Chapter 393

Robin's flashback resumes with Saul completing his raft, only to delay his departure when her sadness moves him to stay a while longer. The reunion he quietly sets up runs headlong into the catastrophe descending on the island.

Stirred by Robin's gloom, Saul adds a flag to the raft and lingers. As she speaks of the Void Century, the Poneglyphs, and a mother off studying archaeology, dread sweeps over him: the scholar she describes is Nico Olvia, and the soil under his feet is Ohara itself, now the destination of Marine warships sent to slaughter its researchers. He hurries her off toward town to see how things stand and whether her mother has come home.

Warning the assembled scholars, Olvia lays out the grim news. Her thirty-three-member team was wiped out, their effects traced to Ohara, and the government has fixed the island in its sights. Clover and the others refuse to run, unwilling to forsake Ohara's stores of knowledge. Olvia resolves not to seek out her daughter, recalling the day she left the weeping child in her brother's care. When Spandine's ship makes landfall and arrest orders go out for every scholar, Robin and her mother brush past one another in the panicked streets, neither aware of the bond between them. Far off, a young Kuzan rouses at word of Spandine's arrival.

This chapter formally unveils Nico Olvia and names the young Kuzan, who will become the admiral Aokiji. The near miss between mother and daughter in the crowd ranks among the saga's most aching beats. The cover closes out a Baroque Works thread, with Mr. 2 having cleared the path to free Miss Valentine.