"It was him... he was the one who arrested the Pirate King!!!!"
Sabo's words drove into Ace's and Luffy's hearts like shards of ice.
"The Pirate King... he arrested him himself..." Luffy was utterly stunned, his jaw nearly dropping to the ground and his eyes wide.
For the first time, he realized that the title "Pirate King" carried more than glory and dreams.
Especially in this era, the Pirate King had not surrendered-someone had brought him down!!!
"Huh-!!! That young weird old guy caught the Pirate King?!!"
Luffy shouted until his voice cracked, his face filled with childish disbelief.
In his simple view of the world, the "weird old guy" who treated them to meat and the man who "arrested the Pirate King" were two images he could not reconcile.
But unlike Luffy's straightforward shock... Ace stood beside him, completely frozen.
Sabo's words were like a key, suddenly unlocking the box in his heart that he had never dared touch.
The complicated looks old man Garp occasionally revealed, the vague rumors among the villagers,
and his own features, which increasingly resembled the portrait of that legendary man...
At that moment, Sabo's words connected them all!
"My father... was Gol D. Roger..."
The identity he had always resisted, hated, and even considered a source of shame surfaced in his mind with absolute clarity.
And the man who had just treated them to a meal, laughed and joked with them, and even earned the title of "a pretty nice weird old guy" from Luffy-
Gern Reginald Sigma.
He was the man who had personally brought down the "Pirate King," the man who had given Ace life and burdened him with an endless curse, and sent him to the Execution Platform!
An icy chill shot through Ace's entire body.
Then Gern's words in