Chapter 1139: Mountain-Eater

Still hunting the key to Loki's shackles, Luffy's small party reaches the throne room and finds a summoning circle drawn on the floor, something Nami links to demon rituals and Luffy oddly recognizes. A voice greets Luffy, an axe sails out and spooks Road into dropping everyone, and an old man waits upon the throne. Road names him Ya, a retired pirate, Ripley's husband and Colon's father, who muses that his giant-blooded son is twenty while his wife is eighty, both still young by their reckoning. Calling himself a Preacher of Love, Ya warns Luffy that only Shanks ever subdued Loki and that charging in blind would be reckless.

Bored, Luffy wanders off as Ya recalls urging Roger to weigh his risks. Back in the village, Oimo tells Usopp that two men once rivaled Roger himself, one being Rayleigh and the other a warrior who felled an entire mountain of trees with twin axes to earn the name Mountain-Eater. In a looted treasure vault behind the throne, the chain key still lies untouched. Ya snatches it first and tells Luffy to take it by force, and Usopp learns this man, settled in Elbaph for nearly twenty years, is Scopper Gaban.

Scopper Gaban appears in the present day, identified as the man drinking beside Crocus on the cover of Chapter 631. Known locally as Ya-san, he is Ripley's partner and Colon's father. He references two hybrid races, the Dosundada and the Longlimbnecks. Oimo and Kashii tell Usopp, Sanji, Brook, and Jinbe that Gaban once stood equal to both Roger and Rayleigh. Luffy's group locates the key to Loki's chains, and Gaban challenges Luffy to a duel to decide who keeps it.

The chapter ties the Mountain-Eater epithet to Gaban's feat of cutting down a whole mountainside of trees while defending a resting Roger, marking him as the captain's left-hand man. Ya's discourse on mixed-race marriages frames Elbaph's diverse population and the bittersweet truth that a human husband outlives his giant family. The cover spread continues the Yamato pilgrimage serial, featuring Beasts Pirates silhouettes. The chapter falls within the Elbaph Arc.