Chapter 255

The exploration party trips over its own incompetence almost at once, with Zoro wandering off and Luffy pointing the wrong way while Robin and Chopper try to keep them headed south. Just as the group congratulates itself on how harmless the forest feels, an enormous serpent that dwarfs them all rears up in their path. The snake's strike misses but melts a tree on contact, betraying acid-strong venom that Zoro warns will kill instantly. Robin swings clear with a sprouted vine, Chopper bolts, and the others scramble, leaving the team broken apart and lost.

On the Going Merry, the recovering knight reveals his name is Gan Fall and admits he served as Skypiea's previous "God" until six years ago. He explains that Upper Yard rose into the sky roughly four centuries back, a miracle the peaceful Skypieans claimed as a Holy Land, sparking a war that drove out its native Shandia. Six years prior, Enel arrived with an overwhelming army, crushed both God's Army and the Shandia, and seized the land, forcing the survivors into harsh labor for purposes Gan Fall does not fully know.

Gan Fall describes how Enel rules less as a tyrant and more as a manufactured deity, outlawing people on flimsy pretexts and pressing the populace to hunt them, so fear sustains his godlike grip. He took on the role of Knight of the Sky to spirit these branded criminals away from Enel's reach. The Skypieans, he notes, treasure blue-sea objects washed up by the Knock Up Stream yet have no idea what gold even is. The cover continues Wapol's toy arc as a town scientist examines the strange material his toys are made from.