Chapter 289: There Is Also a Harald in the Fog
"Master Moria! Master Moria!"
"Are you alright?! Can you stand?!"
Long after Kuma and his crew had departed, the suffocating fog violently reclaimed Thriller Bark. A deathly, oppressive silence settled over the ruined landscape.
The zombies, utterly stripped of their animating shadows, had all reverted to lifeless, rotting corpses scattered across the dirt. In the center of the destruction, only two incredibly frail, small figures hovered anxiously around Moria's battered body.
"Perona... Absalom..." Moria groaned, weakly pushing himself up. "Are you two... alright?"
"We're perfectly fine, Master Moria," the frail, emaciated boy replied quickly. "The intruders left immediately after the battle ended. I sneaked down to the docks to check—their ship is completely gone."
The scrawny, malnourished-looking boy was Absalom. He had not yet undergone any of Dr. Hogback's horrific, beast-hybrid surgical modifications. Currently, he looked like nothing more than an exceptionally thin, ordinary human.
However, he had already consumed the Clear-Clear Fruit. Relying entirely on his absolute invisibility, he had cautiously scouted the island to confirm the enemy's departure.
Besides Moria, Absalom and Perona were the only two living humans aboard the entirety of Thriller Bark. Moria had essentially adopted Perona when she was a toddler, and although Absalom officially held the title of a subordinate, their relationship functioned similarly.
Earlier, the moment the zombie scouts reported that impossibly powerful intruders had breached the graveyard, Moria had immediately ordered Absalom to take Perona and hide deep within the castle. He strictly commanded them not to intervene under any circumstances.
Deep down, buried beneath layers of trauma and insanity, Moria still fiercely cherished his companions. If he didn't, the Moria of the original timeline wouldn't have suicidally stormed Pirate Island alone, fully prepared to wage a one-man war against Blackbeard just to rescue Absalom.
It was precisely because the agonizing grief of losing his original crew had broken him so profoundly that he no longer possessed the courage to face reality.
If I don't possess anything, then I cannot lose anything.
Driven by that twisted logic, aside from Perona and Absalom, Moria hadn't actively recruited a single living subordinate in seven years.
"As long as you two are safe... that's all that matters," Moria rasped, coughing up a mouthful of dust.
In a twisted, horrifying way, Moria actually felt a morbid sense of relief that he hadn't recruited living crew members. He felt absolutely no sorrow over the destroyed zombies, and the stolen shadows could simply be plundered again. In his warped mind, he hadn't actually lost anything of true value today.
"The corpse of the samurai Ryuma and the sword Shusui are also untouched," Absalom reported, assisting Moria to his feet. "Those people... it seems they truly were just passing through."
"I understand. The two of you head back inside. I need... some time alone."
Moria gestured for Absalom to guide the loudly sobbing Perona back into the castle. Once alone, Moria slumped against a broken stone pillar, his mind sinking into dark, manic contemplation.
"The shadows of weaklings aren't enough. Pathetic, low-tier shadows completely fail to unlock the true terrifying potential of those legendary corpses... I need stronger corpses... I need vastly superior shadows..."
Unfortunately, Kuma's devastating shockwave wasn't equivalent to Kaido's personally transmitted "Awakening Club." The terrifying, paralyzing fear of "loss" prevented Moria from looking inward and confronting his own pathetic weakness.
Instead, he chose to double down, sinking even deeper into his psychotic obsession with manufacturing the ultimate, immortal Zombie Army.
Meanwhile, the pirates who had successfully reclaimed their shadows and fled Thriller Bark found that their miraculous stroke of luck had abruptly expired.
Shortly after sailing out of Moria's domain as a small, terrified fleet, they violently collided with another colossal, monstrously sized vessel navigating the dense fog.
Standing atop the bow of the approaching ship was a figure fanatically dedicated to the World Government—Harald. Even though he had recently been promoted to a reserve "Servant of the Gods," his brutal patrol route still periodically brought him through these waters.
Seeing the fleet of pirate ships desperately trying to flee the fog, Harald didn't hesitate. With a single, devastating swing of his massive sword, he effortlessly sank the entire fleet, violently sending the pirates who had just narrowly escaped Moria's clutches straight down to Davy Jones's locker.
However, right before he unleashed his lethal strike, Harald's sharp ears picked up the frantic, disbelieving chatter echoing between the pirate ships. They were loudly celebrating the fact that Moria had been crushed.
"A Warlord of the Sea was defeated?" Harald muttered, lowering his sword slightly.
Harald fully understood the geopolitical purpose behind the Warlord system. Realizing the gravity of this development, he immediately pulled out a specialized Den Den Mushi to report the intelligence directly to Mary Geoise.
