Lucian stared.
He blinked once, his silver eye shimmering with confusion. He blinked twice, his crimson eye pulsing in tandem with the headache beginning to throb behind his brow.
Then he stared some more.
'…why is there a talking, bipedal pig in a bubble yelling at me?'
Before him stood a grotesquely dressed man, if the term "man" could be stretched to describe such a misshapen creature. His face was a masterpiece of ugliness and entitlement, twisted into a sneer so absolute it looped past annoying and landed squarely in the realm of biological tragedy.
The man's skin was a sickly, pale hue, looking as though it had never been touched by a natural sunbeam, and his eyes were dull, lacking even the basic spark of human empathy.
Around the "god" stood rows of elite guards in heavy armor, CP0 agents in stark white masks that hid any flicker of shame, and a collection of trembling attendants whose spirits had clearly been ground into the dust long ago.
And at the center of it all, the Celestial Dragon was screeching.
Spittle hit the inside of his bubble helmet, running down the glass in slow, disgusting rivulets as he pointed a shaky, sausage-like finger at Lucian.
"You will kneel! You will hand over every treasure! You belong to me now! I heard you make miracles, I want them all! I am a god, and you are just a toy for my collection! Guards, put the collar on him! I want him to crawl!"
Lucian tuned him out halfway through the first sentence. He didn't even know how he'd gotten here at first. Well, that wasn't strictly true.
After his proposal to the Marines, after Tsuru had signaled they would "discuss" his offer while Akainu tried to find a way to melt his sanctuary, word had reached the elders, it seemed, and thus reached the so called gods of the world.
Power like Lucian's was a scent that greed could track across entire oceans, and no one was more sensitive to that scent than the leeches atop the Red Line, it seems.
When he'd felt the "pull" earlier, it was a powerful tug on his soul. Most summons felt like a polite knock or a desperate prayer, this one had been different. He should have known.
"I said kneel, you common filth!" the pig roared, reaching for a gilded pistol at his hip, his face turning a shade of magenta that no doubt suggested a looming stroke.
Lucian sighed, a sound of utter, world-weary boredom. "…No."
For half a second, the room was so quiet you could hear the resin bubble hiss. The guards froze, their hands hovering over their hilts, unable to comprehend that someone had used a negative syllable in the presence of a World Noble. Then, the Celestial Dragon's face shifted from magenta to a bruised, ugly purple.
"Kill him! Tear off his legs so he can't run! He dared to speak!"
The CP agents moved. They didn't hesitate, they were the well-trained dogs of the gods, and they had been told to bite. They all attacked him, and then,
nothing.
Every attack simply… Disappeared.
Those who attempted physical strikes were met with a repulsive force that flung them like ragdolls, their bodies shattering marble walls and denting reinforced steel.
Lucian didn't move. He looked at the trembling "god" with a gaze with a raised brow, then Lucian vanished, leaving the Celestial Dragon to scream in a room filled with groaning guards.
Lucian reappeared in his rented room on Grove 75 in Sabaody Archipelago, dropping onto his chair with exhaustion, and it seemed just listening to that thing was lowering his intelligence.
The room was simple, a stark contrast to the gilded rot of Mary Geoise, but it was quiet.
'What was that creature?' Raum's voice echoed in his mind, sounding genuinely curious. 'I felt an overwhelming, primal urge to erase its lineage from creation. It felt like... a mistake of nature.'
Lucian snorted, rubbing his temples where the headache was still localized. 'That, dear ancestor, was a Celestial Dragon. A so called "god" of this place.'
'What?' Raum's disbelief was palpable. The Great Earl had faced archangels in the silver cities and cosmic horrors in the deep abyss, yet he sounded shaken by the mere existence of the celestial dragon. 'That… thing? That sack of pale meat and rot was a god? Has the word lost all meaning in this place?'
