After shooting down the Pegasus Fruit user, Golden Lion pushed straight through to the space above the skull-shaped building, intent on giving his old crewmate a warm welcome.
It had been a long time since he had seen this enormous skull built from yellow stone.
Golden Lion flew straight toward the skull's right eye and swept onto a platform. He raced through the corridors inside, heading straight for the treasury.
The pirates he encountered along the way were cut down almost casually by slashes he swung as he flew past.
When he passed the throne room, he found it deserted.
The cigar clenched in Golden Lion's mouth tilted upward. He had known that bastard Ochoku would run the moment he heard the news.
Keeping his Observation Haki searching, Golden Lion flew to the treasury doors and hacked them apart with a few strokes.
"Ochoku! I know you're in here!"
As the doors shattered, a white-haired old man in a white shirt and patterned black trousers was frantically stuffing gold coins into a large cloth sack inside the treasury. Golden Lion's shout made him jump.
"Shiki!"
Ochoku, an old man nearing eighty, whipped around, his long white hair and black cape swinging. His thick neck, buried beneath folds of chin, twisted back. A long, shoehorn-shaped face with pointed ears turned toward Golden Lion.
"...You... really have gotten younger!"
As Ochoku spoke, his long tongue stuck out, and his eyes nearly popped from their sockets.
Seeing photographs in the newspaper was one thing. Witnessing it with his own eyes was another.
"Oh? Well, are you jealous?"
Holding a sword in each hand, Golden Lion walked toward Ochoku with the smile of a conqueror at the height of his success.
"Still, almost forty years, and you haven't even moved the treasury. You've been