Snow swirled through the air as a biting wind howled past.
"What kind of godforsaken place is this? Why is it snowing so hard?" Gild Tesoro brushed the snow from his shoulder in disgust.
"There must have been a brutal battle here. Why aren't there any bodies?"
Gild Tesoro walked on as he spoke.
Crack. It sounded like a stick snapping underfoot. Gild Tesoro looked down, and his face twitched.
An arm lay in the snow, frozen solid. The cold had made it so brittle that Gild Tesoro had snapped it with one step.
"Ah!" A scream came from behind Gild Tesoro. It was Carina, the beautiful singer.
Carina was only a singer and a thief. She had never seen anything so gruesome.
The shattered arm gave them some idea of how brutal the battle had been.
Now Gild Tesoro knew where the bodies on the island had gone.
They were all beneath their feet, buried under the snow.
"Hee-hee-hee. What a gruesome sight. Anyone who could win a battle like this must be a monster."
The speaker had an enormous head and a short body. A black bodysuit covered everything but his face.
He was Tanaka, one of Gild Tesoro's trusted subordinates, though everyone aboard Ark Maxim called him Mr. Nakata.
Mr. Nakata's Warp-Warp Fruit ability was also indispensable to the operation of Ark Maxim.
"There'll probably be a fight soon. If there is, make sure I'm at the front."
This time, the speaker was a burly man with a thick yellow beard and bulging muscles.
He was another of Gild Tesoro's trusted subordinates: Dice. His usual job was to smash an iron gambling device with his head at the casino, where he also served as a dealer.
He was also an extreme masochist. He had once competed in