They arrived at the edge of the forest and found a corpse beneath a tree.
A child's corpse that looked to be not even ten years old, frozen to death alive.
"Strange, how could a child freeze to death… A child living in the Future Country couldn't possibly appear alone on this icefield, right?"
Vane and the others examined the body. In the end, they found that although the child's clothes were thickened, compared to the harsh environment around them, he was still dressed too lightly.
"Poor kid… He wasn't wearing enough, and we didn't find anything else for keeping warm or boosting body heat. Instead, we found a dagger."
A child had come to the icefield with a dagger and frozen to death.
With a casual wave, Vane opened a snow pit in the icefield and buried the body.
"Keep moving."
Because they had reached the edge of the forest, Vane had Meowth put away the Gyarados machine, let the girls enter Meowth's body, and he, Meowth and Burgess walked through the snowfield forest.
Meowth didn't need to walk. Its height couldn't even poke its head above the snowfield forest, so it lay on Burgess' broad shoulders.
"There's something again, meow."
On the snowfield they found another corpse, also a child's, also not wearing anything particularly thick.
"Captain, this person… is from the Longarm Tribe."
Burgess noticed the child's arms were unusually long. After checking, he found the hands had two joints—this was the mark of the Longarm Tribe.
The most numerous race in this world is definitely ordinary humans.
The Longarm Tribe, Longleg Tribe, and Longneck Tribe do appear, but usually only as individuals.
The Fish-Man, Merfolk, Mink, Giant, and Tontatta have clearly defined races.
The Lunarian are basically extinct, and Kumo seems to be a race too… Anyway, there are many races.
But Vane could be sure that the Future Country was not a place where the Longarm Tribe lived.
"Something's not quite right."
After burying him, Vane and the others kept walking. Soon, they made more discoveries—one dead child after another appeared.
Some had frozen to death, and some had been killed by modified animals.
"How could so many kids have died?"
The young Burgess felt his scalp prickle from the slightly eerie atmosphere.
"These kids were all brought to the island by someone… and there are only two forces with that capability."
One is the Future Country itself; the other is the World Government.
Boom!
A dull explosion sounded from the other end of the forest. Vane and Burgess immediately rushed toward the blast.
...
Very soon, a scene appeared before their eyes: two children clinging to a tree, and below them a modified mechanical wolf.
On the back of this mechanical wolf was a cannon, but limited by the mounting position and elevation angle, it couldn't directly attack the two kids in the tree.
The hungry mechanical wolf chose to use the cannon to bombard the tree they were climbing. In just a few shots the tree would be blown apart, and the two children on it would fall—at least one would become its dinner today.
"Ship Smash!"
With a huge leap, Burgess landed on top of the mechanical wolf and drove an elbow strike downward!
Boom!
The machinery on the wolf's back was blown apart. Burgess pressed the attack, smashing down with several heavy punches and flattening the wolf's head!
"Really interesting. What kind of creature is this, anyway?"
Burgess dragged up the destroyed mechanical wolf. A creature that had both flesh and machinery like this wasn't common.
"This is the technology mastered by the world's number one scientist, Vegapunk. Burgess, bring them down."
The two kids in the tree were still shivering as they looked at the suddenly appearing Vane, the two men, and a cat.
For a child, the tree that was a life-or-death climb was, for Burgess, just a single jump.
"Meowth, take the two of them into your castle space."
Both kids looked extremely thin, frozen half to death. At this point you couldn't even tell whether they were boys or girls… though one of them looked a bit familiar to Vane.
Vane and Burgess continued to wander through the forest. During this time, Vane kept his Observation Haki almost fully open. They ran into quite a few mechanical animals—some were destroyed on the spot, others were knocked out. Whether destroyed or knocked out, they were tossed into Meowth's castle space for research.
Bit by bit, Vane discovered many children's corpses, and bit by bit, he also rescued a few who were barely clinging to life.
...
"Who are you people!"
Just as Vane was crossing almost the entire snowfield forest, two people wearing masks and long white robes appeared.
One of them questioned Vane's origins. The other said nothing and attacked directly, using Soru to appear in front of Vane in an instant, then using Shigan to stab at Vane's heart.
Flowing Water Fist!
A blue trail of fist-light knocked aside the opponent's Shigan and slammed a punch into his chest.
Crack!
The obvious sound of ribs shattering. The opponent was directly incapacitated.
"Why didn't you use Tekkai? Being this careless won't do… World Government people."
That's right—the ones who appeared on the snowfield were agents of the World Government. No idea whether they were from the CP series or not.
"You are… the great pirate Nation-Slayer Vane! Why are you here!"
The other agent recognized Vane at once and immediately used Soru to flee backward. While fleeing, he couldn't help but glance back—and with that glance, he saw that Vane had vanished from where he stood.
Thud!
Before he could even turn his head back, he felt like he'd slammed into an ice wall!
With a wave of his hand, a large mass of Netherworld Mist appeared in the air, and the mist condensed into several ice crystal needles.
Most of these ice crystal needles whooshed into the agent's limbs, directly crippling his ability to move.
The remaining few were controlled by Vane and pressed to within a few centimeters of the agent's eyeballs.
"Tell me everything about what your World Government is doing in the Future Country! Why are there so many children!"
[I'm a professionally trained agent. How could I tell you about our agent blood selection in the Future Country]
This agent shut his eyes and stubbornly refused to answer Vane's questions, but his heart had already betrayed him.
So it was agent blood replenishment.
Under the World Government, there are mainly two forces: one is the Navy active on the surface, and the other is the CP agents.
What's most special about the CP agents is the numbered series. Different numbers have different jobs.
Between Series 9 and 1 there isn't a clear distinction of absolute strength, but anyone who can enter Series 0 is definitely the strongest.
They scour various places for orphans and enslaved children for selection. Those with excellent results can be trained into agents, and during this process the numbers keep thinning out.
Of course, this is only one of the paths for agent selection. Another path is the descendants of agents who already worked for the World Government—for example, Kalifa the Bubble person who later joined CP9.