One Piece: As Heavy as a Gale #151

The tunnels beneath the mountain stretched endlessly, winding through damp stone and mossy walls like the inside of some enormous beast. The air was heavy and cool, smelling faintly of salt and earth.

Gale’s torch flickered in his hand, casting long, dancing shadows that made every rock look like it was hiding something worth stabbing.

He held it high, squinting as he muttered to himself, “If I were a dead, greedy pirate with a flair for dramatics, where would I hide my treasure…?”

Behind him, Risa trudged along, her boots sloshing against puddles. Her expression shifted every few seconds—curiosity, confusion, disbelief—cycling faster than the moods of someone forced to share a ship with Gale for too long.

And it wasn’t just the two of them. The tunnels were packed. Men and women of all ages, lanterns and pickaxes in hand, wandered about like a bunch of gold-hungry moles. The sound of metal hitting stone echoed through the cavern, followed by the occasional grunt or disappointed sigh.

After watching one guy try to dig through solid rock with a spoon, Risa finally couldn’t take it anymore. “Hey,” she said, voice dripping with disbelief, “you’re seriously okay with this? Just letting these people dig around for the same treasure you’re after?”

Gale didn’t even turn around. He kept walking, eyes on the shimmering stalactites above. “Okay with it? No. Reluctant? Absolutely. But I’m also not an idiot.”

He paused to poke a random wall with his rapier, just in case it turned out to be a secret switch or hidden door. It wasn’t. He sighed. “This is Whitebeard’s turf, Risa. The Whitebeard. The guy who could split the ocean like a damn sandwich if he felt like it. I’m reckless, not suicidal.”

Risa frowned. “But twenty-five percent, Gale? That’s—”

“—Highway robbery, I know,” he interrupted, waving the torch like it personally offended him. “But it’s either give up a chunk of the gold, or risk ticking off the world’s strongest man. And between you and me, I’d rather live broke than die rich.”

He gave her a lopsided grin, though the twitch in his eyebrow suggested he was doing some internal arithmetic—imagining all the treasure slipping through his fingers. “Besides,” he added with a sigh, “we don’t even know where the damn treasure is yet. A whole town full of treasure-hungry locals helps narrow that down faster.”

Risa crossed her arms, clearly unconvinced. “You mean they’ll do all the work while you take the credit.”

“Exactly,” Gale said with a grin. “Delegation, Risa. It’s called leadership.”

Risa groaned and looked away, muttering under her breath about how leadership apparently also meant not working at all.

As they moved deeper into the tunnels, the narration might as well have spoken for him—because in Gale’s head, he was already thinking the same thing that would’ve made a perfect narrator’s line.

As it turns out, the so-called “secret” Blamenco mentioned wasn’t some hidden weapon or forbidden knowledge. Nope. It was a literal town full of people living under the mountain. Whitebeard’s people. Not pirates, not soldiers—just regular folks.

Apparently, this place—Sphinx Island—was the old man’s hometown. The villagers said he’d protected them for decades, sending money, food, and people to help them live comfortably even though they weren’t part of the World Government. A little hidden paradise in the middle of nowhere.

Of course, Whitebeard being Whitebeard, he didn’t brag about it. The Marines didn’t even know this place existed.

The people here called him “Oyaji” with tears in their eyes when they spoke of him. Some had even kept a shrine with his old Jolly Roger carved into the wall.

Gale had to admit, it was… kind of touching. Which immediately annoyed him. “Damn it, old man,” he muttered under his breath, “you’re making it hard to stay cynical.”

Still, the bigger surprise was realizing where the hell he actually was.

Sphinx Island.

He squinted slightly, trying to recall if he’d seen this in the anime or heard about it from that one friend who spoiled everything like it was a sport. He could almost hear the smug tone now—“Oh, you haven’t gotten to that part yet? Yeah, Whitebeard had a secret island and—”

Gale rubbed his temple. “Should’ve punched him when I had the chance…”

Risa blinked, confused. “What?”

“Nothing. Just… remembering someone who deserved a sound beating.”

Still, even knowing all that, the question remained: Why bury a treasure here? If Captain John really did stash his loot on this island, he must’ve had either an excess of guts or a death wish.

Probably both.

Gale was mid–mental argument with himself about whether or not he should start charging “emotional damages” for every dead end they ran into when the sound of frantic footsteps echoed through the tunnel.

He turned sharply, hand instinctively brushing the hilt of his rapier, only to see a sweaty, dirt-smudged townsman come barreling toward him. The poor guy looked like he’d sprinted straight through hell, back again, and then forgot why.

“Captain!” the man wheezed (because apparently everyone decided Gale was “captain” now), “we— we might’ve found something!”

Gale’s brow quirked up, his fatigue instantly forgotten. “Might’ve?” he repeated, voice dripping with just the right amount of skepticism. “As in: you found treasure… or as in: you found another pile of shiny rocks that just happen to disappoint me?”

The man blinked in confusion, clearly not sure how to respond to that.

Risa sighed behind Gale. “Just let him lead the way before you scare him off.”

“Right, right,” Gale said, motioning for the man to go. “You heard the lady, Indiana Jones—lead on.”

The man didn’t get the reference (not that anyone here ever did), but he nodded enthusiastically and took off at a brisk jog. Gale and Risa followed close behind, their torches casting flickering shadows that seemed to chase them down every twisting turn.

They passed through several narrow corridors before finally spilling out into an underground clearing that looked straight out of a low-budget fantasy movie. The place was alive with people and… moss.

A lot of moss.

It blanketed the walls, the floor, even the people’s boots. The air was damp, glowing faintly green from the bioluminescent spores.

