After sailing all morning, Queen finally steered the ship toward a strange boundary line on the ocean.
On one side, the North Blue was choppy, with waves rolling and wind blowing.
On the other side, the water was unnaturally flat, like a giant sheet of glass.
From Queen's grave expression, crossing this line was not just a trip; it was a gamble with death.
The ship's engine slowed down, the paddle wheels spinning gently to a halt.
"What's going on? Why have we stopped?"
Raleigh, who had been napping on the sofa he had brought on deck, woke up.
He sensed the change in momentum and sat up, rubbing his eyes.
Queen stood at the helm.
He didn't look back immediately. He stared at the still water ahead with trembling eyes.
"Raleigh-sama," Queen said softly. "We have reached the edge of the Calm Belt. Do you... do you still decide to enter?"
"Nonsense!" Raleigh snapped, standing up and stretching his stiff muscles. "If we aren't entering the Calm Belt, why did I come all this way? Do you think I'm here for a picnic?"
If Raleigh didn't know the MADS organization was hiding in there, he wouldn't have come alone.
He wasn't stupid.
He knew he couldn't swim back if the ship capsized. But the prize—Dr. Vegapunk—was worth the risk.
Queen turned around.
His face was pale and serious.
"Raleigh-sama, please listen," Queen warned. "The Calm Belt is the nest of the Sea Kings. We might encounter monsters you cannot imagine. If they don't actively attack us, I beg you... please do not initiate an attack against them."
Queen was genuinely afraid.
He feared that this Marine officer, despite his monstrous strength, was arrogant.
He feared Raleigh didn't understand the true terror of this place.
"In the Four Seas," Queen explained, his voice shaking, "the largest Sea Kings are only a few hundred meters long. But here? In the Calm Belt? A hundred-meter Sea King is just a baby. It is merely a snack for the real monsters."
Queen shivered as a memory resurfaced.
"During one deep dive I did for research... I accidentally witnessed a Sea King moving in the trench. It was over three thousand meters long. That sight nearly stopped my heart. My brain simply stopped working."
Queen swallowed hard. "And that wasn't even the biggest one. Based on Dr. Vegapunk's calculations from traces we found, there are things down there exceeding five kilometers in length. A single monster as big as an island."
Raleigh listened quietly.
He saw the genuine terror in Queen's eyes.
"Hmm," Raleigh grunted, "I know my limits."
He lazily lay back on the sofa, though his eyes were now alert. He knew when to fight and when to stay quiet.
As the ship slowly drifted forward, crossing the invisible line into the Calm Belt, Raleigh noticed something on his wrist.
The needle of his Log Pose was spinning aimlessly.
"The magnetic field here is chaotic," Raleigh noted. "How did you manage to pinpoint the location of your base so accurately without a compass?"
Queen didn't hide anything. "Recording indicators struggle here. But Eternal Poses work. Before we made those, we used Vivre Cards to find the direction."
"I see," Raleigh nodded. That made sense.
However, as the ship moved deeper into the zone, Raleigh suddenly felt a strange sensation.
Or rather, a lack of sensation.
It was as if he had stepped into a vacuum.
In the outside world, Raleigh was a god of the wind.
The natural breeze was his eyes and ears. It carried information to him from miles away.
But here?
Not a trace of wind could be found.
The air was dead.
"So this is the Calm Belt," Raleigh murmured. His expression involuntarily turned grave.
For others, the Calm Belt was just a dangerous place where ships couldn't sail.
But for Raleigh, it was a prison that suppressed his abilities.
Without the wind, his "omnipotent" perception vanished.
His sensory domain, which usually covered an entire island, shrank instantly to a mere two-kilometer radius.
He felt blind.
Raleigh walked to the railing and looked down. The water was so clear and still that he could see deep into the abyss.
Far below, he saw shadows.
Enormous, serpentine shadows moving slowly in the darkness. They were veritable titans—monsters that could swallow fleets whole.
Thankfully, these monsters were deep underwater and showed no interest in the tiny speck of a ship on the surface.
'If the Sea Kings are this terrifying,' Raleigh thought, staring at a shadow that seemed to stretch for miles, 'then how horrifying is the Ancient Weapon Poseidon that controls them?'
"And if Poseidon is that strong... what about the weapon Uranus that the World Government holds?"
The World Government had ruled for eight hundred years. They had survived rebellions, pirates, and wars.
They had erased history.
'I cannot underestimate them,' Raleigh told himself. 'Imu. The God's Knights. The Five Elders. They are the real monsters.'
However, Raleigh didn't feel despair
"This is exactly why I need Vegapunk," Raleigh decided firmly.
To fight monsters, he needed his own monsters.
He needed the technology, the science, and the power that MADS possessed.
He couldn't just cooperate with Vegapunk; he had to own him. He had to pull the genius into his own organization.
While Raleigh was lost in his deep thoughts, staring at the abyss, Queen was busy.
Queen stood at the helm, his back to Raleigh. His face was covered in sweat, but his eyes were calculating.
Quietly, subtly, his finger moved to a hidden panel under the steering wheel.
Click.
He pressed a red emergency button.
...
Deep within the Calm Belt, on a lush, jungle-covered island, a hidden facility lay underground.
The laboratory was usually a place of quiet humming and clicking machines.
But suddenly, the silence was broken.
WEE-OOO! WEE-OOO!
Red alarm lights began to flash on every wall, bathing the sterile white corridors in an ominous crimson glow.
In one of the labs, a tall, imposing man in a metal helmet looked up. It was Vinsmoke Judge.
"An intruder alert?" Judge frowned.
He dropped his test tubes and rushed out of his lab, heading straight for the main control room.
He reached the heavy metal door of the Chief's office.
Just as Judge was about to push the door open, it slid open automatically.
Standing there was a man with a disproportionately large head and a tongue that often stuck out.
It was the young Dr. Vegapunk.
"Come in, Judge," Vegapunk said calmly. His expression showed no surprise, only calculation.
"What happened, Vegapunk?" Judge asked urgently. "My research on the Lineage Factor was just getting stable. Why the alarm?"
Vegapunk walked to a bank of monitors.
"It is a silent alert from our paddle-ship," Vegapunk explained, typing rapidly on a keyboard. "I checked the logs. It was Queen and Caesar who took the ship out secretly."
Vegapunk sighed, shaking his head.
"They frequently sneak out to plunder test subjects because they are impatient. But this time... the signal is different."
"Based on the pattern," Vegapunk pointed to a flashing red dot on the map, "they triggered the distress beacon on their return trip."
Judge's mustache twitched.
He narrowed his eyes. "So, they have been compromised? Have they led an enemy to us?"
"It appears so," Vegapunk nodded. "We will have a guest arriving soon. A guest strong enough to make Queen panic."
Vegapunk turned to Judge. "Order everyone to raise the alert level to maximum. We cannot let our research be destroyed."
"Yes, Leader."
Judge turned and barked orders into a communicator.
Throughout the base, scientists in yellow hazmat suits stopped their work.
They filed into the control room, flipping switches and activating defense protocols.
...
Above the underground fortress, the island seemed peaceful.
It was covered in a dense, ancient forest.
But as the scientists pressed their buttons deep underground, the forest began to change.
Whirrr... Click.
Hidden metal hatches in the ground slid open.
From the shadows of the trees and the darkness of the caves, movement stirred.
Mechanical joints hissed. heavy paws crunched on the leaves.
One by one, pairs of glowing crimson eyes lit up in the mysterious corners of the woods.
The guardians of MADS were waking up, and they were hungry for intruders.