Island Falling from the Sky

The former site of the orphanage.

Broken walls and crumbling ruins shivered in the cold wind. Withered yellow weeds had grown half a person's height, almost completely burying the simple stone marker.

Lucas knelt before the moss-covered gravestone, his knees sinking deep into the icy soil.

"Sister Eos, I avenged you all."

Bang! Bang! Bang!

He solemnly kowtowed three times, his forehead striking the hard stone.

Slowly rising to his feet, he gave the gravestone bearing the words "Eos's Grave" one final look.

An invisible, overwhelming aura suddenly erupted from within him, shaking the flying insects out of the air and onto the ground.

Eight years ago, at the moment the sister had fallen before him, he had awakened Conqueror's Haki.

But he had never been able to wield that power on his own. It would only erupt passively when his emotions reached an extreme.

Until today.

Until this moment, when his great vengeance had been fulfilled.

The knot that had weighed on his heart for eight years finally unraveled, and he could at last use it of his own will.

Lucas lightly clenched his fist, feeling the Conqueror's Haki flowing freely through his body. A sharp gleam flashed in his eyes.

When he returned to the dilapidated wooden hut, Gion was already gone.

A small note lay pinned beneath something on the table, covered in her graceful handwriting:

"I'm leaving. Next time, I'll definitely catch you. Once you get out of prison and atone for your sins, I'll marry you. Remember, until then, you're not allowed to get caught by any other Marines."

Lucas picked up the note and looked at the crooked final few words, unable to stop himself from laughing.

"Foolish girl."

With a self-mocking sigh, he crumpled the note into a ball and casually tossed it into the wastebasket beside him.

On these seas, there had never been any such thing as fully atoning for one's sins.

The blood on his hands, the people he had killed, the hatred carved into his bones—which of those could be washed clean by serving time in prison?

Besides, he had never intended to atone for anything.

He slept on the bed still carrying the faint fragrance of the young woman. By the time he woke, it was already evening.

Lucas stretched, his bones cracking loudly. As usual, he went to the shore and completed ten thousand sword swings, then hunted a wild boar in the forest for dinner.

After eating and drinking his fill and returning to peak condition, he took up his Katana and walked beneath the moonlight toward the Flying Group's stronghold.

To cut the grass, one had to pull out the roots. That was a truth he had learned through eight years of struggling in the underworld, paid for with countless lives.

He had no desire to one day be stabbed in the back by some surviving remnant of the Flying Group.

Roberts's greatest arrogance in life was his firm belief that his own strength was the Kingdom of Ye's strongest defense.

Thus, aside from himself, there was not even a single servant in Shogun's Castle.

Every night, he returned to the stronghold to rest. That magnificent Shogun's Castle was merely an empty shell for appearances.

And it was precisely that foolish decision that had allowed the Flying Group's core members to emerge unscathed from the battle during the day.

Now, their time to die had come.

When Lucas appeared at the entrance of the Flying Group's stronghold, several hundred fully armed gang members were already waiting in formation. Their gleaming Katanas reflected a cold light beneath the moon, and every face was filled with fear and fury.

"Kill him! Avenge the acting boss!"

Someone roared, shattering the dead silence.

The dark mass of people surged forward like a tide, their cries of battle deafening.

Lucas drew his Katana expressionlessly.

On these seas, there was an eternal truth—once an individual's strength reached a certain level, a human-wave tactic became a complete joke.

A flash of steel streaked through the air, and blood sprayed everywhere.

Screams, the clatter of weapons falling to the ground, and the sound of bones breaking intertwined.

Lucas was like a tiger charging into a flock of sheep. Wherever he passed, no one could withstand a single slash. Those gang members who normally lorded over the slums were as fragile before him as sandcastles built by children on the beach.

In just fifteen minutes.

The entire Flying Group stronghold had become a living hell.

Most of that time had even been wasted chasing down terrified deserters fleeing in all directions.

Lucas flicked the blood from his blade, dragged out the final member hiding in a water vat, and slit his throat with a single stroke.

Thus, the Flying Group, which had run rampant across the Kingdom of Ye for decades, vanished completely from this world.

For the next three days, Lucas did not return home.

He plunged into the primeval forest deep within the Kingdom of Ye, cutting trees, stripping bark, and binding logs together to build a raft with his own hands.

Of course, he had no intention of imitating that madman Blackbeard and daring to venture into the Grand Line on a raft.

He merely needed the most rudimentary vessel to carry him across the harsh waters around the Kingdom of Ye and reach the nearest commercial island.

