Chapter 496

Hatchan, Camie, and Pappag treat the crew to a free meal as thanks for the rescue. When Hatchan nervously asks Nami's opinion of the food, she makes clear she has not forgiven their shared past yet still admits she enjoys it, delighting everyone. The feast is interrupted when a now-handsome Duval arrives, so transformed that Luffy fails to recognize him. Sanji confirms he reshaped the man's bone structure. Overflowing with gratitude, Duval now addresses Sanji as "Young Master," offers the crew his aid and his Den Den Mushi for emergencies, and grows comically absorbed in his own reflection before he and the Rosy Life Riders depart. Sanji then invites the Takoyaki 8 trio aboard the Thousand Sunny for tea.

Pappag outlines two paths to Fish-Man Island, both requiring survival of deep-sea pressure that only fish-men and merfolk endure naturally. One option means scaling the Red Line and passing through the Holy Land of Mary Geoise with World Government permission, which is impossible given the crew's reputation and would force them to abandon the Sunny, upsetting Franky. The other crosses the ocean floor through a hole in the Red Line where Fish-Man Island sits roughly ten thousand meters down, directly beneath Mary Geoise, but exposes ships to Sea King attacks. To dive that deep the ship must first be coated at their destination. The crew then arrives at the Sabaody Archipelago, where Hatchan explains the location has no magnetic pull, leaving log poses unaffected, since it is essentially a vast forest of trees.

The cover advances the CP9's Independent Report, with the agents reaching the town of St. Poplar where treatment is close but the fees remain a problem. The Flying Fish Riders rename themselves the Rosy Life Riders. The archipelago is detailed as a cluster of 79 islands, each formed by a giant Yarukiman Mangrove whose roots secrete a resin that drifts upward as bubbles, the same substance used to coat the Sunny. The crew docks at Grove 41 after entering at the civilian Grove 44, and Hatchan extracts a promise that the Straw Hats avoid any conflict with the World Nobles.