"Where to next?"
Chrollo, Nami, and Robin were huddled over the nautical chart spread across the table, studying their route.
"The chart Dragon gave us is incredibly detailed. Honestly, there's really only one place with the highest concentration of Devil Fruit users..."
Chrollo's finger traced a line across the first half of the Grand Line, stopping squarely on a structure located in the adjacent Calm Belt. "...Our final destination for the first half of our journey."
Staring at the spot Chrollo was pointing at, Nami, Robin, and Bonney—who had just sneaked over to eavesdrop—all went wide-eyed.
Their jaws dropped.
"Are you insane?!" all three of them yelled in unison.
"The world's greatest prison? Impel Down? The place where they lock up the most atrocious, heinous criminals in human history?!"
"You're saying you want to go there to hunt for Devil Fruits?!" Bonney looked absolutely dumbfounded.
She knew Chrollo was crazy, but she didn't realize he was this crazy. No wonder he hadn't batted an eye when she said she wanted to crash Marineford. He was already planning something just as suicidal!
Is it too late to get off this ship...?
Nami's expression turned dead serious. "Do you even know what that place is?"
"It's a massive underwater penitentiary specifically for criminals with Devil Fruit powers, split into six levels. Rumor has it that Level 6 holds monster pirates who were so dangerous they were literally erased from history. We're talking near-legendary figures!"
"It's known as one of the most terrifying places in the world. They say no one has ever successfully broken out of there."
"It's supposedly surrounded by a massive swarm of Sea Kings, and the whole place is a fortress made of Sea Prism Stone cells and Surveillance Snails. People literally call it the gateway to hell!"
Nami fired off every piece of terrifying intel she knew in one breath, desperately hoping to talk some sense into Chrollo.
Instead, Chrollo just nodded like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
"I know. It's full of Devil Fruit users, which is exactly why I'm going."
...Seriously?
So he literally only heard the first sentence!
"Once you go in, there is no coming back out!" Nami stressed.
Chrollo shrugged casually. "Actually, there is a precedent for a successful breakout. Shiki managed to escape, didn't he?"
...
Whack!
Nami brought down the fist of justice squarely on his head. "Oh, so you do know he escaped! But do you know what it cost him?! He had to chop off both his legs and leave them behind!"
Chrollo clutched the smoking lump on his head and rolled his eyes. "That was uncalled for."
He looked back up, trying to reassure her. "I'm not like him. Don't forget, I have the Door-Door Fruit. There isn't a single place in this world that can keep me locked up."
Nami still looked deeply worried, but the corners of Chrollo's lips curled into a confident smirk. "And don't forget... Sea Prism Stone barely affects us compared to native users."
Chrollo tapped his finger on the spot representing Impel Down again, his eyes gleaming with anticipation. "That place is going to be our ultimate hunting ground."
"We can farm plenty of top-tier Devil Fruit powers there to fill the gaps in our crew's arsenal. It'll give our overall combat strength a massive boost."
"Besides... the amount of Reputation Points we'd gain from cracking Impel Down is unimaginable."
Chrollo looked at the three women. "We have less than three months until the Paramount War breaks out."
"If we want to maximize our power before then, Impel Down is the absolute best choice. High risk, high reward. Walking the tightrope has always been the Troupe's style."
He smiled faintly. "Besides... I know what I'm doing."
Nami, Robin, and Bonney exchanged a look, seeing the shared, helpless resignation in each other's eyes. But... the Captain had spoken. What else could they say?
They just had to trust him.
"Though, I don't plan on going right this second," Chrollo added.
Phew.
All three let out a collective sigh of relief. For once, Chrollo was actually thinking rationally! Exactly—it was such a dangerous place, it wouldn't hurt to wait until they leveled up a bit more before tackling it.
"I'm planning to go in a month," Chrollo finished.
...
"How is that any different?!" the three of them screamed.
Don't pause dramatically like that, seriously...
