Drum Kingdom – Great Horn City
The cold wind howled through the streets of Great Horn City. Snowflakes drifted endlessly from the gray sky, blanketing the corpses and bloodstains that marred the white ground.
A soldier lay sprawled in the snow, one hand pressed desperately against the wound in his chest. His fingers trembled as they stretched toward a rifle just beyond his grasp. Before he could seize it, a shadow fell over him.
A boot.
The soldier froze. Slowly, his gaze lifted, and there stood a man towering more than two meters tall, a wall of steel in human form.
"Go on," Liam said. His hands remained tucked lazily into his coat pockets as he looked down at the broken soldier, his calm voice threaded with amusement. "Shoot. I won't be angry."
The soldier's teeth chattered, but fear could not stop him. With a frenzied motion, he snatched the rifle, loaded a round, and aimed straight at Liam's chest.
Bang!
The shot rang out, but Liam didn't flinch. In a blur, two fingers snapped forward, pinching the bullet midair, the tip still smoking.
The soldier's eyes bulged in disbelief.
In the next instant, whizz, crack!
Liam flicked his fingers, and the round buried itself in the soldier's forehead.
"Didn't you say… you wouldn't be angry?" he croaked before collapsing into unconsciousness.
"I'm not angry," Liam murmured lightly, letting the man drop into the snow.
All around him, the streets were littered with defeated soldiers of the Drum Kingdom. These men had been enacting another "Doctor Purge": hunting down independent physicians, exiling them by force. In King Wapol's kingdom, only the twenty palace doctors were deemed "legitimate." The rest were criminals to be erased.
But tonight they had met someone different.
The townsfolk had watched everything unfold. At first, they had surged forward when Liam brazenly declared his intent to kill King Wapol. They'd tried to hold him back, to stop what seemed like the reckless outburst of a madman.
Yet the result had been the same as in Cocoyashi Village. No matter how many swung fists or desperate strikes landed, Liam's body withstood them all without so much as a mark. Even when he stood still, offering himself openly, it was the attackers who ended up bloodied and broken.
The soldiers chasing Dr. Kureha had abandoned their pursuit, howling in outrage at this outsider who dared to raise his voice against their king. They charged with blind fury.
Their fate was no different.
Liam brushed them aside with effortless disdain, like swatting flies, and dusted his hands as though the fight had been nothing more than a tiresome interruption.
The townspeople stared, caught between awe and dread. These strangers had toppled Wapol's soldiers as though it were child's play. Yet in their eyes there was no hatred, only uncertainty, as though unsure whether to cheer or fear what they had just witnessed.
Kureha sat perched atop an unconscious soldier's chest, tilting back her bottle and draining the fiery dregs.
Robin stood calmly at Liam's side, one hand on her pack's strap, her gaze quietly sweeping over the shaken crowd. These were the very citizens whose protectors had been crushed, but their faces showed no rage, only silence.
Liam chuckled. "You're something else, old granny, "
Whack!
The empty bottle shattered against his face, followed by a stinging kick and a lightning-fast jab.
Thud!
Liam tumbled backward and landed flat on his back in the snow.
"Mind your manners, brat!" Kureha barked, fists planted on her hips, her voice sharp as a whip. "I'm a radiant beauty of a hundred and twenty-seven years!"
The bystanders gasped in disbelief.
The towering man who had shrugged off blades, bullets, and fists, who had caught a bullet between his fingers, was flattened by a single strike from this old woman?
Robin's lips curved into a soft laugh, her eyes glinting with mischief as she looked down at Liam sprawled in the snow.
Kureha adjusted her sunglasses and smirked. "So, brat… you said you're going after Wapol?"
"Yeah," Liam said casually from the ground. "Old granny, can you show me the way?"
With a sharp laugh, Kureha suddenly sprang high into the air, her leg slicing down like silver lightning toward his skull.
Boom!
Snow exploded in a crater where her heel landed, but Liam had already rolled aside, snow spraying as he rose to his feet.
"As expected of someone worth four hundred million Berries," Kureha said, wrenching her leg free from the pit. "You're aiming for the end of the Grand Line, aren't you?"
"Well…" Liam hesitated. He remembered the whispers, the way this century-old doctor spoke words similar to Luffy's village chief, tales of the Will of D, hints of truths buried deep in history. His curiosity stirred hot.
"Old granny," he asked, his voice lowering, "do you know what lies at the end of the Grand Line?"
Her fist shot forward without warning.
Liam leaned just enough, the punch cutting past his cheek like a blade of air.