The Kingdom of Ye had no ships.

This island had produced two pirates renowned throughout the seas, Golden Lion and Silver Axe, yet the gangsters on the island now did not even have the courage to go to sea.

They feared that the moment their ship left port, the Marines would label them "Rocks remnants" and sink both ship and crew to the bottom of the sea.

After all, the founders of the two largest gangs here had indeed been former members of the Rocks Pirates.

The smaller gangs also had countless ties to them.

Lucas had obtained reliable intelligence from Gion:

After crossing that stormy sea, at the speed of a civilian merchant ship, it would take no more than a quarter of an hour to reach the next island—a winter island.

Just a quarter of an hour.

With his strength, even if the raft fell apart, he could get there using Geppo.

On the morning of the fourth day, just as dawn began to break.

Lucas dragged the completed raft to the shore.

He tossed his few belongings onto the raft, drew the Katana at his waist, and fiercely swung it toward the air behind him.

The force of the slash smashed a depression into the air itself, turning into a rolling shockwave that struck the sea.

The enormous recoil propelled the raft forward like an arrow loosed from a bow, shooting dozens of meters away in an instant.

Standing on the raft, Lucas looked back at the island where he had lived for eighteen years.

There was no attachment, no reluctance.

His childhood, his kindness, and his only warmth were all buried here.

Now, it was time to leave.

Just as he was about to swing his second blade and charge completely into the stormy waters.

The sky above his head suddenly darkened.

Lucas abruptly raised his head. His pupils contracted, and cold sweat instantly beaded across his forehead.

In his field of vision, a black island several kilometers across crashed down from an altitude of ten thousand meters like a boulder hurled by a god!

"You've got to be kidding me!"

"Golden Lion, you old bastard! Where did you get the news? How could you have gotten here so quickly?!"

There were only two people in this world capable of controlling islands and making them fall from the sky—Golden Lion Shiki and the future Marine Admiral Fujitora.

He had no grudge against Fujitora. They had never even met.

Then there was only one answer.

No matter how he thought about it, Lucas could not understand why Golden Lion, who was wholly focused on his plan to conquer the world, would personally come to the Kingdom of Ye over an insignificant Roberts.

Would a great pirate of that level truly care about a tiny gang he had founded back when he was still insignificant?

Before Lucas could think further, the terrifying air pressure brought by the falling island had already swept over him.

The air was compressed into a violent hurricane, releasing a piercing shriek.

The sea within a radius of ten kilometers was forcibly pressed into a massive depression, the seawater retreating outward like walls.

The raft beneath Lucas's feet rocked wildly on the raging sea, ready to fall apart at any moment.

He did not foolishly attempt to cut the island apart. Instead, he drew in a deep breath and plunged headfirst into the ocean.

Even if he could accomplish it by giving everything he had, he would still have to face Golden Lion afterward.

The weakness of the Float-Float Fruit was that it could only control things the user had touched.

But in the place where Golden Lion had lived for decades, that weakness did not exist at all.

Who knew how many "weapons" that man had left here, ready to be controlled at any time?

With remote control alone, his opponent could toy Lucas to death.

A gentleman's revenge could wait ten years.

BOOM!

A thunderous crash that seemed to split clouds and stone shook the entire sea.

The island slammed heavily into the ocean, blasting seawater into the sky and forming a wall of water hundreds of meters high. The crude raft was instantly smashed into dust.

Drawn by some invisible power, the raging seawater transformed into dozens of enormous sea-lion heads, opening their gaping jaws and savagely biting toward the surface.

The raging waves rose and fell one after another, as though they intended to tear everything in this stretch of sea apart.

A full ten minutes passed before the sea gradually calmed.

Above the clouds high in the sky.

Golden Lion floated in midair, his long golden hair whipping wildly in the wind. He carefully swept the entire sea with Observation Haki, confirming that the young aura had completely disappeared into the deep sea.

"Jihahahaha!"

"An ignorant little brat dared lay hands on my people, Shiki's people."

He looked down at the calm sea below and casually brushed the dust from his clothes.

"I've wasted enough time. It's time to go back and keep those idiots working on the experiments. Before long, the entire world will tremble beneath my feet."

He turned into a streak of golden light and flew into the distance, vanishing beyond the horizon in the blink of an eye.

TO BE CONTINUED

(PS: Honestly, Golden Lion's plan to conquer the world was absurdly childish. Those beasts probably couldn't withstand Shanks's Conqueror's Haki at its peak.)