If Handsomeness Were a Crime

"Compared to Captain John's treasure, one billion Beli was indeed worth it."

Morgans's breathing grew heavy.

Over the past half month, Cipher Pol agents, Marines, pirates, bounty hunters... even ordinary civilians had been frantically searching for Captain John.

Yet so far, there had not been the slightest trace or scrap of news.

Captain John seemed to have evaporated from the world!

Thus, knowing of Captain John's death did not mean one could obtain his treasure.

But Pete and the others' fingernails were different. They could be used to make Vivre Cards, then follow the cards' guidance to find them.

Find them, and they would find Captain John's treasure!

At that thought, Morgans roughly guessed the identity of the person on the other end of the call.

The other party was likely a crew member of the John Pirates. Since he had either received no share of the treasure or too small a share, he intended to sell Pete and the others for money.

"Unfortunately, I can't scrape together that much money."

Morgans shook his head regretfully, then hurriedly added,

"But don't worry. I have channels to raise the money quickly. You don't mind selling the fingernails to someone other than me, do you?"

"I only care about money."

"Deal! Let's set a time and place."

"..."

After finishing his discussion with Morgans, John called contacts in the Underworld, the World Government, the Bounty Hunter Guild, and other organizations.

The message was the same, both openly and implicitly: he was selling Pete and the others' fingernails!

The standard market price was one billion Beli!

This was not selling the same goods to multiple buyers. The fingernails could be cut into many pieces, and even a tiny fragment was enough to make a Vivre Card.

All the previous organizations agreed to the price of one billion Beli without hesitation, until he called the slave traders...

"One billion Beli? Why don't you just rob us?!" The Den Den Mushi mimicked an ugly, savage face as it roared furiously.

John frowned, his tone turning unpleasant.

"You're an idiot, but don't assume everyone else is one too."

"Everyone knows that finding Pete and the others means finding Captain John's treasure. That's a deal worth hundreds of billions."

"I think you wild monkeys got your brains fucked up by the Celestial Dragons and now think everyone is easy to fool, don't you?"

"You sissy who licks the dicks of brain-dead Celestial Dragons!"

"Y-You! You! You..."

The slave trader was stunned by the barrage of insults. His face visibly reddened, his mouth opening and closing over and over, yet he could not say a single word for a long while.

"The price just went up. One and a half billion. Want it or not?"

John looked down on slave traders like these. If not for taking their money, and letting traitors like Pete experience what it felt like to be hunted by slave ships, he could not be bothered dealing with such wild monkeys.

"One and a half billion?!"

"Two..."

"Yes! Yes! One and a half billion it is!"

The slave trader had wanted to haggle, but when he saw the other party was about to raise the price again, he hurriedly agreed in a panic.

"You're truly pathetic. Tell me honestly, did Figarland Garling fuck your brain up too?"

"Bastard! Stop insulting me! If you keep it up, I won't do business with you!"

"..."

After settling and arranging everything, John raised his head and looked through the enormous crack in the dome at the sky.

The Golden Ship and the treasure were still floating above the clouds. Maintaining their magnetic levitation was not as physically draining as he had imagined; in fact, it even restored quite a bit of his stamina.

He had used lightning to create a powerful, stable artificial magnetic field, using it to magnetically suspend the Golden Ship and treasure above the clouds.

Then, using himself as a conductor, he cut through the magnetic field lines in a particular manner within that orderly field, producing electricity through magnetism.

Simply put, electricity generated magnetism to form a magnetic field, then the magnetic field generated electricity.

Since he was the embodiment of the Logia Thunder-Thunder Fruit, the electricity generated by magnetism could be treated as energy to replenish himself.

"Had I become a perpetual motion machine?"

"No!"

John shook his head. This merely replenished the stamina consumed by his Devil Fruit; it did not change his essence as a living creature.

He still needed to eat and drink.

But he was already quite satisfied with that. From now on, he could treat the sky as a storage bag—anything he could not carry, he could simply throw into the air.

Whenever he needed it, he could pull it back down from the sky.

With Mantra's incredibly vast sensing range, he could afford to be this willful!

"Fujitora's pulled-down meteors were already that terrifying. If I pulled down meteorite iron, who could stop me?"

John smiled meaningfully, then shot into the air and rushed out through the crack in the dome.

Because he used elementalization, he did not stir up even the slightest sound of breaking air, leaving Pete's group, who were diving around the island in search of treasure, completely unaware.

Several days later, West Blue, Lulusia Kingdom.

Lulusia was a World Government member nation. The kingdom was spotless and hailed as the most beautiful country in West Blue.

The country was divided into an Upper Town and a Lower Town. Like Goa Kingdom in East Blue, it was a successful model of a "segregated society."

On a Lower Town street, a black-haired man in an orange patterned short-sleeved shirt and white shorts walked through the crowd. His handsome face and melancholy eyes made numerous young women stop and stare.

"Is he some model? He's so handsome!"

"Even models aren't that handsome, are they? Could he be some superstar from the Grand Line?"

"I don't care anymore. I'm going to ask him for his contact information!"

Seeing the beautiful brown-haired woman blocking his path, John sighed inwardly once again. Before she could muster the courage to speak through her shyness, he directly declined.

"Sorry, I like men."

After saying that, he walked past the brown-haired beauty, leaving her dazed in the wind, and strode away.

When he reached the entrance to an alley, he suddenly darted inside and hid.

"Sigh, I've already kept such a low profile. Why do people keep coming to bother me?"

John leaned against the wall and looked helplessly up at the sky.

He had arrived in Lulusia two nights earlier. The first thing he did was sneak into a closed barbershop, cut off his long hair, dye his purple hair black, and undergo a complete transformation.

His hairstyle was an utterly ordinary side part, and he wore cheap clothes, yet he still became the center of attention in any crowd.

"If handsomeness were a crime, my bounty would probably have already surpassed a hundred billion."

Being too handsome was troubling too.

"Pururururu—"

Just as John was worrying about how to keep an even lower profile, the Den Den Mushi in his pocket began to ring.

He took out the Den Den Mushi and covered its eyes to keep it from mimicking him, then answered the call.

"I've arrived in Lulusia. Where do we make the trade?" Morgans's suppressedly excited voice came through.

John closed his eyes and followed the Den Den Mushi's radio waves with Mantra. He quickly locked onto Morgans's voice in the forested mountains to the south.

"Wait where you are. I'll come find you."

John threw out those words, hung up without waiting for a response, then left the alley and headed briskly toward the Upper Town.