Luke was briefly stunned when he saw his new cellmate. Considering where he was, the girl’s appearance, and the way the guard addressed and treated her, he quickly figured out who she was.
His new cellmate was actually Kaido’s daughter—the governor of the Beasts Pirates—and One Piece’s famously “filial child.”
Luke had never studied One Piece’s timeline in much detail, but judging from Yamato’s appearance and age, he had probably not arrived during the period when Luffy set sail. This should be around ten years earlier.
Yamato had apparently been twenty-six when Luffy set sail, but she now looked only fifteen or sixteen. She had not even reached adulthood yet.
"Young Master, the Governor told you to reflect on your actions. Please, don’t cause trouble here. You’re making things very difficult for us."
After escorting Yamato into the cell and locking the door, the guard spoke with a face like he had swallowed something bitter.
Every member of the Beasts Pirates knew how troublesome this “young master” was. Though no one below the higher-ranking officers dared say it aloud, everyone privately understood one thing...
Yamato was crazy.
She was obviously a girl, yet she insisted that she was Kozuki Oden, who had been executed eight years ago. She was a lunatic who had fangirled so hard that she had fried her own brain.
But she was also one of the Four Emperors’ daughter. The officers could ignore her noisy antics and discipline her when necessary, but the ordinary pirates did not dare mess around. She was Kaido’s daughter, after all. Showing her disrespect made them feel uneasy.
"Hmph! I am Kozuki Oden! How could a prison like this possibly hold me? Once I’ve recovered from my injuries, I’ll smash my way out!"
As Yamato spoke, she waved her fists around. Although she had entered prison as a prisoner, she was not shackled hand and foot in Sea Prism Stone like Luke. She merely had a Sea Prism Stone cuff around each wrist, with no chain linking them together, so her movements were not restricted.
The guard only looked even more miserable and did not argue with Yamato. He understood that the Beasts Pirates’ “young master” was seriously unwell and could not be reasoned with normally.
He could only turn and leave, never once sparing Luke a glance.
In his mind, Luke was not particularly strong, and with Sea Prism Stone restraining him, there was no way he could hurt the powerful Young Master Yamato.
The only reason Yamato had been put in this cell was because Udon Prison had no empty cells left. This room had the fewest occupants, and it had even been cleaned up a little while ago, making it comparatively clean.
Besides, based on what they knew of Young Master Yamato, she would break out within a few days and challenge her father again. She would not remain in Udon Prison for long.
As for “reform through labor,” while Kaido had ordered it, they could not control Yamato.
At Udon Prison, only Queen of the Three Calamities—the Plague—who occasionally came by, could keep Yamato under control. Even the other Headliners could not bring themselves to be too harsh with her.
After the guard shook his head, sighed, and left, Yamato surveyed the cell. Then, without a care in the world, she sat down not far from Luke, apparently unconcerned by the filthy floor.
Luke looked at Yamato beside him and felt a headache coming on. Why was he always assigned “problematic roommates”?
Sosuke Aizen liked hiding his strength, but he had at least been a reliable, normal roommate in everyday life. Yamato was different. She was just a complete nutcase.
When Luke had caught up on One Piece in Endspace some time ago and reached the Wano Country arc, he had seriously suspected that Kaido had not been defeated by Luffy at all. He had probably been driven to death by his own incredibly filial daughter.
"Are you a samurai?"
Yamato’s gaze landed on Luke’s hands. Her eyes shone with curiosity and anticipation as she asked the question.
"Why do you ask?"
Luke was puzzled. He noticed Yamato scoot a little closer, making him reflect once more on just how bizarre this world’s heights were.
When he was young and had read the manga his master collected, he had thought the artist exaggerated people’s proportions to emphasize their distinctive traits, which was why some characters looked so huge.
But after actually arriving in this world, he had discovered that people here really were generally enormous. People two or three meters tall were everywhere. Conversely, some creatures and people were extremely tiny.
As the daughter of Kaido, the “Strongest Creature Alive,” Yamato naturally had a large frame. Her slender feminine figure made her appear even taller.
Sitting beside Luke, she was clearly more than a head taller than him, looking down at him from above.
"Your hands are covered in calluses. I’ve seen hands like those before—they belong to samurai skilled with swords."
Yamato leaned closer excitedly. "So are you a samurai of Wano Country too?"
Luke glanced at his hands. Endspace was a miraculous place. Although he had undergone physical enhancement and received treatment from Endspace, some traits left behind by martial training had not been erased.
For example, the calluses on his hands. They had not been left behind merely by using a blade. In his youth, he had trained with all kinds of weapons, and swords and sabers were both among his better disciplines. It was simply that after gaining a Zanpakuto in the world of Bleach, he had continued using a blade.
"No. I’m merely a traveler passing through Wano Country."
Since he was now Yamato’s cellmate, Luke could only accept the situation and first see whether she could be communicated with normally.
"Passing through Wano Country?"
Yamato froze for a moment. Then her eyes lit up. "Oh, I remember now! You’re that Demon Slayer who tried to assassinate Kaido a few days ago! So you really did come from outside!?"
She seemed completely unguarded around strangers. Leaning in close, she said excitedly, "Wonderful! I never thought I would meet someone like you here. I am Kozuki Oden, and we share the same goal. Let’s work together and defeat Kaido!"
Luke was speechless. Honestly, even in his own era, it was rare to see a child call their parent by name. Yamato clearly did not regard Kaido as her father in the slightest.
