Chapter 490: Fate, Oh Fate
“You saved Dragon?” Ian asked, somewhat puzzled. “Shouldn’t it have been Roger?”
“Who told you that?” Shanks’ eyes widened. “By then, Captain Roger had already turned himself in and been executed!”
Ian was stunned. “Then what did you mean by the Jackson just now?”
“It was the Jackson, no mistake!” Shanks laughed heartily. “Because the last task Captain Roger left me was to find a place to hide the Oro Jackson, the Pirate King’s ship!”
“Why… why?” Ian asked, confused. “Wasn’t the Roger Pirates disbanded by then? What was the point of keeping the ship?”
“Because… the Jackson was an old comrade of our crew!” Shanks said solemnly. “Captain Roger could hear the voice of all things. He once said that our crew had a companion the world would never know about…”
Ian’s heart leaped at this, and he blurted out, “No way!? Did the Jackson have a ship spirit too!?”
It was said that only on ships where the vessel was cherished and cared for could such a ship spirit be born. These spirits often appeared with thick fog, issuing warnings or alerting the crew to impending disasters.
Legends of ship spirits were widespread in this world. Those who had seen one described it as a small dwarf wearing a raincoat and carrying a wooden mallet. It could be said that ship spirits were the shared aspiration of all sailors in this world, for if one appeared on your ship, it meant the vessel had acknowledged you—a mark of pride and honor.
“Hmm!? You know that legend too?” Shanks looked at him in surprise, then nodded. “That’s right. A ship spirit was indeed born on the Jackson. It might be an unknown creature—we could hardly say we truly saw it, but we knew it existed.”
“No wonder!” Ian nodded in realization.
If the Oro Jackson truly had such a ship spirit, then given Pirate King Roger’s nature of treasuring his companions, this was exactly the kind of thing he would do. Since he saw the ship as a fellow crew member, after disbanding the crew, he would certainly arrange a safe haven for it. He knew full well that if the Jackson fell into the hands of the Marines or the World Government, they would destroy it!
The world only knew that Roger had been executed, but few seemed to know the whereabouts of the Pirate King’s ship. It turned out it had been hidden away.
Still, Ian hadn’t expected Roger to entrust the Jackson to Shanks. This showed just how much Roger valued Shanks back then… After all, considering Shanks’ age, he hadn’t been on Roger’s ship for very long—probably just two or three years, at most five. Roger hadn’t taken long to become Pirate King before turning himself in and being executed…
Thinking this, Ian couldn’t help but glance at the Red Force nearby. He wondered if that ship might be a disguised version of the original Jackson. If so, it was a clever move—preserving the Jackson while keeping it unrecognizable to the Marines and World Government.
But Shanks caught Ian’s gaze and seemed to read his thoughts. He laughed heartily. “Stop guessing! The Jackson can only be the Jackson! It’s irreplaceable, so I hid it in a safe place!”
With a hint of nostalgia, Shanks continued, “Back then, to complete the task Captain Roger gave me, I had to find a way to sail the Jackson away. But I wasn’t strong enough to handle the Marines, so I had to stay far from the Grand Line. When I learned that a Marine fleet was stationed at Banbanor, I had to stop far away, afraid of running into them and having them recognize the Jackson. But unexpectedly, that stop led me to coincidentally encounter Dragon, who had escaped!”
“He was badly injured at the time, but he was clinging to a wooden plank and drifting over two hundred kilometers across the sea. Remember, he was a Devil Fruit user!” Shanks said with deep emotion. “Devil Fruit users are completely powerless in the water, yet he gritted his teeth and held on without drowning. How much willpower must that have taken?”
Hearing this, Ian grew curious. “Dragon is a Devil Fruit user? What fruit does he have?”
“I don’t know!” Shanks shook his head. “In fact, to this day, I have no idea what kind of Devil Fruit ability he has. Maybe only Vice Admiral Garp knows, since Dragon was his student.”
No, you’re wrong. Dragon is his son! Vice Admiral Garp definitely knows!
“After rescuing Dragon, he was unconscious for three days and three nights!” Shanks continued. “I don’t know what his personality was like before, but I felt that after he woke up, he had changed—become very deep and steady. I could see a piercing light in his eyes… And when he learned that I was the one who saved him and recognized the Jackson, he showed no intention of being hostile toward me. He just stood silently by the railing, gazing at the sea, saying nothing.”
“But eventually, he spoke to me!” Shanks smiled. “From that moment, I knew his mind was made up… He asked me about Roger and what we had seen at Laugh Tale.”
“I didn’t hide anything and told him everything!” Shanks said. “But after hearing it, he said nothing. The next day, he left without saying goodbye, taking one of my small boats…”
“What happened next?” Ian asked. “Did he start forming the Revolutionary Army?”
“No!” Shanks shook his head. “Out of curiosity about him, I kept an eye on him for a while. Not long after, I heard about an assassination in the Ilusia Kingdom. The perpetrator didn’t show his face, but I knew it was him.”
“Maybe he thought the king of Ilusia Kingdom was the culprit behind the Banbanor incident?” Robin suddenly spoke up. “Unable to take revenge on the Celestial Dragons, he targeted the Ilusia Kingdom instead?”
“Yes, clever lady!” Shanks gave Robin a thumbs-up. “But unfortunately, he didn’t succeed. The king of Ilusia Kingdom didn’t die. After emergency treatment, he survived, and then intensified the manhunt for the assassin across the country. Many innocent people were killed or wrongly imprisoned by the royal army because of Dragon.”
“Huh!?” Ian was taken aback. So that’s how it was.
But Shanks continued, “Perhaps it was this failed assassination that made Dragon wake up. He realized that relying on his own strength alone, he couldn’t dispel the darkness hidden beneath the facade of peace and prosperity. So about a year later, I heard that an organization called the Revolutionary Army had appeared in the Ilusia Kingdom, constantly inciting the people to revolt against the tyrannical rule of King Shendaruka.”
So that’s how the Revolutionary Army came to be. Ian could imagine that Dragon must have steadily expanded the Revolutionary Army’s power, with the Ilusia Kingdom becoming the first target to overthrow. In Dragon’s mind, it was precisely because the Ilusia Kingdom had tried to curry favor with the Celestial Dragons that the tragedy of Banbanor had occurred.
This reminded Ian of when he had infiltrated Mary Geoise during the Reverie. Konenai and the others had sneaked in too because the Revolutionary Army had intelligence that the king of Ilusia Kingdom, Shendaruka, would use the Reverie to label Dragon as the most dangerous criminal to watch out for!
Ian had wondered back then why it was specifically the Ilusia Kingdom that raised this issue, not any other country. Now, hearing Shanks recount this history, he finally understood the reason…
The seeds of all this cause and effect had been planted twenty years ago…
Ian had always thought his intervention had changed the course of history. But who knew that the one who truly altered history was Dragon, twenty years ago?
Fate was truly hard to grasp. Twenty years ago, Dragon had indirectly saved Ian’s life, and now Ian had joined the Revolutionary Army that Dragon had founded. It could only be described as fate.
Ian let out a long sigh and made a silent decision: if he ever met Dragon in the future, he would thank him face to face.