The members of the Jellyfish Pirates fell into deep thought.
Sammy’s words lingered in everyone’s minds.
Yeah…
What did they truly want from this life as pirates?
Money?
Power?
Women?
Fame?
Those were ordinary desires in the pirate world.
Things countless men had gone to sea chasing.
But now, for perhaps the first time, each of them had to find an answer that truly belonged to them.
And it wasn’t only the ordinary crewmen who were thinking.
Several of the officers had gone quiet as well, their eyes distant as they began examining the paths they had chosen for themselves.
Strictly speaking, none of them lacked money while following Sammy.
They were pirates.
They had little need for luxury mansions, expensive property, or the countless possessions ordinary people spent their lives saving for.
Besides, most of the men who had remained aboard the Swordfish until now had few attachments left on land.
They were outlaws who treated the ship as their home and the crew as their family.
Wealth was useful.
Necessary, even.
But perhaps money alone wasn’t enough to give meaning to an entire life.
“I WANT TO GET STRONGER!”
Aldo was the first to shoot to his feet.
His fists clenched tightly, and a fierce fire burned in his eyes.
“I want to become stronger!”
He jabbed a thumb toward Sammy.
“As strong as Boss!”
Then he immediately shook his head.
“No!”
Aldo grinned.
“I’M GOING TO BECOME EVEN STRONGER THAN BOSS!”
He slammed a fist into his palm.
“And one day, I want my wanted poster to have a bounty of ONE HUNDRED MILLION BERRIES!”
“A hundred million, huh?”
Sammy raised an eyebrow.
“Not a bad goal.”
He smirked.
“If you work hard enough, it might actually be possible.”
Aldo’s grin widened.
“But surpassing me?”
Sammy laughed.
“Forget it, Aldo.
You can spend your entire life trying, and it still won’t happen!”
“Don’t look down on me, Boss!”
Aldo immediately puffed out his chest, his familiar stubbornness flaring up.
“That’s exactly what I’m going to live for!”
“Getting stronger!”
“Stronger than you!”
“Stronger than EVERYONE!”
The crew burst into laughter.
Then, from among the sailing team, a normally quiet sailor hesitantly raised his hand.
“I…”
His voice was uncertain at first.
“I want to become the best shipwright in the West Blue.”
He paused.
Then he clenched his teeth and corrected himself.
“No.”
The hesitation in his eyes disappeared.
“I want to become the BEST SHIPWRIGHT IN THE GRAND LINE!”
Several people turned toward him.
The sailor’s voice grew firmer.
“I want to build a ship that can sail anywhere in the world!”
That declaration seemed to break the dam.
One voice after another began rising around the bonfire.
“I’M GOING TO BECOME A GREAT PIRATE!”
A crewman lifted his mug.
“I want my damn name to echo across the entire sea!”
Another man laughed.
“I want to write a book!”
Everyone looked toward him.
“A book about US!”
He gestured excitedly toward the crew.
“Our adventures!
Our battles!
Everything!”
“I want people hundreds of years from now to know that we existed!”
“Just like Noland!”
Another pirate slowly stood.
His expression was more serious than the others.
“My home in the West Blue was taken over by gangsters.”
His hands tightened.
“So someday…”
“I want to build my own town.”
“A town without gangs.”
“Without thugs terrorizing ordinary people.”
“A place where everyone can live peacefully.”
Someone else shouted—
“I want to visit EVERY island in the Grand Line!”
Then another voice came from the crowd.
“I-I want to become a captain!”
Silence.
Then…
“HAHAHAHAHAHA!”
Laughter exploded around the bonfire.
“You idiot!”
The pirate sitting beside him punched him lightly in the shoulder.
“You’ve barely had a few drinks, and you’re already talking like you’re drunk!”
He pointed toward Sammy.
“The Jellyfish Pirates only have ONE captain!”
“Captain Sammy!”
He grinned.
“Right, Captain?”
Suddenly, everyone’s eyes turned toward Sammy.
“…Me?”
Sammy froze.
His gaze slowly dropped toward the mug in his hand.
The amber-colored rum gently swirled inside.
For several seconds, he said nothing.
Yeah…
What was his dream?
What did he truly want?
Wealth?
Power?
Fame?
Sammy stared into his drink.
A memory surfaced from long ago. Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
Before Ribera Sammy.
