Two thousand meters above the East Blue, the floating landmass of Merveille drifted silently through the sea of clouds.
On the western terrace of the obsidian citadel, Arthur sat cross-legged upon a slab of black granite, the twin Meito Oto and Kogarashi resting across his knees.
His golden eyes were closed, his breathing attuned to the vast atmospheric currents beneath him.
Behind him, the foundation of his future empire functioned with quiet precision: Buggy drilled his micro-segmentation artillery against reinforced stone barriers, Kaya cataloged rare botanical extracts in her west-wing laboratory with Merry, and Makino oversaw the fortress’s provisions.
Arthur’s spiritual senses, sharpened by two years of Golden Lion Shiki’s brutal drills, stretched downward like an invisible web.
Through the cloud ceiling, he felt the life signatures on the sea below.
He felt Monkey D.
Luffy’s chaotic presence at the ocean restaurant Baratie, followed hours later by the desperate, starving aura of Don Krieg’s battered galleon limping in from the Grand Line.
And then, the sea turned dead silent.
A solitary presence—cold, razor-sharp, and solitary as an executioner’s blade—entered the perimeter.
‘He has arrived,’ Arthur thought, his eyes slowly opening.
Down on the calm waters of the Sambas region, the mist parted around a small, coffin-shaped black boat bearing a single green candle.
Resting upon it was the World’s Strongest Swordsman: “Hawkeye” Dracule Mihawk.
With a single, effortless draw of the Black Blade Yoru, an arc of emerald-green flying slash energy tore through the atmosphere, cleanly bifurcating Krieg’s massive, three-masted flagship down the center.
The splintered behemoth groaned, collapsing into two sinking halves.
From the floating deck of the Baratie, Roronoa Zoro stepped forward, his heart burning with an all-consuming ambition.
What followed was swift and unforgiving.
Mihawk halted Zoro’s fiercest three-blade techniques with a three-inch cross knife, piercing his chest.
Yet, when Zoro refused to retreat an inch, choosing death over surrender, Mihawk granted the fledgling swordsman the honor of Yoru, leaving a ceremonial diagonal wound across his chest that spared his life.
Zoro fell into the sea, raising his broken blade toward the heavens and weeping his eternal vow to Luffy: “I WILL NEVER LOSE AGAIN!”
Mihawk flicked the crimson residue from Yoru and sheathed the massive black cross across his back.
The surrounding pirates and cooks held their breath, expecting the solitary warlord to return to his coffin boat and vanish into the fog.
Mihawk, however, did not move.
His sharp raptor eyes narrowed into needlepoints.
His posture subtly shifted, his hand remaining poised near the hilt of his sword.
His Observation Haki, among the keenest in the world, had pierced the atmospheric haze directly overhead.
Pressing down upon the Baratie was not the mortal panic of the sea, but an overwhelming, suffocating presence—a density of spirit that warped the air currents, radiating the primordial majesty of an apex predator and the dormant crackle of Conqueror’s Haki.
Mihawk tilted his head back, his voice carrying like cold steel across the quiet waves.
“You have lingered in the heavens long enough,” Mihawk said, his tone razor-sharp.
“Are you going to hide above the clouds, or will you descend to the mortal sea?”
The cooks and pirates blinked in confusion, but before anyone could question the warlord’s words, the heavens answered.
The cloud ceiling violently parted.
Down from the sky plummeted a towering, majestic silhouette.
From Arthur’s broad shoulders spanned a magnificent pair of crimson-and-gold scaled draconic wings, their wingspan exceeding fifteen meters.
With a single, concussive beat of the draconic pinions that sent shockwaves across the water, Arthur decelerated with aristocratic poise, touching down weightlessly upon the splintered prow of Krieg’s sinking flagship.
As his polished black boots settled onto the wood, the draconic wings smoothly folded and dissolved into his back, leaving his black greatcoat untouched.
“AAARRRTHUUUURRR?!”
Luffy’s jaw dropped so violently it nearly struck the Baratie’s deck railing, his eyes bulging out of his skull.
“YOU HAVE DRAGON WINGS?!”
Beside him, Usopp clutched his head in wide-eyed realization.
“A dragon!
He’s a mythical dragon monster!
That’s how he carried Kaya’s entire mansion into the sky!
He just flew it up with his dragon wind and wings!”
Arthur’s golden eyes held a trace of quiet amusement.
Let them believe what they wished.
If the simple-minded Straw Hats assumed his dragon form had lifted the estate through aerial wind manipulation and monstrous brute strength alone, it only buried the truth of the Fuwa Fuwa no Mi even deeper.
A true sovereign never revealed his entire hand to the world.
Arthur looked toward Luffy, offering a calm, cultured smile.
“I was merely cruising through the upper airspace, Luffy,” Arthur said smoothly.
“I told you in Foosha Village that we would meet on the Grand Line, but when a presence of this caliber appeared beneath my clouds…
I could hardly ignore it.
It seems fate has a peculiar sense of timing.”
Luffy beamed, rubbing his nose excitedly, but Mihawk’s yellow raptor eyes remained locked entirely upon Arthur.
Mihawk’s gaze drank in the sheer, suffocating vitality radiating from Arthur’s frame.
“A Mythical Dragon Zoan…
a bloodline of extraordinary pedigree.”
Then, Mihawk’s eyes dropped to the twin Meito resting at Arthur’s left hip.
The polished shark-skin hilts.
The crimson and gold scabbards.
The bloodthirsty hum vibrating from the folded steel.
Mihawk’s pupils dilated slightly.
“Those blades…” Mihawk’s voice dropped into a dangerous, icy register.
“Oto and Kogarashi.
The twin Meito of Golden Lion Shiki.”
Mihawk took a measured step across the floating debris, his hawk eyes boring into Arthur’s golden pupils.
“Three months ago, Shiki’s Vivre card in Impel Down burned into ash.
The Marines claimed he died of old age in the skies.
But blades of that caliber do not yield to scavengers.
Did you slaughter the old lion in his slumber?”
Arthur’s expression remained calm, regal, and composed.
“Shiki was my master,” Arthur stated clearly, his voice carrying the unyielding weight of respect for the dead legend.
“For two brutal years on Merveille, he drilled me in the breath of all things and the unsparing cruelty of the sea.
When his final hour approached, we crossed blades in an honorable duel to the death.
He entrusted his twin Meito and his legacy to me before drawing his final breath.”
A rare, fierce spark of genuine intrigue ignited within Mihawk’s yellow eyes.
A disciple who had survived the crucible of a legend from Roger and Whitebeard’s era, inherited his supreme blades, cultivated the primordial might of an ancient dragon, and now walked the sea with an aura that eclipsed even vice admirals.
“A master who forged his own successor…” Mihawk’s lips curled into a rare, sharp smile.
“Fascinating.”
Arthur rested his right hand lightly upon the hilt of Oto, his crimson dragon aura faintly shimmering beneath his greatcoat, warping the surrounding air.
“I am Arthur Pendragon,” Arthur declared, his voice ringing with the calm, undisputed authority of an emperor.
“I am gathering twelve individuals worthy of standing beneath my banner at the Round Table.”
Mihawk raised an eyebrow, his fingers lightly brushing the leather grip of the Black Blade Yoru.
“And you believe your banner is worthy of my shadow?” Mihawk asked coolly.
Arthur drew Oto and Kogarashi an inch from their scabbards.
A razor-sharp, golden blade-light leaked into the afternoon sun, cleanly slicing the sea breeze in two.
“No,” Arthur replied with a quiet, dangerous smile.
“I intend to prove it.”