Argentus wiped the wet sand from his feet and stepped into the tree line, leaving the violent surf behind. The jungle canopy swallowed him instantly, transforming the bright coastal sunlight into filtered green twilight.
The air here was thick—humid enough to feel like breathing warm water. It smelled of damp earth, rotting fruit, and the peculiar musk of animals he couldn't identify. Unfamiliar insects buzzed past his ears. Strange bird calls echoed from the canopy above.
He moved silently despite the difficult terrain, his boots finding purchase on slippery roots and moss-covered stones without making a sound. Spear's broken shaft was held loosely in his right hand—still useful as a club, if nothing else.
His Observation Haki was cast out like a net, searching for any sign of human habitation or intelligent life.
He sensed heartbeats. Dozens of them. Hundreds, maybe.
But none of them felt human. The patterns were wrong—too fast, too small, or in some cases, disturbingly large.
Animals, then. Lots of them.
He turned his gaze toward the center of the island, where that massive stone cylinder rose above the jungle like a monument to forgotten gods.
Up close, it was even more imposing than it had appeared from the ocean. The scale was difficult to comprehend—easily two hundred meters tall, maybe more, perfectly vertical as if someone had punched a column straight up out of the earth's crust.
"Well," Argentus muttered, adjusting his grip on the broken spear shaft. "If there's anything worth seeing on this island, it'll be up there."
He walked through the dense undergrowth until he reached the base of the rock formation.
Up close, it was a sheer vertical cliff—smooth basalt stone rising hundreds of meters into the air at a perfect ninety-degree angle. No visible handholds. No obvious path or stairs carved by human hands.
The "singing" he'd heard from the ocean was deafening here—a constant, low-frequency roar as wind rushed through those mysterious holes and tunnels. The sound vibrated in his chest, making his bones resonate uncomfortably.
Argentus didn't find a path or an easy way up.
He jammed his fingers directly into a hairline crack in the stone—a fissure barely wide enough to fit his fingertips.
Climb.
He ascended quickly, his body moving with the fluid efficiency of someone who'd spent months training under impossible conditions.
His fingers, hardened by years of brutal training and countless hours gripping weapons, found purchase in the smallest crevices. Imperfections in the stone that would be invisible to normal eyes became handholds to his experienced touch. He used the wind-carved holes as grips, pulling himself up meter by meter with controlled, economical movements.
The wind grew progressively stronger the higher he climbed, transforming from a breeze into a genuine gale that tried to tear him from the wall like a leaf. But he clung on with the tenacity of a gecko, refusing to be dislodged.
His muscles burned with sustained effort. Sweat dripped down his face, stinging his eyes. But he didn't slow down.
Halfway up the sheer rock face—roughly a hundred meters above the jungle canopy, with another hundred to go—Argentus paused briefly.
His fingers were hooked into a narrow fissure, supporting his entire body weight. His arm muscles trembled slightly from sustained tension. His lungs worked like bellows, pulling in air that tasted of stone dust and salt.
He reached up with his free hand, searching for the next handhold. His eyes focused on the rock mere inches from his face, looking for any crack or protrusion.
Zzzt.
A sharp, electric jolt of Observation Haki spiked through his skull like an ice pick.
It wasn't a vague sense of danger. It was a scream of incoming lethal intent, so loud and clear it might as well have been a voice shouting MOVE NOW!
Argentus's body reacted before his conscious mind finished processing the warning.
He didn't hesitate.
He exploded sideways, pushing off the rock face with both legs in a burst of explosive power that left boot-shaped indentations in the stone.
He launched himself five meters to the left, his body momentarily completely airborne, free-falling in open space hundreds of feet above the killing ground below.
WHOOSH.
A massive shape—something huge and fast—dove past the exact spot where he'd been hanging a millisecond before.
The wind pressure from its passage was so intense it buffeted Argentus's airborne body, spinning him slightly. The sound that followed was even worse—the screech of talons raking against solid stone, tearing through basalt like it was soft wood.
SCREEEEE-CLANG!
Sparks showered down from the impact point, falling like burning rain.
Whatever had just attacked him had hit the cliff face hard enough to gouge deep furrows into solid rock.
As gravity reasserted itself and Argentus began to fall in earnest, he reached out desperately.
His fingers—already bloody and raw from the climb—slammed into the stone wall.
CRUNCH.
He didn't find a handhold.
He created one.
His fingers gouged directly into the basalt with enough force to pulverize the stone, creating finger-width holes that arrested his fall with brutal, sudden force. The impact nearly dislocated his shoulder. Blood began leaking from his torn fingertips, painting red streaks down the gray stone.
He hung there by one hand, his entire body weight suspended by fingertips embedded in self-made holes, panting hard.
Only then did he look up.
Circling in the sky above him were five silhouettes that completely blocked out the afternoon sun.
They were monstrous.
