The land of giants keeps a chained prince, a murdered king and a secret that reaches back to God Valley, and the ruler of the world comes in person to bury it.
Elbaf is the country the Straw Hats have heard about since Little Garden: the homeland of Dorry and Brogy, the warrior nation whose duels last a century and whose name made Usopp a legend among the dwarves of Green Bit. It is also where Big Mom was raised, where Shanks moored his ship, and where the books of Ohara were carried when Robin’s island burned. The Sunny reaches it aboard the giants’ warship with two Vegapunk satellites, a former Warlord who has just remembered his daughter, and a captain who has slept for days.
The arc opens as a comedy of scale, with six Straw Hats trapped inside a giant’s diorama, and turns into the deepest history lesson the series has told. A blind prince chained to the world tree claims he killed his father. The Knights of God arrive to take the island’s children as hostages. And the story of King Harald, told over twenty chapters, runs through the rise of the Rocks Pirates, the massacre at God Valley, and the covenant that made a reformer king into a puppet of the throne.
By the latest chapter the ruler of the World Government has left Mary Geoise for the first time in the story, has fought on Elbaf in person as Saint Nerona Imu, and has been driven into the world tree by Luffy and Loki together. The arc is unfinished: this edition narrates it through the latest released chapter, and the final beats below end with three fights still open.
Story
Landfall on the land of giants Ch. 1126
Days after Egghead, the giants’ ship brings the Sunny within sight of Elbaf. The island announces itself before it appears: a forest so tall that its trunks stand like cliffs, a coastline built to the scale of people who fought a hundred-year duel as a pastime. Dorry and Brogy are coming home after decades, and Oimo and Kashii explain to the crew how the two of them came to leave Little Garden in the first place.
The wider world does not pause for the reunion. The Red Hair Pirates sink the Barto Club’s ship, and at Hachinosu the Blackbeard Pirates hold Garp as their prisoner. Two days after landfall the Thousand Sunny vanishes with six Straw Hats aboard, and the remaining four, with the giants, are left searching an empty sea for their friends.
The Land of Gods Ch. 1127–1129
Luffy, Zoro, Nami, Usopp, Sanji and Chopper wake in Viking-style clothes inside a castle made of blocks, in a country whose people call it the Land of Gods and speak of a Sun God who rules it. Oversized animals hunt them: a hedgehog the locals call the Needle God, a cat that swells into a lion, bees the size of dogs. The villagers fear a fire creeping toward their tree, Yggdrasil, and the wrath of an Ear God, a rabbit that Luffy has already eaten.
Luffy smashes into a mirror wall and the sky cracks. The whole kingdom is a diorama inside a giant’s room, and its people are humans in doll costumes. Chopper is found, Luffy in Gear 5 flattens the temple guards, a snake, mice and a raven, and the crew commandeers the cat Iscat as a steed using a blueprint Nami has memorised. Along the way Luffy shows a new trick, applying Gear 4 to a single limb.
The Sun God is Road, navigator of the New Giant Warrior Pirates, who never forgave Hajrudin for swearing loyalty to a human. His raven Muginn towed the Sunny away after the crew fell asleep in the Sleeping Mist Zone, and Road has kept them as living dolls in a detention room built to hold giants. Nami answers with a bolt from Zeus, and Luffy punches a doorway through the wall.
The Accursed Prince in the Underworld Ch. 1130–1132
On the Great Eirik, Franky, Robin, Jinbe and Brook give up the sea search and make for Elbaf. The newspapers report Egghead as an attack by the Straw Hats and the Giant Warrior Pirates, claim Luffy killed Vegapunk, and revive Dorry’s and Brogy’s bounties at 1.8 billion each. On the printed Gear 5 photo Robin notices an X on Luffy’s arm that she cannot place. Dorry and Brogy admit that Hajrudin is a son of the king and speak of an Accursed Prince who killed Harald for a royal Devil Fruit and was subdued by all of Elbaf.
Luffy follows a Haki presence into the forest below the bridge and meets Loki: blindfolded, chained six years to Treasure Tree Adam with Seastone, carrying a special World Government bounty of 2.6 billion. Loki calls Elbaf the land wars come from and himself the Sun God who will end the world. He offers information about Shanks, hinting that Shanks was the one who captured him, in exchange for his freedom. Luffy tames the beasts of the Underworld, and Loki privately promises to kill him once the chains are off.
