Download App
32.42% One Piece: Dream of Immortality / Chapter 166: Another Path

Chapter 166: Another Path

The marines were left laying on the street whilst confused townsfolk looked upon them, unsure if they should be frightened, outraged, or amused. In the end they decided to just go about their days' business and pretend they hadn't seen anything at all.

Mean old man Martin dragged his rodent-like apprentice back into his shop. Later the poor boy would receive a lengthy verbal lashing followed by months worth of tedious busy work as punishment for being such a tattletale.

As Cabernet launched into the air with the other three on board, Cherry wondered if she should go looking for her grandmother.

'No, that would be too troublesome.' Cherry concluded. 'Grandma Angela is a capable and intelligent woman. I'm sure that she will work out that I'll eventually wind up on Sabaody Archipelago and probably wait for me there. I'll just see her at that time.'

Back at Baltigo, the four of them resumed their training.

Dragon decided that Cherry's performance during the rescue operation of Betty was more than enough to cover the rest of her lessons with him, so she wouldn't have to do any more missions for the revolution as payment.

After all, Sengoku's appearance there was beyond their expectations. Dragon had been plagued by guilt when Betty reported to him that Cherry had nearly died fighting him. What neither of them knew was that the majority of the damage she had taken was self inflicted by fusing her sword, Sakura Tengoku, into her body, but they didn't need to know that, did they?

That said, Dragon admitted that they were swiftly reaching a point in which he could no longer teach her. Haki was primarily influenced by one's willpower and it must be honed in battle to become more powerful, not by practicing in sparring matches.

"There's something I should tell you about for future reference as well. I wasn't going to tell you about it before, but this will make us even for rescuing Betty. When you attain an extreme mastery over your Armament Haki, it will become possible to infuse your Conqueror's Haki into your attacks. Some would say it's too early to tell you right now, but I trust that you will know when you're ready and not waste your effort before the time comes." Dragon explained.

"Seriously? Just how much stronger is that than Armament Haki?" Cherry asked, annoyed with how often the bar gets raised for the strength of this world's powerhouses.

"Well, Gol D. Roger didn't have a devil fruit and still became the king of the pirates if that says anything about it. Kaido's infamous nearly impenetrable defense is also the result of that and his mythical zoan devil fruit, he hasn't even awakened it to my knowledge. You should have experienced it yourself when you faced Sengoku, too." Dragon answered.

"Hm, Sengoku WAS hitting me a lot harder than I'm used to. I assume your father can use it too if he's known as the strongest marine. He's such a softy, he definitely didn't use it even once against me." Cherry mused.

Dragon smiled at that. As much as he butted heads with Garp, he could never deny that he was a good man who just wanted to do what was right. That's why Garp never accepted a promotion to admiral, he didn't want to be directly beholden to the celestial dragons.

"Speaking of, just how tough is your body? If I didn't know any better, I'd swear that you have a zoan type devil fruit ability." Dragon commented.

Naturally, the reason was Cherry's cultivation, which when combined with Armament Haki created a superb defense. She wasn't going to tell that to Dragon, though, so she simply smiled at him and walked away without answering his question.

She would have normally responded by asking why he was so interested in a lady's body, but Dragon had apparently grown quite a thick skin through years of similar interactions with Ivankov. Cherry had to admit that she couldn't compete with the okama queen in that regard.

Time passed until it had been a year since Bartholomew Kuma separated the Straw Hat crew.

As Dragon had said, Cherry no longer had anything left to learn from him. At least not until she has put what she trained to the test in real combat.

"Are you sure you don't want to just stick around until it's time for you to meet up with your crew?" Koala asked, looking sad to part ways.

"I've spent far too much time sitting around in one place in my life. I need to stretch my legs!" Cherry said.

"We'll see you later some time, Koala. We'll BOTH miss you." Robin said, giving her a hug.

After several goodbyes with various revolutionaries they had come to become friends with, they set off on their journey.

Where were they going?

Well, since the New World was off limits for now, they decided to travel down the other paths on the Paradise half of the Grand Line.

Arriving at the Red Line at the beginning of the first half of the Grand Line, Cherry decided to stop by the lighthouse on the Twin Capes that she had been told about by the others.

An old man sat sunbathing on a lawn chair whilst reading a newspaper without paying any attention to them. However, after being stared at in silence by four beautiful women, the old man started to blush.

"Excuse me?" Cherry said.

"Hm?" The old man grunted in question.

"Are you Crocus, the lighthouse keeper here?" Cherry asked.

"Depends." He answered.

"We're not debt collectors or assassins." Cherry said.