'Only in their own heads,' Lucian replied, watching a resin bubble drift past his window. 'They're descendants of the original twenty kings who founded the World Government. They've spent eight centuries convincing themselves that because their blood is old, it's divine. They don't walk on the same ground as us, they don't breathe the same air, and they certainly don't think like humans. This is a type of brain rot that only occurs when you have zero consequences for your own stupidity.'
'In my era,' Raum said, 'fools like that would have been smited on the spot for the crime of breathing. They are lucky heavens are so quiet, for if a true deity saw them here in this place, the stars themselves would fall in shame. Where is this place anyway?'
'Lucky for them, annoying for me,' Lucian muttered, ignoring the question, making Raum growl in annoyance. He leaned back, closing his eyes and trying to find his center. 'Anyway, let's get back to the training. I'd rather deal with your hardass than think about that bubble-headed pig for another second.'
Raum paused, his presence lingering at the edge of Lucian's mind like a dark cloud. 'Fine. But eventually, boy, you will have to tell me where "here" is.'
Lucian just smiled and didn't answer. He knew the demon was curious, but this was something he was going to keep to himself for as long as possible.
Training resumed, and the days blurred into a grueling cycle of meditation and Haki refinement. Lucian sat cross-legged on a deserted island a few dozen miles from Sabaody, the waves crashing against the jagged rocks. His breathing was steady, a low hum in the back of his throat as he reached inward toward the Raum family trait, The Sight.
'You have grasped the present, and you have flickered into the future,' Raum's voice was stern, lacking its usual mocking edge. 'Good, good. But you still have a hard time with the past, I see.'
Lucian frowned, his brow furrowing as he tried to navigate the mental fog. "Why is the past so much harder? The future is a notion of endless possibility, a million branching paths, and the present is a whole canvas of continuous changes, but the past is already written. It's static. It should be easier to read."
'Because you are trying to limit your mind in fear of what might happen,' Raum countered, his voice echoing as if from a great distance. 'The past isn't just behind you, Lucian. It is beneath you. It is the soil from which the present grows. Stop looking for images and start feeling the weight of the footprints that had been left on the sands of time, and reach out to those you can anchor to. The universe remembers everything, and through those of the past we are able to reach out.'
Lucian exhaled, letting his consciousness slip past the physical world. He felt his gaze push through the "solid" resistance of the present, a sensation like wading through thick, freezing water. He stopped fighting the current and let himself drift backward, losing all sense of time and self.
Images flickered in his mind with fragments of lives he didn't recognize. A woman with hair like ravens and eyes like spilled blood reached out to him, then was gone. A reflection of a boy in a mirror with purple hair and a frown that looked like a permanent scar stared back. The boy looked familiar, yet he didn't remember ever meeting someone like that.
"Focus your mind," he heard Raum's voice, and then, "wait..." he heard the demon shout, but he was already gone.
Then, the images solidified with terrifying clarity.
He stood there watching from someone's eyes as he saw rows upon rows of demons. They stood in a silent formation, none dared to speak. And before them stood a man. He was beautiful, too beautiful, with hair like spun gold and a radiance that hurt to look at. He was speaking, though the words were silent to Lucian.
Lucian tried to get a better look at the man, but that seemed to be a mistake.
The man stopped mid-sentence. Slowly, with a deliberate, haunting grace, his head snapped toward Lucian. Their eyes meeting.
His eyes, perfect and cold, locked onto Lucian's, and he felt every hair on his body stand.
'NO!' Raum's voice exploded with a terror that Lucian had never felt before. Dark, clawed hands slammed over Lucian's vision, dragging him back with such violence it felt like his soul was being whiplashed.
Lucian jolted awake on the beach, gasping for air, vomiting a mouthful of blood. His heart was hammering against his ribs, and he could still feel the terror when his gaze met theirs.
The sun was setting, painting the sky in a bloody orange that reminded him of the man's eyes.
"Who… who was that? Raum, answer me!" he said, forgetting to add even the 'lord' he normally said.
Silence. absolute silence.
Raum didn't answer.
After a long, agonizing minute, a single phrase echoed, sounding from the demon 'Lesson over.' The demon's presence retreated to the deepest corner of Lucian's mind, leaving him alone with the sound of the sea.
