The first half of the Grand Line. The Florian Triangle.
This sea is smothered year-round in a dense, unnatural fog. Sunlight never breaks through. Only eternal gloom and dead silence. Deep within the mist, the island-sized horror known as Thriller Bark drifts like a lurking ghost leviathan.
Today, however, Thriller Bark is anything but quiet.
"Hah... huff... hah... huff..."
A ragged, bellows-like gasping echoes across the vast ruined plaza at the ship's center.
"Heh heh heh heh! Faster! Heavier! You worthless sack of blubber!"
In the middle of the plaza, former Seven Warlord of the Sea Gecko Moria stands bare-chested, both hands locked around the black blade Shusui, its edge gleaming with the unmistakable presence of a named sword.
Moria's trademark onion-shaped head and massive frame still dominate the eye. But look closer, and the thick layer of fat that had piled up on his gut for years has visibly shrunk by a full ring.
Two months ago, Ace defeated him. Thousands of shadows scattered. Not a single zombie on this ship can still stand as a training partner.
No partner? Then he trains alone.
And he does it in a way that is grotesque, twisted, and utterly reliant on cheating with his Devil Fruit.
"Shadow Box: Forced Pull!"
Moria roars, eyes shot with blood.
The black shadow pooled at his feet suddenly defies every law of optics. It writhes like a living thing. The shadow's hands snap into a textbook, ferocious great-swordsman slash and carve downward through the air.
At the same moment, Moria's bloated body, still gripping Shusui, is yanked and dragged by the shadow. Against every physical instinct, he executes a flawless cutting motion his current frame should never be able to produce.
Shhk!
A black blade of compressed air screams off Shusui's edge and shears a derelict clock tower clean in half at the waist.
This is one of the Kage Kage no Mi's most terrifying traits: the synchronization between shadow and body.
Moria abandoned his swordsmanship and muscle memory for over a decade. Now he forces his shadow to drive his flesh through slash after slash, reawakening the combat instincts buried in his bones. This forced training, like being jerked around by puppet strings, tears and rebuilds muscle fiber with brutal cruelty.
"Hah... hah..."
The strike lands. Moria slumps, propping himself up on Shusui with wretched effort. Sweat pours like rain off his pale face and smacks against the stone.
Clap. Clap. Clap.
Crisp applause drifts down from the high perimeter wall.
A pink-haired girl in a Gothic lolita dress, holding a wine-red parasol, sits on the wall's edge. Her long legs swing idly in the air.
"Lord Moria, I'll admit that swing almost looked a tiny bit cool. But that breathing of yours? You sound like a seahorse about to croak. Hororororo~"
Perona covers her mouth, letting out her signature venomous giggle.
"Shut up, Perona!"
Moria snaps, furious and flustered. "I'm carrying out a grand rehabilitation plan! Once I burn off this blubber, reclaim my Haki, and get my hands on that enhancement serum Ace promised... I'll return to the New World!"
"Yes, yes, Lord Moria is the greatest."
Perona rolls her eyes, drifts down from the wall, and hands him an enormous towel.
"But seriously, aren't you pushing too hard lately? Doctor Hogback says you're not just using your shadow to forcibly reshape muscle and squeeze out fat. You keep snipping the shadows off swordsmen and martial artists who wander into this sea and stuffing them inside yourself."
She eyes him with a trace of worry. "Absorbing someone else's shadow gives you their combat experience in an instant, but it's not your own power. If you don't digest it properly, your mind will break."
"Tch. That quack's medicine is only good for stitching up corpses that can't talk back."
Moria wipes the sweat off his face and tosses the towel aside.
He knows Perona's concern is valid.
Forcibly absorbing foreign shadows to steal experience and muscle memory puts crushing pressure on the psyche. He doesn't care. If he can reclaim the body that once tore through battlefields, he'll accept a shattered mind.
Moria tilts his head back and stares into the eternal fog overhead. Those narrow eyes, dead and empty for over a decade, now burn with a mad, feverish light.
"Ace..."
Moria tightens his grip on Shusui. The cold hilt drags his mind back to that demon of a man: Kaido.
Back in Wano Country, that monster used his brutal, unstoppable kanabo to bludgeon Moria's most precious crewmates into bloody pulp, one by one. The nightmare never fades. It gnaws at his soul day and night.
For over ten years, he was afraid. He ran. He hid in this fog, building painless zombies, all to avoid ever feeling that absolute despair again.
But that young tyrant named Portgas D. Ace didn't just crush his pathetic zombie army with overwhelming force two weeks ago. He savagely, violently ripped open the deepest wound in Moria's heart.
"These past few days, I've added a few more monsters to my crew. And our genius ship's doctor just finished a serum that breaks human limits. I'll drop it off when I pass by. When I take this ship to Wano to claim Kaido's head, I'm bringing you with me."
That voice, brimming with arrogant ambition over the comm channel, still rings in Moria's ears.
"Heh heh heh heh! Heh heh heh heh heh!"
Moria suddenly laughs like a madman. The sound carries over a decade of pent-up, unhinged desperation and final resolve.
If anyone else said they were going to take Kaido's head, he'd call it a joke.
But if it's the monster who executed Celestial Dragons in public and fought an Admiral head-on... if it's this ship of demons packed with lunatics...
"You young monster dare to declare war on an untouchable Emperor? Then this worthless life of mine, the one that should have ended in Wano, is yours to spend!"
Moria's massive, bloated frame erupts with a vicious, savage pressure that makes the air tremble. It's the madness of a drowning man clutching a lifeline, ready to burn everything to ash for one last chance.
"Hogback!" Moria bellows toward the distant castle like a wounded beast.
"Here! Here! Lord Moria! Fosfosfosfos!" A bizarre doctor with vampire-like teeth scrambles out, tripping over himself.
"Drag out those swordsmen and fighters we caught yesterday, the ones with bounties over ten million! I'm cutting their shadows!"
Moria's bloodshot eyes bore into the empty air ahead, as if he can already see the burning battlefields of the New World.
"Before Boss Ace sets foot in Wano, I'll squeeze every last ounce of this damn fat off my body! I'll reclaim every scrap of Haki I lost back then! I won't let anyone on this ship look down on me!"
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