Chapter 77: The Dragon's Call and the Dead Zone

The return to Water 7 was executed with absolute silence.

The Titan’s Glory descended from the dark night sky, guided purely by the Sky-Rift Roc, slipping through the cloud cover and settling into our hidden inlet just hours before dawn.

The massive city of water and shipbuilding remained entirely undisturbed, completely unaware that a Warlord’s flying fortress had just dropped into its backyard.

I didn’t wait for the sun to rise.

I left the crew to sleep and made my way through the quiet canals straight to Dock 1.

The lights inside the Galley-La mayoral office were still burning brightly.

When I pushed the heavy oak doors open, Franky and Iceburg were standing over a workbench, greasy, exhausted, and wearing massive, identical grins.

“SUPER timing, Victor!” Franky boomed, striking his signature pose, his cyborg arms clanking together.

Resting on the velvet cloth of the workbench was the Portal Gun.

It was a masterpiece of multiversal tech being integrated together.

The heavy, magical brass housing of the Sun Wood gun had been perfectly retrofitted.

Tony Stark and Reed Richards’ silver, fixed-point spatial sphere was now seamlessly embedded into the firing chamber, glowing with a faint, steady, high-tech blue hum.

“We had to completely strip the mystical conduits and replace them with high-density energy accumulators,” Iceburg explained, wiping oil from his cheek while his pet mouse, Tyrannosaurus, squeaked from his pocket.

“But the Adam Wood core holds the spatial displacement perfectly.

You set the coordinates, pull the trigger, and it bridges the gap instantly.

No magic.

Just pure, unbreakable science.”

I picked up the heavy weapon.

It felt perfectly balanced.

“Incredible work.

Both of you.”

“We built that flying fortress of yours, Victor.

We weren’t going to let its captain walk around with sub-par tech,” Iceburg smiled, crossing his arms.

“Safe travels, Warlord.

If you ever need repairs, Water 7’s docks will always be open to the Verdant Abyss Pirates.”

“Thanks,” I nodded, securing the gun.

“I’ll have a small gift for both of you delivered to your workshop.”

By mid-morning, I stood at the helm of the Titan’s Glory, the morning sea breeze rushing over the deck.

I had just finished listening to the morning’s encrypted Marine intelligence reports, relayed through a secure, black-shelled Warlord Den-Den Mushi.

Sengoku wasn’t bluffing.

The grace period was officially at exactly two months.

The reports detailed massive Marine fleet movements consolidating near the Red Line, establishing blockades and chokepoints.

They were setting the stage.

Once that clock hit zero, any Warlord lingering in Paradise would be heavily “encouraged” to cross into the New World to deal with Kaido’s escalating, violent temper tantrums.

Before I could call the crew to discuss the timeline, a sharp, piercing sound cut through the air.

Puru-puru-puru-puru!

It was a golden, heavily armored Den-Den Mushi sitting inside Jasmine’s coat.

Jasmine stopped leaning against the railing.

Her cheerful demeanor instantly evaporated, replaced by the hardened, razor-sharp focus of a Revolutionary Commander.

She pulled the golden snail out and answered it.

“Commander Jasmine,” a deep, impossibly heavy voice echoed from the receiver.

Even through the snail, the sound of howling, violent winds could be heard in the background.

“Dragon,” Jasmine replied softly, standing perfectly straight.

I walked over, Law and Robin stepping closer as well, sensing the shift in gravity on the deck.

“We have a situation in the South Blue,” Monkey D.

Dragon stated, his voice devoid of any warmth, purely tactical.

“Operation Centaur has been severely compromised.

CP0 agents have infiltrated the rebel staging grounds.

Two of our regional leaders are captured, and the uprising is on the verge of a total slaughter.”

Jasmine’s jaw tightened.

“What do you need?”

“I need my heavy-hitter,” Dragon said.

“I need your lightning.

Your vacation in Paradise is over, Commander.

A covert retrieval ship is waiting for you at the Water 7 Blue Station.

I need you in the South Blue within a week.”

“Understood,” Jasmine said, without a single second of hesitation.

“I’m on my way.”

She hung up the receiver.

The golden snail clicked shut.

Silence fell over the deck.

Laura and Gwen, who had grown incredibly attached to Jasmine over the last week, stared at her in shock.

