Solomon was guided to a separate VIP seat inside the Human Shop, receiving the highest level of courtesy from Disco, the auction house manager.
Disco made no effort to hide his greedy smile. He flattered Solomon so shamelessly it was almost burdensome, clearly hoping to scrape up even the tiniest crumb of favor from him.
Solomon half-listened to the sycophancy and quietly waited for the auction to begin.
After quite a long delay, a small disturbance broke out. It was quickly suppressed by the Human Shop’s internal security staff, but in the process, the "merchandise" Charloss had been aiming for was ruined.
The young mermaid, crying for her mother and gasping that she wanted to go back to the sea, was blown to pieces before Solomon could even intervene. The explosive collar around her neck detonated, reducing her to torn flesh.
With one of the auction’s main attractions destroyed, Disco flew into a rage, while the other customers treated it as amusing entertainment. They raised blood-spattered glasses and drank, using the little mermaid’s tears as seasoning for their revelry.
Solomon had come prepared not to see anything good in the Human Shop, but even he had not imagined it would be this bad. The shock hit him hard.
Even so, he judged that there was nothing he could do immediately, and slowly forced the tension out of his tightly clenched, trembling fists.
Even if he used his authority to shut this disgusting place down on the spot and erase it, as long as the other Celestial Dragons still created demand, destroying one Human Shop would only lead to two or three more opening elsewhere.
Solomon was not some champion of justice from his original world.
His personal nature might be kind, but his way of thinking in matters of ideology and principle was not all that different from the cold, calculating mindset typical of Type-Moon magi—or so he claimed.
So Solomon buried his grief completely and chose to wait for the true legend of this other world to appear in the future.
Now was not the time.
"We had a brief incident, and one of our key items was damaged, so I truly have no excuse to offer our valued guests! But! I, Disco, promise you this! Even without that mere mermaid, this auction still has plenty of useful slaves up for sale, so none of you will be leaving disappointed or empty-handed!"
Disco was a professional in all the worst ways.
His patter quickly reignited the auction hall after its brief lull. The only person left cold—cold enough to freeze the room—was Solomon alone.
"And our firrrst item~! A pirate who ran wild in the South Blue! Kraut Solgaria! A beautiful female pirate with a bounty of fifty million berries!"
"One hundred million! She’s a pretty one!"
"One hundred twenty million! A silver-haired beauty pirate this rare? Dress her up right and she’ll be plenty entertaining at night!"
The female pirate from the South Blue named Kraut, apparently having suffered terribly on the way to the Human Shop, had none of her former bold spirit left. With dead eyes, she was sold to some fat noble for the enormous sum of one hundred fifty million berries.
The barbaric auction, where people bought and sold other people, continued without pause.
The fifth round of bidding began.
Six girls in loose clothing were brought onto the stage.
The smallest of them resisted until the very end and refused to come up. Only after Disco slapped her across the face and lashed her with a whip did she stagger onto the stage.
Solomon recognized the clothes they wore as the traditional dress of Amazon Lily, and realized at once that these were the people he had been waiting for.
But the women warriors of the Kuja Pirates were not the only ones brought up onto the stage.
An old man in shabby glasses and a worn cloak came up after them, and Solomon found the face strangely familiar.
Though age had weathered him heavily... there was no mistake.
It was definitely him.
"Rayleigh... why are you being sold as merchandise at a slave auction of all things?"
There was no way Solomon could know the truth—that whenever Rayleigh ran out of gambling money, he sold himself into slavery and then fleeced whoever bought him.
Deciding he needed to save Rayleigh first and ask questions later, Solomon cut off Disco’s ridiculous sales pitch, which had been desperately trying to package Rayleigh into something worth even a little money.
"I’ll bid thirty million berries per person for the members of the Kuja Pirates. And that useless gambling addict next to them isn’t even worth pricing, so just throw him in for free."
Disco nearly jumped for joy. The price Solomon called for the Kuja Pirates was more than double what he had expected. Naturally, no insolent lower-worlder dared try to compete in price with a Celestial Dragon.
The lot of six plus one was sold to Solomon, with Rayleigh practically treated as a complimentary bonus.
Not wanting to remain in that revolting place for even a moment longer, Solomon immediately took the people he had purchased from Disco as if snatching them away by force.