"Questions like that?" Kureha snorted. "The only one who knew was the Pirate King, Roger, and he's long dead. Now, you want to see the palace? Fine. I'll take you."
Liam grinned. "Really? Thanks."
Kureha's sharp gaze flicked toward Robin. "A captain with a bounty lower than his crewmate's… not the kind of pirate crew you see every day."
Robin's smile didn't falter. "That's true."
Kureha chuckled darkly. "That composure alone's worth a hundred million. Come on. There's a cable car outside the city, straight shot up the mountain."
With a cocky grin and swagger in her step, the punk-styled doctor marched forward, bold as if she herself owned the snowbound kingdom.
The townsfolk erupted at once.
"Kureha! You're seriously taking them to the palace? That's madness!"
"How could you betray your own kingdom?!"
"You're a subject of Drum, too!"
Kureha slid her sunglasses higher up the bridge of her nose, eyes like daggers as she turned. Her voice cut cold and fierce through the clamor.
"Subject? You've got it wrong. That fool Wapol… even before his grandfathers' grandfathers were born, I was already living in this country. I've seen Drum's sickness longer than any of you. And if anyone should judge how rotten this kingdom has become, don't you think it ought to be me, a doctor, and not you?"
Her words struck like whips, and silence fell. The furious cries died mid-breath, the people frozen where they stood, shame weighing heavier than the snow.
Behind her, Liam strolled backward, fists cocked in mock challenge, a grin tugging at his lips. His easy steps dared the villagers to test him. No one moved.
Kureha exhaled and turned her back once more, strides confident as she led the two pirates out of Great Horn. Robin followed in step, snow crunching softly underfoot.
But the moment they crossed the city's edge,
A blockade awaited.
Dozens of soldiers stood in formation, rifles gleaming under the gray sky, their breath frosting in the frigid air. At their head loomed a man built like an ox, broad shoulders squared, presence as immovable as the mountain itself.
Dalton. Commander of the Drum Kingdom guard.
"Kureha," Dalton rumbled, his voice carrying over the whistling wind. His eyes flicked to her, worn with familiarity, then settled firmly on the strangers at her side. "You mean to escort them… to the palace?"
Metallic clacks rang as ranks of rifles snapped up in unison. The soldiers' nerves may have quaked, but their discipline held fast.
Dalton's gaze hardened like granite as he pronounced their names.
"Jolyne Kujo… Giorno Chopperna…"
Liam blinked. "Jolyne Kujo? Giorno Chopperna? Who the hell are those supposed to be?"
,
Not thirty minutes earlier in Drum Castle, that very name report had crashed into Wapol's throne room.
At first, the king barely reacted. Nose jammed between pudgy fingers, he barked a laugh, snot dripping proudly as always.
"Hah! Pirates coming to kill me? Moo-hahahaha! Don't make me laugh!"
At his side, his ministers snickered, Chess, lips rippling as if mocking everyone around him, bow slung proudly over his back. And Cromarimon, the afro-headed brute with fur-coated fists, guffawed loud enough to shake the icicles off the palace roof.
"Probably some rookies who barely stumbled into the Grand Line!" Chess sneered.
"Bahaha! No idea how high the sky stretches!" Cromarimon roared.
Their laughter died abruptly the instant Dalton kicked open the chamber doors. His usually stoic posture was cracked; his chest heaved as he waved a crumpled newspaper high.
"You idiots! Have you lost your minds? These aren't no-name rookies!" His fist shook, crushing the print. "Jolyne Kujo carries a bounty of three hundred and thirty million Berries! And Giorno Chopperna… four hundred million!!"
The words struck harder than cannon fire.
"Th-three hundred… and thirty million?!" Chess stammered, lips stiff with terror.
"F-f-f-four hundred million?!" Cromarimon's voice cracked to a screech, his afro trembling so violently it looked ready to launch off his skull.
Even Wapol froze, his hands falling limp, finger lodged uselessly in his nose. His eyes went wide, his jaw slack, snot stringing down as if frozen mid-drip.
In that moment, the King of Drum wore an expression worthy of Enel himself.
Three hundred and thirty million?! Four hundred million?!
He wasn't the brightest monarch to grace the Reverie, but even Wapol knew enough, those numbers weren't the kind you laughed off.
Any pirate with a bounty over one hundred million was already a monster. Over three hundred? Four hundred? That wasn't a pirate anymore. That was a legend among monsters.
And they had no business standing here, at the doorstep of the very first stretch of the Grand Line. They belonged far beyond, in the New World, battling emperors and titans.
Yet here they were.
(To Be Continued…)
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