Jasmine had been the one teaching them Haki, translating the violence of their old world into the violence of this one.

“You’re leaving?” Gwen asked, the symbiote rippling nervously over her hands.

Jasmine turned, a sad, apologetic smile on her face.

“I have to, Gwen.

I’m a pirate, but I’m a Revolutionary first.

People are dying.

I have to go stop it.”

Palmon trotted forward, her pink flower blooming brightly.

She didn’t look at Jasmine instead, she looked directly at Gwen and Laura.

“Where she goes, I go,” Palmon told the girls, her voice filled with absolute, unshakeable loyalty.

“I’m her partner.

We fight together.”

Gammamon walked up slowly, his large eyes welling up with tears.

He wrapped his tiny, white arms around Palmon’s green stem in a tight, emotional hug.

“Be safe, Palmon.

Don’t let the bad guys hurt you.”

Palmon smiled softly, gently wrapping a vine around Gammamon to pat his head.

“I’ll be fine, little guy.

You make sure you protect the crew while we’re gone.”

Jasmine stood up and looked at me.

The unspoken weight of our journey hung between us.

We had fought through the underworld together, crossed dimensions together, and built this crew together.

Facing the New World without her felt like walking into a hurricane with half a ship.

“I’ll meet you in the New World,” Jasmine promised, holding her fist out.

“Don’t sink the boat before I get back.”

I bumped my fist against hers, channeling a brief, silent pulse of Conqueror’s Haki a promise of absolute survival.

“Give CP0 hell, Jas.

We’ll leave a light on for you.”

Within thirty minutes, she was gone.

Jasmine and Palmon disembarked, heading into the city to catch the Revolutionary transport.

Her departure left a massive, undeniable void on the deck.

The crew felt it.

Jasmine was our crowd control, our lightning rod, and the emotional anchor for the new girls.

Without her, the overall combat power of the Verdant Abyss Pirates had taken a massive hit.

“Alright, listen up,” I announced, my voice cold and carrying the absolute authority of a Warlord, cutting through the somber mood.

Law, Robin, Brook, Laura, Gwen, Perona, Gammamon and the Heart pirates Bepo, Penguin, and Shachi gathered around the main mast.

“Sengoku’s timer is officially at two months,” I told them.

“Jasmine is gone.

Which means the margin for error just dropped to zero.

We are not ready for the New World.

We are not ready for Doflamingo, and we are certainly not ready for Kaido.

So, for the next month, we are going off the map.”

“Where are we going, Victor?” Laura asked, her claws sliding out an inch instinctively.

I looked out toward the endless, blue horizon.

“We are going to the dead zone.

We are flying into the Calm Belt.”

That evening, the Sky-Rift Roc carried us high above the ocean, bypassing the standard shipping lanes and flying directly into the heart of the Calm Belt.

The air grew stiflingly still.

The ocean below was as flat and reflective as a pane of dark glass, completely devoid of currents or wind.

The silence was oppressive, broken only by the occasional, terrifying breach of a Sea King the size of a mountain range.

We scouted from the air for two days before we finally found it.

Sitting in the middle of the dead ocean was a massive, uncharted island.

It wasn’t a tropical paradise.

It was a primal, brutal wasteland covered in towering, prehistoric jungles, jagged black mountains, and swamps that smelled of sulfur.

Looking through the ship’s spyglass, I could see shadows moving through the canopy of ancient, monstrous beasts that made the Sea Kings look like guppies.

“Hold position,” I ordered.

The Titan’s Glory hovered a safe distance offshore, held steady by the Roc.

I gathered Law, Robin, Perona, Laura, Gwen, and Brook at the edge of the boarding ramp.

“This is Goliath’s Rest,” I told them, making the name up on the spot.

“The air is thin, and everything on that rock wants to eat you.

This will be your crucible.”

I looked at all of them.

“You are deploying without me.

Your directive is simple: survive.

Conquer the apex predators of this island using only Haki, your Devil Fruits, your blades, and your instincts.

No running.

No hiding.”

“A survival course,” Law smirked, adjusting his nodachi.

“Fine by me.”

“Yohoho!

A true test of the soul!” Brook cheered, though his bony knees knocked together slightly.

“Wait,” Gwen said, looking at the dense, terrifying jungle.

“You’re sending us down there alone?”

“Not entirely,” I said.

