"What's this?"
Ulcky stared, mouth agape. Today, while checking the hold, he'd found a large supply of brand-new timber — timber of exceptional quality. Not just rare on Sky Islands; even on the open seas this wood was one in ten thousand.
Olvia was astonished too. After checking references, she recognized it: the legendary Adam Tree wood — the finest material for building wooden sailing ships.
From the moment Sharn sent the two giants flying and fed them to the fish, the decision reward had already been granted. And when Dorry and Brogy declared they would rebuild the Giant Warrior Pirates, Sharn also received a scroll: a mysterious treasure map to Alabasta — rumored to hide great treasure and fragments of lost history.
Following their current course from Little Garden, the path to Alabasta inevitably brings them near the Magnetic Drum Kingdom. At this time the later famed doctor Kureha was only 102 years old; Dr. Siluluk was still a pirate and had not yet become a dodgy physician; Valpo's father was a respected ruler, and Valpo himself hadn't even been born yet. The Magnetic Drum Kingdom — famed as the Grand Line's most advanced medical center and permanently cold — lay ahead.
"Why bother?" Kaido wondered. No one aboard was injured, and with Sharn, Bear, and Kinnie on board, most ailments seemed covered. Was there another motive?
"Sharn, will we stop at Magnetic Drum?" Kaido asked. He didn't imagine Sharn would linger somewhere useless.
"We will. Dorry and Brogy eat like monsters — they've wasted a lot of provisions. We need to resupply," Sharn answered without hesitation.
Of course they would stop. If they didn't top up in Drum, Alabasta would still be far off — and who wants to survive on nothing but roasted fish? As a gourmand, Sharn wouldn't accept that. Plus, if they could find Dr. Kureha, all the better. Sharn didn't care about youthful secrets — with his current body he expected to keep peak form for a century. What he wanted was more hearts — more ways to strengthen himself.
Kaido kept training privately. Whether or not Sharn was Rocks, Kaido refused to sit idle. He would catch up to and surpass Whitebeard and Roger — or die trying. Without absolute power and stronger Haki, a future God Valley–style calamity would be fatal.
Kaido's workout inspired the crew. Farewells to the vice-captain completed, Sharn leaned against the navigation room wall and read through precious maritime documents, hunting for clues.
"You read?" Olvia asked in surprise. She'd assumed Sharn was illiterate. But Sharn had a photographic memory. He'd flipped through texts on Devil Fruits and strange worldly curiosities and found almost no useful information. That absence suggested two possibilities:
Before Ohara's excavations, ancient kingdoms either refused World Council membership or deliberately masked their advanced culture with a primitive facade — islands that seemed tribal but secretly held advanced medicine and technology.
The most complete knowledge about Devil Fruits was concentrated among the Celestial Dragons — and they would not share it.
"I came too early," Sharn said. If he had come eight years later, he might have benefited from Ohara's breakthroughs. As it was, the scholars he'd met had only begun deciphering lost texts.
"Break the compass — if Alabasta yields nothing, you'll eat it," Sharn joked, then walked out to stare at the horizon. Snowflakes began to fall.
Inside, Olvia took notes on everything Sharn had read. The Devil-fruit compass was eerily still — almost confident. Sharn held the device that only he could see; its permanent pointer was more useful than any ordinary compass. Even in the most chaotic magnetic zones it pointed true.
"One hundred nautical miles ahead is Winter Island — the Magnetic Drum Kingdom," Olvia said, exhaling cold air as she spoke.
Sharn's expression shifted as he fingered the treasure map in his pocket. What would that map bring to this voyage?
Meanwhile, Drum's people had noticed the pirate flag. At first they wondered: "Is Siluluk back? He's a World Council member — he wouldn't need to be a pirate to leave the island." Others scoffed that the supposed Siluluk could not possibly afford the voyage fees. Then someone shouted at a newspaper and everyone went pale.
"That's the tyrant Sharn!" the paper read. "He single-handedly toppled Sorbet and broke through the blockade of ten warships — CP9 and CP0 united!" The headlines painted Sharn as a merciless madman who made Sorbet suffer.
Guards ran up the mountain to the cable car. "Why didn't they use the phone bug to report?" asked one. At the harbor, a sentry picked up a phone bug in alarm and called the captain: "Tyrant Sharn is entering our waters! Requesting aid!"
The king, sweating, picked up his own phone bug and sent word to the nearest Navy outpost: "Tyrant Sharn's pirates are invading! Send help!" He worried over how many civilians might die if the pirates struck.
At the base of the mountain, an old man with a cane walked calmly through the cold. "Pirates? What's there to fear?" Doctor Kureha sipped her special brandy with no alarm. She'd recently seen Roger's crew and had been a seafaring adventurer in her youth; fear was the seed of death.
As the ship neared the port, Sharn looked out at the crowds and quipped, "They sure know how to welcome us."
◇ I'll drop one bonus chapter for every 10 reviews (leave a review/comment!)
◇ One bonus chapter will be released for every 100 Power Stones.
◇ Read 60 chapters ahead on P@treon: patreon.com/KageNaruto