"I… I guess I don't really know."
Tashigi's earnest, slightly airheaded answer sent the chat into flames.
[bro!! white-robe geezer are you teasing our Officer Tashigi on purpose?!]
[exactly—your face is punchable right now]
[when I log in I'm hunting you down, even if I die and respawn, I'm still going to gank you]
White-Robed Drunkard smiled helplessly and let the abuse roll past.
Tashigi thought a bit longer, then shook her head. "I don't know how strong the Government is, but I do know something about the Marines. They say Headquarters Admirals are the World Government's top combat power. Each one is a monster—able to rout thousands of pirates in short order."
"Admirals… top combat power?"
"Thousands of pirates… crushed quickly?"
He echoed her, then went blank. He had no real sense of what an Admiral meant—only the names he'd heard in Hall of Fame pings.
But Tashigi's words hooked him deeper. The chat, too, spun up into wild takes about Admiral power levels—most of them blind guesses. The boldest claim: "an Admiral could defeat a pirate with a bounty over a hundred million." The replies? Pure flamethrower.
When Gu Feng skimmed the VOD the next morning, he almost choked laughing.
Oh, he loved tearing down player head-canon.
An Admiral beating a 100M pirate and you're flaming the guy?
Heh—can't wait to see your faces when an Admiral actually shows up.
He wore a devilish grin and checked the Popularity meter. Last night's streams had pushed reserves from 10 million to 18 million. Still 12 million short of the Memoir System unlock at 30 million.
"The Syrup Village arc (Usopp) starts weaving memories—Shanks's arm scene alone has huge pull," he muttered, eyes on five live feeds. "If we can unlock Memoirs before they hit Syrup Village, the impact will be perfect."
Kaka with Red-Hair? Popular, but the East Blue won't spawn big fights around them right now; and once they hit the Grand Line, a Yonko crew won't stumble into tidy public 'events' either. Not reliable.
Little Fisherman and White-Robe? Stable growth, but their spikes won't come until Fisherman reaches Syrup Village and White-Robe bags a named pirate.
That left one lever.
Gu Feng's gaze slid to the Swan cutting across glittering seas—Buggy, Alvida, and Sword-Shadow Flow chasing the rumor of a Devil Fruit.
On deck, they'd been scanning blue for a full day.
"Alvida, is your intel solid?" Buggy hovered above the rail at sail-height, monocular pressed to his eye like a human crow's nest.
Alvida herself looked tired. Devil Fruits were the sea's secret treasures—how often did leaks pan out? A trap?
Then Buggy barked, "Island ahead!"
All eyes turned. A round silhouette swelled on the horizon.
Alvida's eyes lit up. "That's the Bubble Isle—shaped like a bubble. The Fruit rumor came from there!"
Cheers broke out. Buggy's upper body detached and windmilled in midair. "O-ho-ho! Full speed ahead!"
The Swan surged toward the isle. Gu Feng rubbed his hands together, already picturing the chat imploding when Alvida ate the famed Slip-Slip Fruit—the "instant glow-up" Fruit. Even he was curious: just how magical would the transformation be?
But before that could fire… another feed delivered a curveball.
The quietest of the five streamers: Net-Addicted Girl.
Unlike the others, she'd picked Free Faction at start—neither Marine nor Pirate—so her route had diverged hard. She wasn't raiding or patrolling; she was… wandering.
Her little skiff finally bumped a populated island after days off a barren rock. Small place, a mountain at its back, a single village.
Pink-haired and fashion-forward, she hopped ashore, asked a villager for directions, then turned to stream:
"Familyyy, as the most scuffed streamer in Age of Grand Voyage, I finally made it to a town with actual humans. Uncle says this is Shimotsuki Village. There's a famous Isshin Dojo, run by a swordmaster named Koshiro."
[Isshin Dojo? Koshiro?]
Comments exploded—someone connected the dots to Zoro's earlier crumbs: he'd trained in Isshin Dojo, under Koshiro; as a kid he'd had a friend, Kuina, who died at eleven; his lone named blade, Wado Ichimonji, was once hers.
"So I've stumbled into Zoro's hometown?" She brightened. "It looks tiny, but if it's his home, there must be stories tucked everywhere, right?"
Gu Feng blinked—and grinned. When he'd added Free Faction he'd worried Pirate vs. Marine was too linear. Freedom added texture.
And now? That texture was about to pay off.
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