After an unknown length of time, amid gusts of bitterly cold sea wind, Alger slowly opened his eyes, hanging upside down from the yardarm. His vision was blurry at first. Then the spinning world and the searing pain of blood rushing to his head made him groan involuntarily.
"Ah-"
He saw a pitch-black night sky and, beneath his feet, enormous black sails swaying with the waves. The sound of waves striking the hull and the sailors' coarse laughter and curses drifted up from below.
It took him several seconds to adjust to this upside-down world.
At the same time, he understood his current predicament.
He was hanging upside down from the yardarm of a pirate ship in an utterly humiliating position.
I've... really become the Hanged Man-
The thought flashed through his mind with a sense of absurd irony.
After a brief moment of bewilderment, he gradually recalled what had happened.
He remembered Danitz's seemingly gullible but actually cunning face, the grief and madness in Vice Admiral of Ailment Tracy's eyes, and the helplessness of being taken down in an instant.
Flame! This is all his fault! That son of a bitch- He mentally cursed every member of Danitz's family.
What should I do now? Once his anger subsided, Alger faced reality.
He tried to muster his spirituality, grow illusory scales, and break free of these damned ropes.
But he soon discovered, to his despair, that he could not. The weakness brought on by the ailment still permeated his entire body. Even moving a finger was extraordinarily difficult now.
Brute force was out of the question.
Should I pray to Mr. Fool?
He thought of the unfathomable Mr. Fool, seated Above the Gray Fog.
*Mr. Fool follows the principle of equivalent exchange. I still have several pages of Roselle's Diary