Chapter 87: The Global Panic and the World’s Greed

EXTRA!

EXTRA!

THE CELESTIAL ELIXIR REVEALED!

Millions of News Coos descended upon the Grand Line like a white blizzard.

The front page of the World Economy News Paper didn’t feature a pirate bounty or a Marine victory.

It featured a leaked, heavily redacted blueprint of Dr.

Vegapunk’s supposed greatest masterpiece, alongside a bold, catastrophic headline:

THE MIRACLE DRUG FOUND!

BROKER ‘JOKER’ TO HOST EXCLUSIVE AUCTION IN DRESSROSA!

The article detailed everything.

It described the glowing yellow liquid capable of rewriting cellular decay, curing any disease, and reversing age itself.

But it was the final paragraph of Morgans’s explosive exposé that set the world entirely on fire.

“Sources confirm the auction, set to take place in exactly two months, is strictly invite-only.

Entry is personally dictated by Donquixote Doflamingo.”

That single sentence was a lethal poison pill.

In the New World, ego was a currency more valuable than gold.

Because no one had actually received an invitation, every single Emperor, Underworld Don, and notorious pirate captain instantly believed Doflamingo had deliberately excluded them.

The slight was unforgivable.

If Joker didn’t invite them, he was keeping the miracle for his preferred clients.

If Joker was keeping it for someone else, it meant he viewed them as inferior.

Within twenty-four hours of the paper hitting the stands, the New World erupted into a chaotic, violent frenzy.

Pirate fleets abandoned their current campaigns, underworld brokers loaded their galleons with billions of Berries, and heavily armed armadas set sail.

They didn’t have invitations.

They don’t need it.

They were going to Dressrosa to kick the doors down and take a seat at the table by force.

Three weeks before the supposed auction date, the sunny, vibrant ports of Dressrosa had morphed into a powder keg of absolute anxiety.

The kingdom of passion was currently playing host to the New World’s greed.

Dozens of heavily armed pirate galleons and black-market merchant vessels were anchored in the harbor.

Cutthroat pirates with hundred-million-Berry bounties swaggered through the cobblestone streets, their hands resting on their weapons, eyeing everyone with deep suspicion.

“Captain, this place gives me the creeps,” a grizzled pirate muttered to his captain, “Bloody” Higgins, as they walked past a café.

Higgins grunted, adjusting his cutlass.

Dressrosa was famous for its cheerful atmosphere and its bizarre, sentient toys that lived alongside the humans.

But to the hardened killers of the New World, the extreme cheerfulness felt deeply, inherently wrong.

A toy soldier marched past them, tipping its little plastic hat with a squeaky, “Welcome to Dressrosa!

Enjoy the sunshine!”

Higgins kicked a pebble at the toy, scowling.

“Keep your hands on your guns, boys.

Joker might be a snake.

But the moment he brings that elixir out, we grab it and run.”

High above the streets, peering down from a balcony of the royal palace, Donquixote executive Diamante ground his teeth together.

The flamboyant swordsman was sweating profusely.

“We can’t keep this up, Doffy,” Diamante spoke into a Den-Den Mushi.

“The ports are overflowing.

We have a dozen rival pirate crews drinking in the same taverns.

We try to turn them away, they threaten to burn the country down.

If we attack them, we trigger a war before the Emperors even get here!”

“Just smile and play the host, Diamante!” Doflamingo’s voice snapped through the snail, uncharacteristically shrill and frantic.

“Don’t let them start a fire.

I will handle this!”

Deep inside the palace, Donquixote Doflamingo was losing his mind.

He sat on his throne, his pink feather coat discarded on the floor.

His hands were gripping the armrests so tightly the stone was cracking into dust.

For seven weeks, his life had been an absolute, waking nightmare.

He had spent the first month aggressively denying the Sovereign Elixir existed.

He had screamed at underworld brokers, sworn on his Warlord title to Marine spies, and practically begged Kaido to listen to reason.

Nobody believed him.

To them, Doflamingo’s desperate denials just sounded like a greedy broker trying to hoard a priceless artifact.

