The humid warmth of Little Garden surrendered to a biting, merciless frost as the floating continent of Merveille navigated the northern jet streams of Paradise.
Cloaked within a dense veil of artificial thunderclouds, the imperial landmass glided silently through the upper atmosphere until the endless blue below vanished beneath a blinding desert of snow and jagged ice.
Below lay Drum Island.
Vast plains of powdered snow stretched across the frozen landscape, broken only by the Drum Rockies—a ring of colossal, sheer-faced mountains rising from the tundra like petrified ancient tree stumps.
Atop the highest and most precipitous mesa stood Drum Castle, its dark granite spires braving the perpetual blizzard that battered the peaks.
Standing on Merveille’s northern terrace, Arthur leaned against the frosted stone balustrade.
The sub-zero wind tugged at his crimson-lined black mantle, his breath pluming into pale mist.
At his flank, Laki stood in motionless silence, her tailored black combat armor insulated against the cold, her keen eyes scanning the white terrain with lethal vigilance.
Kaya stepped up beside them, bundled in a heavy woolen coat trimmed with white fur, a sealed leather case tucked firmly beneath her arm.
“The thermal conduits through the bedrock are holding,” Kaya said softly, her breath catching in the freezing air.
“The civilian sectors and the lower dinosaur reserves remain warm.
But Arthur…
why divert our course so far north?
Alabasta lies in the opposite direction.”
“An empire that cannot heal itself is merely an army waiting to rot, Kaya,” Arthur replied, his voice calm and measured.
“You have built a remarkable foundation with the Round Table Medical Academy.
But our future battles will pit us against toxic weapons, biological horrors, and the devastating violence of Marine Admirals.
Talent alone is not enough; we need an anchor who has stood at the summit of mortal medicine for over a century.”
Arthur gestured toward the distant, solitary castle perched atop the highest drum mesa.
“In that fortress lives Dr.
Kureha.
A woman of nearly one hundred and forty years who possesses surgical mastery and pharmacological wisdom that the scholars of Ohara would have envied.
You and Laki will accompany me down.
It is time to secure the crown jewel of our academy.”
With a subtle shift of the Fuwa Fuwa no Mi, gravity released its grip.
Enveloped in a warm, pressurized pocket of air, Arthur, Kaya, and Laki stepped over the precipice, descending silently through the blizzard.
They bypassed the frozen trails and the mechanical ropeway entirely.
Rising along the vertical cliff face like ghosts of the storm, they crested the summit and landed with whisper-soft steps upon the snow-buried courtyard of Drum Castle.
The vast fortress was hollow and silent, abandoned by its former king.
Yet, from a high arched window in the central tower, the warm glow of a hearth flickered against the drifting flakes, accompanied by the sweet, sharp scent of fermented plums and burning cedar.
Arthur strode toward the heavy oak doors of the royal clinic.
Before his boot could cross the threshold, a vicious whistle cut through the howling wind.
Fwip!
A surgical scalpel, thrown with blinding velocity and pinpoint lethal intent, sliced through the falling snow aimed squarely at Arthur’s throat.
Arthur did not flinch.
Without breaking his stride, he raised his right hand and caught the spinning blade between two fingers an inch from his neck, killing its momentum instantly.
“Not bad for a brat in expensive silk,” a raspy, gravelly voice cackled from the dim warmth beyond.
“Most men who interrupt my afternoon drink leave with an open windpipe.”
The heavy doors creaked open, revealing the eccentric matriarch of Drum Island.
Lounging in an ornate velvet armchair before a roaring stone fireplace was Dr.
Kureha.
She looked less like an ancient crone and more like an aging rock star who had violently refused to wither.
Clad in low-slung, flared denim trousers, a cropped burgundy top that brazenly displayed an impossibly toned midriff and a navel piercing, and a leather jacket draped over her shoulders, she exuded feral, youthful vitality.
Wild plumes of frizzy silver-gray hair framed a deeply wrinkled face, while a pair of small, purple-tinted sunglasses perched on the bridge of her hooked nose.
In her right hand, she casually swirled a bottle of aged plum liqueur, a thin wooden pipe dangling between her lips.
