The World Is Shaken! The Ruler's Judgment and the Five Elders' Actions!

A quartet of escapees, Vivi alongside Wapol, Bonney, and Sabo, manage to leave the holy land by concealing themselves aboard outbound ships. High above, Imu decides that a trial run of the Mother Flame will fall upon the Lulusia Kingdom. Before his audience, Sabo brings his account to a close by describing what befell Lulusia at the moment of its destruction. Listening on, Ivankov begins to suspect that the figure Sabo encountered ranks among the original twenty rulers.

Igaram, Pell, and Chaka grew anxious when Cobra failed to come back from his audience and Vivi could not be found. Safe in Wapol's company, Vivi crept past the Marines toward the harbor, where the two hid inside a cargo crate and stowed away on the Eigis Kingdom's vessel. Through the Den Den Mushi that Wapol carried, they made contact with Morgans, who agreed to shelter them in return for their story, and this sent word of Vivi vanishing and Cobra's death racing across the world. Bonney escaped aboard the Tajine Kingdom's ship while Sabo, eluding the Knights of God hunting him, subdued a knight and donned his armor to pass himself off as one of them, then hid below the deck of the Lulusia Kingdom's ship. Because the framing for Cobra's murder had triggered revolts in several kingdoms, Lulusia's people had already toppled their ruling family, throwing both King Seki and Princess Komane into confinement. When Sabo made himself known, the citizens cheered, and though he wished to declare his innocence, he held his tongue so the revolutions could proceed. He then brought along toward the Kamabakka Queendom those citizens who hoped to enlist with the revolutionaries, yet his transmission to the others was intercepted by the World Government, and Imu unleashed the Mother Flame upon Lulusia, leaving only the citizens who had sailed alongside Sabo alive.

Wrapping up his account, Sabo informs both Dragon and Ivankov that Imu exists, which prompts Ivankov to name the ruler as Nerona Imu, a figure from the original twenty who has by some means clung to immortality across the centuries. Given the black cloud that hung over Lulusia, Sabo argues the catastrophe was no natural disaster but rather an invention of Vegapunk's coupled with an Ancient Weapon, leaving him puzzled why the World Government had never deployed it before. The anime enlarges the Levely's aftermath with extra scenes, including Sabo walking through the forest beyond Pangaea Castle and fending off Royal Guards, Chaka and Pell briefing Igaram, the stowaway boarding sequences, and Sabo's switch into guard disguise. Where the manga shows the Celestial Dragons merely shouting about their hunger as Mjosgard is put to death, the anime has them place direct blame on him both for the food shortage and for the uprisings stirring in the world below. Figarland Garling makes his first appearance.