his chin, then looked up at the wild man and asked, "By the way, what is your name?"

"A name? I do not have one." The wild man shook his head.

"You are already this old, and you do not have a name?" Rogge asked in surprise.

"They call me Slave Number One. Some people also call me Jerry," the wild man said.

"Jerry is pretty good. Jerry it is from now on." Rogge clapped his hands.

"Jerry, Jerry. Okay, my name is Jerry from now on." The wild man nodded.

"Hey, Rogge, who exactly is this guy?" Jelly asked.

"He is Jerry. He will be our companion from now on. I do not know much about him either, but he should be a bad guy, right?" Rogge said with a smile.

Simon carefully examined Jerry, then finally stood behind Rogge. "Captain, this man should be one of Earthfire Island's native Glacial Cavemen. That cannot be. Did the Glacial Cavemen not go extinct decades ago? How can there still be someone like him?"

"Glacial Cavemen?" Rogge looked completely baffled.

Simon immediately explained what Glacial Cavemen were to Rogge, and only then did Rogge learn that Jerry had such an identity.

Glacial Cavemen were still humans, to put it plainly. They had merely lived here for so long that their bodies adapted to the environment and changed somewhat. That was not strange; there were far stranger races in the world. Glacial Cavemen still counted as humans, except their arms were a little longer. To ordinary people, they simply looked mutated. After all, there was no shortage of people with long arms.

"Why does he want to join us?" Ham asked curiously.

"I do not know either. He wanted to join on his own, so I agreed." Rogge spread his hands.

"He wanted to join, and you just let him?" Jelly grabbed Rogge by the collar and shouted.

Rogge leaned back to avoid his spit. "Yeah. He is not exactly a good person anyway, right? Have you not always complained that there are too few people on the ship? Is having a newcomer not a good thing?"

"Since the captain agreed, then it is fine. Bring him along. We have a lot of money to transport this time, so another person will help," Cook said soothingly. Money could shift their attention.

"By the way, where is the vault?" Jelly quickly tossed Jerry's matter to the back of his mind, his eyes gleaming with the light of coins.

"Inside." Rogge led them all the way to the vault. Seeing the wealth there, they estimated that it was worth at least two billion Beli. The island's entire yearly income was stored here. This was no small sum; they had struck it rich.

Without another word, Jelly used his ability to create several large net bags. They stuffed all the treasures inside and left with the loot.

"I originally wanted to destroy this island, but it looks like there is no need now. Hehe." Rogge had wanted to do something even worse before, but with an income of more than two billion Beli, he no longer had such thoughts. This place was a treasure vault. Perhaps they could come back and raid it again someday.

When they reached the entrance, a gust of frigid wind swept over them. Everyone except Jerry shuddered.

"This weather really is extreme," Rogge said once he quickly adapted.

The others put on their clothes. The icebergs outside remained as magnificent as ever, and Rogge's group continued toward the shore. Jerry stopped and looked back.

"Ah!!!"

Hearing Jerry's cry, Rogge and the others stopped and turned around.

Jerry kept shouting.

"He is saying goodbye, right?" Ares said.

"He is the only one left of his entire race. Other than this island, there is nothing left for him to miss. Even the Black-clawed Snow Foxes, his people's closest companions, have been contaminated," Simon said.

By interrogating some people on the island, they learned of Jerry's misfortunes.

The Glacial Cavemen had not actually gone extinct decades ago. One family had survived, hiding deep within the glaciers. They never appeared on the surface, instead living in the gaps between the icebergs.

But as other people's range of activity expanded, they lost their food source. Eventually, the two adults had no choice but to leave the glaciers and come to the surface to steal food. Finally, their traces were discovered twenty years ago.

They were the last remaining Glacial Cavemen. The nobles who had moved to the island were curious, so they were captured and kept in captivity. Jerry was captured as well.

They were treated as slaves and rare animals, put on display and abused. Then, ten years ago, Jerry watched with his own eyes as his parents were locked in cages. It was said that they were sent to the world nobles, the Celestial Dragons.

Jerry, meanwhile, was kept on the island. He possessed the Glacial Cavemen's unique talent: taming Black-clawed Snow Foxes.

The Black-clawed Snow Foxes were the foxes that had fought Rogge earlier. They were a rare species unique to Earthfire Island. Jerry, who had been abused since childhood, feared those people, so he helped them tame the Black-clawed Snow Foxes. Yet the islanders continued persecuting the foxes. Eventually, in order to research a medicine, they used the Black-clawed Snow Foxes for experiments. They had not expected the drug to spread between the snow foxes, turning them violent and causing them to slaughter one another.

Only Jerry could calm those Black-clawed Snow Foxes somewhat, but they still needed to be fed bloody meat. Moreover, those foxes could no longer reproduce. They had become tools that knew only slaughter, which was why Jerry had ultimately let those Black-clawed Snow Foxes die at Rogge's hands.

Jerry had not possessed much sense of self before. He had been treated as a slave since childhood. Though he was intelligent, his living environment had been too different, too closed off. That changed five years ago, when he came into contact with other slaves. As Earthfire Island's residents gradually grew wealthier, fewer and fewer people were willing to do physical labor, so they began buying slaves to work.

Among them were members of a pirate crew who had been captured and made into slaves. Jerry came into contact with those slaves, and that was when he received his name. He gradually learned about pirates and the world outside. He longed for the day he could sail out with pirates. And so, he waited for five years before finally meeting Rogge. Once he learned that Rogge was a pirate, he chose without hesitation to sail with him.

After Jerry finished shouting, he suddenly raised his head toward the icebergs, his face lighting up with delight.

"What is that?" Rogge saw it too. Observation Haki had greatly improved his eyesight, and atop the iceberg, he saw a group of more than a dozen white foxes with black claws. Other than their eyes not being blood-red, they were undoubtedly Black-clawed Snow Foxes.

"Ah!!!" Jerry shouted again. The Black-clawed Snow Foxes looked at Jerry for a moment, then turned and vanished into the icebergs.