Three days later.
Lucian had expected a bounty for his defiance at Mary Geoise, he knew the World Government wouldn't take a "no" lying down. But as he unfolded the paper at a small cafe in Sabaody, he nearly choked on his coffee.
There was his face, a surprisingly accurate sketch, likely provided by a CP0 specialist. His name was written in bold, black ink. And beneath it, 1,700,000,000 BERRIES.
"What the hell?!" Lucian shouted, his voice echoing through the cafe and causing several nearby patrons to scramble away in fear. Over a billion? For a "no"? For defending himself? He knew the Celestial Dragons were sensitive, but what the hell..
He grabbed a stolen Navy transponder snail he'd kept as a souvenir and dialed the emergency frequency for Vice Admiral Tsuru. It rang twice before her calm, measured voice came through.
"Who is this?"
"What is this, Tsuru?" Lucian's voice was a low, dangerous growl, his crimson eye glowing with a faint, predatory light.
There was a pause. He could hear the sound of papers shuffling on the other end. "Ah, Lucian. We weren't expecting a call so soon. You've become quite the celebrity in the last seventy-two hours."
"One point seven billion? You're treating me like a Yonko commander because I wouldn't let a talking pig put a collar on me? Explain the logic, Vice Admiral. I thought we were negotiating."
"The Five Elders are… displeased," Tsuru said, her tone devoid of its usual professional warmth. "You humiliated a World Noble. The 'Gods' do not negotiate with those who strike them. The Navy has been ordered to prioritize your capture, dead or alive. Preferably dead."
"I'm giving the World Government three days," Lucian said, his voice dropping into a menacing, demonic register that made the snail itself sweat and retreat into its shell. "Take the bounty down. Issue a public apology for the 'clerical error.' Admit that...."
He paused. "…If you don't, I'll give you a reason to have given me this bounty. I'll show those dragons what a real god is."
Click. He cut the call.
Three days passed.
The bounty remained. The posters were everywhere, pinned to every tavern door and mast in the archipelago. Bounty hunters began to gather in Sabaody like vultures, their eyes greedy as they looked at every purple-haired youth they saw.
That was it. They dared to ruin his stay here, hmmm...
On the fourth day, Lucian appeared high above the Red Line, his black wings spread wide, casting a small, ominous shadow over the pristine white of Mary Geoise. He looked down at the "Holy Land". He saw the beautiful gardens, the marble statues, and the slaves being whipped in the back alleys.
"Fine," he whispered. "You want to play, then play."
He summoned his Gate, reaching into the golden ripples of the void to pull out a weapon. It was a golden hilt, ancient and ornate. As his hand gripped it, a cylindrical, drill-shaped pillar extended from it, glowing with a red, pulsating energy that hummed with sound. The drill began to spin, faster and faster, until the friction of the rotation began to shred the very air around it into vacuum pockets.
Lucian poured every drop of his magic into the weapon, his silver and crimson eyes bleeding. The sky above Mary Geoise turned a bruised, blood-red. The space around him groaned, reality buckling and cracking like thin glass under the weight of the concentrated "True Void" energy.
"ENUMA ELISH!"
He brought the blade down.
A spiraling, crimson-and-black beam of pure annihilation tore through the clouds. It erased everything in his path. The beam carved a path through the stone, through the palaces of the nobles, through the very plateau of the Red Line.
When the light finally faded and the dust settled into the sea below, Lucian was trembling with exhaustion, his magic reserves nearly bottomed out. He looked down. Half of the Holy Land was simply... gone.
A perfect, smoking semi-circle of nothingness remained where the central districts had been. The Pangaea Castle was sheared in half, its grand halls exposed to the cold wind.
"Let's see how you react now, bastards," he muttered, his voice cracking.
He didn't wait for the Navy to scramble its remaining Admirals. With the last flicker of his strength, he went back to DXD, stepping through to the safety of his home dimension.
He needed to sleep.
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