Ignoring their outburst, Chrollo moved his hand and pointed to two other locations. "Actually, these two spots are our best options right now."
Nami, Robin, and Bonney immediately craned their necks to look.
Chrollo was pointing at the Florian Triangle, a sea zone permanently blanketed in thick, ominous fog.
The other spot was the unavoidable checkpoint to the New World: the unique island formed by the massive Yarukiman Mangroves—the Sabaody Archipelago.
Nami was utterly speechless.
Why did Chrollo exclusively pick suicide missions with single-digit survival rates? Was this just some weird male obsession with extreme danger?
"Do you even know what the Florian Triangle is before you decide to just waltz in?"
Nami's voice carried a hint of genuine panic as she explained. "The Florian Triangle: legend says it's a cursed stretch of sea where over a hundred ships vanish without a trace every single year. They say ghost ships crewed by the dead roam those waters."
"Worse yet, rumors claim that right in the dead center of it is a terrifying island crawling with the walking dead, literally called Thriller Bark—the Ghost Island. It's completely cursed. We should avoid it if we can," Nami advised earnestly.
If they didn't have a flying ship, that sea route would have been a mandatory choke point on their way to the New World. But... the Black Whale could fly! That meant they could absolutely just take off, fly straight over the cursed waters, and bypass the Florian Triangle entirely.
Chrollo slowly shook his head. "I'm not picking this route just for the thrill of it."
"On that very 'Ghost Island' you just mentioned, there's a specific Devil Fruit I've got my eye on—the Shadow-Shadow Fruit."
A sharp, calculating gleam entered Chrollo's eyes.
"You're talking about the power of Warlord Gecko Moria?" Robin asked thoughtfully.
"Exactly," Chrollo nodded.
Paramecia-type: Shadow-Shadow Fruit.
A shadow is essentially an alternate soul shared by all living things, and the Shadow-Shadow Fruit allows the user to physically grab and manipulate them.
Since shadows retain the personality and combat skills of their original owners, the user can steal someone's shadow and implant it into another living person, temporarily granting them those combat abilities. They can also implant a shadow into a corpse to reanimate it as a loyal zombie.
Furthermore, the user can weaponize their own shadow for various attacks—shadow doubles, breaking it into a swarm of bats, creating a shadow box—and even absorb massive amounts of shadows to drastically buff their own physical stats.
It was a fruit Chrollo had specifically handpicked for Shizuku.
After their last set of experiments, they had proven that it was entirely possible for different Nen types and Devil Fruit abilities to synergize. Shizuku's Nen vacuum cleaner, Blinky, could inhale any non-living object she commanded it to. By combining Blinky with the Shadow-Shadow Fruit, Shizuku could essentially command a highly mobile, practically unstoppable army of shadows. On top of that, the fruit would massively boost her close-quarters mobility.
Besides...
The zombies on Moria's Thriller Bark were far from ordinary. Back when he was a manga fan in his old life, Chrollo had done a deep dive into the lore. Many of those zombies... were actually former members of the legendary Rocks Pirates. Moria had somehow grave-robbed them from god knows where.
Which meant... Moria might actually know details about the massive God Valley Incident that took place thirty years ago.
What Moria was plotting, and what kind of secrets he was hoarding—Chrollo was incredibly interested in finding out.
Hearing the title of Warlord, Nami rolled her eyes hard. "First Crocodile, and now Gecko Moria? Why do I get the feeling we're systematically picking fights with the Seven Warlords?"
Chrollo held back a laugh and patted her on the shoulder. "Your feeling is absolutely right."
"The Warlords generally possess incredibly powerful Devil Fruits. Honestly, you could say those broken fruits are exactly why they earned the title in the first place."
A flicker of anticipation flashed in his dark eyes. "Therefore... stealing their powers and handing them out to my crew is the perfect plan."
"We have one month to hunt down our targets in these two locations. And after that... we head to..."
"...Impel Down."