The Grand Line, the New World.
The ruins of Alchemi, the legendary Alchemy Island of two hundred years ago.
What remained rose from the sea like a giant reef.
An old man named Doren lay in a wooden lounge chair. Beside him were his fields and a lighthouse-like house.
Under a huge parasol, Doren wore sunglasses and studied the newspaper in his hands, his face grave.
The headline read: Four Emperors Alliance Emerges—Where Is the War Between the Navy and World Government and the Sky Pirate Crew Headed?
Beneath the headline, amid dense columns of text, was a single photograph.
It was a face Doren knew all too well: Fire Dragon Ye Mu.
"Half a year already..."
Ever since Ye Mu and the Sky Pirate Crew had come here six months ago and met Doren, the old man had changed his habits. He gathered whatever news he could from across the seas and never missed a daily paper, hoping for word of the Sky Pirate Crew.
It was no small expense for Doren. Fortunately, the Sky Pirate Crew had left him plenty of good things when they departed. The lounge chair he lay in, the parasol, and the sunglasses were all gifts from that time.
Doren followed the Sky Pirate Crew's news partly because he cared about those two dear girls, Ayala and Erza. But he also wanted to see whether Ye Mu would truly fulfill the dream he had spoken of: changing the world and building a nation.
So far, Ye Mu had not disappointed him. Freeing slaves oppressed by the Celestial Dragons proved Doren's faith in him had been well placed. But declaring war on the Celestial Dragons and the World Government outright made him worry that Ye Mu was moving too fast.
Doren had become a pirate