"Divine Departure!!!"
"Mitama Aramitama!!!"
"Kagutsuchi: Ebisu!!!"
"Joy Boy, I'm gonna curse your entire bloodline! What kind of lunatic builds a damn door and leaves a crack in it?! Isn't this just shoddy construction?!"
Night had already fallen, yet Roger was still standing before the underground palace entrance, swinging Ace around like a madman while continuously bombarding the stone gate with attacks.
But it was completely useless.
Even when he unleashed his Conqueror's Haki with full force, the gate remained utterly unmoved, as though it existed outside the reach of destruction itself.
Meanwhile, not far away, Valthior, Gaban, Rayleigh, and the rest of the crew had already settled themselves comfortably along the stone steps, drinking around a campfire while watching the spectacle unfold.
"See?" Gaban said after taking a swig of alcohol. "This proves that even if the World Government managed to find the final island, they still wouldn't be able to open this place without the proper 'key.'"
"Sixty billion… Sixty billion… enough money to spend for a lifetime~" Rayleigh sang in a bizarre teasing tone, clearly enjoying himself far too much.
Valthior glanced toward the still-raging Roger before shaking his head slightly. In his hand was a rubbing copied from the ancient text engraved upon the drum stand.
The stand itself had also been built from the same special indestructible stone as the Poneglyphs, and upon it was another message written in the ancient language:
"With the power of Nika, beneath the radiance of the sun, gather companions for a grand banquet, ignite the campfire of hope, sound the drums of laughter, and perform the song of liberation. Only then shall the underground palace open.
There, I have left behind my gift to fate.
Future Warrior of Liberation, destroy this world… and rebuild it into a beautiful one once more.
Let this world be filled with laughter and joy.
— Joy Boy"
"You're still reading that?" Rayleigh glanced at Valthior before sighing. "Looks like we arrived at the final island too early. Honestly, after seeing all this, I don't even know what I'm supposed to say anymore…"
"Destroy the world and rebuild a beautiful one…" Gaban snorted. "Sounds more like a bad joke than anything else."
Valthior folded the paper and tucked it away before replying calmly, "It does sound like a joke. So why aren't you guys laughing?"
In the original story, weren't all of you laughing your heads off here?
Especially Roger.
That guy had laughed so hard tears came out.
But now?
Now he was kneeling in front of the underground palace entrance looking like he was about to cry for real.
"Do you bastards even have any humanity left?!" Roger wailed in grief and fury. "My 64,778,272,342 Berries! Every last coin fell into that underground palace! And instead of helping me, you're all sitting over there drinking while watching me suffer?!"
Then he suddenly turned toward Rayleigh and shouted desperately:
"Rayleigh! Hurry and help me! If the two of us attack together and unleash Paradise Bloom, we can definitely break this damn underground palace open!"
"Damn, you even remember the exact amount down to the last digit," Rayleigh laughed.
"Well of course he remembers it clearly," Gaban said with a wicked grin. "That's his entire life savings, after all."
"Everyone on this ship is rich," Valthior added while laughing loudly, "except for one unfortunate idiot who accidentally became broke overnight. I won't say who, though."
"Hey, Bullet," Spencer called out with a smirk, "go throw Roger farther away. Can't you see Lord Valthior is too kindhearted? The poor make him uncomfortable."
Bullet burst into laughter as he looked toward Roger.
"So, Captain… are we still disbanding after this?"
"Back then this bastard used his authority as captain to take the biggest share of the treasure," Sunbell laughed loudly. "He got two whole billion Berries more than the rest of us! I still remember the disgusting look on his face back then. And now look at him… completely broke!"
"Alright, alright, that's enough," Valthior finally said while barely suppressing his laughter. "Stop wailing like someone died. Just think of it this way: since you dream about liberating the world anyway, consider that money your sponsorship fund for the future Warrior of Liberation."
He grinned mischievously before continuing:
"When the time comes, they'll definitely remember your contribution. Worst case scenario, later on I'll find a reporter and hold a press conference for you. You can announce to the whole world that you discovered Laugh Tale and left all your treasure there."
"Then tell everyone this—"
"If anyone wants it… they'll have to go find it themselves."
Roger staggered over to the group in a dazed state before suddenly dropping to his knees and wrapping both arms around Valthior's leg.
"My Lord! Lord Valthior!" he cried out in utter misery. "For the sake of the Oro Jackson, help your brother out here! This isn't one or two billion Berries we're talking about — it's more than sixty billion! I was counting on that money to live the comfortable life of an ordinary rich man! I already bragged my ass off to that bastard Shiki too, so you can't just leave me to die here! If he laughs at me later, do you think that's only slapping my face? No! That's slapping your noble ass too, My Lord!"
Originally, today should have been one of the happiest days of Roger's life.
He had finally reached the legendary Laugh Tale, the island he had dreamed of for years, and completed the ultimate goal of sailing around the entire Grand Line.
Yet before he could even enjoy the moment for long, all his money had vanished into the underground palace.
At this point, Roger genuinely could not laugh anymore.