"In that case, yes I am." Crocus confirmed.

"That's great, though I have to admit that I lied. We're debt collectors AND assassins." Cherry spoke with a wicked smile.

"Well, shoot. I knew I shouldn't have taken such good care of my organs." Crocus said, returning his gaze back to the newspaper.

"I like you old man." Cherry said, enjoying his antics. "If you keep up with the news often, though, I suspect you already know who I am."

"That I do. So what brings you all the way back here, then?" Crocus asked.

"We were just passing by to take another path for fun. I figured we could let you know that we found a survivor from the Rumbar Pirates in the Florian Triangle." Cherry said.

Crocus was shocked by that revelation. He didn't want to believe that those friendly pirates had abandoned Laboon, so he had been certain they were all dead. Especially now after over fifty years.

"Who was it?" Crocus asked.

"Brook, the musician. He ate the Revive Revive Fruit so he came back to life after they got annihilated by another pirate crew. Funny thing is that he got lost in the Florian Triangle trying to find his body and when he did, it was already a skeleton! Poor guy spent half a century going mad on a ghost ship with a broken rudder, all alone." Cherry explained.

Crocus didn't want to imagine what kind of hell Brook went through on that ship.

"Apparently it was a promise he made to that whale, Laboon, that let him hold on to the last vestiges of his sanity. What a guy, huh?" Cherry nodded her head, appreciating Crocus' talent as a good listener.

"Certainly I couldn't have done it. I can't even say I wouldn't have just thrown myself into the ocean and been done with it." Crocus said.

Crocus pondered whether or not he should tell Laboon about this. He knew that he should, but he didn't know if he wanted to see Laboon to grieve again if Brook failed to return a second time.

"Anywho, we ought to get going. Places to be, you know how it is." Cherry waved goodbye and left the old man to his thoughts.


next chapter

Chapter 167: First Island

"Have you gone senile? That has got to be the dumbest plan I have ever heard in my entire life." Sakazuki spoke harshly with a sneer to the man opposite him.

"I thought you'd understand after what you've lost to the pirates. I can pull it off, especially if you lend your strength to the cause, Sakazuki." Zed, formerly Admiral Zephyr, said looking a bit annoyed at his old student's criticism.

"I understand perfectly well and I have no doubt that it could be done. That isn't what I meant." Sakazuki clarified. "What I meant is that it won't work even if you succeed and the sacrifice of a whole sea worth of innocent lives will have been for nothing."

"How do you suppose that is?" Zed asked, half curious and half frustrated.

"Where should I even begin?" Sakazuki spoke condescendingly.

"Won't destroying the One Piece discourage new pirate groups from forming?" Zed asked.

"No. Most pirates either don't believe in One Piece, think that it's a mountain of gold, or have no delusions that they'll be the one to reach it. It was just the spark that inspired them, but that spark could have been anything." Sakazuki said.

"Surely killing off all the pirates in the New World will frighten them?! If nothing else, at least the Yonko will die!" Zed insisted.

"The Yonko won't die. Pirates these days are different from how they used to be. They're like cockroaches, you can't be certain they're dead unless you personally crush them beneath your boot." Sakazuki said.

Zed thought back to a few encounters his Neo Marines had with pirates. Somehow the pirates had slipped away from them for one reason or another just when they thought they were done for.

"What's happened to you, Zephyr? These tactics are something you never would have used in the past." Sakazuki interrupted his thoughts. His words might sound concerned, but his face showed no emotion.

"It's Zed." Zed spoke. "Why do you care? These things are right up your alley, aren't they?"

"True, but if we're going to accomplish anything, you need to be at your best. I lost in that duel with that damned Aokiji because I allowed my rage to cloud my mind. My clouded mind weakened my will, which in turn led to my loss. After he cooled my head, I realized I needed a clear head to accomplish my goal. The same is true of you." Sakazuki explained.

"And what would you suggest then?" Zed said somewhat meekly.

Sakazuki leaned forward and stared into Zed's eyes through his sunglasses. Zed could see swirling magma deep within his pupils, like a volcano waiting for the right moment to erupt and rain death upon the world.

"It's simple. We'll still steal the Dyna Stones, we just won't use them to blow up the End Points. We'll turn them on the Yonko and on the Shichibukai. We'll crush those cockroaches beneath our boots and show their mangled corpses to the world! I'm sure that damned seagull bastard would love to take pictures for his newspaper." Sakazuki spoke darkly.

"Give me some time to think. It's not that easy to abandon years of planning." Zed said after a few moments of tense silence.