"Harald just transmitted a highly classified report. It appears Gecko Moria has been defeated."
Within the absolute sanctum of the Five Elders, Saint Saturn lowered his golden Den Den Mushi. Harald's recent "promotion" had granted him significantly elevated security clearance, allowing him a direct line to the Five Elders.
"That is most certainly not good news," Saint Warcury grunted, leaning forward. "If word of this leaks to the public, the global deterrence of the Seven Warlords system will plummet catastrophically. And if the Marines catch wind of this... they'll undoubtedly use it as ammunition to cause us a massive headache."
Despite calling it a headache, Warcury's tone was incredibly dismissive.
The Marines had vehemently opposed the establishment of the Warlord system from the very beginning. However, the Five Elders fundamentally ignored Marine opinions. Even when they occasionally "listened" to the Marines, it was only because the Marines' suggestions coincidently aligned with what the Five Elders had already planned to do.
Once the Five Elders made a decision, unless Imu personally intervened, absolutely no one possessed the authority to overrule them.
However, superficially, the Marines maintained significant advisory power, and bureaucratic protocols had to be observed.
The Seven Warlords system was specifically implemented to violently suppress the endless swarms of rookies spawned by the Great Pirate Era. If a Warlord suffered a crushing defeat, it implied a catastrophic flaw in the system.
The Marines would inevitably weaponize this failure, flooding Mary Geoise with endless stacks of formal complaints and demands for the system's abolishment. Even if the Five Elders just casually tossed the complaints into an incinerator, dealing with the political fallout was highly annoying.
Furthermore, despite the World Government's ironclad control over global media, if this news leaked to a pirate journalist, it would undoubtedly dominate global headlines within twenty-four hours.
"However," Saturn continued smoothly, taking a deliberate, dramatic pause, "Harald also reported that he personally annihilated the entire fleet of pirates who witnessed the defeat before they could leave the fog. The exact details of Moria's defeat remain completely contained. Virtually no one in the outside world knows."
If there were no living witnesses to leak the story, the political fallout was essentially zero.
"Moria certainly isn't going to broadcast his own humiliating defeat," Warcury mused, stroking his mustache. "As for the crew that actually defeated him... deploy a covert intelligence team to investigate them immediately. If they possess sufficient strength, perhaps we can offer them one of the vacant Warlord seats."
Currently, the Seven Warlords only had four active members. Three of them—Moria, Crocodile, and Hanafuda—were effectively members of the "Losers' Bracket," with Kaido alone being responsible for handing two of them their crushing defeats. The fourth, Mihawk, had secured his position simply because he kept getting bored and indiscriminately slaughtering Marine fleets.
Recruiting a candidate from the "Winners' Bracket" didn't seem like a bad idea.
"And what of Moria?" Saint Nusjuro asked coldly, polishing the hilt of his katana. "If this fool truly suffered a crushing defeat against an unknown crew, should we not revoke his title?"
Nusjuro wasn't entirely opposed to Saturn's plan; he was merely addressing the weakest link.
"Let us observe the situation for now," Saturn replied neutrally. "Since the news of his defeat hasn't leaked, we will allow him to retain his position temporarily.
"However, if he suffers another humiliating failure..."
The Five Elders had absolutely no intention of proactively publicizing Moria's defeat just to legally strip him of his title. The Warlord system still served a vital purpose; casually firing a Warlord without a globally recognized justification would severely destabilize the alliance and make the other Warlords incredibly paranoid.
Ironically, the oppressive, completely isolated environment of the Florian Triangle had accidentally saved Moria's career. Instead of an immediate execution order or a Buster Call, he would merely receive a stern, humiliating formal warning.
As for the World Government's internal investigation... it proceeded at the agonizingly slow pace typical of massive bureaucracies. By the time their covert operatives finally infiltrated Thriller Bark, Moria had already created a completely new batch of zombies patrolling the perimeter.
While Moria's interaction with the government officials was incredibly hostile and unpleasant, he ultimately confirmed the basic details of the incident. Seeing as no catastrophic headlines had appeared in the World Economy News Paper, the officials concluded that Harald's accidental massacre had indeed salvaged the situation.
It didn't take long for the World Government's vast intelligence network to cross-reference Kuma's unique physical traits with his known affiliation.
Shortly after leaving the Florian Triangle, while still navigating the first half of the Grand Line, Luna and her crew were suddenly intercepted by a highly peculiar bat.
It was a specialized, long-range communication bat exclusively utilized by the World Government. How it had flawlessly tracked their ship across the chaotic weather of the Grand Line remained a mystery, but it undeniably carried a very specific, sealed envelope addressed to Bartholomew Kuma.
An official invitation to join the Seven Warlords of the Sea.
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