Chapter 1033: Shimotsuki Kozaburo

Zoro commands Enma to stop siphoning his Haki uninvited and draws the energy back into his arm. King closes in, then halts before him, and the instant Zoro buries his blade in King's chest the All-Star calls it a clean hit, only to detonate moments later. Over at the Pleasure Hall, a battered Queen returns to the cook and lays out King's lineage: he springs from the Lunarian Tribe, a people once hailed as gods for flourishing in any merciless habitat and thought wiped out long ago. When the cook asks how such beings could be erased, Queen tells him to discover it himself and readies one more laser.

Back outside, Zoro reveals he guarded himself with Armament Haki and balks at King emerging untouched from his own blast. Shi Shishi Sonson leaves no mark as King shifts to pteranodon form for another Tempuraudon; Enma misbehaves again, the attack grazes him, and Zoro falls, reclaiming Sandai Kitetsu mid-drop while recalling Tenguyama Hitetsu and buying it in Loguetown. A blazing kick flings him down, yet he is glad Wado Ichimonji held, thinking of Kuina's death and Hitetsu's word that the same craftsman forged both it and Enma: Shimotsuki Kozaburo. He puzzles over how a Wano blade reached the East Blue.

Slammed into the castle, the swordsman's mind travels back to his early days in his home village, to a nameless old man by the shore later found to be Kuina's grandfather, a man who had fled Wano unlawfully more than fifty years before. He recalls the elder teaching him the word Sunacchi, gifting him two practice blades for nothing, and explaining that every sword carries its own temperament a fighter must tame and bend to his will, that talk of cursed swords is merely the excuse of the feeble, and that in his youth he forged a masterwork named for the Lord of the Underworld for its dread. The puzzle resolves: that weapon was Enma, the elder was Shimotsuki Kozaburo, and the sword has tested him from the start, just as it once answered Oden. Letting Enma feed on his Haki freely, Zoro drops a wave of promotion-hungry Beasts Pirates with Supreme King Haki and stands before King, all three blades crackling.

Asked whether he intends to become a king, Zoro affirms it, naming the promise he gave his captain and closest friend. In his strand of the fight, Queen explains that the Lunarians won the name gods through a toughness that let them endure anywhere, while Momonosuke keeps wrenching to drag Onigashima clear. PN Sodasusu's cover request casts Tashigi as a villain getting trounced by baby penguins playing the heroes. The chapter is part of the Wano Country Arc.