"Yo~ Yo~ You two old antiques, we're here."
While Beckman was absorbed in the little phone, browsing all kinds of courses and novel information, the hovercar had unknowingly left the brightly lit center of Reverse City.
By the time he realized the car had stopped and looked up, the scene before him made him frown without warning.
The bustling steel jungle was gone.
In its place was an open square in the outskirts, shrouded in a thin mist.
It was frighteningly quiet.
There were no vehicles, no pedestrians, and even the sound of the wind seemed strangely cut off.
The paving stones beneath their feet were made of black basalt with a dark sheen, stretching several hundred meters ahead. At the end stood a gate.
An ancient torii gate that gave off an extreme sense of incongruity.
The gate was carved from pitch-black ancient wood and covered with intricate symbols Beckman had never seen before.
It stood there alone at the end of the square, connected to no walls and leading to no building.
Yet this gate, which looked as though it could be moved anywhere, gave Beckman the terrifying feeling that if he approached it, even his soul would instantly scatter.
What made his scalp tingle even more was the smell in the air.
There was no scent of the sea, no exhaust fumes, not even the earthy smell of soil.
Only a kind of presence Beckman couldn't describe.
"Hiss!"
Beckman instinctively took a breath, and the muscles in his right arm instantly tensed.
"There's something there!"
His gaze shot toward the front of the gate like an unsheathed blade.
To the naked eye, there was nothing there.
But under the perception of his Observation Haki, two figures were standing silently before the gate.
Two young men dressed in tight white uniforms beneath black robes.
Their faces were cold to the extreme, as though they had never possessed any human emotion.
Most bizarre of all, each wore a broken bone-white mask on his face.
One resembled half of a fox's face, another the lower jaw of a skull.
At their waists hung long swords without exception.
"Strong!"
Beckman's pupils shrank to pinpoints.
The sense of danger coming from these two seemingly young men was no weaker than Shanks.
'What does this mean?'
By the World Government's standards, both Shanks and Beckman himself were S-rank powerhouses.
Yet now, top S-rank existences were only qualified to guard the gate here?
"My, my. It's perfectly normal that you can't see their physical forms, Mr. Beckman."
Borsalino stepped out of the car with his hands in his pockets, wearing that irritating grin.
"When have you ever seen a normal human being able to see dead people with the naked eye?"
"Dead people? Souls?"
Beckman's expression turned serious as he stared at the two expressionless figures in his Observation Haki.
"What nonsense are you talking about?"
"Mr. Beckman..."
Borsalino's lazy voice suddenly sounded beside him.
"Let me ask you something interesting. Have you ever been killed in your life?"
The moment he heard those words, every nerve in Beckman's body tightened.
A sense of vigilance unlike anything before shot from the base of his spine straight to the top of his head.
But... before his brain could conclude that this guy had turned hostile, before his hand could even reach the rifle on his back...
Whoosh!
Borsalino's figure had already become a flash of golden light, appearing in front of him out of thin air.
BANG!
A dull boom rang out.
Kizaru's long leg struck Beckman's lower abdomen with a kick that was neither heavy nor light, but perfectly precise.
Too fast.
It was so fast that even the reflexes of an S-rank powerhouse couldn't react.
So fast that Beckman didn't even feel pain. He only felt his whole body jolt.
Just as Beckman thought Borsalino had finally turned on him, instead of being kicked away, his body was filled with an incredibly strange sensation of separation.
As though something invisible had been forcibly pulled out of his body.
Clatter!
The crisp sound of chains colliding suddenly rang in his ears.
Beckman looked down, and saw he was floating.
His entire body, now half transparent, hovered in midair, the tips of his feet about half a meter above the ground.
From the center of his ghostly chest, a thumb-thick chain of warm white energy stretched straight downward, connecting to the chest of another him below.
He looked down.
It was his own body.
The body wearing the familiar coat, still holding a cigar in its mouth and its eyes tightly shut, stood rigidly in place in an extremely strange posture.
It hadn't fallen.
It wasn't breathing either.
"What... what the hell is this?"
Beckman's face, hardened by years at sea and rarely shaken, showed undisguised horror.
Standing nearby, Hongo was completely frozen, his jaw nearly dropping to the ground.
From the perspective of a living person, Borsalino had merely delivered a casual kick, and Beckman had frozen in place as if someone had pressed pause, his body still locked in a defensive stance.
But when Hongo tried to support Beckman's body, his Observation Haki caught a bizarre sight.
A translucent Beckman was floating above his original body, staring blankly down at himself.
"This is the spiritual form people take after they die."
Borsalino withdrew his foot and slipped both hands back into his pockets, smiling as he looked up at the ghostly Beckman floating in the air.
"Congratulations, Mr. Beckman. You're completely dead now."
"Stop joking."
After a brief daze, Beckman instantly recovered his usual composure.
He lowered his head and examined his transparent body, through which he could see his own hand, before speaking calmly.
"My body is still standing there, and my mind is completely clear. This isn't death. You used some method to pull my soul out of my body."
"More importantly, you have no reason to kill me here."
"Heh! As expected of Benn Beckman."
Borsalino smiled with satisfaction.
Ignoring his grin, Beckman cautiously reached out with his transparent hand and touched the chain in front of his chest.
The chain felt solid, and a sensation linked directly to his soul passed through him, making him shiver.
"This chain is the connection between the soul and the body, isn't it?"