Gerd and Goldberg of Hajrudin’s crew chase Road while carrying the Sunny; Hajrudin and Stansen hunt a moose for a feast; Brook cuts Robin’s hair back to the style Saul knew, and then word comes that Saul has fallen. The Great Eirik rides a painted rainbow bridge up into the Sun World, one of Elbaf’s three tiers with the Underworld below and the Heaven World above. The half-giant boy Colon greets the ship and says Shanks told him Luffy’s name. Gerd and Goldberg knock Road out, and the crew is whole again.
Saul, the Owl Library and the feast Ch. 1133–1136
After Ohara, Spandine framed Robin for the destruction of the evacuation ship, and she nearly stepped off a cliff. Now Saul is alive and teaching history at the Owl Library in Warrior Springs. He fakes a collapse as a joke, then holds Robin, who asks him to praise her for surviving. He and Hajrudin salvaged Ohara’s books, and the owl Biblo enlarges them for giant hands. Lilith reveals a container holding a perfect Vegapunk clone body, the one that visited Elbaf twenty years ago, and plans a laboratory to recover it and restore Kuma’s mind.
Saul’s assistant Ange and the biology teacher Ripley run Walrus School, opened twenty years ago at Harald’s request, where children are no longer raised as warriors. Colon attacks Luffy with a wooden sword and admits his father is a human ex-pirate. At the Western Village feast Stansen remembers being freed at Sabaody, and the elder Jarul, four hundred and eight years old, arrives with a sword still lodged in his helmet. He explains the Harley, the sacred text in which Nika is a god of liberation, destruction or laughter, and the world has ended twice.
The giants tell Loki’s story as they know it: Harald’s prophecy that his son would kill him, the family’s lucky horse Loki killed, villages terrorised with Underworld beasts when he was ten, Harald dead about six years ago, and Shanks stopping the rampage. Elsewhere Loki speaks by snail to an unseen contact called Mosa, and two hooded figures arrive at Aurust Castle by black lightning and wound the guards, demanding to know where he is. Luffy confides his bargain to Zoro, and he, Zoro and Nami, with Road as Nami’s reluctant servant, set out for the castle and its key.
The Knights of God and the Mountain-Eater Ch. 1136–1141
In the Underworld the hooded woman, Gunko, tries to recruit Loki. Refused, she beats him with the Aro Aro no Mi, arrows that mark where her blows will land. Her companion unhoods: Figarland Shamrock, son of Garling, commander of the Knights of God, with Shanks’ face. Shanks is his younger twin, who once returned to Mary Geoise and chose the lower world instead. Their orders are to bring Elbaf under the World Government. Shamrock’s sword houses a Cerberus Mythical Zoan; he sets it on Loki and leaves to hunt the island’s children.
Aurust Castle has stood empty for fourteen years. Road shows the party the ruins of Harald’s last fight and the bones of a hundred guards; horned skulls prove that some giants carry Ancient Giant blood, and Harald tore out his own horns. Hajrudin is Harald’s son by an outsider giantess, Loki’s half-brother. In the throne room, beside a magic circle, they meet Ya-san, Ripley’s husband and Colon’s father, a self-styled preacher of love. When he lifts the key from a looted vault and challenges Luffy for it, the Mountain-Eater of Oimo and Kashii’s stories gets a face: Scopper Gaban.
Gaban yields once the key is on the ground, remembering that Shanks vouched for Luffy. Gunko summons two more knights, Saint Shepherd Sommers and Saint Rimoshifu Killingham; because only the marked can travel by Abyss, the children must be taken by ship, and Shamrock makes their kidnapping a game. Ripley shows Franky the burned branch where Haugen village stood, and explains that fire and lightning are Elbaf’s weaknesses. Luffy and Zoro unlock Loki, leaving one Seastone cuff; Hajrudin begs them to stop; Loki rises and takes up his weapon, Ragnir.
