Chapter 485

The island still drifts, though Kuma's blast has reduced everything on it to ruin, with both crews left broken and senseless. Stepping past the fallen, Kuma stops at Luffy and lifts him, only for Zoro to surge up and cut into his shoulder, his blade revealing metal beneath. Kuma fires a beam from his mouth that Zoro barely avoids, the shot grazing him and bursting on the ground. The Warlord then explains he is a Pacifista, a cyborg the World Government built to surpass even Franky.

Having never heard the term, Zoro listens as Kuma describes the Pacifista line, crediting the scientist Dr. Vegapunk with advances others would not reach for five hundred years. Pressed on why Luffy must die, Kuma calls it his best terms. Too wrecked to obey his own body, Zoro offers his head instead, and when asked how dying would ever satisfy his dream of being the greatest swordsman, he answers that Luffy has to become the Pirate King. Sanji breaks in, branding Zoro an idiot and insisting his own life be taken, boasting that he would soon be the crew's most dangerous member; Zoro knocks him out cold, draws a curse as he faints, and casts his swords down to seal the deal. Admiring that resolve, Kuma warns Zoro he is about to taste hell, lifts Luffy, and draws out all of his pain and fatigue. He lets Zoro sample a sliver of it, which floors him in agony, and Zoro asks to drag himself somewhere else. Kuma muses on how remarkable Dragon's son is for keeping such friends. When the rest stir, the Warlord is gone, Luffy is whole and unhurt, and Sanji goes looking for Zoro, finding him standing amid scattered blood and claiming nothing happened.

Zoro's strike exposes Kuma's metal frame, and Kuma is identified as a Pacifista remade by the Marine scientist Dr. Vegapunk, whose grasp of technology is said to run five centuries ahead of the present. Sanji's bid to die in their place is cut off by Zoro's blow. Zoro takes in the full measure of Luffy's suffering stacked atop his own wounds yet lives through it, a mark of both his endurance and his loyalty to his captain. Kuma also seems familiar with Luffy's father, Dragon.