It was a blue flag emblazoned with a gleaming gold coin.
That flag was quite famous in the New World, for it represented a mysterious trading company.
The company was called the Mysterious Troupe.
No one knew where it was based, much less where it had come from.
Every ship flying the Mysterious Troupe's flag conducted just one kind of business: trading valuable goods.
The Mysterious Troupe did not accept Beli. It accepted only rare items, such as unusual ores or Famous Swords.
Though it did not accept Beli, the Mysterious Troupe did accept one thing: gold.
Trading such valuable goods should have made the Mysterious Troupe an easy target for thieves, especially in the pirate-filled New World.
But every Mysterious Troupe ship had one thing in common: it could self-destruct in an explosion of terrifying scale.
A powerful attacker might survive the blast, but the valuable goods would not.
That madness had allowed the Mysterious Troupe to maintain a perfect record: not a single item had ever been stolen from it.
It was also how the Mysterious Troupe had made its name in the New World. Pirates loved trading with it because it had so many fine goods.
Rumor had it that the troupe had once offered a Logia Devil Fruit in exchange for a valuable item.
The vessel before Werther now was a Mysterious Troupe ship.
Werther was intrigued by the company and decided to trade with it.
The Mysterious Troupe ship was sailing toward Werther as well. Its crew apparently wanted to make a deal with him.
Before long, the two ships drew alongside each other.
The Mysterious Troupe ship was not very large, so it pulled right up against Werther's hull.
A masked figure emerged from its cabin.
The figure wore a flowing golden robe and