I looked down at the little white triceratops standing beside my boots.

“Gammamon.

You are going with them.”

“I get to fight?!” Gammamon beamed, his tail wagging excitedly.

“No,” I said firmly, crouching down to his eye level.

“You are the failsafe.

You do not hunt.

You do not intervene.

You let them fight their own battles, no matter how badly they get beaten.

You only step in if they are facing absolute, unavoidable death.

Do you understand your orders, soldier?”

Gammamon stood incredibly straight, giving me a perfectly serious, tiny salute.

“Yes, Victor!

I will act as the last resort!”

“Good.

Now jump.”

Then all of them leaped from the deck, plummeting toward the dense, hostile jungle below.

I watched them disappear beneath the canopy, knowing that the next few weeks were going to break them down to their absolute core.

With the survival team deployed into the meat grinder, I didn’t waste a second.

I locked myself inside the ship’s heavily reinforced medical bay.

The Food Synthesizer sat quietly in the corner, and arrayed on the stainless steel tables were several deep-frozen blood and tissue samples I had collected from a Sea King we had killed on the way here.

I pulled the mystic pouch from my hip, withdrawing the two glowing glass vials of the pure super soldier serum.

This serum was the ultimate wildcard.

In the Marvel universe, it granted powers to ordinary humans, but often with catastrophic psychological side effects or literal cellular meltdown if the body rejected it.

I needed to know exactly how Grand Line biology, specifically biology altered by Devil Fruits or mutations, would react to it.

I wasn’t a trained scientist, but I had enough basic common sense and an understanding of my own powers to run a control group.

Alongside the Sea King tissue, I used blood samples I had discreetly taken from the crew during their routine physicals, and my own blood, to cross-reference the reactions.

I put on a pair of sterile gloves and went to work.

Over the next seventy-two hours, I avoided sleep.

I ran continuous, grueling chemical analyses, isolating the serum’s genetic rewriting protocols and testing them against our Lineage Factors.

On the fourth day, sitting under the harsh fluorescent lights of the lab, I finally cracked the code.

I stared at the chemical breakdown on the monitors, the terrifying, absolute rules that Compound V followed in this universe becoming crystal clear.

“Fascinating,” I muttered, leaning back in my chair and rubbing my exhausted eyes.

As I listed all the basic rules it followed.

Rule 1: The Baseline Rule.

If a subject possessed absolutely no existing superpowers, no Devil Fruit, no alien symbiote, no adamantium mutations, the pure Compound V acted exactly as it did in its home universe.

It mutated them permanently, granting permanent superhuman abilities.

However, the Grand Line was ruthless.

If the baseline human lacked immense physical fortitude or Haki, the serum would violently tear their cells apart, melting them from the inside out just like Krieg’s unfortunate test subjects.

Rule 2: The Overdrive Rule.

This was the breakthrough.

If a subject already possessed a superpower, if their Lineage Factor had already been altered by a Devil Fruit, or if they were a mutant like Laura, their advanced biology viewed the super soldier serum as a hostile, invasive rewrite.

The body would violently reject a permanent mutation.

But, it would accept the raw, kinetic energy of the serum as a temporary fuel source.

I looked at the notes I had scribbled across the whiteboard.

If I injected Law, Robin, Laura, or myself with pure Compound V, we wouldn’t get laser eyes or flight.

Instead, the serum would act as an apocalyptic adrenaline shot.

It would grant the user exactly a 19-minute boost.

For those 19 minutes, their physical strength, Haki output, and Devil Fruit capacity would be exponentially multiplied by exactly five times.

Once the 19 minutes were up, the body’s immune system would burn the serum out completely, leaving the user exhausted but completely unharmed by the usual cellular degradation.

I picked up the glowing blue vial, holding it up to the light.

A Warlord of the Sea with five times his normal physical strength and Haki capacity for nineteen minutes.

Law, able to expand his Room to cover an entire island without exhausting his stamina.

Robin, blooming massive, gigantified limbs imbued with impossible strength.

“Who needs a army,” I whispered to the empty room, a dangerous, razor-sharp smile spreading across my face.

“We just need nineteen minutes to kill a god.”

I carefully packed the vials into a specialized, shock-proof auto-injector casing.

The trump card was ready.

Now, I just had to wait for my crew to survive the jungle.

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