Luffy’s Current Situation

"It’s over~, my dream, my promise with Shanks~, it’s all over!"

On the Going Merry, Luffy lay sprawled across the deck like rubber softened by the sun, wearing a completely dead-inside expression.

"Hey, is this guy okay?" Sanji, who was smoking, raised one of his curly eyebrows and asked Zoro, who was lifting a barbell.

"Nine hundred ninety-one, nine hundred ninety-two… one thousand!" Zoro set down the barbell, grabbed the towel draped over his shoulder, and wiped the sweat from his forehead. "Don’t worry. With Luffy’s personality, I believe he can endure any blow, no matter how big!"

"That may be true, but this time, what he lost was his dream!" Usopp said with a worried look.

"Luffy’s dream isn’t just becoming the Pirate King… He wants to become the Pirate King because the Pirate King is the freest person, so what he really wants is to become the freest person!" Zoro explained with a serious expression.

"Did you hear that, Luffy? You need to pull yourself together! You’re going to become the freest person on the seas!" Little Chopper hurried over to encourage Luffy after hearing that.

"It’s over~, Ace found Laugh Tale…" Luffy groaned, still looking like he was sleepwalking.

"That’s completely useless!?" Chopper shouted.

"Move aside! Let me handle this!" Nami snorted and stepped forward, but Usopp quickly grabbed her. "Hey, hey, hey, Luffy is already miserable enough. Don’t beat him up again."

"Who said I was going to beat him?" Nami rolled her eyes. "Just watch me!"

Then Nami looked at Luffy and said, word by word, "Sanji said you don’t get any of the meat he’s making tonight! From now on, you’ll eat vegetables every day."

"It’s over~, Laugh Ta… Meat!? I want meat tonight! Sanji! Hurry up and make me a steak!"

The half-dead Luffy suddenly sprang up and pounced on Sanji like a starving tiger, pinning him down with drool running down his chin.

"Wait, are you rubber-brained or something? Isn’t that recovery way too fast? Whoa, your drool is dripping! It’s getting on my clothes, that’s disgusting!"

"Sanji, I want meat! I want meat tonight!"

"Let go! Your drool is really about to drip on me! I’ll make it for dinner, okay… Just let go already!"

In the distance, on a tiny sailboat, Red Hair Shanks sat atop the mast, using a spyglass to watch Luffy and the others fooling around. A smile spread across his face.

"Well, they still seem pretty lively… Looks like I don’t need to go over and explain too much to him after all. That’s fine too. Dumping the pressure on the next generation would just make us old-timers look incompetent!"

Ace sat below on the little sailboat. Hearing those words, he relaxed slightly as well. "I knew it. Luffy’s a single-celled organism. There’s no way he’d stay depressed for long."

"Come to think of it, as his older brother, I do feel a little bad for deceiving Luffy."

"You didn’t just deceive Luffy." Shanks put away his spyglass and jumped down from above. "You deceived the whole world."

"That was Yota’s idea. I just didn’t refuse." Ace raised his hands helplessly. Deep down, he had wanted to refuse a little, but he simply couldn’t argue against Yota. "Captain Shanks, please don’t say any more. Pops has already lectured me for ages."

"Hahaha, this isn’t bad either. Isn’t Laugh Tale a joke? It began with a joke, and now it ends with one. There’s really nothing wrong with that." Shanks said with a grin, clearly unconcerned.

"Maybe a thousand years from now, the island you took pictures on will become the real Laugh Tale!"

"I can’t agree with that." Ace smiled at Shanks. "I’ve always believed that Luffy will eventually find the real Laugh Tale!"

"Since it’s Luffy, I believe in him too." Shanks smiled. "He’s the freest person on these seas!"

"As expected of Dr. Vegapunk. You can even mass-produce the Nika Fruit?" Yota said excitedly as he held the artificial Devil Fruit in his hand.

"Producing artificial Devil Fruits isn’t all that difficult. After all, it’s technology from nearly twenty years ago." Vegapunk, dressed in a white lab coat, narrowed his eyes as he spoke.

"It’s just that this kind of thing disrupts the balance far too much. So back then, I told the World Government that the research had failed."

A thoughtful expression appeared on Yota’s face. "It seems Dr. Vegapunk doesn’t like the World Government very much either."

"Ha!" Vegapunk gave a cold laugh. "I don’t think any prisoner would like the police who arrested him, especially when he was falsely accused."

Yota nodded. Indeed, the World Government had arrested Vegapunk and the others on the grounds that their research into Lineage Factors was too dangerous. Then they turned around and had Vegapunk continue researching Lineage Factors and artificial Devil Fruits for them.

If Vegapunk didn’t hold a grudge over that sort of blatant double standard—where officials were allowed to set fires while commoners weren’t allowed to light lamps—that would have been strange.

Besides… Yota glanced at Tyrant Kuma, who stood beside Vegapunk holding a Bible, his tall frame topped with a bear-eared hat that looked somewhat cute. This guy might even be with the Revolutionary Army. Otherwise, why would Kuma be willing to accept his modifications?

Maybe plenty of hidden tricks were planted in those Pacifistas back then. After all, wouldn’t it be easy for a creator to install backdoor programs in these mechanical things?

"Still, I didn’t expect Dr. Vegapunk to trust me this much." Yota looked at Vegapunk in surprise. "You actually handed the research materials for artificial Devil Fruits directly to me."

"Even if I didn’t give them to you, in another decade or so, your laboratory should be able to perfect artificial Devil Fruits anyway. Biological Chips… honestly, they’re an astonishing innovation." Vegapunk looked at Yota and spoke bluntly.

Yota nodded, finally understanding why Vegapunk had been so accommodating this time.

If the gap between scientists like Caesar and Queen and Vegapunk had been five hundred years without Biological Chips, then with Biological Chips, the gap between them and Vegapunk was probably only three hundred years.

That being the case, given enough time, they could slowly develop artificial Devil Fruits themselves. That was why Vegapunk no longer bothered keeping it secret.