These weren't normal birds—not even close. They were massive avian predators with wingspans easily reaching eight meters each, possibly more. Their feathers were the color of rusted iron, each one as long as a man's forearm. Their beaks were cruelly hooked and serrated, designed to crack open tortoise shells, whale bones, or human skulls with equal ease.
But most disturbing were their eyes.
These things were smart enough to coordinate. Smart enough to ambush.
They screeched in perfect unison and banked their massive wings for a second coordinated dive.
"Right," Argentus muttered through gritted teeth, pulling his legs up against the wall to find purchase. "Not a deserted island. A fucking nest."
He was in a terrible tactical position.
He couldn't use spear's broken shaft effectively while hanging by one hand. He had nowhere to dodge except down—and that meant falling to his death. The birds had the advantage of speed, numbers, and aerial maneuverability.
This was bad.
"I don't have time for this bullshit," Argentus growled.
He made a split-second decision.
He abandoned the slow, methodical climbing approach.
He jammed his bleeding fingers into the rough stone crevices—ignoring the fresh pain as torn skin scraped against sharp rock—and began to essentially sprint up the vertical wall.
It was insane. It shouldn't have been physically possible.
But months of Garp's torture—running up cliffs while dodging thrown boulders, swimming while dragging ships, fighting Sea Kings bare-handed—had pushed his body far beyond normal human limits.
He slammed one hand into the rock. Pulled with explosive power. Released. Reached higher. Slammed again.
Boom-boom-boom-boom.
Each handhold created a small explosion of pulverized stone. He was climbing so fast he was practically running vertically.
SCREECH!
The first bird folded its massive wings tight against its body and dropped like a stone missile, aiming directly for his exposed spine.
Argentus didn't have time to climb out of the way.
Instead, he whipped his right hand back—letting go of the wall entirely for a fraction of a second—and grabbed the broken shaft of his old iron spear still strapped across his back.
He yanked it free in a blur of motion.
He didn't have the leverage or positioning for a proper thrust. The angle was all wrong. But he could still swing.
He put his entire core rotation into the blow—using his waist, his shoulders, his back, everything—and swung the broken spear shaft like a baseball bat aimed at the incoming bird's head.
CLANG!
The iron shaft collided with the bird's hooked beak with the sound of a hammer striking an anvil.
The impact shuddered through Argentus's entire arm, the vibration so intense it felt like his bones might shatter. He nearly lost his grip on the wall entirely.
But the bird was knocked completely off-course, its carefully aimed dive turned into an uncontrolled spiral. It tumbled away into the wind, screeching in rage and pain.
"One down," Argentus panted, jamming his fingers back into the stone and pulling himself up another three meters.
His hand left bloody smears on the gray rock. The broken spear shaft in his other hand now had an ominous bend in the middle—the iron was starting to fail from the stress.
Zzzt.
His Observation Haki screamed a new warning. Multiple targets this time.
Argentus's eyes widened. His teeth clenched.
He couldn't dodge both. The angles were perfect—they'd timed it so that moving away from one would put him directly in the path of the other.
He had to block.
He jammed his left hand as deep into a stone fissure as it would go, wedging it in until he felt the bones creak from pressure.
With his right hand, he swung the bent iron shaft overhead in a desperate defensive arc, trying to deflect the talons of the bird diving from his right side.
The bird's talons—black, serrated, hard as diamonds—slammed into the middle of the iron spear shaft just as Argentus attempted the parry.
The weapon, already weakened by deflecting cannonballs days ago, chipped from cutting through Sea King scales, and now bent from blocking the first bird...
...finally reached its absolute limit.
SNAP.
The sound was sickeningly loud—like a gunshot fired next to his ear, echoing off the stone cliff.
The top half of the iron spear—the section that still had some semblance of a point—spun away into the abyss below, glinting sadly in the sunlight as it tumbled end-over-end toward the jungle floor hundreds of feet down.
Argentus was left holding a jagged, broken stick—barely two feet of twisted metal, completely useless as a weapon.
"You have got to be KIDDING ME!" he shouted over the howling wind.
The bird on his left—the one he hadn't blocked—was now seconds away from taking his head clean off his shoulders.
He could see it in perfect detail through his Observation Haki.
No weapon to block with. No options left.
His eyes darted frantically across the cliff face, searching for anything.
There.
Five meters up and slightly to the right. A dark, jagged opening in the rock face—one of those mysterious holes he'd noticed from the ocean. It was small, maybe only three feet wide, but it looked deep.
He didn't think and plan.
He just moved.
He threw the broken handle of his ruined spear directly at the incoming bird's face—a desperate, last-ditch distraction that bought him maybe a quarter-second of confusion.
Then he lunged.
He pushed off from his foothold with every ounce of strength left in his exhausted legs, throwing his entire body through open air toward that small dark hole.
It was five meters of empty space.
Five meters where if he missed, he'd fall to his death.
The bird shrieked, course-correcting mid-dive to snatch him out of the air.
(END OF CHAPTER)
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