Beckman asked in a deep voice, "Then what happens if this chain is cut? Would I really be completely dead?"
"Well, not really."
Borsalino waved a hand.
"If the chain breaks, you'll simply continue existing as a pure spirit after separating from your body. With the energy inside you, even with the chain broken, you'd still drift around this world for a few years before your soul completely disperses."
"So... you've really solved death?"
Beckman looked up, and stormy waves rose in his ghostly eyes.
He gripped the chain before his chest. The unmistakable feeling of his soul separated from his body while his mind remained awake made him feel the trembling of life itself for the first time.
Technological leaps, airplanes flying through the sky, the spread of intelligent technology...
He could still force himself to accept those as progress in civilization.
But death?
That was the ultimate law that had remained unchanged since life first appeared.
And the World Government had actually broken that law?
"As you can see, under His Majesty Rosse's rule, death is no longer an ending. It's simply an intermediate step where you continue working in another form."
Borsalino tilted his head. To Beckman, that expression looked especially punchable.
"Even as a spirit, it can't really mean true immortality, can it?", Beckman held firmly to the key point.
"If you want true immortality, then you have to train to SS-rank."
Borsalino slowly raised two fingers.
"At that stage, a body that doesn't decay for a thousand years and a soul that doesn't perish for a million years are both trivial things."
"As for someone at your S-rank level..."
Borsalino gave Beckman's translucent body a glance.
"Since what you train isn't spirit particles, but your physical body and Haki, your body can only live for about a hundred years at most. But after your body dies, if you begin training spirit particles as a spirit, surviving for several thousand years without perishing is still possible."
"For mortals like us, several thousand years is enough, isn't it?"
"Several thousand years? Who the hell are you trying to fool?"
Beckman couldn't help cursing. He wanted a puff of his cigar to calm himself, only to realize he didn't have a spirit version of one.
"The Sea Circle Calendar has only existed for fifteen hundred years! Where did you get data covering several thousand years?"
"Who told you those data came from this world?"
Borsalino's smile faded somewhat, and rare reverence appeared on his irritating face.
"Mr. Beckman, you pirates still have your eyes fixed on this tiny sea and this tiny world."
"But His Majesty Rosse set his sights beyond the sea of stars more than ten years ago."
"Otherwise, why do you think this world's technology suddenly advanced at such a terrifying speed?"
"Hiss!"
Even Beckman's spirit body couldn't stop trembling.
No matter how composed he usually was, this revelation crushed him completely.
So the battlefield they had imagined was nothing more than Rosse's leftovers.
So the World Government had long regarded this world as nothing more than a small backyard.
And they pirates were merely a group of ants in that garden who thought they were impressive.
"Then... why not let pirates like us take part as well?"
A thought suddenly flashed through Beckman's mind. His spirit eyes reddened as he stared at Borsalino.
"We'd never refuse something like exploring other worlds!"
Wasn't the conquest of the unknown and freedom exactly what pirates pursued all their lives?
Going crazy in other worlds, plundering other seas, that was ten thousand times more exciting than struggling meaninglessly in that godforsaken little sea called the East Blue.
"What makes you think something that benefits civilization would ever be your turn?", Borsalino tilted his head with a half-smile.
"Or rather, Mr. Beckman, what makes you think your little bit of skill is enough to beat the people of other worlds?"
Borsalino turned around and casually nodded toward the two black-robed youths guarding the torii gate.
"Hey, you two Arrancar brothers. Come on, explain it to this old antique from the old era. Before His Majesty Rosse came to your world of Hueco Mundo, what level would someone like Beckman have counted as?"
The black-robed young man on the left, wearing the fox mask, grinned. He glanced disdainfully at the floating Beckman and spoke in an extremely cold voice.
"In Hueco Mundo? Any random Vasto Lorde could crush him like a toy. As for the Soul Reapers, just among the captains and vice-captains of the Gotei Thirteen that I know, at least twenty or thirty of them could kill him."
"Hey, hey, isn't that a bit exaggerated?"
Even though Beckman was still in shock, he couldn't help raising an eyebrow.
Of course he knew there were always stronger people out there, but he didn't believe so many monsters capable of instantly killing him existed in another world.
It wasn't that so many powerful people couldn't exist.
It was that if another world really had that many experts, how could it have been invaded and conquered?
"That's not an exaggeration."
Borsalino chuckled, and deep reverence once again appeared on his face.
"In that world, there are more than ten monsters on Imu's level alone. If Imu wanted to kill you pirates, it'd be as easy as crushing a nest of ants."
"Imu? The uncrowned king the World Government hid for eight hundred years?", Beckman shuddered.
Of course he had heard Shanks mention the mysterious figure hidden behind the Void Century.
Whenever Shanks spoke of that person, rare wariness would appear on his usually fearless face.
And now Borsalino was telling him that there were more than ten monsters of that level in another world?
And Rosse had already conquered that world?
Just how terrifying had Rosse himself become?
"So, Mr. Beckman, stop thinking about plans to resist."
Borsalino spread his hands with an earnest expression.
"Isn't it good to just live your life? You want freedom? There's really no need to resist. I already told you, an Admiral like me gets half the year as paid vacation, slacks off all the time, and still earns an annual salary of tens of millions of Berries. I can't even spend it all. Really, I can't."
"Isn't that kind of life great?"
Borsalino smiled in his usual sleazy way, but he looked even more satisfied.
Under Rosse's rule, life as an Admiral had only gotten better and better.
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