Just as Hancock had said, the women warriors of the Kuja Pirates were far too young to be called seasoned fighters.
With his usual soft, gentle air, Solomon calmed the terrified girls.
At first, the warriors of the Kuja Pirates were doubtful, but the moment Hancock’s name came from Solomon’s lips, they finally realized they had been rescued and burst into tears as they clung to one another.
After watching them with pity for a moment, Solomon’s attention shifted to Rayleigh.
"Hm. What are you planning to use an old man like me for, Master?"
At first, Rayleigh did not recognize Solomon right away. That was only natural. It had been decades since he had last seen him. No matter how close they had once been, it was not easy to remember someone’s face after so many years.
Looking at another old friend who, like Garp, had been struck head-on by the passage of time, Solomon broke into a bright, almost refreshing smile.
At times like this... there had been a certain kind of greeting pirates used with each other.
To jog Rayleigh’s forgotten memories, Solomon decided to show off a new spell he had developed after coming to this world.
Rayleigh, who had only been thinking about how to swindle his vacant-looking young owner, went pale and hurriedly projected Armament Haki forward.
"Impossible! That presence... this Conqueror’s Haki...!"
"How to Kill the Pirate King."
[Spell Name: Pirates Memory]
[Load: Gol D. Roger]
[Output Value: Kamusari]
Rayleigh saw it.
How could he ever forget?
Roger, the very man who had opened the Great Age of Pirates and been executed long ago, appeared before him as a translucent phantom recreated exactly as he had been in life.
And then he unleashed his signature move—Kamusari.
With Roger’s own Conqueror’s Haki infused into it.
It was impossible to block the Pirate King’s signature attack with a mere projection of Armament Haki alone.
Instantly revising his judgment, Rayleigh wrapped even Conqueror’s Haki into his defense, pouring more power into the Armament barrier before him.
The aftermath wrecked the surrounding area and blew half the Human Shop apart, but neither Solomon nor Rayleigh cared in the slightest.
Crack...
When the clash of Conqueror’s Haki ended, the explosive collar around Rayleigh’s neck had lost all function and fell away in shattered pieces.
Only then did Rayleigh, utterly dumbfounded, walk over to his old friend—who had chosen a truly novel way to announce that he was still alive—and pull him into a light embrace.
"Your Magecraft is as astonishing as ever. I never imagined you’d take Roger’s Haki and use it like this...!"
"You didn’t seem to remember me, so I got a little petty. Rayleigh. Did I surprise you?"
"Surprise doesn’t even begin to cover it. You really haven’t changed at all. You look exactly like you do in my memories of our youth. Our era ended long ago... but that doesn’t mean we can forget the history we built."
Joking that Solomon still looked as flimsy as ever, Rayleigh gave him a few playful thumps on the back and steadied his stirred emotions.
"How’s Shakky doing? The last thing I heard was that you and Shakky finally managed to get married."
"I don’t go home very often, but we’re still doing well enough. Shakky runs a bar in GR 13. If you’re not busy, I’ll buy you a drink. Shakky would be very happy to see you too."
Solomon shook his head.
He had to keep his promise to Hancock and start heading back to Mary Geoise.
If this outing dragged on any longer, annoying people like CP0 or the Holy Knights would come looking for him. More precisely, he was worried about the trouble their arrival would cause for everyone around him.
"I see. That’s a shame, after meeting again for the first time in so long."
"I was planning to stop by with Garp and see you for a moment anyway, but since we met here, that’s enough. It’s a shame I can’t see Shakky, but let’s meet properly next time."
"Can’t be helped! Let’s just hope the next time we meet isn’t when I’m so old I’m smearing filth on the walls! Your sense of time is definitely not the same as everyone else’s!"
Rayleigh’s pointed joke struck home a little too well, and Solomon awkwardly scratched the back of his head.
Solomon’s brief detour, which had begun with the Sorbet Kingdom, came to an end.
The six women warriors of the Kuja Pirates successfully returned to Amazon Lily, and Solomon was reunited with old friends he had briefly forgotten amid the erosion of time.
When Solomon returned to the Holy Land of Mary Geoise, he was immediately met with an invitation from the Five Elders, as if they had been waiting for him to come back.
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