The more he denied it, the more convinced the world became that he had it.

And now, the deadline was only days away.

The Whitebeard Pirates, the Big Mom Pirates, and Kaido’s lead Disasters were currently sailing toward his kingdom.

If they arrived and he told them he had nothing to sell, they would obliterate Dressrosa and slaughter his entire ‘Family’.

“Doffy!”

Trebol burst into the throne room, his slimy body trembling as he held up a heavily scrambled Den-Den Mushi.

“We intercepted a transmission!

Black market chatter, verified by our deepest spies!

The Elixir…

Doffy, it’s not a myth!”

Doflamingo stood up instantly.

“What?!”

“It was stolen from Vegapunk years ago!” Trebol shrieked, waving the transcript.

“The seller who was supposed to bring it to you got paranoid when the news broke!

He stashed the merchandise!

It’s in the New World.

An old ruin on Mystoria Island!”

Doflamingo’s eyes widened behind his red-tinted sunglasses.

He didn’t hesitate.

He didn’t send Vergo or Pica.

He couldn’t trust anyone else with the one thing that could save his life and reputation.

Doflamingo sprinted to the palace balcony.

“Sky Walk!” He kicked the air, shooting into the sky like a bullet.

He attached his invisible strings to the clouds, swinging and vaulting across the ocean at blinding, supersonic speeds, leaving Dressrosa far behind.

Mystoria Island was completely off the grid, a desolate, fog-choked rock in the middle of a treacherous current, dominated by the crumbling stone ruins of an ancient civilization.

Doflamingo landed heavily in the center of the ruins, panting slightly from the sheer exertion of flying across the New World non-stop.

He marched into the largest, darkest temple.

The air was thick with dust and the smell of ancient dampness.

He walked past collapsed pillars and ruined statues until he reached the central altar.

Resting perfectly on the stone pedestal was a heavy, ornate lockbox.

Doflamingo’s heart pounded against his ribs.

He slashed his fingers, an invisible string instantly cleanly slicing the heavy iron lock in half.

He threw the lid open.

A vibrant, mystical yellow light instantly washed over his face, reflecting in his sunglasses.

Resting in a velvet-lined case were three thick glass vials.

They were filled with a violently glowing, luminescent yellow liquid that seemed to hum with inherent, otherworldly energy.

Doflamingo reached out with a trembling hand, picking one of the vials up.

“It’s real,” Doflamingo breathed, a hysterical, relieved laugh escaping his throat.

“It’s actually real.”

He examined the vial closely.

Capping the thick glass was a heavy seal of deep red wax.

Pressed perfectly into the wax was an incredibly intricate, complex crest of a dragon and a wing.

Doflamingo’s thumb hovered over the wax.

His paranoid instincts flared.

He needed to break the seal.

He needed to test the liquid, to verify its properties, to ensure it wasn’t a trap.

But then, the harsh reality of his situation crashed down on him.

The auction was in three days.

If he broke the seal now, he couldn’t chemically test it and return to Dressrosa in time.

More importantly, he couldn’t duplicate that intricate wax stamp.

If he presented the Elixir to the Emperors with a broken or poorly forged seal, they would immediately assume he had tampered with it, diluted it, or siphoned some off for himself.

They would kill him for the insult alone.

He was trapped by his own incoming clients.

He had to present it exactly as he found it.

Doflamingo looked at the violently glowing, mystical liquid.

It looked like a miracle.

It looked like salvation.

“Fate is on my side,” Doflamingo whispered, a wide, arrogant, and thoroughly relieved grin stretching across his face as his god-complex surged back to the forefront.

“I am the chosen king.

The heavens themselves have delivered me from this mess.”

He carefully placed the vial back into the case and locked it tight.

Tucking the heavy box securely under his arm, Doflamingo launched himself back into the sky, swinging his way back toward Dressrosa.

He flew through the clouds, entirely convinced he had just secured his supreme reign over the underworld, completely blind to the invisible strings that had just been wrapped tightly around his own neck.

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