True Gold and Silver Island, Prosperous Kingdom, outskirts of the City, in the wilderness, over a dozen people lay sprawled about, covered in bloody claw marks left by wild beasts. Some had gaping holes across their bodies, still oozing streams of blood. Broken swords and discarded flintlock guns were scattered everywhere.
Firelight flickered, and smoke curled thick through the air.
Within the haze stood two tall figures.
One of them, whose body had just resembled that of a werewolf, slowly shrank down and reverted into a young man dressed in a white-sleeved black coat. This was Jabra.
The other was just as tall, over two and a half meters, but round and plump. From a distance through the smoke, he didn't look like a man at all, but rather like a giant, upright, human-sized egg. This was Fukurou.
Jabra, having switched from his Dog-Dog Fruit: Wolf Model form back to human, swept his gaze across the pirates lying everywhere and muttered with palpable boredom, "Pathetic. Seriously! With this kind of skill, do they actually dare to enter the Grand Line? No wonder Lucci couldn't be bothered to come along…"
"Rokushiki Technique, Strength Test (Tegatame)…"
Jabra turned around just in time to see his teammate, the rotund, egg-shaped man, Fukurou the Silent, gesturing over a pool of blood and measuring something with his hands.
"Doriki level only five…"
"Only five, huh. Well, they were pretty much half-dead when we got to them," Jabra nodded, then suddenly cursed, "You've gotta be kidding me! Since when do you test Doriki like that?!"
The Rokushiki auxiliary technique "Strength Test" was, in essence, a skill where one hardened their body with Tekkai (Iron Body) and received the opponent's attack to gauge the strength of that blow. To Jabra, Fukurou's silent measuring over a dead body was pure oddity.
Fukurou said matter-of-factly, "Chababa… With power this weak, I doubt these pirates were the ones planning to raid the royal treasury."
"Hey!" Jabra scolded. "Don't go spouting our mission details out loud!"
Fukurou quickly raised a hand to his mouth and made a motion of zipping his lips shut.
"The higher-ups really shouldn't have let a '{17}'-year-old rookie join this mission…" Jabra said disdainfully.
Fukurou unzipped his "invisible zipper" again and reminded him, "Lucci's even younger than me, by a year."
"Why bring that guy up…" Jabra muttered irritably. Thinking about that '{16}'-year-old teammate, Rob Lucci, always left a sour taste in his mouth, though he couldn't quite say why.
Three years ago, Lucci had been sent to handle a pirate crisis in one of the World Government's allied kingdoms. Five hundred soldiers had been defeated and taken hostage, and the pirates used them to threaten the king.
The then-'{13}'-year-old Lucci charged into the pirate den alone, killed all five hundred captured soldiers to eliminate any leverage, and then unleashed his full fury, slaughtering every pirate inside.
Three years later, Lucci's strength had only grown stronger, beyond question. The only problem was his insatiable bloodlust.
Even Jabra, who had eaten the Dog-Dog Fruit: Wolf Model, sometimes felt that even without receiving the Cat-Cat Fruit: Leopard Model as a reward for that mission, Lucci's natural thirst for blood was terrifying enough on its own.
Lucci had once said that the only reason he joined CP9 was simple:
"Because only this organization has the legal right to kill."
Even ordinary civilians, if they interfered with CP9's missions, could be slaughtered without hesitation.
Jabra shook his head and asked, "Where's Blueno?"
When he didn't get a response for a while, he turned around and saw Fukurou watching him silently, mouth zipped tight.
Jabra's wolf head almost popped out in anger. "This is not the time to keep your mouth shut!"
Fukurou calmly unzipped his mouth and replied leisurely, "He should still be in the city…"
The three of them left the restaurant.
To be honest, Liam hadn't enjoyed the meal. Mainly because, he wasn't full.
It wasn't that Liam planned to dine and dash; even if he and Robin could afford to pay, the restaurant simply didn't have enough ingredients or grain to feed him properly.
So he could only leave half-satisfied.
Under the stunned stares of the chef and everyone else in the restaurant, he walked out with Robin, who had eaten her fill, and Ross, leaving behind a table in complete disarray.