"Make your choice quickly, Sensei. The pirates won't kill themselves." Sakazuki said, before walking out of the room.

Cherry and company arrived at the first island of their journey.

"A Spring Island, huh?." Cherry observed by the humid atmosphere and gentle heat.

The island was very rocky and didn't seem to have any trees or grasses. Instead there were a multitude of giant mushrooms and huge swathes of moss.

The soft, spongy texture beneath their feet tempted them to remove their shoes and feel it with their bare feet. They all did just that, except for Perona who insisted that acting in such a reckless manner in the Grand Line was foolishness.

Perona suddenly found herself getting lifted into the air and several arms bloomed to peel off her socks and shoes whilst she squirmed in outrage.

"Cabernet! Put me down! I don't want my feet to fall off after stepping on some crazy thorn-moss filled with super poison or something!" Perona protested. You could tell she was really angry because she didn't use her pet name for Cabernet.

"If your feet fall off, I'm sure that Cherry can fix you right up!" Cabernet said, missing the point.

"I don't want-" Perona started before her bare feet sank into the thick moss that was wet with morning dew.

"..."

"It feels nice, doesn't it?" Cabernet asked with that innocent smile that Perona couldn't resist.

"... yes…" Perona muttered truthfully. It did feel quite nice.

"There's a settlement inside of that mushroom, uh, forest? Jungle? Should we head straight over or just explore for a bit?" Cherry asked, having scouted the island with Life Sense.

"We do need to know how long the log pose takes to set. We can look around after." Robin said sensibly.

They went ahead into the mushroom forest. The wide tops of the giant mushrooms blocked out the light of the sun creating a very low light environment.

When they had gotten so far inside they noticed a large variety of new fungal species growing on the giant mushroom, out of the moss, or on the scatter boulders. Cherry checked them out and took several samples to do some testing on later, as they may be useful for cultivation pills or just medical purposes in general.

The air was thick with humidity and spores as they journeyed deeper into the fungi canopy.

Perona started to feel lightheaded, so Cherry gave her a little vital energy to boost her body's ability to filter out toxins which seemed to do the trick. Though she still complained of a headache.

They caught movement in their peripheral vision. Cherry saw that it was a moose covered in a particular mushroom. It didn't seem sick at all, so it was either harmless to the animal or possibly even symbiotic.

There were also sloths with moss covered bodies that gazed at them in their slow fashion.

Soon enough they reached an area of the mushroom forest that opened up a bit, not a clearing but was clearly brighter than the rest.

The settlement only consisted of just a few hundred people. Many of them had quite a few warts, a common ailment for people living in very humid places.

Upon seeing their group, they glared at them with suspicion, but not with any great amount of fear as one would expect when seeing pirates.

"Excuse me. Do you know how long the log pose takes to set?" Robin asked a man who was tending to a garden of mushrooms.

"Two weeks. You'd best not stay in the village, though." The man warned. He was one of only a few that didn't seem negatively inclined towards them.

"Why is that?" Robin inquired, thinking it best she do the talking for now to keep things diplomatic.

The man looked about nervously and seemed satisfied that he hadn't found whatever or whomever he was checking for.

"There's been a string of mysterious deaths in the last few months. People are on edge. Many of them have become paranoid, seeing killers amongst their neighbors at the slightest provocations. It's tearing us apart from within and there are no leads as to the truth of the matter." The man explained, running his hand over his balding head.

The man shooed them away, not wanting to draw any suspicions upon himself for talking to strangers.

"A murder mystery! We HAVE to solve it!" Perona's mood became much better with the addition of such a morbid topic.

"We'll be here for two weeks anyways, might as well. Not like anyone here can stop us if we want to meddle." Cherry said.

"Perhaps the killer is the man we just spoke to? That's usually how the novels go, always the most unexpected culprit." Robin added, feeling interested herself.

Cabernet just hoped she'd get to beat someone up.


Load failed, please RETRY

Weekly Power Status

Batch unlock chapters

Table of Contents

Display Options

Background

Font

Size

Chapter comments

Write a review Reading Status: C166
Fail to post. Please try again
  • Writing Quality
  • Stability of Updates
  • Story Development
  • Character Design
  • World Background

The total score 0.0

Review posted successfully! Read more reviews
Vote with Power Stone
Rank 200+ Power Ranking
Stone 66 Power Stone
Report inappropriate content
error Tip

Report abuse

Paragraph comments

Login

tip Paragraph comment

Paragraph comment feature is now on the Web! Move mouse over any paragraph and click the icon to add your comment.

Also, you can always turn it off/on in Settings.

GOT IT