Chapter 25. Oni Kuma Part 2

C/N: Sunday's Post

Chapter 25. Oni Kuma Part 2

"Keki, Keki, can you hear me?" Galette's voice reached me through the fog clouding my mind. I tried to shake my head to clear it, but my body felt numb. All I managed was a weak movement, but it was enough to assure her that I was somewhat conscious.

"We need to run. We need to get out of here!" Galette yelled, shaking me vigorously, her desperation doing little to help her cause. I could feel the weakness in my eyelids as I struggled to open them.

"W-w-what happened?" I wondered aloud, managing a few scrambled words. My body felt detached, with pain in some places, and everything seemed lost to me. I struggled to recall what had happened.

There had been a mine - one I had happily demolished with my hunger. Then, a few moments after I was satisfied, there had been a quake - violent yet insignificant, like it wasn't even trying to cause any real harm. The last thing I remembered was the roar that had followed.

Though my mind was foggy, I could recall the roar vividly and the effect it had on the mine. It sounded like an angry, wild animal - magnified many times over. It was a roar somewhere between a wolf's haunting howl and a dragon's fiery bellow.

When the roar happened, even I felt a cold shiver run through my stomach, as if the gelato I had swallowed had just frozen. It was so terrifying that it had everyone else in the mines - workers and visitors alike - shaking and shivering as if they had just heard the trumpet of Judgment Day. Moscato was the most shaken of all, and he had proceeded to tell everyone to run away, just as he had tried to do.

"Keki, Keki, can you hear me, brother!?" My ears finally tuned to Moscato's voice on the other side of my body opposite to Galette - shaking me back to life more frantically and more desperately.

"Cazzo!, Keki! We have to get out of here!" Moscato cursed in Italian as he continued to desperately rouse me, his voice quivering. I presumed that he had reached a stalemate, concluding that if he left me to die on Ice Island, he and everyone else on the island would end up dead at Mama's hands.

It was greatly comforting to see how far my siblings would go for me, but completely discomfiting to feel a sharp pain cruising through my head, alerting me to a memory oversight. The roar wasn't the last thing I had witnessed. It was merely a prerequisite to what seemed like the end of everything - beyond death! I hadn't experienced a near-death encounter since Kaidou, but what I had seen before the lights nearly went out for good was not just death... but the gates of hell opening to welcome me into their ranks.

"What was that thing!?" I jerked upright, pushing both Moscato and Galette aside as I remembered what I had seen appear before me.

I struggled to stay seated for a moment before giving in to the weight of my stretched stomach and falling back to the ground. There was still a whole lot of gelato in there, and I couldn't quite hold my weight - at least not without a struggle.

"Gotta-g-get... u-up-pp," I stammered, moving my body to the sides to at least get on my knees. After what felt like the most impossible task in the entire world, I made it to a kneeling position with a newfound respect for women. Kneeling, I looked around to confirm what was in my mind.

I blinked once, then twice... but no blink seemed enough to assert that what I was seeing was indeed true.

"All the ice is... gone?" I wondered aloud, trying to process the information. I knew I had eaten quite a lot of the mine, but not all of it. Besides, I didn't eat the surface either, such that we were no longer inside the mine, but on the surface where the sun was visible and the landscape was flat with dark brown, dead-looking soil without a trace of ice!

A dusty wind was blowing ominously as I took in the far-reaching scene, wondering what had happened to the Icicle Keep. Something that large just doesn't vanish out of sight. The landscapes too.

So, what had actually happened?

"Good, brother. You can walk. We need to go!" Moscato's voice was relieved as he watched me kneel, but the urgency was still there. Galette stood too, ready to shoot out and leave at a moment's notice.

"I'm pretty sure I didn't have a hunger pang," I muttered, assuring myself that I hadn't eaten the entire Ice Island. "And I'm certain that I saw something like a giant on fire holding an ice trident."

"Keki," this time, Galette's voice was more frantic than Moscato's, her words coming out in chokes from the dust. "You... 'coff' saw what that... 'coff' 'coff' thing did to all the miners and the crew. Let's get out of here before it reappears."

Yes, I did see what 'that thing' had done, and it was... fascinating. I couldn't imagine that such a thing, or creature, existed - besides Chopper's transformation into a reindeer monster. This, on the other hand, wasn't just some transformation; it was a manifestation, and I was starting to see why it was feared and called a demon.

The demon of Ice Island was a burning bear the size of a giant - approximately 2000 cm tall - and it had an ice trident of the same size. It had appeared out of nowhere from right beneath me, fitting and filling in the entire mine within just a second and wiping everything away in a flash. The surroundings I was currently in were not my original location - the mine - but a place on Ice Island that had been sucked dry of all its ice, just like the mountain facing the same fate several miles away.

How the demon bear took me out with a tow by its trident was a mystery - a power far beyond Haki. Moreover, the coincidence that only Galette and Moscato had been thrown at my exact location was foreboding. Or maybe they had just walked to find me.

