At this point in time, the sky islands did not yet have Enel as their “god.”
Thor and Shiki didn’t even need to take action themselves.
The Giant warriors alone were enough to conquer the entire sky island with ease.
Upper Yard.
Golden Lion Shiki sat comfortably on a golden throne, looking immensely satisfied.
His future was set!
Thor was practically the greatest ally heaven itself could have given him.
“So you’re the god of this sky island?”
Thor sat on an altar forged from gold.
Shandora certainly didn’t have a golden throne large enough for a Giant, so he could only make do.
He looked down at the sky islander prostrating himself before him.
Gan Fall.
Only twenty years old.
Thor hadn’t expected that even forty-eight years before the original story, this guy was already the god of Skypiea.
That was genuinely surprising.
“Please do not harm the people of the sky island. I am willing to submit and surrender the position of god to you.”
Despite his young age, Gan Fall was naturally unwilling.
But faced with the overwhelming strength of the Giant warriors, he had no choice but to submit.
The Divine Soldiers under Gan Fall’s command hadn’t even managed to put up a single round of resistance before being effortlessly defeated by the Giants.
Even Nola, the Lord of the Sky—a gigantic snake two hundred meters long—had been knocked unconscious by a single punch from the Giant child before him.
Right now, the Giant warriors were treating Nola like prey and discussing whether they should roast it whole or skin it and turn it into soup.
“Andhrímnir, don’t eat that snake. Keep it as a pet to guard the sky island instead. This place belongs to us from now on.”
Seeing that the Giant warriors were genuinely about to hoist the Lord of the Sky over a fire, Thor hurriedly stopped them.
“As you command, Prince Thor.”
Andhrímnir, the Naglfar’s head chef, regretfully lowered the meat saw in his hands.
He had wanted to taste what animals from the sky islands were like.
“You can continue serving as the god of this sky island. But from today onward, this place will fly the flag of the Viking Pirates.”
“Oh, right!”
Thor suddenly remembered something he had forgotten.
He turned toward Golden Lion, who was sitting on the golden throne smoking a cigar.
“Big Brother Shiki, what was your pirate crew called again?”
“My crew already disbanded. Just fly your own crew’s flag.”
Shiki spoke indifferently.
Because of Rocks’s Davy Back Fight, the pirate crew he had originally formed now existed only in name as the “Flying Pirates.”
But that didn’t matter.
As long as he had strength and wealth, he could recruit as many pirate underlings as he wanted.
After witnessing the strength of the Giant warriors, however, Shiki had already lost interest in recruiting ordinary pirate fodder.
It would be far better to use his relationship with Thor to recruit powerful Giant warriors directly from Elbaph.
That was the kind of force he needed to achieve his ambition of conquering the world.
“All right.”
Thor nodded.
In that case, the sky island would simply fly the flag of the Viking Pirates.
Because the sky islands were ten thousand meters above sea level, the Giant warriors couldn’t properly live here.
That meant Thor needed to subjugate the local population and use them to govern the territory.
Then came the next issue.
The one Thor cared about most.
“Do you know of the sky island called Birka?”
There was more than one sky island in the One Piece world.
The sky island above the Grand Line was the largest, while Enel’s homeland—the sky island where the Rumble-Rumble Fruit was located—was a smaller island called Birka.
“Birka is a sky island located to the south.”
Gan Fall had no idea how Thor knew about Birka.
But for the sake of his people’s safety, he didn’t dare hide anything from the Giant prince before him.
“Good. I need you to guide us there.”
Now that he had obtained a lead on Birka, Thor stood up and turned toward Golden Lion on his golden throne.
“Big Brother Shiki, I need another favor.”
“Nothing to it.”
Shiki waved casually while smoking his cigar.
The golden throne beneath him, along with numerous golden objects around the area, began floating under the power of the Float-Float Fruit.
“When I take all this back to Hachinosu, that bastard Rocks is going to drool with envy.”
“Uh… Big Brother Shiki, if you take all this back, won’t Rocks realize the sky islands are full of gold?”
“…Ah.”
Shiki froze.
That was a good point.
But if he couldn’t show off his wealth in front of everyone, wasn’t that like wearing magnificent clothes in the middle of the night?
It was driving him crazy!
“No! All the gold here belongs to me! Rocks absolutely cannot find out about this place!”
