When the shockwave created by the Spear of Elbaf finally dissipated, a vast ravine stretched out before El, its end nowhere in sight.
At the bottom of that ravine lay a single figure.
Gecko Moria.
Although the translucent white beam unleashed earlier had burst straight out of Thriller Bark, its remaining force had not been enough to throw Moria completely off the island ship.
Moving at high speed, El appeared in front of the fallen Warlord.
Gecko Moria lay motionless, completely unconscious.
After confirming Moria's condition with Observation Haki, El did not call Kuina over to use electrotherapy to pull him back from the brink of death.
Instead, he crouched down, placed a hand on Moria's head, and consumed a small amount of Haki.
He began to read his memories.
Not long after, El opened his eyes.
He had found it.
The hiding place of the black blade Shusui.
If Senior Koushirou ever learned that Gecko Moria had stuffed the corpse of his ancestor together with that famous sword into a freezer, he would probably leave East Blue on the spot and come here just to cut Moria down.
El looked at Gecko Moria with a strange expression and snorted softly.
"There really isn't a single swordsman in the Gecko Pirates…"
Neither Gecko Moria nor his three cadres had any appreciation for the national treasure of Wano—
the strongest black blade left behind hundreds of years ago.
To them, Shusui was nothing more than an object.
So Moria had casually tossed it into cold storage—
together with the corpse of Shimotsuki Ryuma.
"Nii-san, is this pirate dead?"
At that moment, the three girls rushed over.
Looking at Gecko Moria lying on the ground like a corpse, Nami's eyes instantly turned into Belly symbols, glittering with excitement.
Carina rolled her eyes.
"You idiot—don't tell me you're thinking about turning in his head for a bounty?"
She crossed her arms and continued,
"This guy is one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea—one of the few legal great pirates."
"Do you know what that means?"
"It means that no matter how high Gecko Moria's bounty was before, it stopped the moment he became a Warlord."
"Even if you chop off his head and sell it on the black market, you won't get a single Belly."
"Eh—?! How can that be?!"
Nami's face instantly fell.
"No," El said, shaking his head.
"He's not dead yet."
"If we want to recruit Perona, we can't kill him."
He glanced at the unconscious Moria.
"Perona was taken in by Gecko Moria when she was very young. To her, he wasn't just a captain—he was also a father figure."
"When Perona wakes up, we'll use Gecko Moria's life as a bargaining chip and let her leave with us of her own will."
"If that's the case, then leave it to us!"
Carina smiled and patted her chest confidently.
"Nii-san, you can go get the black sword, Shusui."
El smiled, reached out, and patted Carina's head.
"Alright. I'll leave things here to you."
He nodded to Nami and Kuina.
Then his body blurred, turning into an afterimage as he shot out of the castle.
Having already read Gecko Moria's memories, El easily found the location of the Ice Warehouse.
The door alone was enormous—
larger than every other door in the castle combined.
If someone didn't know any better, they might have thought it led to a treasure vault overflowing with gold and silver rather than a freezer.
When El pushed the door open, the first thing that entered his sight was—
A frozen giant corpse.
It was an indescribably massive body, several times larger than Brogy, whom El had seen back on Little Garden.
This was the legendary giant who had shaken the world five hundred years ago—
Oars,
known as the "Continent-Puller."
At his peak, Oars had stood sixty-seven meters tall.
Even in death, his corpse was too large to lie down.
It could only sit upright, leaning against the wall, its entire body sealed beneath a thick layer of ice.
The sheer scale of Oars' remains explained why the Ice Warehouse itself had been built so absurdly large.
El only spared Oars' corpse a brief glance.
Compared to that giant body, what lay beside it was like an ant.
A coffin.
El walked over and opened it.
Inside lay another corpse—
clad in a simple white kimono.
This man had also been famous throughout the world hundreds of years ago.
In his era, he was the undisputed greatest swordsman, the man who once slayed a dragon—
The Sword God of Wano,
the ancestor of Koushirou and Kuina—
Shimotsuki Ryuma.
Even so, El merely glanced at Ryuma's remains.
His gaze quickly shifted—
To the sword resting beside him.
The black blade Shusui.
A sword even rarer than the Supreme Grade Swords (Saijō Ō Wazamono).
Only a swordsman who stood at the absolute peak of swordsmanship could temper a blade into a black sword through countless battles, using Armament Haki.
El reached out, lifted Shusui from the coffin, and slowly drew it from its sheath.
The blade gleamed faintly under the cold light.
"It's heavier than Wado Ichimonji," El murmured,
"though their lengths are almost the same."
"Wado is actually a bit thicker."
He examined the sword carefully.
"The reddish-purple zigzag pattern… not a single trace of damage, even after hundreds of years."
He smiled.
"So this is the toughness of a true black blade."
El slid Shusui back into its sheath and fastened it to his belt.
"As expected of the strongest sword. From today onward—
you are my exclusive weapon."
With El's talent, it would only take ten or twenty years to temper an ordinary famous sword into a black blade—
just like Hawkeye or Ryuma once did.
But El didn't have that kind of time.
In less than nine years, the main storyline of the world would begin.
By the time a newly tempered black blade was ready, the most turbulent era might already be over.
Moreover—
The black blades of Hawkeye and Ryuma possessed extremely high metal density and the greatest toughness in the world.
Such swords required:
precious, rare materials
master-level forging
and extraordinary flames during creation
Even if Carina used her Devil Fruit to synthesize countless materials at random, the resulting blade might not even reach the same starting point as those legendary swords—
let alone be tempered into a black blade later.
In El's eyes—
Aside from the Shichiseiken (before it was purified), there was no famous sword that could compare to the Black Sword, Shusui, and Sandai Kitetsu Yoru.
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