Before the Jellyfish Pirates.
Before this dangerous, magnificent world had become his reality.
He had once been nothing more than an unknown high school student.
A nobody.
And when he first arrived in this vast world of pirates, monsters, legends, and endless seas…
What had he wanted?
The answer came almost immediately.
To make his name known across the sea.
To leave behind a legend that belonged to him.
That had been the fire burning inside him at the beginning.
So…
When had he started becoming afraid of fame?
When had he started hiding?
Was it after realizing exactly what era he had been thrown into?
Was it after discovering that the monstrous Rocks Pirates were still rampaging across the seas?
Was he afraid simply because he knew fragments of the future?
Because he knew what kind of terrifying people were waiting out there?
So what?
Even if the Rocks Pirates were destined to collapse at God Valley, this sea would still be overflowing with monsters afterward.
Garp.
Roger.
Whitebeard.
Shiki.
Which one of them wasn’t a monster blessed by their era?
Was Sammy supposed to spend the rest of his life hiding from people like them?
Why?
Why should he be afraid?
Because he’d eaten what everyone considered a useless Devil Fruit?
Because those people had been overwhelmingly powerful in the original story?
Bullshit.
The manga hadn’t even revealed the full history of this world.
Who could say with certainty what the real past had actually looked like?
And hadn’t Kaido himself said it?
Haki transcends all.
In the end, physical strength and combat ability were what truly mattered.
As long as Sammy was still alive…
As long as he could continue training…
As long as he could keep becoming stronger…
Who had the right to declare that he couldn’t become the greatest dark horse of this era?!
Sammy suddenly raised his mug.
GULP!
He drained the remaining rum in one breath.
Then, under the eyes of the entire crew, he slowly rose to his feet.
Something that had been suppressed inside his chest for years seemed to finally break free.
A roaring torrent of ambition surged through him.
It was the adventurous fire of the young man he had once been.
And the conquering ambition of the pirate he had become—
Ribera Sammy.
“Me…?”
The bonfire danced before him, its shifting light illuminating an expression his crew had rarely seen on their captain’s face.
“I want to become stronger.”
His voice was calm at first.
“Strong enough that I never have to be afraid again.”
The crew fell silent.
Sammy slowly looked across every familiar face around him.
Then his gaze rose beyond the bonfire.
Beyond the giants.
Toward the endless night sky.
“I want to become so strong…”
His voice grew heavier.
“…that whenever I decide to do something…”
His fists tightened.
“…NO ONE IN THIS WORLD CAN STOP ME!”
Sammy suddenly threw both arms wide.
BUZZZZ—!
In that instant, something invisible erupted from his body.
An overwhelming presence blasted outward from Sammy like an unseen shockwave.
The flames of the bonfire were suddenly pressed low, flickering violently as though an enormous invisible hand had swept across them.
Several crewmen instinctively clutched their chests.
Their breathing became heavy.
Their eyes widened.
W-What is this?!
Sammy stood at the center of it all.
Then he roared his dream toward the heavens.
“I’M GOING TO BECOME—”
His voice thundered across Little Garden.
“THE KING OF THE WORLD!!!”
For a moment, even Dorry and Brogy stared at him in stunned silence.
Then…
“GABABABABABA!!!”
Dorry erupted into the loudest, most excited laughter Sammy had heard from him yet.
“INCREDIBLE!”
The giant slapped his knee.
“Little guy…”
Dorry paused.
Then his enormous grin widened.
“No!”
“SAMMY!”
“GABABABABA!”
Sammy grabbed his mug and raised it high.
“TO OUR DREAMS!!!”
“TO OUR DREAMS!!!”
Dozens upon dozens of mugs shot into the air.
The roar of the Jellyfish Pirates shook the clearing.
What happened during the rest of the feast…
Well…
Almost nobody remembered.
Except the two giants.
And whenever anyone asked Dorry or Brogy what exactly had happened after everyone became completely drunk, the two merely looked at each other…
And burst into laughter.
They refused to explain anything.
Sammy rubbed his throbbing temples the next morning.
A terrible suspicion crept through his mind.
We…
We didn’t do anything TOO embarrassing last night, right?
“By the way, Boss Dorry.”
Hans approached the giant while holding the Log Pose.
He was still looking a little worse for wear after the previous night’s celebration.
