"Whatever, cross that bridge when we come to it," Raleigh muttered to himself, finally letting out a long, slow breath.
The knot of tension in his chest—formed by CP9, Headquarters, and sanctions—was enough to give a normal man an ulcer.
But Raleigh wasn't a normal man.
He was, at his core, a lazy one.
And this was all just too much work.
"Schemes and tricks are annoying," he grumbled, picking up his fishing rod again.
The worn grip felt familiar and comforting in his hand.
"They're for people who don't have enough power to just smash the problem."
He gave the line a test-jiggle, his eyes settling on the gentle bob of the lure in the water.
"As long as I'm strong enough to punch a hole in whatever they throw at me, I don't need to care about this political garbage."
This was his core philosophy, the one that let him sleep at night.
All these plots, all this maneuvering... it was just a distraction from the only truth that mattered in this world: pure, overwhelming strength.
Everything else was just noise.
He settled back into his comfortable spot on the figurehead, the warmth of the North Blue sun returning to his shoulders.
The crisis, for now, was filed away in the "Deal With It Later (Hopefully Never)" part of his brain.
He returned to his earlier, far more important task.
Almost on cue, a familiar sound chimed in his mind.
[Fishing during patrol, Slacking Points +200]
"Ah, much better," Raleigh sighed, a genuine smile gracing his lips for the first time in an hour.
.....
North Blue, Eryojaku Kingdom
Thousands of miles away, the sky wasn't just cloudy; it was choked.
A permanent, sickly, brownish-black smog blotted out the sun, casting the land in a perpetual, grim twilight.
A tall man in a dark green cloak, Monkey D. Dragon, stepped off the gangplank onto the docks.
The air didn't just smell bad—it was acidic.
It stung his eyes and coated the back of his throat with a chemical, coppery taste.
He frowned, his resolute gaze and square jaw, now devoid of any youthful softness, taking in the desolation.
"Chief... what is this place?" one of his followers wheezed, doubling over.
"Why is it like this?" The man, one of the younger recruits, was already coughing, a harsh, hacking sound that echoed in the dead air.
Dragon's gaze lifted, moving past the crumbling docks to the horizon, which was dominated by several distant, giant smokestacks.
"This is the Eryojaku Kingdom," he said, his voice flat. "According to the books, it's a powerful and resource-rich country."
He looked down at the ground beneath his boots.
It wasn't stone or dirt.
It was a thick, crunchy carpet of black, granular dust. "I never expected it to be like... this."
Before arriving, the small group had held high expectations.
They were looking for a new base, a place to gather support, a nation ripe for change.
They had hoped to see a prosperous, beautiful country.
The reality was a nightmare.
The giant chimneys were the kingdom's only pulse, breathing vents for some monstrous beast hidden underground.
With every breath, they expelled a plume of thick black smoke, a poison that rained back down on the land.
Even here at the port, the farthest point from the industrial center, the soot was inescapable.
Dragon bent down, ignoring the filth, and examined the weeds growing between the cracked stones.
What should have been green was blanketed in a thick layer of black particles.
Some plants had given up, their stems dry and brittle.
Others clung tenaciously to life, their leaves coated in grime.
He plucked a leaf. Rubbing it between his palms, he watched the black particles come off on his fingers like thick, greasy graphite.
He sniffed it.
"Soot," Dragon said, his voice cold. "Industrial grade. This air... it's a poison. Living here long-term would be a death sentence."
"Leader, how do the people here survive?" the younger member asked, coughing violently into a handkerchief.
"I feel like staying here for even a short time will kill me."
"First, cover your nose and mouth," Dragon ordered, tearing a strip of cloth from his own pack.
"Cotton or gauze. Let's find an inn and settle down before we discuss anything else."
The group followed suit, masking their faces as they moved into the town.
It was a ghost town.
The visibility was less than fifty meters, the smog so thick it swallowed the buildings.
The streets were empty, not just quiet, but abandoned.