“Ah, lovely,” Gale muttered, eyeing the squishy carpet underfoot. “Nature’s moldy carpet.”

“Bayle,” Risa said warningly, though she sounded just as unimpressed.

He shrugged. “I’m just saying—if I catch athlete’s foot from this, I’m billing the Whitebeard Pirates.”

Before she could retort, Blamenco lumbered into view, wiping sweat from his round face with the edge of his sleeve. “You’re here. Good,” he said between breaths. “We’ve found something.”

“Yeah, so I’ve been told,” Gale replied, crossing his arms. “So what’s the big discovery? Secret tunnel? Mysterious inscription? Giant spider nest?”

Blamenco’s grin didn’t fade. “A passage,” he said simply. “But it’s blocked.”

Gale’s eyebrow twitched. “Blocked? Then why didn’t you just clear it?”

Blamenco gave an exaggerated shrug. “Better to show you.”

That… wasn’t an answer, but at this point Gale had stopped expecting those.

“Alright,” Gale said, motioning ahead. “Lead the way, Blamenco-san.”

As they started down a side tunnel, Risa leaned close and muttered, “You think he’s stalling?”

“I think he just likes the suspense,” Gale muttered back. “He’s got that storyteller tone—you know, the kind that says, ‘And then… everything exploded!’”

After a few minutes of walking, the tunnel opened up into a smaller passage—and there it was. The blockage.

Gale stopped dead, head tilting slightly.

It wasn’t just a boulder. It was a masterpiece.

Someone had—apparently out of sheer spite for future explorers—rolled an enormous, perfectly smooth sphere of stone into what looked like a carved doorway. It fit so snugly you couldn’t have slipped a piece of paper between the edges.

Gale’s jaw slackened a little. “Okay… that’s… impressive. Evil, but impressive.”

Risa tilted her head. “It’s almost perfect…”

“Yeah, that’s what scares me,” Gale muttered, walking up to it and pressing a hand against the cool surface. “You don’t make something like this unless you really don’t want people getting through.”

Still confused, he turned back to Blamenco. “Alright, so let me get this straight—you found a door-sized rock. Big deal. Why didn’t you just crush it with your giant hammer thing?”

Blamenco puffed up his chest proudly. “That was my first instinct, lad.”

Gale smiled approvingly. “Good instinct.”

“But the townsfolk stopped me,” Blamenco finished.

“…Bad follow-through,” Gale deadpanned.

The rotund pirate pointed upward toward the ceiling. “The rock up there is brittle. One wrong swing, and this whole tunnel could come down.”

Gale squinted up at the cracked ceiling. Sure enough, the stone above them looked fragile—flaky, with thin lines webbing through it like a spider’s design.

He sighed heavily. “You know… I’m starting to see why you didn’t just do it.”

“Safety first,” Blamenco said with a grin.

“Yeah,” Gale muttered, “safety first, treasure second, and sanity last.”

He ran a hand through his hair, thinking. The boulder was clearly manmade—someone had gone out of their way to make it fit this tunnel. Which meant there had to be a way to move it safely.

He gave it one last look before glancing back at Risa and Blamenco. “Alright. Let’s find out who Captain John hired as his interior decorator, and see if they left a manual on how to open this thing.”

Risa sighed. “Translation: you’re going to start poking it with your sword, aren’t you?”

Gale grinned. “Well, yes, but no...”

Under the observant gazes of Risa and Blamenco, Gale stepped forward until he stood right before the massive boulder.

The damp air carried a faint echo from somewhere deep in the tunnels, but all sound seemed to fade as he reached out and placed one hand flat against the cold surface.

For a moment, he simply stood there—silent, focused—his fingers tracing the curve of the stone as though feeling for a heartbeat. Then, slowly, his eyes slipped shut.

The air around him shifted. A faint vibration rippled outward from his palm, stirring the loose dust at his feet. Risa felt her skin prickle, and even Blamenco’s grin faltered into a look of mild awe.

The change was subtle at first—barely visible—but the boulder began to tremble. The smooth surface seemed to flex, its edges drawing inward ever so slightly. Then, in a matter of seconds, the impossible became reality.

The enormous sphere of stone—something that would’ve taken ten men to roll and twenty to lift—began to shrink.

Cracks hissed quietly as the weight compressed into itself, stone folding like paper, mass bleeding away into nothing until all that remained was a pebble no bigger than a coin, resting delicately between Gale’s thumb and forefinger.

The tunnel fell utterly silent.

Gale opened one eye, glanced at the tiny stone, and gave a small, self-satisfied grin. “There,” he said, voice casual, as if he hadn’t just rewritten physics.

Risa’s eyebrow rose. “That trick's pretty handy...”

“Mm-hm,” Gale interrupted, already flicking the pebble into his palm and examining it like a trinket. “And I think I’ll keep it.”

He slipped it neatly into his pocket, the faintest glint of mischief tugging at his lips. “This,” he said, patting his coat, “is going to make one hell of a nasty surprise for whoever crosses me next.”

Blamenco let out a low whistle. “Remind me never to stand on your bad side, lad.”

“Wise policy,” Gale replied, smirking as he turned toward the newly revealed passage.

Without another word, he adjusted his cloak, hands sinking into his pockets. The torchlight stretched his shadow long across the cavern floor as he stepped into the dark beyond, his voice drifting back through the tunnel—soft, amused, and edged with that dangerous confidence that only Gale could muster.

“Let’s see what kind of secrets you’ve been hiding, Captain John…”

And with that, he vanished into the darkness.