Her sharp, predatory gaze flicked over Arthur’s tall frame, assessed Laki’s coiled warrior stance, and finally settled on Kaya’s composed, intelligent face.
“I don’t remember putting out a welcome mat,” Kureha remarked, taking a long swig straight from the bottle and wiping her mouth with the back of her wrist.
“If you’re here begging for treatment, it’ll cost you half your wealth.
If you’re here to ask the secret of my youth…
I might dissect you just to pass the time.”
Laki’s hand drifted toward the hilt of her dagger at the woman’s abrasive tone, but Arthur raised a hand, stopping his bodyguard in place.
“A secret that has kept you vibrant for one hundred and thirty-nine years is beyond price, Doctor,” Arthur said smoothly, his deep baritone echoing with aristocratic authority.
“However, I have not come seeking medicine, nor do I require your youth.
I have come to offer you an empire.”
Kureha let out a sharp, mocking bark of laughter.
“Gahahahaha!
An empire?!
Listen to this arrogant little prince!
The last fool who sat in that chair called himself King Wapol, and he spent his miserable reign hoarding doctors like cattle until he choked on his own cowardice.
I don’t bow to kings, I don’t wear collars for the World Government, and I certainly don’t play nurse for pretty boys playing pirate.”
“Wapol was an insect fighting over crumbs on a frozen rock,” Arthur replied, stepping into the warmth of the hall.
“I am the Sovereign of Merveille.
Above this blizzard floats an airborne continent unbound by the laws of the sea, carrying its own people, its own military, and its own future.”
Arthur nodded to Kaya, who stepped forward with composed grace, unbuckling the brass latch of her leather case.
“This is Kaya,” Arthur continued.
“Chief Medical Officer of Merveille and founder of the Round Table Medical Academy.
She has built an institution to train the finest physicians this sea will ever know.
But brilliance requires historical depth.
I require a Grand Chancellor capable of standing above the summit of conventional science.”
Kureha snorted, blowing a plume of blue smoke toward the rafters.
“Words are cheap, boy.
Why should I leave my warm fire and my private mountain for your school?”
“Because your scientific curiosity will not allow you to turn away,” Arthur said calmly.
“Kaya.
Show her.”
Kaya opened the case, presenting a vacuum-sealed glass cylinder.
Inside rested a vibrant, pulsating specimen of emerald moss intertwined with a silver-veined flowering root, radiating an intense, pristine vitality that seemed impossible in the winter cold.
Kureha’s sunglasses slipped down her nose.
Her sharp eyes locked onto the plant, her cynical posture instantly evaporating.
“That root…” Kureha muttered, her voice dropping into intense, clinical precision.
“The cellular respiration…
it possesses an atmospheric pressure tolerance ten times greater than any Blue Sea flora.
The sap is rich in concentrated neuro-regenerative enzymes.
Where did you find this?”
“Ten thousand meters above the sea,” Kaya answered respectfully.
“In the sacred soil of Upper Yard, high in the White-White Sea.
We have harvested hundreds of species entirely unknown to the world below.
Furthermore, in the subterranean tiers of our floating continent, we have established a living prehistoric biosphere from Little Garden, filled with medicinal ferns and biological specimens that went extinct millions of years ago.”
Kaya placed the cylinder gently on the table beside Kureha’s wine.
“Dr.
Kureha,” Kaya said with quiet sincerity.
“We have the rarest pharmacological resources on the planet, an entire floating laboratory, and hundreds of students who want to heal the sick.
But we lack your century of clinical experience.
Teach us.
Help me build a medical foundation that no tyrant can ever hoard or control.”
Kureha stared at the glowing green root, her weathered fingers tapping rhythmically against the glass bottle.
For a physician who had spent a century pursuing the limits of pathology, the prospect of uncatalogued flora from the heavens and extinct prehistoric biology was an intellectual temptation she could barely contain.
Yet, she leaned back, blowing another stream of smoke, her gaze fixing onto Arthur with razor-sharp intensity.
“You’re sharp, boy.
Offering rare toys to an old researcher,” Kureha murmured, her voice low and dangerous.
