While the world argues about a fifth Emperor, its kings gather beneath a throne that should be empty.
The Levely is a council of kings convened every four years at Mary Geoise, the Holy Land atop the Red Line. Fifty rulers attend to argue about the shape of the world under the eye of the Five Elders. The manga interrupts its pirate story to show that gathering, and to follow the people the Straw Hats have loved and left: Vivi, Shirahoshi, Rebecca, Dalton and Kureha, each representing a country the crew once fought for and none of them free to say so.
The interlude has two layers. On the surface, the newspapers announce Luffy as a fifth Emperor of the Sea after Whole Cake Island, the Revolutionary Army prepares to declare war on the Celestial Dragons, and old friends meet in a palace where Sabo’s group hides on a rescue mission. Beneath it, the story shows what Mary Geoise actually is: a place with an empty throne that no king may sit upon, and a figure who sits there anyway.
Story
A headline crowns a pirate Ch. 903
Morgans, the president of the World Economic News Paper, turns the escape from Whole Cake Island into a story about a war. Under his editorial hand, Luffy becomes the leader of a fleet of thousands, the Straw Hat Grand Fleet appears as a standing army, and the world learns the new bounty: one and a half billion berries. The crew reads the news aboard the Sunny with a mix of embarrassment and delight, and Luffy declares that fifth is a step behind first.
The same page lands on every desk that matters. Kaido reads it and Big Mom reads it, and the seven captains of the Grand Fleet read it and celebrate a war they did not fight. At Marine Headquarters, Sengoku laughs and Sakazuki does not. On Fish-Man Island, a princess who was promised a walk on the surface learns that the pirate who made the promise now stands beside the woman who protects her home, in the world’s estimation if not yet in fact.
An army decides on a war Ch. 904
In the Kamabakka Kingdom, the Revolutionary Army’s commanders assemble around Dragon for the first time since the loss of Baltigo. Sabo, Karasu, Morley, Lindbergh and Belo Betty are introduced as leaders of a movement the story has only glimpsed: a woman whose flag makes crowds brave, a crow-man who moves as a cloud of birds, a giant who tunnels through the earth. Dragon announces that they will strike directly at the Celestial Dragons during the Levely, when the whole world is watching Mary Geoise.
Koala and Hack relay news of Kuma, the former Warlord who was a comrade of theirs before Vegapunk took his mind, and who is now kept in Mary Geoise as a slave for the nobles to ride. The army decides to bring him home whatever the council decides. Sabo asks whether Luffy, now a headline, will be a problem, and Dragon answers only that his son has been a problem since he was born. The rescue party leaves for the Red Line in disguise.
Old friends in a holy city Ch. 905
Ships converge on the Red Line. Vivi and Cobra arrive from Alabasta with Igaram and Pell, Rebecca and Viola escort King Riku from Dressrosa, Dalton and Kureha represent the Sakura Kingdom, and Neptune brings Shirahoshi to her first Levely with Garp assigned as escort. Wapol, restored to a small throne through his wife’s wealth, arrives too and is delighted by everyone else’s misfortune. The friends recognise one another through shared stories about a straw-hatted pirate that none of them may speak aloud in front of the guards.
Admiral Fujitora meets Admiral Ryokugyu, who has not eaten in three years and jokes about it, and the two discuss ending the Warlord system that let Doflamingo and Crocodile rule kingdoms. Sabo, Karasu, Morley and Lindbergh, disguised among the servants, watch the kings file past and keep their eyes on the slave quarters. Shirahoshi, who has never left the sea, is carried up the Red Line in a bubble and finds the Holy Land as beautiful and frightening as her mother said it would be.
The debt a Celestial Dragon owed Ch. 906
Saint Charlos, the Celestial Dragon Luffy once punched at Sabaody, sees Shirahoshi and decides she will be his pet. His men throw a net over a princess in the heart of the world’s government, in front of every king present, and none of them may raise a hand. Vivi and Rebecca move anyway. Garp, forbidden to interfere, plans a distraction that will cost him his rank. Then another noble strikes Charlos down with a club. Saint Mjosgard, whose life Otohime saved on Fish-Man Island, has spent ten years remembering it.
Mjosgard takes Shirahoshi under his protection and declares her untouchable, and Charlos is carried away raging. Shirahoshi’s tears, held back with all the courage she learned at home, mark how far Otohime’s hope has travelled in a single generation: one Celestial Dragon has become a human being because a mermaid refused to hate him. Vivi and Rebecca compare the men they know who wear a straw hat, and the Revolutionaries in the corridor above see where the slaves are kept.
What sits above the Five Elders Ch. 907–908
Shanks walks into Mary Geoise to speak privately with the Five Elders about a certain pirate, a conversation the reader is not allowed to hear. Elsewhere Big Mom telephones Kaido and reminds him of an old debt, and the two Emperors agree, ominously, to meet in Wano. The world’s power blocs are moving in the same direction at once, and the kings who argue in the chamber below have no idea how little their debate will decide.
At the heart of the Holy Land stands the Empty Throne, surrounded by twenty weapons, a monument to the promise that no single ruler will govern the world. A figure called Im climbs the steps and sits on it, and the Five Elders kneel. Im examines wanted posters of Luffy and Blackbeard and portraits of Shirahoshi and Vivi, and destroys one of them. Cobra, meanwhile, prepares to ask the Elders about the Poneglyphs, a question the Nefertari family has been owed an answer to for eight hundred years.
Legacy
The Levely leaves the world with questions rather than answers. Im and the Empty Throne overturn the Government’s founding story, and the Five Elders are revealed as servants rather than masters. Shanks’s visit and the Emperor alliance forming between Big Mom and Kaido establish the stakes that Wano will inherit. Sabo’s presence in the Holy Land guarantees that the council will not end quietly, though the story withholds the outcome for hundreds of chapters.
The fifth Emperor headline changes how every faction speaks to Luffy. Allies who once saw a lucky rookie now see a peer of the Emperors, and enemies plan around a fleet that does not exist. Vivi’s and Shirahoshi’s appearances remind the reader that the crew’s completed arcs left people behind who are living with the consequences, and that the Nefertari and Ryugu families hold histories that Im is watching closely.