This country has a dark atmosphere. Although they are Minks, their presence here did not attract the attention of others.
Compared to the modified freaks with nails in their heads, bandaged zombies, evil witches, vampires and other elaborate makeup, the appearance of the Minks seemed quite cute.
It was this country’s festival and they had arrived just in time for tour.
Various pumpkin lanterns were stacked on the streets, and apart from the different theme, the liveliness here could rival the Fire Festival in Wano Country.
“Here is your iced pumpkin juice, please enjoy.”
A waiter dressed like a vampire brought the pumpkin juice. The festival’s time here coincided with the pumpkin harvest season, so the streets were filled with various pumpkin products.
“Why hasn’t dad returned yet?”
The roasted turkeys were served, but Hachi was nowhere to be seen. He had mentioned going to the toilet earlier, and then he disappeared.
“He’s not in the toilet. I wonder where Uncle Hachi went. The restaurant staff didn’t notice him either, considering there are quite a few werewolves here.”
Zeraora glanced around helplessly. Vampires and werewolves were the most common costumes, and many people were also wearing wolf masks and similar accessories.
“I’ll give him a good scolding when we get home.”
Rin twisted the fork in her hand, making it clear that Hachi wouldn’t have a good time when he got back, but the immediate priority was to find out where Hachi had gone.
“Setsuna, you stay here with Auntie. I’ll go and look for Uncle.”
“Okay.”
On the other side, Hachi had arrived at a place filled with crosses. From the wreaths and tombstones, it was evident that this was a cemetery. This was a characteristic of this country; the cemetery was not separate but scattered among the residential areas.
Whether near ordinary residences or beneath noble castles, you could see similar cemeteries.
What had led Hachi here was a white ghost. He had just seen the ghost pass through a child’s body, and then the child suddenly knelt on the ground, constantly muttering that it shouldn’t have appeared in this world.
This piqued Hachi’s interest, so he followed the white ghost here. However, he didn’t see other ghosts here, rather he saw several people digging graves.
And it was not just one grave, many graves had these strange individuals standing next to them. After digging up the bodies, these people would inspect them to see if they were intact. If not, they would discard them; if they were intact, they would carry them away.
Even though this country was holding a themed event, Hachi felt cold sweat breaking out all over his body. It seemed like this place was haunted.
And at this moment, it seemed like those strange individuals had spotted him as they immediately began closing in on him.
“Hey, hey, this isn’t some kind of show, is it?”
He could see that some of these people had hollow eye sockets; the situation looking increasingly eerie.
They ignored him and raised tools like wooden sticks and shovels to attack him. They have been given an order to eliminate anyone who saw them.
Of course, Hachi wouldn’t just stand there and let himself be attacked. With a casual wave of his hand, one person’s head was sent flying.
Hachi didn’t expect to kill someone like this, but then he realized that he was mistaken; that thing with its head sent flying actually fumbled around and put its head back on.
“Damn it, there are really zombies here! I need to inform them quickly.”
Seeing the head and arms severed without a single drop of blood, and the zombies advancing towards him, he suddenly remembered the so-called exorcism salt that a witch had sold him.
With a “let’s give it a try” attitude, he sprinkled some salt onto the zombies, and to his surprise, it actually worked.
The scattered salt entered the mouths of the zombies, and a black substance immediately ran out from the mouth of one of the zombies. The other zombies, seeing Hachi holding the salt, halted in their tracks and couldn’t help but step back.
“Haha, Rin and others always say I buy useless stuff, but it looks like this salt really works. Back off! Back off!”
At this moment, Hachi demonstrated what it meant to be “a dog threatening people on the strength of the salt’s power.”* With a bag of salt in his hand as a weapon, he actually carved out a path. However, just as he was about to leave, a big guy blocked his way, seemingly unafraid of him. [*Author has rewritten this idiom here whose original meaning is ‘a dog threatening people on the strength of its master’s power’. Author has replaced master to salt.]
Seeing this, he grabbed a handful of salt and sprinkled it on him, but this time, it didn’t work.
“Kishishishi, I’m not one of those zombies, you know. I can’t believe there was a Mink here. Let me see if I want your corpse or your shadow.”
Bounty: 320,000,000 Berries – Gecko Moria.
Although he hadn’t yet recruited Hogback and expanded his army of zombies, he had already started collecting powerful corpses and shadows for future preparations.
After his defeat at the hands of Kaido, where most of his subordinates perished, Moria, having stolen the corpses of strong individuals like Ryuma, arrived in the West Blue. After a period of depression, he believed he had figured it out – it was because he was alive that he had lost.
So, as long as his subordinates were undead, he wouldn’t lose anything.
Therefore, he began searching for powerful corpses to create Zombie Soldiers. Ordinary corpses wouldn’t be of much use, so he had been quietly searching various places in West Blue for the corpses of people who were powerful when alive.
However, the task was quite challenging. Some countries preferred cremation, and the rate of decay of corpses was swift. His ability couldn’t turn skeletons into soldiers. Later, he discovered this place, a country that had the habit of preserving bodies with formalin or creating mummies.
Earlier, he had been gathering information on the deaths of powerful individuals and had started his tomb-robbing activities by taking advantage of Halloween.
But he suddenly spotted a fleeing shadow, and when Moria approached, he saw Hachi using salt to fend off the zombies.
Minks were much stronger than regular humans, whether it was their shadows or corpses.
A large pair of scissors appeared in his hand, and the snipping sound, combined with the background around him, made the scene seem somewhat terrifying.
“Hand over your shadow!”
He intended to test the opponent’s strength through combat; if they were strong, he would steal their shadow; if they were weak, he would take their body. The large scissors split into two scissor blades, and then he slashed them towards Hachi.
However, hearing Moria say he wasn’t a zombie, Hachi wasn’t afraid of him anymore. He had been apprehensive earlier because he had heard that zombies could infect others. But now, he was brave enough to resist Moria, even though he was a big guy.
If Kaido were here, he would notice that Moria had become much weaker than he was several years ago. At that time, Moria’s martial arts skills could compete with Kaido to some extent. However, now he would undoubtedly be defeated in an instant if facing Kaido. Even against someone of Hachi’s strength, he couldn’t immediately defeat him.
If it were him from a few years ago, even without using his Devil Fruit ability, he would never be like this. Sensing that Hachi wasn’t an easy opponent, Moria intended to use his Devil Fruit ability. However, just at that moment, a bolt of lightning suddenly struck from the sky.
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