The Knights’ game Ch. 1142–1149
A serpent called Jormundgandr attacks Walrus School and the principal Kiba and Saul kill it. The children begin sleepwalking toward the beach behind one of Gunko’s arrows and cannot be touched; Ange realises the monsters are the fears the children drew in class. Sommers’ Iba Iba no Mi wraps them in invisible thorns hard as steel, and Killingham’s Kirin fruit puts people to sleep and makes their dreams walk. Loki strikes Adam with Ragnir to burn off his last cuff, collapses, and under Gerd’s care asks Hajrudin whether he truly believes the murder was planned.
A Draugr attacks the Western Village. Nami, Usopp, Brook and Jinbe sail out on Colon’s boat while Dorry, Brogy and Gaban join the fight, and Jinbe drowns the fire moments before the children walk into it. Gunko boards, calls herself a god, says a war that will swallow the world is coming, regenerates from Usopp’s shot, beats all four and takes Colon. Killingham seizes the island’s snail network; Sommers defeats Saul, who hides Robin and Chopper in his hair. Loki, meanwhile, admits he idolised Rocks D. Xebec as a boy and was refused a place on his crew.
Sommers broadcasts the terms: burn the school and the library and submit as battle-slaves, or ten named children die. Nightmares sink the Great Eirik. Ronja is walked to a branch edge with a thirty-second count. Robin breaks Sommers’ spine; Ronja begs Jarul not to burn the school, and he orders it burned. Gaban severs Sommers’ arm, which does not grow back, and halves him. Then Gunko puts a blade to Colon’s throat. Gaban drops his axes, is impaled and thrown into the Underworld; Chopper dives after him. Colon’s cry stirs something in Gunko, and Imu, whose Holy Land is burning, takes her body.
Domi Reversi Ch. 1150–1152
Imu, wearing Gunko, flattens children and giants with Supreme King Haki, sprouts wings and a tail, conjures cannons, and blows off Brogy’s hand with a shotgun made from nothing. Then comes Domi Reversi: Brogy, Dorry and the nearby Giant Warrior Pirates are turned into oversized demons in exchange for their lifespans and ordered to kill Jarul and name themselves kings. Killingham’s Nightmare Hole keeps spawning and reviving monsters. Imu says the chaos will last until Elbaf’s spirit breaks, and blames Harald’s failure.
In the Underworld Chopper has saved Gaban with Guard Point, and Luffy’s group learns that the preacher of love is a Roger Pirate. Mosa tells Loki they cannot speak for a while. Gaban explains that the Knights are not truly immortal and that Supreme King Haki is the counter, then reveals that Zoro has it without knowing. Luffy offers Loki a place in his crew and is refused by everyone present. Gaban says that he and Shanks were on Elbaf the day Harald died, and Hajrudin gives Loki three minutes to explain.
King Harald and the Rocks Pirates Ch. 1152–1158
A hundred and nine years ago Harald becomes king at forty-five, fifteen in a giant’s reckoning, a violent bully feared more than the Giant Warrior Pirates. He rescues the South Blue giantess Ida from a circus, is slapped, learns the townspeople had already saved her, and reforms; a diplomacy tour follows. Ida bears Hajrudin but cannot be queen as an outsider. Harald marries the geomancer Estrid, who gives him the lucky horse Asla and, sixty-three years ago, a son whose eyes she calls cursed. She declares Loki stillborn and throws him into the Underworld. The infant climbs back up.
The year Big Mom kills Jorul, disasters and famine fall on Elbaf and are blamed on Loki’s curse. Estrid dies still denying him; his eyes are bandaged; Ida opens a bar in the Underworld. Jarul tells Harald of the Galleila, more than a hundred giant shipwrights captured long ago, and of rumours of a frozen giant army. Loki attacks villages, bullies Hajrudin, and leaps into the Underworld to die, and survives. That same day Rocks arrives with Newgate, Shiki and Buckingham Stussy, drawn plainly at last and named as Blackbeard’s father.
Rocks tells of the Levely: five kings abducted, the Room of Flowers, Imu with Gunko in attendance, and a vow to return as a worshipper of Davy Jones. He means to take Hachinosu, destroy the Marines and the Holy Land, and become King of the World; Harald refuses him. Four years later the crew forms at Hachinosu, Linlin and Kaidou among the recruits, and two years of raids name the era. The Elders offer Elbaf membership if its warriors kill Rocks. Harald accepts; he and Rocks fight to a draw and part as friends. Thirty-nine years ago, on God Valley, the twins Shanks and Shamrock are born.