“How long does the Log Pose need to record this island’s magnetic field before it’s fully charged?”
“Oh, the Log Pose?”
Dorry casually chewed on a piece of meat.
“It takes one year.”
Hans blinked.
“…What?”
“One year.”
“WHAAAAAAT?!”
…
“CAPTAIN!”
“CAPTAIN, WE’VE GOT A PROBLEM!”
Hans came practically tumbling toward Sammy, stumbling over himself in his panic.
He thrust the Log Pose into the air.
“We…”
Hans swallowed.
“We have to stay on this island for an ENTIRE YEAR!”
“What?!”
Sammy stared at him.
“ONE YEAR?!”
This time, even Sammy was genuinely shocked.
To be fair, the details from the manga he had read in his previous life had become blurry over the years.
He remembered that Little Garden’s Log Pose took an unusually long time to record the island’s magnetic field.
But he hadn’t remembered that it took an entire damn year.
“A YEAR?!”
“Are you kidding me?!”
“We have to live for a whole year on an island crawling with dinosaurs?!”
One crewman pointed toward several weathered skeletons visible near the jungle.
“We’re going to end up like THOSE GUYS!”
Panic quickly spread through the crew.
“EVERYONE, SHUT UP!”
Sammy’s sharp command instantly crushed the commotion.
He looked toward the giants.
“I’ll ask them exactly how this works.”
His eyes narrowed thoughtfully.
“There might be another way.”
…
“So that’s the situation.”
Sammy stood beneath Dorry and Brogy and craned his neck upward.
“Dorry.
Brogy.”
“Does the Log Pose really need an entire year to record Little Garden’s magnetic field?”
He frowned.
“There’s absolutely no other way around it?”
“GABABABABA!”
Dorry laughed.
“That’s right, little guy!”
“It takes one full year for a Log Pose to finish recording the magnetic field here.”
He shrugged.
“That’s simply how the Grand Line works.”
“No shortcuts.”
Then Dorry stretched out one enormous finger and pointed toward the edge of the jungle.
“Look over there.”
Everyone followed his finger.
Beneath thick prehistoric ferns…
Inside the shadows between rocks…
And scattered around the remains of old, abandoned camps…
Human bones could be seen.
Some had already been weathered white by years of exposure.
“Those are all little humans who couldn’t survive long enough for their Log Poses to finish recording.”
Dorry’s voice remained casual, but the meaning behind his words was grim.
“Some became snacks for hungry dinosaurs.”
“Others couldn’t survive the heat.”
“Some died from diseases.”
Dorry looked down at them.
“For you little humans…”
“A year on this island can be a very long time.”
“…I see.”
Sammy rubbed his chin.
His eyes moved across the scattered bones.
Then…
A thought flashed through his mind.
His eyes sharpened.
“Hans!”
The navigator immediately straightened.
“Take several men and search those skeletons!”
Hans blinked.
“What?”
“Search the remains and everything around them!”
Sammy pointed toward the old camps.
“Focus on places that look like someone once lived there or tried to hide!”
Then he turned.
“ALDO!
ISAAC!”
Both officers stepped forward.
“Take the combat teams and secure the area!”
“Kill or drive away any dangerous creatures nearby!”
“Make sure nothing gets close to the search parties!”
“Understood!”
Sammy swept his gaze across the rest of the crew.
“Everyone else, stop standing around!”
“Split into groups and SEARCH!”
He pointed toward the jungle.
“Check cracks between the rocks!”
“Tree hollows!”
“Abandoned camps!”
“Anywhere a dead pirate might have hidden their belongings!”
Several crewmen suddenly began to understand.
Sammy grinned.
“Think about it!”
“Countless pirates have died on this island over the years!”
“Their Log Poses might still be lying beside their remains!”
His fist tightened.
“We DON’T need to wait an entire year!”
Sammy pointed toward the scattered skeletons.
“WE JUST NEED TO FIND A LOG POSE LEFT BEHIND BY SOMEONE WHO DID!”
The crew’s eyes widened.
Of course!
Why hadn’t they thought of that?
If the previous owners were dead…
Then their fully recorded Log Poses were free for whoever found them!
Sammy clapped his hands sharply.
“WHAT ARE YOU IDIOTS STILL STANDING AROUND FOR?!”
“MOVE!”
“YES, CAPTAIN!”
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