Dragon had to actively use his Observation Haki just to navigate, sensing the few hunched figures that scurried from one shadowed doorway to the next, desperate to get back inside.
After half an hour of walking through the oppressive gloom, they finally found a living soul who wasn't running.
An elderly man, his face a roadmap of wrinkles and soot, leaned against a crumbling wall.
"Elder, excuse me," Dragon said, his masked voice muffled. "We are travelers. Is there an inn here?"
The aged man looked up, his eyes milky.
He didn't just shake his head; he laughed.
It was a dry, rasping sound, like sandpaper on stone.
"Inn? Travelers?" the old man wheezed. "Anyone can tell you're young'uns from elsewhere. In this place, there are no inns."
Dragon's brow furrowed. "No inns? How is that possible? Does no one ever visit?"
The old man sighed, a plume of steam in the cold, dirty air.
He gazed up at the black smoke drifting overhead.
"Visit? Who would ever come to a place like this for travel? People don't come here, son. They only die here."
He gestured with a shaking, soot-stained hand.
"Not just outsiders—even the nobles of our own kingdom don't live here. Hah! They moved away long before the air turned to poison, relocated to another area with 'beautiful scenery.' The only ones left are us... us lowly commoners, treated as less than human. We're just the fuel for their factories."
Dragon and his companions exchanged grim glances.
One whispered, "Leader, this country... it's incredibly oppressive. The people have lost all hope."
Dragon nodded.
He had traveled from the Grand Line, seen suffering, poverty, and despair.
But he had never seen a place so systematically broken, so completely shrouded in a dark, thick haze of both pollution and hopelessness.
He couldn't understand it.
Why hadn't they risen in rebellion?
The old man seemed to sense their predicament.
"Young man, there are no inns. But... this old man lives alone. My house is just... empty. If you don't mind the dust, you can come to my place for some water."
He shrugged, a gesture of complete apathy.
He wasn't worried they were criminals.
What could they possibly do to him that this city, this kingdom, hadn't already done? To him, living or dying made no difference.
"Then thank you, elder," Dragon said, bowing his head slightly.
He had planned to return to the ship, but this was an opportunity.
A local. A place to stay. A way to learn.
....
Half an hour later, they followed the old man into a small, two-story house.
Dragon instinctively brushed the dust from his cloak before entering.
The inside was dark, and everything was coated in the same black film as the outside.
It seemed most of the house hadn't been touched in a long time.
But in the middle of the living room, on a small table, was a faded, old photograph.
It was a group photo of four—a smiling family, the old couple and what looked like their son and daughter-in-law.
The glass of the frame, unlike everything else, was spotless.
A single, clean square in a world of filth.
Given the old man lived alone, Dragon didn't need to ask what had happened.
"Please, have a seat. I'll... I'll go fetch some water from the basement," the old man said, shuffling away.
As soon as he was gone, Dragon turned to his men.
"This is it," he said, his voice low but vibrating with a cold intensity. "This is the place. The experience we gained in other kingdoms... this is where we put it to use."
"But leader," the younger member whispered, "where do we even start? It's a ghost town. It seems most people are busy in the mines. There's hardly anyone on the streets."
Dragon nodded. "That's true. But we start with one."
He gestured to the photograph. "We start with him. He knows the secrets of this kingdom. He knows the pain."
Dragon looked around the filthy, neglected room.
"And while we listen... we work."
He didn't idle, and he didn't need to give an order.
While they quietly discussed their next steps, Dragon picked up a rag.
His men, understanding instantly, began to clean.
They weren't just cleaning a house.
They were making a statement.
We are here. We see your suffering. And we are not them.
By the time the old man slowly climbed the stairs from the basement, carrying a pail of water, he stopped dead at the top step.
The dust was gone.
The furniture was wiped down.
The floor was swept.
The room, though poor and old, was clean.
He looked at the tall strangers, then at the clean photograph of his family.
And for the first time in what looked like a decade, the old man's shoulders, which had been stooped in permanent defeat, straightened.
Just an inch.