The God Valley Incident Ch. 1159–1166
Thirty-eight years ago Garling returns to God Valley, stabs the twins’ mother and opens the Native Hunting Competition; the cadet Monkey D. Dragon is among the Marines, and Ginny and a young Morgans leak the event to the world. Ochoku sells Shakky to the Government. Rocks tells Harald that his true name is Davy D. Xebec, descendant of Davy D. Jones, and that his wife Eris and his son are on the island. Kuma is a target; the boy Teach is the first of the Davy Family identified in eight hundred years. The Rocks and Roger Pirates land, the Knights of God deploy, and Garp arrives.
Saint Maffey shoots Dragon and carries off Shamrock while Shanks stays hidden; Newgate cuts Maffey in half by accident; Garp scatters Newgate, Linlin, Kaidou and Shiki; Rayleigh saves Shakky from Sommers. Linlin takes the Seiryu fruit from Ivankov and Kaidou steals and eats it; Kuma eats the Nikyu Nikyu no Mi. Then Imu possesses Saturn, and Rocks names the thing before him The World. Rocks, Garp, Roger, Newgate, Kaidou and Linlin strike it together, and it regenerates. Imu turns Domi Reversi on Rocks with orders to kill his own family.
Rocks resists long enough to declare that Davy D. Jones was once king of the world; Imu names Elbaf’s giants and their pliable king as the next soldiers. Demon Rocks flattens Kaidou and Linlin and shatters a mountain against Newgate; Kuma teleports Eris and Teach away; Garp and Roger hear Rocks begging to be killed, call a truce, and pour their Haki into one blow. Garling stabs the restored Rocks dead. God Valley sinks, the Roger Pirates find infant Shanks in a chest, Imu orders the records erased, and the press crowns Garp a hero. Young Loki mourns Rocks; Harald tears out his horns.
The Depths Covenant Ch. 1167–1171
Harald spends the next decades hunting pirates for the Government, and twenty-four years ago the Five Elders make him a Devoted Blade of God with a Shallow Covenant mark. He visits Neptune, who proposes betrothing his future daughter to Loki, and asks Saul to open a school. Shanks, himself a Devoted Blade, secretly helps Fisher Tiger free the slaves of Mary Geoise. The elders of Brewers Village poison Ida; Loki burns the village, calling her his only mother; she dies in winter, and he is jailed for the arson.
Fourteen years ago Shanks vanishes before his promotion and Harald is elevated instead. Imu, on the Empty Throne, raises him to a Depths Covenant, immortality, strength and total obedience, and orders Elbaf made a warrior nation. Harald sees the trap, has himself chained and summons Jarul and Loki. He kills a guard against his will, begs to die, heals, and orders Jarul to give Loki the sacred fruit so Loki can kill him and take the throne. Then the covenant takes him whole: he slaughters the guards, stabs Jarul through the helmet, and is stopped by Shanks and Gaban.
Ragnir, the living hammer that guards the fruit and chooses who may eat it, lets Loki eat. He transforms and cripples Harald, who for a moment is himself again, thanks Loki for avenging Ida, tells him he loves him, and is shattered by Loki’s lightning. Imu suffers the backlash and declares that Elbaf can never join the Government because it is of the D. Loki insists the truth stay buried and sails away with the surviving guards, accepting the blame. In the present Hajrudin forgives him and removes the last cuff, and Loki freezes a falling Draugr with Ragnir while Luffy rides his shoulder.
Elbaf declares war Ch. 1172–1178
Jarul broadcasts to the island that a demon killed Harald, clears Loki, and declares Elbaf at war with the World Government. Zoro’s Rokudo no Tsuji cuts demon giants down from above; Dorry and Brogy behead each other and wake as themselves, proof that fatal damage undoes Domi Reversi, and Hajrudin, Stansen and a slap from Chopper’s Monster Point finish the rest. Brook calls Gunko Princess Shuri, her memories stir, and she tells him to run before Imu retakes her. Gerd, Goldberg and Road blast a Nika nightmare out of the sky and sink the Knights’ ship with it.