Seeing someone who had tried to assassinate her father, she was warmer than if she had met her own dad—and she was even proclaiming that they should work together to defeat Kaido...
Luke enjoyed challenging powerful opponents, but he did not enjoy courting death. He did not have protagonist plot armor like Luffy. Did Yamato really think Kaido would keep giving him chances to bounce back up?
The fact that he was currently alive was part of his assigned identity. In reality, if Kaido spared everyone who challenged him out of admiration, he would have been annoyed to death long ago.
If Luke escaped prison and challenged Kaido again, he would most likely be beaten to death outright instead of getting smashed hard enough to unlock his hidden potential.
Thus, Luke had absolutely no intention of provoking Kaido again. He only wanted to honestly learn the three types of Haki in Udon Prison, then find an opportunity to leave Wano Country and begin his real adventure.
After all, while this world had no main mission, it still had a side mission. If he handled it properly, Luke felt he could earn considerable rewards.
[Side Mission: Fruit Hunter]
Mission Objective: Kill Devil Fruit users who appeared in the original work. While collecting World Exploration, you may obtain generous rewards.
Mission Difficulty: Easy—Certain Death
Mission Reward: Limited Devil Fruit Treasure Chest
Failure Penalty: None
[Hint: This mission will be settled after your return. Rewards may only be settled once. The Pioneer may select one target they personally killed for settlement.]
Luke checked the details of the Limited Devil Fruit Treasure Chest reward and found that it differed from what he had initially imagined. It would not necessarily yield the Devil Fruit possessed by the person he killed.
Instead, it would yield a Devil Fruit from the same category. If he somehow killed Akainu, for example, the chest might not contain the Mag-Mag Fruit. It might instead give him the Flame-Flame Fruit—a fruit not even a dog would want.
This Limited Devil Fruit Treasure Chest had both advantages and disadvantages. Its advantage was that it was granted by Endspace during the final settlement. In other words, it could yield any Devil Fruit of the same category, even one possessed by a person who was still alive and well in the world of One Piece.
That meant the chest’s upper limit was extremely high. Using Akainu as an example again, Luke might draw the Flame-Flame Fruit, or he might draw some unknown Mythical Zoan Fruit with fire-based abilities.
Endspace was not that malicious, though. There was another note regarding the Limited Treasure Chest: the stronger the target Luke personally killed was relative to him, the more likely he would be to draw an exceptional Devil Fruit.
For example, if he ran to the East Blue and killed Red-Haired Buggy right now, the Devil Fruit he drew would probably be quite weak. But if he killed Kaido, then the fruit he drew might be even more powerful than the Fish-Fish Fruit, Model: Azure Dragon.
"What’s your name? Why did you stop talking?"
Seeing Luke fall silent, Yamato continued questioning him.
Luke came back to himself and suddenly realized that there was a pretty good Devil Fruit sitting right in front of him.
The Devil Fruit Yamato had eaten was the Dog-Dog Fruit, Model: Okuchi no Makami, a Mythical Zoan.
Even Kaido, with all his vast knowledge and experience, had called it an extremely rare and precious Devil Fruit. It was a Mythical Zoan, and a legendary guardian deity of Wano Country.
"My name is Luke. I come from the distant East Blue."
That was also part of his assigned identity, perhaps matching his origins from a great eastern nation.
As he spoke, he used an appraisal skill to inspect Yamato’s attributes. After seeing them, he could only think, Damn.
[Beasts Pirates: Yamato]
Constitution: 60
Strength: 35 [Weakened]
Agility: 35 [Weakened]
Spirit: 50
Charm: 50
Negative Status—[Weakened]: Yamato’s wrists are restrained by low-purity Sea Prism Stone cuffs. Cursed by the power of the sea, she has fallen into a weakened state and cannot use her Devil Fruit abilities.
He could not see any further information. Yamato’s Spirit suppressed his own, allowing him to see only limited attributes and that obvious [Weakened] debuff.
When he read the original work, Luke had also wondered what sort of cuffs Yamato wore. At first, he had assumed they were ordinary cuffs, which was why Luffy had been able to remove them for Yamato using Ryuo. Pure Sea Prism Stone was extremely tough and difficult to destroy directly with Haki.
Yet Yamato had also never used her Devil Fruit ability before the cuffs were removed, so some people argued that they truly were Sea Prism Stone cuffs.
Now he knew the answer. Yamato’s cuffs were a specialty of Wano Country—low-purity Sea Prism Stone cuffs. Because they were low purity, they were easier to work with. Explosives and a range-detection device had also been installed inside them. The moment Yamato left Wano Country’s boundaries, they would explode.
But because they were low purity, their toughness was limited, making them easier to destroy. Their weakening effect on Devil Fruit users was also less severe.
Luke estimated that after removing the cuffs, Yamato’s primary combat attributes, aside from Constitution, would not exceed fifty. Frankly, Luke felt she was a little weak...
When Yamato first appeared in the original work, she had already been a fighter above the level of a Yonko Commander, arguably the second-strongest member of the Beasts Pirates. But sixteen-year-old Yamato’s strength was rather average. Perhaps she had not trained much as a child, and only began attending Kaido’s training camp after growing into her body over the past few years.
In any case, given the strength Yamato currently displayed and the Sea Prism Stone restricting her, Luke felt that if he wanted to kill her, he might actually be able to do it.
Of course, he had no reason to kill Yamato. Besides, if he killed her in Wano Country, there was no way he would leave alive...
Comments (0)
Please log in to leave a comment. Login or Register