Even the restaurant's signboard was cracked, a clear sign that its owner was having a hard time surviving. Judging from the state of things, their situation wasn't much better than that of those desperate street peddlers who had tried to sell them clothes earlier.
From the look of the local conditions, this so-called "True Gold and Silver Island" probably wasn't far from being renamed "Rusty Scrap Island." And a few more years down the line, the "Prosperous Kingdom" would likely end up being called the "Impoverished Kingdom."
Based on the architectural details recalled from B.I.B.'s memory projections, this was the same place where Brook the Skeleton had landed after being launched away by Bartholomew Kuma, only to be worshipped by a group of locals as the evil god Satan.
That, however, was something that would only happen about twelve or thirteen years later.
Right now, the skeleton Brook should still be drifting somewhere within the dense fog of the Florian Triangle, sailing endlessly aboard his ghost ship.
As Liam was thinking about this, he suddenly heard someone in the street shout excitedly:
"Water's being distributed!"
For a moment, Liam thought there'd been a flood, or maybe even a fire, and looked up in confusion.
Down the street came a group of people dressed like merchants, leading several burly men and women. They were carrying large wooden barrels, which sloshed with each step, spilling faint splashes of a colorless liquid.
From the reactions of the nearby residents, it was clear the barrels contained something precious, water.
The locals acted as though they were witnessing a divine miracle, surging toward the merchants and shouting all sorts of things like:
"Salvation Water!"
"Prosperity Water!"
"Wealth Water!"
"Resurrection Water!", a noisy chaos of wild claims and desperate hope.
"What's going on over there?"
Liam stopped a man who was about to rush into the crowd in excitement.
It wasn't that Liam didn't want to just grab or pull him back; he was just so tall that he ended up pressing down on the man's head instead.
The man looked irritated at first, but the moment he turned around and saw who it was, his anger vanished. Smiling nervously, he explained:
"It's the Haichi Chamber of Commerce, they're handing out water for free! Everyone says if you drink their water, you'll be blessed by fortune and soon get rich again!"
"Really?" Liam asked, intrigued. "And anyone who drinks it actually becomes rich?"
The man shook his head.
"No."
"Then why drink it?"
"It's not useless, people do earn money, but the debt they owe just eats it all away."
The man seemed ready to snap, but after another glance up at Liam, he continued patiently:
"To pay the Heavenly Tribute, people have to borrow money, there's no other way. Even the king's treasury was raided by pirates recently, and he had to take out loans to fill the gap and pay the Tribute."
Liam nodded slightly. He didn't need to ask the obvious: no one could afford to owe the Celestial Dragons. They didn't care whether pirates had robbed you or your crops had failed, fall short on your yearly Heavenly Tribute, and your kingdom's status as a World Government member nation would be in grave danger.
"That process sounds awfully familiar…" Liam muttered under his breath, then asked, "So who do you borrow the money from?"
"Why, from the Haichi Chamber of Commerce, of course!" the man replied matter-of-factly. "They're one of the biggest trading organizations in the Grand Line. Naturally, when you need a loan, you go to them!"
The moment Liam released his grip, the man hurried off into the crowd, raising his bowl and shouting for a share of the so-called "charity water."
Liam even noticed a few soldiers, still in uniform, abandoning their posts to join the frenzy, pushing and shoving among the citizens for a sip of the Haichi merchants' "miracle water."
"So the royal treasury gets looted, they can't pay the Heavenly Tribute, they take loans… then they raise taxes on the people to make up for it," Robin said softly as she stepped up beside Liam, watching the desperate mob. "The people can't bear the burden, so they borrow too, and it becomes a cycle. The Kingdom of Igor, the one where that old man stayed behind alone, fell into ruin the same way. Eventually, they couldn't pay the Tribute, angered the World Government, were stripped of their member-nation status… and then pirates destroyed the island. The survivors scattered across the seas."
The crowd was too large, and before long, the water ran out.
One of the Haichi merchants shouted loudly:
"That's all for this month's charity water!"
The people of the so-called "Prosperous Kingdom" looked crushed with disappointment. A man in patched clothing broke down in tears, crying hopelessly as despair swept across the street.
(End Of This Chapter)
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