The children walk toward a hole in the sea clouds. Their parents embrace them through the thorns and fall with them, and Gear 5 Luffy, riding a transformed Loki, catches them all as snow and lightning herald the Sun God. Sanji burns Robin’s thorns away, the children shield their parents, and Luffy borrows Loki’s lightning for the Dawn Thor Rifle, blasting Sommers apart before Loki crushes the rest. Jarul’s memory names the fruit, Ryu Ryu no Mi, Model: Nidhöggr, the largest of dragons, and Ragnir as the weapon of a Warrior God who fought the Sun God, home to the ice squirrel Ratatoskr.
Lilith’s converters freeze the burning library and school; Sanji crushes Killingham’s head, and the knight is reduced to a boxed head that will not die. Usopp is beaten trying to reach Brook. Imu, still in Gunko, calls Luffy and Loki Nika and Nidhöggr and tries Domi Reversi on both; it fails, and Loki seals the possessed knight in ice with Niflheim. Every book in the Owl Library has vanished, and Biblo with them. Imu’s shadow slips out of the ice and tells the Five Elders that he is leaving Mary Geoise.
Nerona Imu descends Ch. 1179–1186
In Mary Geoise, Garling reports that the Revolutionary Army’s food blockade is working and York is ordered to remake the Mother Flame. Imu opens an Abyss to Elbaf, appears in Aurust Castle, vomits blood and transforms: Saint Nerona Imu, one of the First Twenty, King of the World, user of the Akuma no Mi. He frees Sommers, takes Stansen’s leg, drops Zoro and Hajrudin with a power called Omen, heals his knights and kicks Sanji away. Loki confronts him and admits, aloud, that he killed Harald.
Loki’s Ragnaizuchi is matched by Omen. Imu grows to a giant’s size, impales Loki with a sword he names Nemesis, and describes Corruption, Covenant and Omen as the pillars of Domination. Loki slams him into Adam and transforms, and Imu smiles that Nidhöggr has returned, calling him a traitor. Ragnir is confirmed as the eater of the Ratatoskr fruit. Robin and Saul find that Biblo hid the books in a secret room. Killingham accidentally conjures a rain god, Zaza, and floods the Western Village to snatch children; Zoro goes for Sommers, Sanji for Killingham.
Brook tells the crew about Esperia, a kingdom of music under King Reuven and Queen Candelle: a junkyard boy of eleven taken into the palace, a World Noble’s visit that left the queen bedridden, a smog that killed her and ruined the country, and a war declared when Reuven could not pay the tribute or hand over a thousand slaves. Brook found Princess Shuri demonised over her father’s corpse, watched by Imu inside Mars and by Knight Manmayer Gurou, her true father; her sword through his skull is his scar. He asks the crew to help free Gunko. Luffy punches Imu and orders him out of Elbaf.
The combined strike Ch. 1187–1191
Imu’s Stigma sends black flame through Loki, and Luffy sheds his burning jacket to dodge it. Imu calls Gear 5 Luffy Joy Boy. Luffy answers with Jet Gatling and a giant form he names Majin, Jinbe guards Loki, and Imu, recognising Brook from Esperia, summons the life-draining sword Bohu and runs Luffy through. He pins Luffy to a tree with Fragarach, calls up the Axe of Xingtian, and hands Sommers the sword Gram and Killingham the spear Longinus, all weapons of the First Twenty. Zoro squares off with Sommers; Sanji faces Killingham, remembering Gaban’s warning about his habit of self-sacrifice.
Gaban blocks the finishing blow, frees Luffy, scolds him for nearly dying, and names himself a Roger Pirate; Imu recalls ordering Roger’s true name changed. Gaban’s Kamudo forces Imu to block with two weapons at once and cuts the Adam branch beneath him, dropping the King of the World into the Underworld. It costs Gaban his left arm. Imu climbs back more monstrous than before, saying he should have wiped out the Roger Pirates at God Valley.
Saul asks Chopper to translate Biblo, and the owl says something that silences the room. Hajrudin strikes Imu with Gungnir, Loki returns, and Luffy, Hajrudin and Loki launch San Sho: Gokoku together and blow Imu back. Gunko lies thawed and unconscious nearby, Garp is still Blackbeard’s prisoner, and the war has only just been declared.
