"Choosing a jar? Let's do it." Moria handed over the payment and stepped toward the collection with an energy that had completely shed any trace of the confrontation from minutes ago.
"With the right pull from one of these, maybe I can finally erase that humiliation."
It was Kaido who had put him here.
One year ago, Moria had still been the kind of man who went looking for a fight with his chin up, who believed in his own strength, who had a crew he trusted. Then Kaido's forces had torn through them, and when the smoke cleared, nearly everyone was gone. Only Absalom had made it out with him. The defeat had broken something that hadn't fully healed since, and rather than face the world that had just demonstrated how small he was in it, Moria had sailed Thriller Bark into the permanent fog of the Florian Triangle and started building an army that couldn't be killed.
Perona he'd found on the way back. A girl surrounded by pirates, situation already decided, no good ending available. He'd stepped in, partly from reflex and partly because the scene reminded him of his own crew in their final moments. She'd been with him since.
He had long since accepted, quietly and bitterly, that this fog-wrapped existence was probably the rest of his life. Kaido was a wall he couldn't see over. What he had now was a pale substitute for the life he'd wanted.
And then a jar merchant had appeared in his castle.
Crocodile had been more forthcoming about the jars than most people would have expected of him, probably because the experience had been significant enough that suppressing it entirely was impossible. Gender-changing pills. Armament Haki cards. An object that called down meteors. Moria had filed all of it away and told himself it was probably exaggerated.
Standing in front of the actual collection now, he found he believed every word.
He came to a stop in front of a jar the deep red of cooling embers and picked it up.
"This one."
"Red. Good choice." Amon nodded. "Just give it a knock."
Moria tapped the surface. The jar cracked cleanly, and two items tumbled out trailing light.
Perona's attention snapped over from Lily immediately. She'd gotten the general outline of the situation from Doppelman, and watching Moria actually open one was considerably more interesting than being told about it. Lily used the moment of distraction to slip back behind Amon, deeply relieved.
Moria scooped up both items and turned them over, puzzled.
"What are these supposed to be?"
Robin pressed her lips together in quiet amusement. "Crocodile didn't mention that our captain needs to examine them first?"
"Hehehehe, that part didn't come up." Moria scratched the back of his head with the sheepish energy of a very large man caught missing an obvious detail.
"Well, now you know. Perhaps ask him."
"Right. Amon, would you?" Moria held out both items to Amon.
"Happy to."
Amon took them and let the system run.
[Sorcerer's Boots]: An item originating from a mobile strategy game. When worn, increases movement speed and reduces the cooldown time of abilities.
He turned that over for a moment. Moria's entire combat style was technique-dependent, built around his shadow manipulation and the abilities it generated. Reducing cooldowns was a direct and meaningful upgrade. The speed bonus on top of that made the boots genuinely practical rather than merely interesting. Not a showstopper, but solidly useful.
He moved to the second item.
[Shadow Clone Jutsu Scroll]: Originating from the world of Naruto. Developed by the Second Hokage, Tobirama Senju. Unlike ordinary clone techniques, Shadow Clones are fully physical entities capable of combat. They cannot be dispelled by visual perception abilities, and can be applied across virtually any technique. The number of clones that can be created scales with the user's available strength.
Amon read it twice.
Shadow Clone Jutsu. He hadn't expected that one. As Naruto techniques went, it sat at B-rank on paper and somewhere considerably higher in practice. The scroll would allow Moria to learn and use it without the chakra system, same as Amon's own jutsu card had worked.
The combination forming in his head was immediate and vivid. Shadow Clone Jutsu layered on top of Moria's existing Doppelman technique, multiple physical copies each capable of deploying shadow constructs independently. The tactical possibilities were genuinely difficult to calculate.
Moria's luck had been considerably better than average today.
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