"I was wrong… I was really wrong…" Roger muttered like a man whose soul had left his body. "Back then, I never should've gone out to sea. If I hadn't gone to sea, I wouldn't have searched for this damn Laugh Tale. If I hadn't searched for Laugh Tale, I wouldn't have lost over sixty billion Berries here. I…"
"If you never went out to sea, you wouldn't have had sixty billion Berries to lose in the first place," Rayleigh reminded him mercilessly.
"Wow, you're still bringing up the sixty billion?" Gaban immediately shouted in fake outrage. "Do you even have a heart? Can't you see Roger's about to cry himself blind over here?"
Valthior looked down at Roger clinging to his leg with visible disgust.
"And exactly how am I supposed to help you?"
"Report the card as lost! Help me freeze the account!" Roger looked up at him with desperate hope in his eyes. "You're a Celestial Dragon, right? You can definitely do something about it!"
"The World Bank," Valthior began in a deliberately serious tone, "is a transoceanic financial institution jointly established by the World Government, funded by the Twenty Royal Families together with the nobles of all one hundred seventy-six affiliated nations. Back then, pulling strings to get pirate scum like you an account was already bending the rules."
He shook his head slowly before continuing:
"I told you at the time to open a normal VIP account with standard deposit and withdrawal procedures, but you refused. You insisted on getting one of those encrypted direct-access accounts instead, the kind where anyone holding the card can spend the money inside. And now you want me to help you freeze it after you lost the card? That's asking a bit too much."
"I only did that because I figured once the crew disbanded, we wouldn't all be sailing together anymore!" Roger said with a face full of regret. "Without My lord backing me up, what if the World Bank started giving me trouble? With direct encrypted access, using the money would've been way more convenient…"
Truthfully, for Valthior, this entire issue was barely even a problem.
The World Bank sounded impressive, but in this era, how strong could financial oversight really be? Especially when a Celestial Dragon personally intervened.
Forget replacing Roger's lost card — if Valthior wanted to, he could fabricate a new account and casually add another sixty billion Berries into it with a single sentence.
And who exactly would dare investigate Valthior's finances?
Even if someone somehow did, it still wouldn't matter. Celestial Dragons possessed complete immunity from the laws of the World Government. Aside from the internal laws of their own people and the Holy Knights responsible for enforcing them, nobody in the world held the authority to judge him.
Originally, Valthior really had intended to help Roger solve the issue immediately.
But earlier, Rayleigh, Gaban, and the others had all maliciously insisted that he stay out of it for a while. Recently, Roger had become far too smug and inflated with confidence, so they wanted him to suffer for a bit and calm down before eventually helping him recover the money later.
At the same time, Roger was by far the least reliable person on the ship.
More importantly, the man was a notorious gambling addict.
Rayleigh had previously argued that it would be best to distribute Roger's money to him in yearly portions rather than letting him access all sixty billion at once. Otherwise, within two or three years, that idiot would probably lose every last coin buying drinks for women and gambling it all away.
After thinking it over, Valthior felt the argument actually made a lot of sense.
Besides, this was also the perfect opportunity to use Roger's "tragedy" as a reason to hold a press conference later—announce that the Roger Pirates had discovered the final island, and casually throw in the famous line about "wanting my treasure."
With that in mind, he eventually gave a half-reluctant nod, going along with everyone's plan.
By the time things had settled, the initial shock had already begun to fade. Or perhaps Roger simply couldn't endure the embarrassment of being openly laughed at anymore.
Whatever the reason, he suddenly glanced around at the crew, stood up, and dramatically waved his hand.
"Forget it!" Roger declared proudly. "So what if I lost sixty billion Berries? If I, Roger, could earn my first sixty billion, then I can earn a second one too!"
But after saying that, he quietly turned around and secretly wiped away his tears.
Soon afterward, Roger took the Roger Pirates' Jolly Roger that Sunbell carried with him, climbed to the highest point of the stone pillars, and firmly planted the banner there.
"No matter who comes here in the future," Roger shouted loudly while raising the flag high into the air, "the first crew in centuries to ever set foot on Laugh Tale, to plant their flag here, and to complete the dream of sailing around the Grand Line… will forever be the Roger Pirates!!!"
Then he raised his arms and roared toward the heavens:
"Let's throw a banquet, boys!!!"
The very next moment, Valthior and the rest of the crew all raised their arms as well, responding to Roger's call with thunderous cheers.
On February 5th, Year 1490 of the Sea Circle Calendar, the Roger Pirates accomplished a feat shocking enough to shake the entire world.
They reached the final island, Laugh Tale, and fulfilled the dream of sailing around the entire Grand Line.
At the same time, the great Captain Roger, disregarding all personal gain in the spirit of the ancient hero Joy Boy, generously invested every last bit of his life savings into the future.
The Roger Pirates all praised his heroic generosity and noble spirit.
And then, when Roger enthusiastically proposed that everyone else also contribute some money to "invest in the future"… every single one of them instantly became stingier than iron.
...
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