CHAPTER 184: VOYAGE INTO THE BLUE(2)

Lightning tore across the sky like a god dragging his nails through the clouds. A second later, it struck—directly onto the rod mounted at the peak of the mast.

My hair snapped upright in an instant, flaring out. A metallic taste hit the back of my tongue. My ears rang.

Then, just as fast, the electricity dispersed. Clean. Controlled. The water beneath the boat hissed with static for a second before falling still again.

Usopp, you lunatic genius.

By all logic—by every scientific principle I could remember—I should’ve been fried. Turned into a charred husk clinging to the helm. But this was the world of One Piece. And this was one of Usopp’s ideas, which meant that logic had politely excused itself from the conversation a long time ago.

I caught my breath, grabbed the harpoon beside me, and stabbed into the water at the fish that had floated to the surface—electrocuted and stunned by the bolt. Two pierced cleanly. I pulled them in. Food.

But then I saw it.

A wave.

No—a mountain of water. Towering in the distance. Racing toward me.

It wasn’t just big. It was biblical in its own way. The kind of wave sailors carve into myths and whisper about when the wind dies.

It raced towards me swallowing every smaller waves in front of me.

I bolted for the cabin and slammed the door shut behind me.

The boat began to rise. Slowly, unnaturally. My knees bent. The floor tilted under my boots as if the sea itself had decided to lift the vessel like a toy.

The wave hit.

The boat didn’t crash into it—it plunged through it.

Water burst through the door instantly, splintering it off its hinges. Windows exploded inward. The cabin flooded in a heartbeat. A wall of cold saltwater smashed into my chest, throwing me against the far wall. For a second, I couldn’t tell which way was up.

I sucked in a final breath as my head breached the only air pocket left in the cabin before the entire room filled. I grabbed the beam overhead, struggling to keep myself oriented.

I felt the boat dive under. It was like being pulled into a whirlpool wrapped in a landslide. Everything spun. The world tilted. And then—

Light.

The boat surfaced, thrown violently back into the air by the end of the wave’s pull.

I hit the floor hard, gasping and coughing out seawater.

For a moment, all I could hear was the blood in my ears and the groaning of wood.

I stayed down for a few seconds. Maybe a minute. Just breathing. Letting the shock pass through me.

When I could move again, I crawled through the wreckage of the cabin, my limbs stiff and heavy. My knuckles were scraped. My vision blurred from salt. But I checked what mattered.

Crates: shattered. Their contents gone. Lost to the sea. Tools. Rope. Food. Most of it.

My belt: still buckled.

Grenades and bullets. Untouched by the chaos. Miraculously.

Sword and a dagger: gone. Torn away during the chaos. My fingers clenched but this wasn’t the time to mourn for a blade.

The gun Merry had given me: I saw it outside the wrecked cabin, half submerged. I scrambled for it, snatched it before another wave could claim it.

It was scratched. Damp. But usable.

This storm—it had thrown everything at me.

Maps made no sense as there was no sense of direction here. The compass spun uselessly. Even the Log Pose, the supposed solution to all navigational woes in this sea, had stopped working. The needle drifted lazily in circles, refusing to settle.

I stepped out of the wrecked cabin.

The roof was gone. The walls cracked. A skeleton of what had once been shelter.

No point staying inside.

So I walked out stepping into the full force of the storm.

It greeted me like an old rival.

The rain hit my face first—cold, stinging, relentless.

The wind howled so hard I had to lean against it. My steps came crooked. My balance betrayed me more than once. The deck was slick with water, rocking violently beneath my feet.

The thunder lit the world like a strobe, each flash painting the sea in monochrome.

I looked around. Every direction—just more storm.

Dark sea. Dark sky. The line between them gone.

Still, I stood.

I planted my feet.

The boat pitched under me again, and I had to grab a beam to stay upright. My fingers dug into the soaked wood. I felt the world tremble through my grip.

Then came the moment.

Lightning cracked. The flash illuminated the sea—and there, in the distance, I saw it.

A wall.

Another wave. Bigger than the one before.

It was still far, but closing fast.

It would swallow me. That much was clear.

This boat—what was left of it—couldn’t take another hit like that.

Most men would jump overboard, pray for driftwood, or just close their eyes and let the sea take them.

But not me.

I did what every man secretly dreams of doing.

I stepped to the front of the boat.

Faced the wave.

And I stood tall.

No shield. No prayer. Just blood boiling, heart hammering, and fists clenched.

The wave loomed before me.

I was nothing to it.

Just a speck.

An ant.

Still, I raised my fist.

Still, I punched.

My knuckles met rain and wind. They met nothing tangible. But it wasn’t about hitting something. It was about not bowing.

I punched the air in defiance of everything this world had thrown at me.

And I screamed.

Not in fear.

In rage.

In rebellion.

In laughter.

Because this wasn’t the worst I’d seen.

I had walked from seeing Leviathans that engulfed the whole sky. I had faced men that didn’t deserve to be called human. I had been molded, devoured. I had carried hope of the girls that had lost theirs in this water.

So no.

I would not drown quietly.

I would not close my eyes and fade away into this sea.

I challenged the elements. Not to win. But to stand.

To remind this world that even an ant has teeth.

The wave hit.

But I was still there.

Still standing.

Still refusing to fall.

The waves took me whole.

