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Ulti, also wrapped in bandages and lying in a hospital bed but still full of vigor, turned toward Luffy and Lami. "One of you is a Whisper-Whisper Fruit user, and the other has some talent called the 'Voice of All Things.' You can usually talk to my lord easily enough, but now neither of you knows anything?"
"Sorry, Ulti."
The gentle, twin-tailed Lami apologized earnestly, while Luffy scratched his head and answered, "Actually, Teacher Rossi has always been the one contacting us. We can only hear his voice passively.
"We can't talk to him on our own initiative, let alone now, when he's probably in the middle of a fierce battle, right?"
At those words, the hospital room in the Royal Palace fell silent. "Hee hee hee! Don't worry."
As the Family's young officers worried, Luffy smiled easily, his hands behind his head. "Even the sun couldn't do anything to Teacher Rossi. Could that Imu person really be more powerful than the sun?"
"That's right!"
The scent of rust spread from the second tier, where nineteen ancient weapons of differing shapes stood silently embedded. They bore witness to that distant age known as the "Nineteen Kings."
That remote era.
The gaze climbed upward, finally settling on the highest point-not an ordinary seat, but a throne cast from cold metal, shaped like an enormous inverted sword.
A figure sat upon it.
It was a woman.
Her sky-blue hair fell like lake water, framing a sharply defined face with a slightly raised chin.
A black robe enveloped her slender body, and a sharply angled crown rested in her hair.
Without a word, merely by sitting there, she seemed to make the surrounding air collapse toward her, condensing into a silent center of pressure.
A sword lay across her hands.
Its blade