Chapter 1144: A Time for Warriors

Led by Ripley, Franky comes upon a crumbling laboratory swallowed by trees and roots, a sight he finds strange in a nation built around fighters. Already inside are Lilith and Bonney, who only reached it by getting lost. Distant alarms have Ripley on edge, and Lilith puts the ruin's age at three thousand years, which Franky doubts until Ripley notes there is no record of it anywhere. Lilith claims the site as her new base, but a faced thundercloud, one of Killingham's beasts, looms up behind the group before Franky can explore.

Over in the Western Village a giant skeletal Draugr begins wrecking the place, and the drunken warriors must sober themselves to fight. Both Dorry and Brogy are off in the bathroom after overdrinking, so the giants have no commander. Usopp quietly says the Straw Hats want to help, while Colon, despite naming himself a warrior and Gaban's child, is sent to shelter with the others. Jarul hears Nami's account of the castle attack, the wounded guards' description of a Shanks lookalike, and the strange power, leading Jinbe to suspect a Devil Fruit. Jarul has the country put on alert. Spotting Colon as he hauls a sack of arms behind him, Nami, Usopp, Brook, and Jinbe get the boy to take them aboard his svarr, agreeing that he can captain it.

Among the Knights, Gunko is caught enjoying music after eating, and to Sommers' amusement the track turns out to be Brook's New World, drawing a rebuke from Killingham for the mockery. Saul straps on two shields against the thorns and stops one child, but a second collides with the first and both are wounded. When he ropes a child from behind, a Fenrir moves in, and he grasps that the monsters guard against any interference. The Draugr is downed at last, yet a Nidhoggr and a Ghost prove too much until Dorry and Brogy come back, having purged the alcohol from their systems, and finish the beasts with a paired Hakoku. Gaban and the Giant Warrior Pirates appear, giving the villagers hope.