Shiki waved his hand.
The floating golden throne and other treasures descended back to the ground.
Golden Lion had already mentally claimed all of Shandora’s gold as his personal treasure.
How could he possibly bear to share it with anyone?
Especially a greedy bastard like Rocks.
“Come on! Let’s go to that Birka place.”
Shiki was now even more eager than Thor.
He absolutely couldn’t let Rocks and the pirates of Hachinosu learn about Shandora, the City of Gold.
So they would conquer another sky island instead.
When Rocks eventually wanted to come see the sky islands for himself, Shiki would simply take him to a different one.
That way, Rocks would never discover Shandora’s gold.
At Golden Lion Shiki’s urging, the Giant warriors who had only just finished conquering Skypiea boarded the Naglfar once more and set off toward another sky island.
With Gan Fall, a native of the sky islands, guiding them, the Naglfar soon reached Birka.
What followed was almost an exact repeat of what had happened before.
The Giant warriors conquered Birka effortlessly.
And on an altar in Birka, Thor finally found what he had been searching for.
A Devil Fruit worshiped by the sky islanders.
The Rumble-Rumble Fruit.
“I thought this would take a lot more effort. I didn’t expect it to be this easy to find.”
Thor only knew that Enel was originally from Birka and had eaten the Rumble-Rumble Fruit there.
As for when the Rumble-Rumble Fruit had appeared on Birka, or exactly where it had been located, Thor had known none of that.
He had simply come here to try his luck.
He hadn’t expected his luck to be this good.
Or perhaps it was just like Oda’s setting—
Devil Fruits possessed wills of their own and actively chose their masters. Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
No one suited the title of God of Thunder more than Thor.
So perhaps the Rumble-Rumble Fruit had simply chosen to appear before him.
“So this is the Devil Fruit you’ve been looking for?”
Shiki curiously floated onto Thor’s shoulder.
Judging from its appearance, it seemed to be a Logia-type Devil Fruit.
It might not be as rare as a Mythical Zoan, but it was still an extraordinarily powerful and practical ability.
“Big Brother Shiki, move back a little. I’m going to eat it.”
“Oh? Now this should be interesting.”
At Thor’s request, Shiki flew farther away.
Then he watched as Thor carefully pinched the Rumble-Rumble Fruit—smaller than a grape compared to his enormous body—between two fingers.
Thor placed it between his teeth.
And bit down hard.
BOOM!
A thunderclap exploded across the clear sky.
Thor took a deep breath before raising Mjölnir high overhead.
A colossal bolt of lightning descended from the heavens and struck the hammer in his hand.
“Smash my enemies apart—
“MJÖLNIR!”
Thor hurled Mjölnir.
His overwhelming physical strength, combined with the acceleration of lightning and electromagnetism— the One Piece world’s version of a railgun— fired!
Thor threw Mjölnir toward the sky.
Had he aimed it at the ground instead, Birka might have been destroyed in an instant.
Propelled by both Thor’s monstrous strength and electromagnetic force, Mjölnir broke free of gravity’s restraint and transformed into a lethal streak of lightning.
In the blink of an eye, it vanished completely.
Golden Lion Shiki stared up at the sky in stunned disbelief.
He wasn’t shocked by the power of the Rumble-Rumble Fruit.
Thor’s raw strength alone had already been enough to accomplish something similarly absurd.
What stunned him was something else entirely.
“Brat…
“You don’t want your hammer anymore?”
Throwing the hammer like that had certainly looked impressive.
But the moment Shiki imagined Thor having to go all the way out and retrieve it himself, he nearly burst out laughing.
“Don’t worry, Big Brother Shiki. Just watch!”
Although Thor had hurled Mjölnir away, an invisible electromagnetic attraction still connected him to the hammer.
Like an enormous electromagnet, Thor opened his right hand.
Several minutes later—
WHOOSH!
Mjölnir came tearing back through the atmosphere, breaking the sound barrier as it returned at Mach 10.
It slammed straight back into Thor’s hand.
The instant Thor caught a massive iron hammer traveling at ten times the speed of sound, the resulting blast of air nearly sent Shiki flying.
“You monstrous Giant brat!”
Shiki couldn’t help cursing.
No wonder Linlin wanted Thor to become her husband.
With a body like his, he really might be the only person capable of surviving that woman.