After passing through the moat of the outer bailey, Luffy's group ascended the stairs to find themselves in a forest.
The further they ventured, the more peculiar creatures they encountered. There were trees with arms and legs, and a unicorn with a horn, having a drinking party with a bottle of sake in hand. There were also translucent ghosts that appeared, dancing softly.
The dim forest setting made it all the more eerie. The former posed no real threat, aside from Luffy trying to recruit them, but the latter caused a strange phenomenon where anyone who touched them became inexplicably depressed, leaving Luffy's group bewildered. Luffy, who had intended to catch and keep a ghost, was so angered by this that he was now fuming, vowing to "beat them to a pulp."
After passing through the forest, they came upon a graveyard, where corpses began to rise from the graves all around. It was an abnormal situation, to say the least. However, not one of them flinched, and they cut down the zombies one after another.
Having quickly dispatched them, the Straw Hat Pirates questioned the zombies and learned that Nami's group had gone to the mansion on the other side of the graveyard. Luffy was about to charge into the mansion, but other victims who had had their shadows stolen like Brook told him about the mastermind, Moria, and that they could be freed if he was defeated.
Luffy learned that to make Brook his crewmate, he either had to defeat the zombie that had been given his shadow, or defeat Moria himself. Laughing that his objective was now clear, he stormed Hogback's mansion to save Nami and the others, and to help Brook and make him his nakama.
***
—At the same time.
Behind Hogback's mansion, three of Moria's subordinates were meeting.
"Phew… that was a close one."
"Oi, Absalom… were you peeping in the bathhouse again?"
"Grrr… I'm looking for a bride, Hogback."
It looked as though Hogback was talking to thin air, but a reply had certainly come. After Hogback sighed at Absalom, who was looking around saying, "I can't see where you are. Show yourself," the man called Absalom quietly revealed himself.
The man who had appeared out of nowhere was an ability user who could turn invisible thanks to the Suke Suke no Mi. He was a pervert who had used this ability to sneak into the bathhouse and stare at Nami while she was bathing. He was eventually discovered and attacked by Usopp, but only the wall had been destroyed, and Absalom himself was unharmed.
"I've taken a liking to that woman!! I'm going to make her my bride!!"
"She's a wanted woman. I won't let you have her."
"This time there are six wanted criminals, and one of them is over 100 million. The captain is even 300 million!" the ghost Luffy's group had seen earlier cried out gleefully. Absalom sighed at its ecstatic voice.
"You know, Perona, for the government to put a 300 million bounty on someone means they've done something pretty big."
"If you understand that, then you should take this seriously too, Absalom. Tonight's 'night raid' is going to be a big job."
"I know."
With that, Absalom disappeared again, Perona's ghost flew off somewhere, and Hogback returned to the mansion.
Absalom made his way to the graveyard in front of Hogback's mansion and rallied the zombies, who had been carefully reburied head-first. Their bodies were corpses. No matter how much pain they felt, it was nothing more than a remnant of when they were alive. In essence, they felt no pain.
"Rise, my Soldier Zombies!! The General Zombies will settle the score with the pirates!! You just have to teach them the terror of the undead!!!"
The date was about to change. At the same time, the zombies would begin to move, and they would corner the trespassing Straw Hat Pirates. Let them be terrified as their comrades disappear one by one—Absalom laughed, planning to ultimately marry the bride, Nami.
Perhaps because he had found a woman to his liking, Absalom's steps were light as he next visited the tomb where the General Zombies slept.
"Now… the prey has entered our territory!! Go and rampage as you please tonight!!"
At Absalom's command, the General Zombies sleeping in their coffins awakened. A knight commander of a country, a pirate of infamous renown—all zombies who were once famed warriors had slain countless pirates as soldiers who knew no pain. It would be the same this time, Absalom thought as he surveyed them.
"Aah, honestly… what a slave driver. He could let me rest a little longer."
"Don't dawdle, 'Golden Lion' Shiki. Your infamous name from your past life will weep!"
"I know, I know…"
The sound of geta sandals echoed from the bald-headed man called Shiki, and he followed the other zombies out of the room.
As Absalom saw him off, a single zombie stood behind him.
"Absalom-sama," the voice called, sending a chill down Absalom's spine.
"Whoa!? Lola!? W-What are you doing!! Get to the battlefield!! I'm the commander, I'm not going to the front lines!!"
"Shut up!! Marry me!!"
"Why!!"
Lola, a zombie created with the shadow of a female warthog, pursued Absalom with relentless persistence. Her vigor was as if to say there could be no other man. Even the formidable Absalom was flustered by this momentum, and he even felt a sense of terror at Lola, who was doing as she pleased, such as trying to force him to stamp a marriage certificate the moment he looked away.
But this time, he tried to make her give up, showing her Nami's wanted poster.
"I'm going to marry a living woman!! Look at this woman, Lola!! She looks strong-willed, but there's a certain elegance to her… I will make this beautiful woman my bride!!!"
"Hmph, it'll just end in failure again."
"What do you mean, failure!! This woman is the only one worthy of being my bride!! Your curse ends here!!"
"…Then I'll just get rid of that bride first!!"
"Stop it!!!"
Absalom had to chase after Lola, who was now running at full speed to find Nami.
***
"…Hmm?"
Lola knew several routes through which captured pirates were taken to Moria. Listening for any commotion, thinking it was likely where she would be, she had been running at a speed that could shake off Absalom… but somewhere along the way, Absalom's voice and footsteps, which should have been chasing her, had disappeared. He was an invisible man. Judging that he had likely taken a different route to find the woman he wanted for his bride, concealing his footsteps so Lola wouldn't notice, Lola continued her search for Nami.
