Chapter 326: I Cannot Exist Under the Same Sky as the Celestial Dragons!
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"Celestial Dragons?"
"Damn them! I cannot exist under the same sky as the Celestial Dragons!"
"Hey, Figarland—stop!"
Saint Garling moved, restraining the struggling, thrashing Saint Sommers. The change that had come over him sent a chill through the God's Knights.
It was as if he were a completely different person.
He no longer recognized himself as a Celestial Dragon. Instead, he saw himself as a member of the Revolutionary Army, an enemy sworn to destroy them.
He was trying to take them all down with him.
"It's the Memory-Memory Fruit," Garling stated, his gaze sharp. "His memories have been completely rewritten, overwritten. He's been implanted with another life, another history. That's why he's like this."
'Just how much did that king read from Sommers's mind?' he wondered. This was becoming a real headache.
The other Knights were horrified. Rewriting a person's entire existence... they looked at the raving Sommers. The ability was terrifying.
"What do we do now?" Saint Shamrock asked. "Is there a way to break it? Can Haki undo it?"
Garling shook his head. "Haki's ability to nullify Devil Fruit powers is not absolute. There are limits. Sommers is already under its effect. Our Haki can't rewrite his memories the way the fruit did. Even if we wiped his mind, he'd just be an empty shell."
"To undo this," he continued, "either Sommers's own will must be strong enough to shatter the user's hold..."
Saint Gunko, who had been silent until now, spoke, her voice cold and devoid of emotion. "Saint Sommers bears a grave responsibility for the failure of this operation."
Demonic wings unfurled from her back, her eyes transforming into golden vortexes.
Garling, Shamrock, and all the other God's Knights bowed their heads in unison.
"The sentence," she declared, "is death."
A grim silence fell over them. No one pleaded for Sommers's life.
A failure of this magnitude required a scapegoat. Sommers was useless now, a liability. Who knew what other traps Jin had planted in his mind?
His death had been sealed the moment he failed.
An arrow of light shot through the air, piercing Sommers's body. His power was drawn from him, stripped away. Wisps of black smoke poured from his form as he screamed in agony, his body dissolving into a skeletal husk.
Suddenly—
"Woooooooooom..."
A strange sound echoed from the depths of the sea, from the very void itself—like the call of a whale, yet also like a ship's horn.
The sound alone made the hair on Garling's arms stand on end.
"What was that?"
"Sommers??"
"What's happening to him?"
"Hey, look! On his bones... what is that mark?"
A strange emblem had appeared on Sommers's skeletal remains, burning with golden flames.
It seemed to connect to some unknown, colossal entity. A vast and terrifying presence washed over them, a pressure that seemed to transcend space itself, stunning them all into silence.
In a fleeting vision, they saw a massive warship, as large as a mountain. It seemed to draw Sommers's soul into itself and then vanished without a trace.
When the presence receded and the sea grew quiet again, Sommers's skeleton remained.
It was as if it had all been a hallucination.
"Did... did everyone see that?"
"Was that... Pluton?"
"One of the Ancient Weapons... the bringer of death and destruction!"
The God's Knights exchanged looks of shock.
The three Ancient Weapons—Uranus, Pluton, and Poseidon—were said to have been created by the "Gods" of old. Uranus was under the control of Lord Imu. Poseidon was a bloodline passed down through the royal family of Fish-Man Island. But the whereabouts of Pluton had always been a mystery.
"Could it be that Jin has somehow found... or even built... Pluton?" Garling theorized. "If he has Pluton in his hands, then everything makes sense. After all, it is one of the powers of the 'Gods'."
A sense of relief washed over him. The unknown was what was truly terrifying.
"Sommers was compromised," Shamrock said, nodding in agreement. "There was some kind of mark on him. If we had brought him back to the Holy Land, the consequences would have been unimaginable. He could have given Pluton the coordinates to Lord Imu's location."
The thought was horrifying. Pluton, like Uranus, possessed the power to destroy an island with a single blast. If a weapon like that were to be fired at Mary Geoise...
"We need to investigate this thoroughly," Garling concluded. "From now on, unless we are absolutely certain of victory, we are not to engage him. We can't risk being picked off one by one."
The other Knights nodded. This Jin was an anomaly, even more unnatural than their own immortality.
"Saint Sommers's position," Gunko said, her voice still ice, "will be filled by Donquixote Doflamingo."
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Loguetown.
In a tavern, the morning's news was the talk of the town.
"What??"
"It's a complete reversal!"
"So it was a group of revolutionaries, disguised as CIU, working with Colonel Lambert from the 165th Marine Branch?"
"They tried to start a revolution in the Conomi Islands, but they were discovered by King Jin and wiped out?"
"So... Captain Ron, who was being crucified in the papers just a few days ago, was actually innocent?"
"No way! This is insane!"
"I heard that all the nobles and merchants who helped those revolutionaries are going to be arrested."
"More than that, a lot of the big-name nobles have been implicated."
"No wonder the Bounty Hunters' Guild has been flooded with new contracts."
"Wait, is the Winter Blossom Kingdom putting out bounties on the nobles and merchants who were involved?"
"Not exactly. It's the nobles and merchants from other countries, hiring bounty hunters for protection."
"Makes sense. I heard the Winter Blossom Kingdom won a decisive victory. Most of the invaders were cut down. Any noble or merchant who kicked the trade guild while it was down has got to be scared now."
Zoro and Saga sat in a corner, listening to the chatter.
"You think that's the real story, Zoro?" Saga asked, popping a peanut into his mouth.
"Heh. The 'real story' is whatever the papers say it is," Zoro said with a shrug. "Who knows?"
After their last job together, the two had teamed up, a dual-wielding duo specializing in hunting pirates. They were already making a name for themselves.
"True," Saga said. "The news, the papers... they're always fooling the masses like this. And the people don't even realize it."
He pulled out a stack of wanted posters. "What do you think of these guys?"
Zoro glanced at them.
"Buggy the Clown," 15,000,000 Berries.
"Mohji the Beast Tamer," 9,500,000 Berries.
"Cabaji the Acrobat," 9,000,000 Berries.
"And a few other officers with bounties of two or three million. They've taken over Orange Town," Saga said. "The guild got a request from the villagers. They want someone to get rid of them. The reward is 20 million Berries. Of course, it's not about the money. The point is, how can we just stand by and let pirates trample on innocent villagers?"
Zoro took a sip of his drink and set his glass down on the posters. "Let's do it."
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