BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

  BANG! BANG! BANG!

  Sptter… sptter… sptter…

  Explosions erupted. Bullets flew in every direction. Shockwaves tore through the air. Cold steel fshed in arcs of death. For the people of the town, it was a waking nightmare.

  “No! Aaahh—!”

  “S-Somebody help me!”

  “I-I surrender! Please—Aaagh!”

  “M-Monsters!”

  “I’m begging you… have mercy…”

  Five minutes ter…

  The once-orderly town now y in utter ruin. Smoke bnketed the air. Crumbling streets stretched out in a maze of destruction. Hardly a single building had survived intact. Mangled bodies—pirates and bounty hunters alike—littered the streets in grotesque disarray.

  Scars from the battle riddled the nd. The ground was torn with deep fissures. Rubble and colpsed buildings filled the horizon. Some ruins looked bombed out—others, unnervingly, bore clean, surgical ssh marks.

  Next to a half-demolished building on the east side of town, Aeridar leisurely wiped blood from his hands using a crisp white handkerchief. Beneath him y a broken, unrecognizable corpse soaked in gore. Judging by the outfit and build, it had to be Gruho, the captain of the Gruho Pirates.

  “A 43 million bounty, huh? Still not as fun as this gun.”

  Spinning a golden flintlock in his hand, Aeridar looked like a man who’d just discovered his new favorite toy.

  Like most men, Aeridar had a fondness for weapons—bdes or guns, it didn’t matter. After over a decade in this world, he’d already tried just about every kind of cold weapon short of the legendary swords. Most felt like antiques to him now.

  Firearms were trickier. The world was still stuck in the flintlock era, with muzzle-loaded rifles and pistols. Most were single-shot. A few were multi-barrel, but reloading was a slow, annoying mess.

  Aeridar had always dreamed of a showy, multi-shot flintlock to match his nostalgia-tinged aesthetic. The best he’d found were double-barrels—until now.

  This elegant, golden flintlock pistol was a thing of beauty. Four-round capacity, 15.2mm caliber, 36.7cm barrel, 1.86kg unloaded, and 18.4g bullets. It wasn’t just a weapon—it was a collector’s masterpiece.

  From that moment, Aeridar made up his mind:

  “I’m gonna collect these. Rare, stylish flintlocks—anything with at least three rounds, elegant craftsmanship, and some serious visual fir. Ivory handles? Hell yes.”

  “Nice gun,” said Oliver, strolling over with his two blood-drenched swords—Nagamitsu and Yurabashi—gleaming red in the moonlight. “Pretty damn cool.”

  Aeridar looked up with a grin.

  “Hey, Oliver. This baby’s going in my collection. Perfect for taking out small fry. And now I’ve got a new hobby too.”

  “You do your guns, I’ll stick with famous bdes,” Oliver replied coolly.

  “Anyway, we should head back. Let the others deal with looting the spoils.” Oliver sheathed his bdes carefully, clearly unwilling to let the blood dirty the scabbards.

  “Yeah, sure, but—hold up…”

  Aeridar jogged after him, then slowed, scowling as he gnced down.

  “Ugh. Look at our shoes. Covered in blood. Every step’s a red footprint. And your swords are still dripping. Let’s clean up before we get back on the ship—I’m not dragging this mess on board.”

  Oliver blinked, then gnced at his boots and bdes. He raised an eyebrow and nodded.

  “Agreed.”

  Out at sea, the Gruho Pirates’ ship had already sunk beneath the waves. Only a massive whirlpool and scattered debris remained.

  Taking out a mid-sized pirate crew like them had been a cakewalk. They weren’t even in the same league. The Chris, their ship, had crippled the enemy vessel with a single broadside. Most of the pirates had been taken out in that instant. What followed was a swift boarding op, led by Arn and Gorbo, along with a squad of a hundred men. The few remaining foes were wiped out instantly.

  They looted every st scrap of treasure and supplies before finishing the job with another broadside—sending the pirate ship to the bottom of the sea.

  Back onshore, Aeridar and Oliver were crouched by the riverbank, cleaning off the blood from their shoes and weapons.

  Meanwhile, Arn led a team down from The Chris, sweeping through the town to gather up any remaining loot and valuables. They were pirates, after all. Killing, raiding—that’s part of the job description.

  “Captain, we’ll rest here for the night and set sail at dawn.” Dace reported, leaning on the rail of the towering ship thousands of meters above the sea.

  “Captain! There are tombstones all over those mountain peaks!” shouted Millie and Mina, the energetic twin sisters, as they bounced around the deck.

  “Whatever. You guys handle it. Sleep if you want,” Aeridar replied zily, reclining in a deck chair and brushing dried blood off his boots.

  “Tombstones, huh? So what? Just don’t look at them.”

  Oliver snorted, carefully polishing both his prized swords, and shot the girls a condescending gnce.

  “Drama queens.”

  Night fell. The moon climbed high, casting a silver glow over the ruined town.

  The night passed uneventfully.

  At dawn, with everyone rested and resupplied, The Chris pulled out of the channel between the Whiskey Peaks, leaving behind a smoldering ghost town. Whether anyone would ever rebuild it… wasn’t their concern.

  And whether Luffy and the Straw Hats might one day stumble into a simir encounter—well, that wasn’t Aeridar’s problem either.

  Reclining on the deck chair, Aeridar pondered their next destination: Little Garden.

  “Been over a decade… Can’t remember the details that well.”

  He wracked his memory for a good while, until finally, pieces started falling into pce.

  Little Garden.

  A prehistoric isnd along the Grand Line, en route to Abasta, the desert kingdom. Thanks to the isnd’s chaotic magnetic field, it took an entire year just to store up enough Log Pose magnetism to set sail again. That, along with the violent seas surrounding it, meant the isnd remained cut off from the outside world.

  The terrain was wild and lush—like a jungle from Earth’s Mesozoic era. It was crawling with primeval creatures: dinosaurs, saber-toothed tigers, and other ancient predators.

  But the most unforgettable thing?

  Two giants.

  Towering warriors, dozens of meters tall, locked in battle. Both hailed from the New World—specifically, the warrior vilge of Elbaf, home of the Giant Tribe.

  They were known as the Blue Ogre Dorry and the Red Ogre Brogy, once captains of the Giant Warrior Pirates. They had been dueling for over a hundred years, all for the honor and pride of being true warriors.

  JuanFiction