Chapter 167

Map in hand, Vivi steers the crew toward Rainbase, the gambling town where the warlord keeps his lair, warning that the trek from Yuba will swallow a whole day. The mention of casinos lights up Nami, but the moment sours when Luffy and Usopp tussle over their drinking water, with Luffy unwilling to squander what Toto labored so hard to draw. On the road, Vivi quietly thanks Luffy for spurring her toward this plan, and he cheerfully insists on a feast as his reward once the warlord is beaten.

Off in Katorea, a boy named Kappa begs to enlist in the uprising, only for Koza to flatly refuse. Koza has a maimed fighter show the child a missing forearm and points him toward the hospitals and graves that war keeps filling, yet the boy will not flinch, spurred by a dying friend in a drought-cursed town. Koza barks at him to clear off, later admitting to a comrade that the child is a mirror of his own younger self. Inside the Alubarna palace, Cobra turns down Pell and Chaka's push to strike the rebels first, holding that the real foe is whoever feeds the kingdom its Dance Powder.

Karoo reaches the capital bearing Vivi's letter, which exposes the warlord's scheme and reports that Igaram has died. Reading it, Cobra commits to a daring reversal: rather than crush his own rebelling subjects, he will march on Rainbase and topple Crocodile in person. Pell protests that the town sits too far for any covert approach and that assaulting a beloved warlord will only stoke deeper hatred, but the king brushes aside the danger to his own standing, certain the nation can be rebuilt once the warlord falls.

The chapter shuts on a ticking reminder that seventeen hours stand between the present and the launch of Operation Utopia. Cobra orders Chaka to muster the officers and Pell to scout the route, fixing the army's march for the coming morning. On the cover, the Jango's Dance Paradise serial sweeps an entire courtroom into the joyful routine shared between Jango and Fullbody.