“But a woman doesn’t reach nearly a hundred and forty without learning how to read men.
You don’t have the eyes of a savior.
You have blood on your hands and a hunger that reaches far beyond medicine.
What are you really after, Arthur Pendragon?”
Arthur held her gaze, unyielding.
“The world is sick, Doctor,” Arthur spoke, his tone carrying the weight of an executioner.
“The World Government keeps humanity trapped in artificial stagnation, guarding ancient secrets and hoarding longevity while entire nations starve in the dark.
A storm is coming.
A storm that will break the Three Great Powers, shatter the execution scaffolds of Marineford, and drag the ancient past into the light.”
Arthur stepped closer, his golden-flecked eyes burning with cold ambition.
“You knew him, didn’t you?
The man who carried the straw hat before this generation.
You know the truth of the name the Government tries so desperately to erase from the bounties.
You know the meaning of the Will of D.”
Kureha froze.
The pipe nearly slipped from between her lips.
The firelight danced across her stunned, lined face.
For decades, the World Government had flooded the seas with posters reading Gold Roger, methodically burying the middle initial that carried the world’s greatest taboo.
Almost no one alive understood the distinction.
Yet this young sovereign spoke it as a casual, undeniable fact.
“You…” Kureha whispered, her voice trembling slightly before she forced it back into an iron rasp.
She took a long, burning pull from her plum wine, staring at Arthur as if seeing a sovereign who had stepped directly out of the Void Century.
“You’re playing with fire that could reduce the four seas to ash, brat.”
“Then let it burn,” Arthur replied with absolute finality.
“Join Merveille, Dr.
Kureha.
Preside as Grand Chancellor of the Round Table Medical Academy.
I will give you unlimited resources, absolute academic autonomy, and biological specimens that no living physician will ever see.
In return, you will forge an imperial medical corps capable of keeping my vanguard alive when we tear down the world order.”
Silence settled over the great hall, broken only by the crackle of burning pine logs and the muffled shriek of the blizzard outside.
Slowly, Kureha’s shoulders dropped.
A wide, manic grin split her wrinkled face—the untamed, ferocious smile of a woman who had spent a century defying the rules of the world.
“Gahahahaha!
GHAHAHAHAHA!”
Her raucous cackle echoed through the stone fortress, louder than the storm itself.
She hurled her empty bottle into the hearth, where it shattered in a burst of sparks.
“A flying continent with extinct plants…
an academy of eager brats to boss around…
and a madman crazy enough to say that name out loud!” Kureha cackled, springing up from the armchair with startling, spring-loaded agility.
“If I stayed on this freezing rock, I’d die of boredom before I hit a hundred and fifty!”
She turned to Kaya, jabbing a sharp, calloused finger against the girl’s forehead.
“Listen well, apprentice.
I don’t tolerate sloppy incisions, and I don’t tolerate crybabies.
If you want to learn how to drag a soul back from the gates of death, you’d better be ready to work until your fingers bleed!”
Kaya smiled brightly, her eyes shining with fierce resolve.
“I am ready, Grand Chancellor.”
Kureha looked back at Arthur, her grin turning sharp.
“Don’t expect me to bow to your crown, brat.
But as long as you keep the wine flowing, the rare herbs coming, and let me cut open whatever I want, the Round Table will have the sharpest scalpels on the seven seas.”
“A Grand Chancellor does not bow to her King,” Arthur said, a rare, faint smile touching his lips.
“She ensures he lives to rule.”
With a sharp whistle from Kureha, her belongings were assembled with practiced speed—chests of antique surgical tools, dense medical manuscripts, barrels of aged plum wine, and her cherished wooden reindeer sleigh.
Through Arthur’s effortless gravitational control, the doctor’s entire archive lifted into the air, trailing behind them as they stepped out onto the snowy precipice of the mountain.
Above them, the veil of artificial thunderclouds parted.
The grand transport platforms of Merveille descended through the arctic mists, hoisting the living legend of medicine into the skies.
With its medical future firmly secured, the shadow of the Sky Sovereign turned southward, cutting cleanly through the frozen gales toward the scorching deserts of the Grand Line.
The sands of Alabasta lay ahead.