Chapter 1155

The first humans Loki has ever laid eyes on belong to the band that has come ashore on his island, a fact he verifies aloud for their leader. Once it dawns on Rocks that this young giant is the offspring of the king he seeks, he wants a message carried home claiming the boy lies gravely injured, a ruse meant to draw Harald back. Loki turns it down flat, sure that his father holds no such affection for him and equally sure he can best the captain himself. He lunges, gets flung aside without effort, and so hands Rocks an excuse: the wound now makes the summons believable. Throughout, the captain treats his sword like a hammer or a hurled cannonball, sweeping everything before it from his path.

The story doubles back eight years to a Levely that Harald had slipped into in secret. Amid that gathering Rocks abducted five seated monarchs and forced his way as far as the Room of Flowers, where he stood before Imu and the attendant Gunko, a meeting kept hidden until now. The hostages bought him nothing, since Imu cared not at all for them, so the captain withdrew after professing himself a devotee of Davy Jones and swearing he would one day come back. Pinned with the blame for the disorder, Harald was being chased across the Holy Land when the two collided, their dueling Supreme King Haki leveling all life inside a five-kilometer radius. Rocks coached the giant to send his next strike into the town, warning that capture would mean enslavement, and the pair fled in tandem before the captain sprang off the Red Line.

A bounty followed once Rocks dealt a deathblow to a Marine admiral, and he soon looted a vessel hauling the World Nobles' Heavenly Tribute, demolishing one Gate of Justice in the process and funding his start as a pirate. His earliest followers were won through Davy Back Fights, so that by his arrival on Elbaph six formidable figures stood under him: Edward Newgate, Don Marlon, Ganzui, Buckingham Stussy, Ochoku, and Shiki. They relay the tale of Hachinosu, the gold-laden Pirate Island, and the captain lays out his design: take it for himself, level the Holy Land along with the Marines, and crown himself King of the World. Harald keeps declining, yet Loki, listening in, begins to regard Rocks as his deliverance. Four years on, the captain's bid for the king has failed repeatedly, but his assembled might is enough that the Rocks Pirates come into being.