The city was quiet that night.
“Oh, I almost forgot.”
Shanks put the straw hat back on his head.
With that, he walked in flip-flops, shaking his hairy legs, hands in the pockets of his large shorts, casually following Liam.
Liam unleashed ‘B.I.B.’, who scampered around like a ghost, apparently searching for something.
‘…’
But not long after ‘B.I.B.’ flew back.
Liam inserted the ‘earpiece’ into his ear, tapped it twice, and a wrap-around virtual screen appeared in front of him. As he focused and poured his concentration into it, he “entered” the perspective of the ‘B.I.B.’…
What he saw was the scene of cutting through the waves at night.
And, a pale-faced guy barely steering and navigating a pirate ship…
“Damn, I forgot that…”
Under the silent ‘gaze’ of the ‘faceless armor’ in front of him, Liam covered his face in shame. He had removed ‘B.I.B.’s faceplate, which currently accompanied the bounty money he hadn’t collected yet on the pirate ship.
Without the faceplate’s eyes, ‘B.I.B.’ couldn’t see anything and could only hear the sounds… Now it seemed that he had to guide his stand himself.
Shanks rubbed Liam’s hair vigorously, “I say, what are you doing in the middle of the night? Where’s this fruit?”
Liam didn’t resist and let him mess with his hair and asked, “Shanks, with your years of experience wandering the world, in which direction do you think the cemetery of this town would be?”
“Cemetery?” Shanks was surprised.
“Aren’t you good at that powerful Kenbunshoku Haki (Observation Haki)?” Liam added, “Can you use it to sense any unusual individuals on this island?”
“You want to rob a grave? What a bad boy!” Shanks chuckled. “Or are you after a grave robber? No, wait, is there some delicious fruit ripening in a graveyard?”
Liam slapped his hand away, “Stop playing dumb. You should know I’m talking about a Devil Fruit, right?”
“You brat!”
Shanks, somewhat surprised and amused, flicked Liam’s forehead and lifted him off the ground with one hand.
“Let me see… the possible direction of the graveyard… and a suspicious Devil Fruit user…”
An unknown force seemed to be circulating in Shanks’ seemingly ordinary black eyes. At that moment, the energy reactions of countless lives on the island, male and female, old and young, human and animal, were all reflected in his mind.
It was as if millions of points of light were weaving an image of distribution at that moment… and over ninety percent of those points of light were just ordinary, everyday energy reactions.
“This is quite challenging…”
Shanks closed his eyes tighter, focusing his mind even more.
A gust of night wind blew, picking up dead leaves that stuck to Shanks’ hairy legs.
“Hey! What are you doing?”
Just then, a night patrol guard noticed Shanks standing like a wooden stake in the street in the middle of the night, holding a large boy in his hand, looking very suspicious.
A formidable presence, detected by Shanks’ Kenbunshoku Haki (Observation Haki), pointed in a general direction.
“Quite an extraordinary guy, I didn’t expect such a monster to appear in the West Blue…” Shanks opened his eyes and muttered slightly seriously, “Liam, why would you want to provoke someone like that?”
Saying this, he picked Liam up and, still in his flip-flops, his hairy legs striding, headed in that direction.
“Hey! Stop right there!” The night patrol guard yelled, “I haven’t seen you before. Identify yourself…”
“Hu,” Shanks walked past him without looking.
The night guard’s hand that was reaching for his weapon suddenly froze.
He felt waves of dizziness and quickly fell to his knees as his limbs grew weak and numb. Cold sweat poured uncontrollably from his forehead…
Liam paid no attention to the unfortunate guard who had been affected by Shanks’ leaked haki.
He was being carried by Shanks, glaring with lifeless eyes and fuming inside, “Go ahead and enjoy using your right hand while you still can, you won’t have the chance later!”
—
Graveyard.
Under the moonlight, a gigantic and strange figure with a long snake-like neck was leisurely looking up at the moon.
Bathed in the faint light of the moon and stars, Gecko Moria walked among the graves with his hands behind his back, looking at the names carved on each gravestone.
“Hee hee hee hee, found it.” He stopped before a grave. “It is said that this was the brave and incomparable guard of this island from over a decade ago. Alas, no matter how brave the warrior, he too will decay and die one day!”
“But now I will grant you new life, and eternal life…!”
Moria let out a bizarre “hee hee hee hee” laugh and pulled several “shadows” out of his body. These shadows, transforming into bat-like forms, flew into the graves in front of him.
Not far away, Shanks could clearly see that in front of the six or seven-meter-tall figure in the night, the ground of the graves suddenly burst open and figures began to climb out!
In the hazy moonlight, the figures climbing out of the graves stood in twisted postures around the six- or seven-meter-tall figure.
“What kind of Devil Fruit power is this to resurrect corpses?” Shanks exclaimed. “It’s strange that these corpses haven’t completely decomposed yet…”
“You’re focusing on the wrong thing here,” Liam said next to him. “This is Gecko Moria. I read about him becoming a Shichibukai in the news not long ago when I was on the island… His ability is the Shadow Shadow Fruit, which allows him to cut off people’s shadows and inject them into others or corpses…”
“Moria, huh! I’ve heard of him. So that’s what his power does…” Shanks realized. “But I heard he went to the New World. I didn’t expect him to show up in the West Blue so soon after becoming a Shichibukai…”
“Anyone whose shadow he takes will be completely disintegrated when exposed to sunlight!” Liam hid behind a tree. “It’s a pretty useful ability, and he’s used it to hurt a lot of people…”
Damn, just seeing that bastard Moria reminds me of that horrible Thriller Bark arc, with that hideous invisible man Absalom… That scum had the nerve to grope Robin’s chest with his Clear-Clear Fruit power. Just thinking about it makes me so damn angry!
Liam pointed at the dimly lit graveyard.
The left arm of the ‘Faceless Armor’ ‘B.I.B.’, covered in blue flames, immediately detached from the body, wrapped in the dark Stand energy, and flew silently towards the seven-meter high Gecko Moria!
….;..
You can read ahead up to 20 chapters on my patreon and I’ve also activated (date to date) subscription model on my patreon https://www.patreon.com/marvel6395
Support me on Patreon for extra chapters