From One Hell to Another

When jailers radio in the enormous breach that the Sphinx and Luffy tore through Level 2, a band of liberated inmates arms itself and falls upon the guards, who scramble to summon reinforcements. Word then reaches the monitor room that Fleet Admiral Sengoku has pieced together the motive behind the assault: the intruder and Ace share a bloodline. The Blue Gorillas are ordered down to Level 2 and Magellan is called for support.

Far away at Marine Headquarters, Sengoku seethes at the boy for storming the prison just as the Whitebeard War looms, rattling off his record at Enies Lobby and the assault on a Celestial Dragon. He notes that the lone prior escapee, Golden Lion Shiki, fled two decades back, and rages that the first soul to break in since is none other than Garp's grandson. He tears into Kuma for the lie that the Straw Hats had been destroyed, while Garp shrugs the whole affair off with laughter.

Down on the blistering Level 3, dubbed the Starvation Hell, a hummingbird that slipped through the breach falls already roasted, which thrills the famished Luffy. According to Mr. 3, every captive on this floor carries a bounty of fifty million or higher, and the heat boiling up from Level 4 keeps food and water scarce enough to push them toward death. The Sphinx is then caught in a Seastone net that ensnares the whole trio, and the diminutive, trident-wielding Saldeath presents himself, the warden who commands the Blugori squad, insisting that struggling underwater is pointless. The Sphinx rips the mesh apart anyway, dropping Luffy among the Blugori, whom he flings aside with Gomu Gomu no Gatling while cheerfully thanking Buggy and Mr. 3 even as the two scuttle up a beam to escape.

The cover shows Usopp atop a rock copying the stance of a praying mantis. Sengoku recounts Shiki's historic breakout twenty years earlier, Saldeath debuts as the warden directing the Blue Gorilla unit, and Level 3 earns the name Starvation Hell, home to prisoners valued at fifty million or more. Buggy and Mr. 3 also stumble upon the jailed Mr. 2 leading his cellmates through the Okama Way.