Dawn Thor Bullet Ch. 1192–1193
The combined strike staggers Imu but does not drop him. He slips Loki’s swings, meets Luffy’s new Dawn Kraken Gatling, a volley of arms that lash like tentacles, with a hail of Omen, and calls the Gear 5 captain slow. Then he summons a second sword of the First Twenty, Tohu, crosses it with Bohu into Tohu wa-Bohu, a wall of Omen harder than Armament-coated fists, and drives Luffy into the ground with both blades.
Gaban again tells Hajrudin to carry the wounded Luffy away: the boy owes Elbaf nothing. Usopp, riding on Hajrudin’s shoulder, answers for the crew. He counts the debts, Dorry and Brogy at Little Garden, Oimo and Kashii at Enies Lobby, Hajrudin’s men at Dressrosa, and says Luffy is not Joy Boy, Nika or Roger but himself, free to choose this fight and never anything but serious about it. Then he thanks Gaban for saving him.
Loki climbs above Imu for a blow he is sure cannot be dodged, and Luffy leaps onto Ragnir and tells him not to hold back. Riding the lightning together they become the Dawn Thor Bullet. The shield breaks, Imu bleeds, and he is driven into Adam hard enough to shake the whole tree. Luffy charges for more and collapses, out of stamina, refusing to drop Gear 5 for fear his wounds will return, while Loki begins to change and tells him to sit the rest out.
Still practicing Ch. 1193–1195
At the port, where a giant ship waits to carry the children off, Sommers fires blasts from Gram, a sword that turns its wielder’s anger into explosive force, and cages Zoro in invisible thorns. Zoro ignores the taunts and works the problem. Every wound on a Knight of God heals, but Harald once pointed at his own heart for Loki to strike. The only kill is Supreme King Haki driven into Sommers’ steel heart, and Zoro cannot yet call that Haki on purpose.
His first thrust reaches the heart and glances off; he is still practicing, he says flatly, and Sommers grasps how dangerous he is. The knight heals, coats Gram in Omen and looses a dragon of thorns, and Zoro’s Pound Ho, carrying the Haki, cuts straight through Omen that was supposed to stop it. Remembering Mihawk’s lesson that every user of that Haki shares an unshakeable sense of self, Zoro ties on his bandana and coats his swords at will. The next cut takes a hand that does not grow back.
Sommers flees, begging Zoro to keep away, and is cut down on a branch of Adam; whether he lives is not shown. On the branch route Gunko wakes with her head in Brook’s lap, remembers him, the day King Reuven died and begging Imu for her life, and says through tears that she is a World Noble of the Manmayer Family. She drives Brook back with a sword of arrows, in a stance he taught her, and runs. At the Owl Library the old chest is opened, and Biblo names a human who once lived on Elbaf: Lili, a name that stops Robin.
The worth of self-love Ch. 1193–1196
In the Western Village the giants ask whether Harald’s peace with the Government brought this on them, and Jarul answers that staying a hated nation would have been no better. Dorry and Brogy end the argument: if Elbaf cannot beat a few demons it was always going to fall. They wade into Zaza, the rain god Killingham conjured, pull children from its grip and remind everyone that a nightmare lasts until its maker falls. Four children are still held: Colon, Ylva, Bjorn and Johanna.
Sanji splits Killingham in half with Ifrit Jambe and watches him knit back together. Longinus burns through Sanji’s side, the knight mocks his cooking, and Sanji keeps taking blows he could avoid while memories of his two years on Momoiro Island push to the surface. Killingham puts him to sleep and calls up his worst nightmare to fuse with: not Judge and not his brothers, but Ivankov, the one person who ever saw his weakness.
In the memory Ivankov orders him to rest after a thirtieth victory, each one won by taking more damage than he needed to. Love from someone with no love for himself is worthless, Ivankov tells him, and dying for others defeats the point. In the present Sanji credits his crew, not Germa, with his worth, decides to try loving himself, and the nightmare vanishes. He sits on a rooftop and tells Killingham he will take no more hits. Their fight is unresolved.