Chapter 1098

At Baltigo, the Revolutionary Army fields a plea for reinforcements, and Kuma volunteers despite Ivankov noting how reckless he has grown since "that day." The cause is Ginny, who was captured by the government and married off to a World Noble. Two years later she contacts the army with grim news: she has fallen ill and been cast out of the Holy Land, and the call is her farewell. Kuma races to the Sorbet chapel where he knows she will go, but arrives only after she has died. The villagers explain that sunlight turned her skin blue and stone-hard, and that she spent her last strength shielding her infant, Bonney. Kuma buries Ginny and swears to raise the child.

He devotes himself to Bonney, who shares her mother's huge appetite and comes to see him as her father. When she manifests the same affliction, he boards up the church windows and carries her from doctor to doctor, all baffled by the disease. He ultimately leaves the army to care for her, with Dragon's blessing.

It is confirmed that Bonney is not Kuma's biological daughter but Ginny's child, born during the forced marriage. Ginny's illness is named: stone-like dark marks that spread under natural light, with no cure, worsened when she was forced to travel exposed to the sun. Kuma swears to raise the orphaned Bonney in Ginny's memory, continuing as a Revolutionary commander while doing so, and a scene shows him training a young Sabo.

Before Bonney turns five, a patch of the marks surfaces on her cheek, proving she inherited the condition. Kuma quits the army for her sake, reassures her that the stone under her eye looks like a jewel, and promises a future trip to the sky islands so she might meet Nika. A doctor then identifies the disease as Sapphire Scales and warns she will not live past ten. Kuma, unable to break her heart, lets her believe she will be cured by that age. A year later, Bekori resumes his terror, now burning residents in their homes.

The cover request, by PN Noda Skywalker, shows Brook shredding a guitar solo powered by an electric eel; the magazine version had a note on Brook's pants apologizing that the art was unfinished, later omitted in Volume 108. Trivia points out the Sabo training scene appeared as filler in Episode 737 and that Sabo is drawn without his face scar. Much of the chapter looked rough in its Weekly Shonen Jump 2023 issue 50 release because Oda could not finish the panels in time, and the art was redone for Volume 108.