If she had been captured, she should have been taken from Hogback's mansion, through Perona's garden, to Moria's castle. Even if she hadn't passed through there, she might be able to get information from Perona's subordinates, the Wild Zombies. That was her reasoning—and it seemed she was right.
"I've found you, you cat burglar~~~~!!!"
Lola, with a sword in each hand, charged at the first Nami she saw, but her blades were blocked by a penguin zombie just before they could touch her.
"Ngh! Don't… get in my way!!"
Glancing at the easily-deflected penguin zombie, Lola fixed her gaze on Nami once more. Usopp and Chopper, who had been saying, "To acknowledge that thing as a woman, you're a real man," to the penguin zombie who had declared, "I will not kick a woman, even if it means my death," now sprang into action, realizing this was bad.
Usopp quickly used a Smoke Star to create a smokescreen, and Chopper put Nami on his back and fled from the surrounding Wild Zombies.
"For some reason, Nami is being targeted a lot."
"I know! It's so annoying!"
"Hey, I have a proposal… why don't we split up?"
"So you can use me as a decoy!!"
Usopp, who had been slapped, put on a serious face, which then turned to a tearful one as he looked at the large number of zombies chasing them from behind. Dealing with them would be more than just a pain. In the first place, they didn't even know how to defeat them. They knew they were afraid of fire from their previous encounter with zombies, but then again, even living humans were afraid of fire.
In order to escape somehow, Chopper, carrying Usopp and Nami, picked up even more speed.
***
"What is this ship?"
Perona had been rummaging through Luffy's ships, the Mini Merry II and the Thousand Sunny, as well as the wrecked ship that had gotten caught along with them, when she noticed another ship that had drifted ashore.
Only the Sunny and the wrecked ship had been detected by Perona's initial search. The Mini Merry II was known to have come from the Sunny, according to Absalom's testimony, and there was nothing suspicious about it. The remaining ship had drifted here unnoticed by anyone, and according to the zombie who had searched it, there was no money on board, only food and clothes. There was no mark on the sail, so they didn't even know if it was a pirate ship.
"There was a surprisingly large amount of money on board. To think this is the ship of the man who took down Crocodile… and yet there was nothing of value on the other two ships."
"There's an awful lot of food."
"He's got money to spare, so he probably bought a lot of food. Carry out the valuables and the food."
Drifting in the Florian Triangle, Thriller Bark had few means of resupplying. Since they survived by plundering food from the pirates they attacked, this was a welcome find. There were few living humans, so with this much food, they would be fine for a while.
"Perona-sama!"
"Hildon. What is it?"
A zombie with bat-like wings flew down to Perona from the sky. He often delivered messages directly, so there was likely some news.
"It seems they've captured Straw Hat Luffy! Moria-sama has decreed that No. 900 will be unveiled!"
"No. 900!? Is he serious!?"
No. 900, Hogback's masterpiece, was special. Moria had said he wanted to put a particularly strong shadow in it to make effective use of it, and it seemed a pirate worthy of it had finally appeared. Perona conveyed her acknowledgement and, after instructing the other zombies to carry out the food, she returned to the mansion.
Hildon took to the sky again and turned his gaze toward the forest, intending to relay the message to Absalom next. However, finding the invisible Absalom was a difficult task. If he weren't invisible, he would be easier to find, but even then, Thriller Bark itself was so large that he thought it would take some time.
—Until that moment.
"—Eh?"
With a thwip, a hole appeared in his wing.
With a hole in one wing, Hildon lost his balance and crashed into the forest. As Hildon was also a zombie, he felt no pain… but he couldn't comprehend what had happened and looked around frantically.
"What in the world…"
Even without pain, with a hole in one wing, he couldn't fly properly. He could only think that he had been attacked by someone, but the only people on this island should have been Moria's associates or someone from the Straw Hat crew, Hildon thought suspiciously.
In any case, he cautiously scanned his surroundings and was about to head back to Hogback's mansion—when in the next instant, both his knees were shot out, and he was left crawling on the ground.
"W-What's happening…"
"Even without pain, you can't ignore the structure of the human body, it seems."
A voice came from nowhere. A woman's voice he didn't recognize.
Looking at what had shot his knees, he saw that it was not bullets, but arrows. They looked like ordinary arrows, but his knees, struck with such terrifying force, were not just shattered, but his lower legs had been torn off.
When he opened his mouth to call for help, an arrow accurately struck his throat, making it impossible for him to even breathe properly, let alone speak. When he looked around, both his eyes were shot out, and his vision was stolen.
In the face of this one-sided violence, Hildon could do nothing but be terrified.
"You're tougher than I thought. To think your shadow won't come out even with this… I was wondering just how much I'd have to destroy you, but it seems it would be better to just use salt."
With the sound of something being dragged, someone approached.
Hildon had no way to resist. With his legs immobile, his voice gone, and his vision stolen, there was nothing he could do.
"What do you plan to do to Moria-sama…!"
"Oh, you're still conscious."
Hildon heard a familiar voice. But he could do nothing.
"Aren't you an ally of Moria-sama…!?"
"We were. Until now."
"What…!?"
"It's the way of pirates for friends and foes to change at the drop of a hat, isn't it? What's so surprising?"
"But… so suddenly…"
"Of course. If you know someone is going to become your enemy, the smart thing to do is to take care of them before they notice."
Hildon was purified at that point.
The conversation that followed was not heard by anyone else.