"We can give you an opportunity."
"An opportunity to become a 'god.'"
"Do you want it?"
One of the Five Elders, Saint Ethanbaron V. Nusjuro, the "Warrior God of Finance," held the First Kitetsu and radiated an endlessly keen edge. His aged, piercing voice cut through the world's facade like the most precise scalpel, laying bare before Yas a lure that could drive any ambitious man mad.
Become a god!
What an outrageous, yet enticing promise!
On this end of the Den Den Mushi, the entire deck of the Leviathan was so quiet that a pin could have been heard dropping.
Even Garp, the Navy Hero who feared neither heaven nor earth, felt his pupils abruptly contract the instant he heard those words. Unprecedented shock and gravity surfaced on his face. He knew how terrifying the Five Elders were, knew that secrets capable of overturning the world lay behind them. But he had never imagined they would make such an earth-shattering offer of "recruitment" to a marine who was only sixteen!
What exactly had this brat done? Had his very existence already become so impossible for these five Kings of the World to control that they had to win him over this way?
Garp instinctively looked at Yas. He wanted to see even the slightest trace of shock, elation, or ambition on Yas's face.
But he was disappointed.
There was no expression on Yas's face.
His ice-blue eyes were as calm as an eternally frozen lake, without the slightest ripple. He merely gazed quietly at the Golden Den Den Mushi in his hand, which mimicked the imposing faces of the Five Elders, as though looking at a prancing clown.
A long silence followed.
So long that even the air began to grow oppressive and thick.
At the other end of