Zoro's three swords had slid three inches from their sheaths with a soft shing. Sanji's weight shifted subtly onto the ball of his foot. Luffy pulled his straw hat low, his usual grin replaced by a stern line.
The tavern's raucous noise died an instant death, every eye locked onto the freshly printed bounty posters.
"Oi, oi... look at this!" a scar-faced pirate stammered, holding up the paper. "Straw Hat Luffy... 300 Million Berries!"
"WHAT?!"
"Three hundred million?!"
The tavern exploded into chaos. The sound of shattering mugs echoed, but an even bigger shockwave was coming—
"Roronoa Zoro... 250 Million Berries!"
"Black Leg Sanji... 240 Million Berries!"
Zoro's lips curled into a faint, proud smirk. "Hmph. About right."
Sanji: "....." He gets a higher bounty than me just by sleeping?! He exhaled a sharp plume of smoke. "The Marines' intel must be flawed. They've clearly overlooked my true... potential."
But the real cataclysm was yet to come—
"Li-little Cat Burglar Nami..." The pirate reading the poster's voice suddenly shot up eight octaves, "F-FIVE HUNDRED MILLION BERRIES?!"
"Pfft—!"
Zoro spat out his mouthful of booze. Sanji's cigarette dropped to the floor. Even Luffy's eyes bulged. "Eh?! Nami's bounty is higher than mine?!"
"Wh-what kind of joke is this?!"
An eerie, disbelieving silence swallowed the tavern whole. Every patron stared at the Straw Hats as if they were looking at a pack of mythical beasts.
"Are you kidding me!" a pirate roared, slamming his fist on the table. "A crewmate's bounty is higher than the Captain's?!"
"What the hell kind of pirate crew is this?!"
"Monsters! They're all monsters!"
Teach stared at the bounty figures in the paper, a tingling sensation crawling over his scalp. With bounties this high, capturing even one of them would be no small feat.
He narrowed his eyes, his thick fingers drumming a restless rhythm on the table. Sloppy as these kids looked, the posters didn't lie. Handing just one of them over would be his golden ticket into the Shichibukai!
"Zehahahahaha..." He bared his jagged teeth in a wide grin. "Let's see what these hundred-million-Berry brats are really made of!"
Just as Teach was about to make his move—
RUMBLE!!
The entire tavern shook with violent, sudden force. Wooden beams groaned in protest, and bottles clattered from shelves, shattering on the floor.
"An Ea-earthquake?!"
"No! This vibration is... wrong!"
Pirates scrambled in panic, stampeding for the door. Zoro and Sanji's expressions shifted in unison. Their extensive... experience with Nami's treasure hunts told them this was no natural tremor.
Usopp's face turned sheet-white. "It's happening again... Did Nami and the others really dig up something they shouldn't have? It sounded just like this last time they unearthed a Poneglyph..."
"Let's move!" Zoro commanded, already turning toward the exit.
Luffy was the first out, crashing through the tavern door. "Big Brother Ron! Nami! You didn't dig up something crazy again, did you?!"
Seeing this, a glint flashed in Blackbeard Teach's eyes. "Trying to run?" He surged to his feet with a booming laugh. "ZEHAHAHAHA! Van Auger! Doc Q! After them!"
The other pirates, having overheard Luffy's shout about "treasure," felt a surge of greed overpower their fear. Without a second thought, they joined the stampede, a wave of avarice following the Straw Hats into the streets.
Chaos reigned outside. Buildings swayed precariously. The ground cracked like a spiderweb, and in the distance, above the central forests of Jaya, ominous black clouds began to swirl.
"That direction..." Sanji leaped onto the rooftops, his eyes narrowing. "It's where the Captain and the others went to dig!"
"Go! Find the Captain!" Zoro yelled, already sprinting ahead.
"Hey! Wait for me!" Usopp cried, scrambling after them.
Doc Q, atop his sickly horse, Stronger, coughed weakly. "Captain... this disturbance feels... unnatural..."
"ZEHAHAHA!" Teach's excitement only grew. "Who cares what it is! Let's bag those hundred-million-Berry rookies first!"
...
A Few Minutes Earlier
Nami unfolded the treasure map, her finger tracing a red line. "It should be right around here."
She had found the spot with practiced ease.
The map itself shimmered and transformed into a gleaming golden shovel. Nami's eyes turned into Berry signs as she gripped it. "Gold! Gems! A king's ransom! Here I come~"
Robin elegantly pushed a low-hanging branch aside, observing their surroundings with an archaeologist's keen eye. "The rock formations here are quite unique. It suggests this area underwent violent geological shifts in the past."
"Wait for me!" Chopper panted, catching up on his short legs, his blue nose twitching incessantly. "I just... I have a bad feeling about the smell here..."
Suddenly,
Several rough-looking pirates jumped out from the bushes. "Halt! This forest is our turf—"
BOOM!
Ron didn't even blink. A wave of Conqueror's Haki washed over them like an invisible tide. The pirates collapsed mid-sentence, eyes rolling back into their heads.
Nami pouted. "Honestly. There's always some no-name thugs interrupting a perfectly good treasure hunt."
She then raised the shovel with determined glee. "Witness my Super-Digging Technique!"
CLANG—
The moment the shovel struck the earth, a pitch-black vortex spiraled open on the ground. The golden shovel vanished into it.
A strange, metallic tremor resonated through the entire forest, followed by...
RUMBLE!!
The very earth convulsed violently! Ancient trees swayed like reeds, shedding leaves in a torrential downpour. In the distance, cliff faces began to crumble, sending boulders tumbling into the valleys below.
"Wh-what's happening?!" Nami stumbled, bracing herself against a large rock. She stared, wide-eyed, at the swirling black void. "It's empty? Nothing came out, but the whole island is shaking?!"
Ron steadied himself, his brow furrowed in deep concentration. "Strange... There's no treasure glow, not even a system prompt..."
Nami was equally baffled. "A dud? But since when does a dud cause an earthquake?!"
Chopper clung to Ron's leg for dear life, tears streaming down his furry face. "An E-E-Earthquake! Did we dig into a magma chamber?! Is the volcano going to erupt?!"
As confusion and dread gripped them,
Robin suddenly gasped, her slender finger shooting out to point into the distance. "Look!"
On the eastern coastline of the island, a shaft of brilliant, pure blue light pierced the sky like a divine sword!
The light was so intensely pure it was almost transparent, yet it thrummed with energy that made their hearts pound.
Then—
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
A series of thunderous detonations erupted in sequence along Jaya's entire coastline. Countless identical beams of blue light shot skyward from all directions!
These radiant pillars of light wove together hundreds of meters in the air, finally connecting to form a massive, shimmering blue dome of energy that encased the entire island!
....
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