---------

Coughs wracked my chest as seawater poured out of my mouth in spurts. I gasped for air, choking, eyes fluttering as light and color returned in blurry smears. My chest ached. My limbs felt like lead. I was alive.

Shapes moved around me. At first, I couldn’t make out what they were—only the shadows of forms circling me. The haze lifted slowly. They came into focus.

Monkeys.

Dozens of them.

They stood around me, watching. Some tilted their heads curiously, others pointed and murmured in high-pitched chittering. A few sat calmly on branches nearby, their tails swinging like pendulums. But one among them wasn’t watching like the rest.

A monkey, old and grizzled, fur streaked with gray and silver. His eyes were sunken but sharp. In his hand he held a large gourd, its surface painted with faded symbols. I recognized him. The elder monkey from the Monkey Island. The same one who had first bartered monkey wine in exchange for marrow-rich pork. Wise and strange.

I tried to stand, to speak, but pain wrapped around my ribs like iron bands. The elder monkey stepped forward swiftly and pressed a heavy, hairy finger against my sternum, forcing me to lie back down.

He opened my mouth with ease, then tipped the gourd. The wine trickled in, a warm, syrupy liquid with an earthy tang. As soon as it hit my tongue, I felt it—something shifting.

The wine didn’t slide down to my stomach. It was diverted—dragged toward the wine ball. That organ-like core I’d carried ever since Monkey Island.

I could feel it, like a new current forming in a river. The wine veered to my chest, drawn toward something I hadn’t felt in weeks.

The wine ball.

Nestled deep within my chest, it had remained dormant until now, pulsing faintly like an unseen heart. But now, the moment wine entered my system, it responded.

Heat bloomed from it—slowly at first, then like a furnace roaring to life. The temperature rose until I could feel my flesh bubbling beneath the skin. My veins throbbed. I clenched my teeth to stop from screaming.

The wine ball wasn’t just absorbing the wine.

It was burning it.

Flesh sizzled near the chest. Muscle tightened and snapped. My skin crawled with unseen movement as something inside me twisted.

But just as the pain reached its peak, a second force surged forward. The blood.

The sentient blood that had healed wounds and gave strength beyond comprehension.

It rose again.

It wasn’t passive only responding when I wanted it too. No, It was angry.

The blood pushed against the heat, cooling the tissue where it could, knitting torn muscle, smoothing raw nerves. It flowed faster through my veins, building a defense—a dome around my organs, isolating them from the heat and violence of the wine ball.

I could feel it moving with intent, tugging my lungs a few inches to the side, sliding my heart higher in the ribcage, folding my digestive tract out of reach. It cleared a space in my torso like carving out a battlefield.

The wine ball, undisturbed, continued to siphon.

And the heat increased.

My chest was now a battleground. The blood held its dome steady, reinforcing walls with layers of cellular padding. But the wine ball was relentless. Its heat seared into the dome, pushing back the blood with pulses of focused energy.

I coughed up blood. My mouth filled with iron.

My lungs were forced to shift again. The heart was squeezed between the dome and my ribs. Every beat came slower, more labored.

The elder monkey watched calmly. He raised the gourd again and poured more wine into my mouth.

The siphoning intensified.

The heat exploded outward. My ribs cracked as pressure mounted. The blood held for a moment—then relented.

The dome burst.

Bone splinters shot outward. Blood sprayed from my chest. The monkeys scattered in panic, shrieking and leaping back into the trees.

Only the elder remained still.

He poured again.

The wine rushed down my throat, straight to the wine ball. Now unshackled, the ball unleashed a deeper wave of heat—not violent this time, but methodical. Like a craftsman taking control of broken stone.

The heat shifted from destruction to construction.

First, the broken ribs. Bone reformed, crackling and setting themselves without needing hands. Then the lungs, heart, stomach—all returned to their original placements, guided by the same force that had torn them free. The blood, no longer fighting, now hid in my heart. It wrapped around the heart and made a fortress in it.

It was harmony now.

A strange harmony.

The wine burned.

The blood cooled.

The body healed.

Each movement felt like being forged anew. Not just healed, but refined. Muscle fiber was realigned. Scar tissue smoothed out. Fat trimmed. Veins widened for faster circulation. I could feel my bones thicken at the core. My tendons tightened like cables. My skin thickened, pores shifting.

The heat traveled up my arms, down my spine, through my legs. Every part of my body was scanned and reworked by the wine’s touch, except two places.

The heart—still shielded completely by the sentient blood, untouched, unburned.

And the brain—the heat didn’t even attempt to enter it.

When the work was done, the heat retreated.

It returned to the wine ball, now pulsing softly like a sleeping ember. It nestled into the hollow between lungs and ribs, unbothered, silent.

The siphoning slowed.

But the elder wasn’t done.

He poured again.

And again.

The wine ball continued to drink, though its heat remained dormant now. It was content to store, not to act.

Until finally, the storage limit was hit.

The excess wine spilled past the wine ball and flowed down to my belly.

And for the first time since this began, I felt it.

Drunkenness.

My head spun. My limbs loosened. My jaw went slack. I hiccuped once, stupidly. Then again.

The monkeys watched eating bananas.

I tried to wave the monkeys off, but my arm flopped like it was made of seaweed. One of them offered me a banana. I grinned dumbly. Then passed out—wine-laced to the core.