Still.

"Why is it sucking all the ice on the island?" I asked, looking at Moscato. He seemed to have been trying to tell me something - probably a lot of things. But my fascination with the demon bear smashing through the ice on the mountains had completely consumed my attention. If it could walk on all fours, I wouldn't mind riding a Burning Ice bear with a frozen trident as my pet. How thrilling that would be, I thought.

"Mh?" Moscato kept emphasizing the urgency of our situation, reiterating that Ice Island was in danger and we would perish if we didn't escape before all the ice was gone. But after noticing my puzzled expression and firmly asserting my question, he finally eased into an explanation.

"The fiery demon you see clearing the ice on the mountains is the curse of Ice Island," Moscato began, hoping to fit in all the details and get me to stand and run away like he wanted. "It is both the end and the beginning of Ice Island. And now, it's been provoked to rise once again and fulfill its duty."

"What duty?" I asked, curiosity piqued.

"To collect Hell's Tribute," Moscato said, pacing back and forth on the barren soil.

The demon bear roared, from the skies as it continued towing the ice on the mountains, sucking it all out.

"The legend of the Ice Demon is well-known across Totto Land, and there's a reason it's called a demon," Moscato continued, nearly holding his breath - not for dramatic effect, but from the fear of disclosing too much information. "In exchange for an unlimited supply of gelato, the demon bear collects a certain number of souls every year - no more, no less."

"Its reasons for this trade are not entirely clear, but people often believe that it takes the collected souls to Hell as a sacrifice."

My body chilled at the mention of Hell as my mind recalled seeing the gates of hot hell opening up to me the moment the bear appeared in the mines. I shuddered, shaking my head to clear the horrific thought.

"Traditionally, the residents of Ice Island used to carry out biannual sacrificial rituals for the demon bear, but that tradition has long been abolished since I took control over Ice Island," Moscato continued. "If the annual soul count didn't meet the demon's required tally, the entire island would be demolished and Ice Island would be reborn anew."

"Sounds harsh," I observed. "Why not just kill - or tame - the demon bear if it's such a menace?"

"Many warriors have tried, but they only managed to contribute to its annual tally," Moscato said with a foreboding tone. "Just crossing into its territory is enough reason to meet the Maker's antagonist."

"It has survived all sorts of attacks aimed at it, powerful or not, without even so much as a scar or a sign of injury," Moscato continued. "Once, its power was thought to be a devil fruit ability, but sea prism and water proved worthless against it. Yet, the power it uses is beyond anyone's understanding, and it became a general consensus that no one could stand up against it."

"However, due to its knack for making deals, it allows only the current leader of Ice Island to approach for an agreement via an invite - assuring them they will leave unharmed while at the same time threatening the destruction of Ice Island if they don't attend the said meeting and enter into a pact."

"Tough guy," I said with a smile forming in my mind. I wondered how nice it would be to have such a powerful bear as my companion. "But if it's that much work to live on Ice Island, why are there residents on the island in the first place?"

I asked, looking at the mountains. The demon bear looked like it was finishing up with the mountain, and I wondered what would happen next. How exactly would the island be demolished and restarted?

"The reasons may vary, but fear of the demon's wrath and self-sacrifice is among the biggest ones," Moscato replied quickly while looking at the bear. His expression was getting back to the more desperate look on his face.

"But all of the sacrifices my people and I have made will be for nothing if we don't get out of Ice Island and survive the island's renewal," Moscato said urgently. "Please, Keki, let's move."

"Yes, brother. Let's go," Galette concurred.

"Alright," I said, giving Moscato and Galette a confident smile. "Let's move—"

"—to the demon bear," I added mischievously. "I want to capture it."

Their jaws might have literally fallen to the ground, but Moscato managed to recollect his composure. "No disrespect, bro, but strong as you might be, you will not survive an encounter with the demon bear."

I smiled, taking in a reassuring breath. "I already did once, remember?"

"And if it's as tough as you say," I added, standing up with a struggle and unsheathing the blade on my back scabbard, "it'll be enough exercise to help me with the digestion."

My siblings stood pale, looking at me with both disbelief and a sense of hopelessness in their eyes. However, I made my first step toward the demon bear before something caught my mind.

"You said it was provoked to rise once again and fulfill its duty," I reiterated, turning to look at Moscato. "What provoked it?"

Moscato, still looking at me in shock, managed a feeble reply. "The devil's deal was broken."

"What's the devil's deal?" I wondered.

"Not to eat or mine too much gelato within a year," Moscato replied. "Only the devil knows what amount is too much."

'No shit,' I sighed inwardly. 'Of course this is my fault. Eating an entire mine of gelato just had to be a bad idea.'

Wait!

'With all that I've just heard from Moscato, doesn't it mean that I ate Ice cream from hell!?'

"Yuuuckkk!! Bleh!"

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