Chapter 4: The Founder's Disappointment
Monkey D. Garp hit the water like a cannonball, the momentum of his jump carrying him high into the sky above the Calm Belt. He was a man of action and simple greeting; he wouldn't bow to the Ancestor—he would exchange a legendary punch.
"You look well-rested, Great-Grandfather!" Garp bellowed, gathering his formidable Color of Arms Haki around his fist. The air crackled, ready to deliver a blow capable of splitting mountains.
Kelean remained suspended upon the Crimson Tide, his expression changing from detached observation to profound, cold assessment. He didn't see a hero; he saw a shadow of what should have been. As Garp closed the final distance, Kelean's eyes, the deep amber of ancient power, pierced the old Marine's very core.
Kelean didn't just sense Garp's Haki; he analyzed its composition. Garp was impossibly strong by the standards of this age, a true King of Willpower. But his Haki felt thin, restricted, like a mighty river forced to flow through a narrow, modern pipe. It lacked the sheer volume of the ancient world.
A deep sigh, heavy with eight centuries of betrayal and disappointment, escaped Kelean's lips.
He did not raise his voice. "You have strength, descendant. The will is intact, the fire still burns. But the foundation… it is cracked."
Kelean did not move his feet or twist his body. He simply extended his arm from the elbow, a casual, almost dismissive gesture. He focused his own Color of Arms Haki, not to coat his fist, but to condense the very air between them. It was a pressure denser than a star, a Haki born of the limitless power before the world was divided.
When his fist connected with Garp's, the sound was not a clash of metal on metal, but the noise of an object moving faster than the speed of light—a singular, devastating crack in the fabric of space.
Garp's legendary fist, encased in black Haki, dissolved the instant it touched Kelean's skin. The sheer force of the Founder's blow bypassed all physical defenses, slamming into Garp's chest cavity with the weight of an entire continent.
Garp didn't cry out. His body simply stopped, rigid in the air, and then was launched backward. He tore through the atmosphere, plunging back toward the ocean, skipping across the water surface like a stone thrown by a giant before finally sinking, unconscious and utterly defeated, miles away.
The Marine destroyer, which had remained stationary through Kelean's presence, was instantly atomized by the residual shockwave. Not a single piece of debris remained, leaving a perfect, shimmering crater in the sea.
Kelean lowered his arm, his eyes heavy with disillusionment. He looked at the emptiness where his descendant had been.
"You are the strongest of your era," Kelean stated, his voice carrying clearly over the now-silent Calm Belt. "A Vice Admiral who serves the very enemy we swore to destroy. You hold the blood, but you do not hold the power required to finish the war."
He looked upward, toward the Red Line and the distant shadow of Mariejois.
"Eight hundred years of selective breeding and suppressed history. And the result is a lineage… weakened."
Kelean turned the Crimson Tide, which shifted and began to flow, carrying him not toward Mariejois directly, but in a vast, sweeping arc across the ocean. He was not going to attack the government yet. He needed to understand the scope of the world's decay before he could cleanse it. He was moving toward the heart of the current age, toward the place where the other descendants of D. were currently gathering.
He was headed for the New World.
Kelean has made his first devastating judgment. The world's hero, Garp, is defeated, and Kelean's mission has changed from immediate revenge to a measured assessment of the world's strength.
When Monkey D. Garp awoke, the first thing he felt was the crushing ache in his sternum, and the second was the complete stillness.
He was sprawled on a salvaged section of his own shattered destroyer—a sizable, metal raft floating listlessly on the calm waters of the Calm Belt. Above him, the sky was a perfect, blinding blue, marred only by the silent presence of Monkey D. Kelean.
The Ancestor sat cross-legged opposite him, robes unmoving, surrounded by a thin, red, crystalline haze. A thin layer of the same crimson material—Kelean's controlled blood—acted as a cool, perfect bandage across Garp's chest. It was the only reason his ribs weren't fully shattered.
Garp struggled to sit up, groaning. "You could've just knocked," he grumbled, wiping the last vestiges of foam from his mouth.
Kelean didn't smile, nor did he look away from the horizon. "I did not intend to knock, descendant. I intended to measure. You resisted well. By the standards of this weak era, you are perhaps the pinnacle."
"Weak?" Garp scoffed, though his voice lacked conviction after being dismissed like a fly. "I'm Garp, the Hero of the Marines! I beat Rocks D. Xebec!"
"A powerful man, shattered by a flawed lineage," Kelean corrected, finally turning his full, amber gaze onto his descendant. "And you serve the very structure that engineered your limitation. That is why you are weakened, not by lack of will, but by suppressed potential."
Garp stared at him, genuinely confused. "What are you talking about? Haki mastery is attained through sheer willpower and training. I broke mountains with it!"
"Haki is the will of life itself," Kelean explained, his voice patient but firm, like a professor addressing a slow student. "During the Void Century, it was a boundless river. After the twenty kings secured power, they enacted the Great Restraint. They could not destroy the D. lineage, but they could make it obsolete."
Kelean gestured to the surrounding air, which was still and humid.
"They used ancient techniques and the stolen power of the World Tree to subtly thicken the essence of the world—the atmosphere, the ley lines of the planet. They made the air heavy, saturated with a specific, restrictive resonance that absorbs raw power. To use Haki now is like trying to breathe fire while standing at the bottom of the ocean. You are strong enough to fight through the pressure, but you cannot draw on the full, global volume of power that we could. Your strongest blow is a whisper compared to the original scream of the Ancients."
Garp sat in stunned silence, piecing together centuries of history he knew nothing about. It explained why even the Conqueror's Haki of the Yonko felt like a massive hammer, while Kelean's felt like a total collapse of reality.
"You knocked me out to teach me a history lesson?" Garp finally asked, rubbing his chest.
"I knocked you out because you approached me with the blood of a D. and the uniform of a traitor," Kelean replied bluntly. "But I have kept you alive, and I will remain here for two days. I need to understand this age. I need to know: why did you, the strongest remnant of the D. will, choose to serve the enemy? Tell me everything about the last eight centuries. Tell me of Joyboy, of Imu, and of the state of the world."
Garp looked at the Ancestor—a man who had just dismantled his physical being and his worldview in a single punch, a man stronger than any known deity. He realized resistance was futile, and perhaps, unnecessary. He finally had answers to the questions he hadn't even known to ask.
With a heavy sigh, Garp relaxed, leaning back against the cool metal. "Fine," he said, resignation mixing with a sudden, ancestral spark of curiosity. "But first, tell me about your Devil Fruit. If you can control blood, why didn't you just make my heart explode?"
Kelean gave a small, almost imperceptible smirk. "Because if I had, I wouldn't have anyone to tell me the story."
And so, suspended in the silent danger of the Calm Belt, the founder and the descendant began their history lesson—a dialogue that would reshape the final saga of the world.