Smoke still hung over the treetop dojo when Luffy pulled the arrow from the door. The clan was dead. The warlord's dogs had come at dawn, killed everyone, and taken the ancestral scroll of shadow techniques. Ludo knelt on the raked gravel of the ruined garden below, one paw pressed to a stone that no longer marked anything. Two fat flame-point Siamese in torn ninja gear, the last of a family. Both wanted the same thing. Get the scroll back. Make the warlord pay. "Sitting here won't do it," Luffy said. He climbed down the rope trunk and dropped beside his sibling. "We need to reach his lands. We don't know the way." Ludo wiped his eyes and stood. "The tribute road. Everyone pays the warlord. The carts all go to him." That was the answer. A tribute caravan crossed the valley below every season, loaded with grain and coin bound for the warlord's fortress. Slip aboard, and it would carry them straight into his lands. Miss it, and the next chance was months away. The scroll would be gone deeper by then, harder to ever find. They ran. Below the trees, the caravan was already moving. Ten oxcarts groaned along the low road, guarded by spearmen who walked at the wheels. Dust rose in a long brown ribbon. The last cart was pulling past the tree line. "Now," Ludo whispered. "Before the road bends." Luffy studied the guards. Two watched the rear. One dozed on the tailboard of the final cart. "The oil jars," he said. "On that cart. We hide under the tarp." They split. Luffy darted low through the tall grass and reached the roadside ditch. Ludo circled wide. When the sleeping guard's cart drew even, Luffy tossed a pebble into the brush across the road. The two rear guards turned toward the sound. That was the gap. Ludo sprang first. He caught the tailboard and rolled under the tarp between the jars. Luffy jumped after him. His paw slipped on the wood. A jar tipped and cracked. Oil spread across the boards. The dozing guard woke. He yanked the tarp back and stared at two masked cats crammed among his cargo. "Stowaways!" he shouted. Luffy did not wait. He kicked the broken jar into the guard's chest and shoved him off the moving cart. The man hit the road hard. The caravan kept rolling. The other guards heard the shout and ran back, but the carts did not stop for them. "Pull the tarp down," Ludo hissed. They yanked it tight and pressed flat. The caravan carried them past the last of the trees and out of the valley. They were aboard, hidden, riding toward the warlord at last. But the guard they threw had seen their faces. He was running to the front of the line right now. By nightfall, the whole caravan would be hunting two cats among the jars.

The caravan slowed as darkness swallowed the road. Under the tarp, Luffy and Ludo pressed flat between the oil jars. Word of them had reached the front. Boots crunched past the cart. Somewhere ahead, the gates of a fortress waited, and unloading hands would peel back every tarp and drag out every stowaway. Their scent alone would betray them among the grain. "They'll check the cargo at the gate," Ludo whispered. "We can't just hide. We have to look like we belong." Luffy scanned the cart. Sacks of grain. Rope. A crate of gray tribute robes bound for the fortress servants. He grabbed two. "Put these on. Over the ninja gear. We carry, we unload, we walk right in." They pulled the plain robes over their masks and vests. The cloth hid the black. But it did not hide their faces, and the thrown guard had seen those faces. A figure moved at the tailboard. A black long-haired dog in a monk's robe climbed up beside them, slow and sure. His eyes were pale and fixed on nothing. He was blind. Yet he turned his head straight toward Luffy. "Two cats who smell of smoke and oil," the monk said softly. "The whole line hunts you. You wear servant robes now. Clever. But your faces will end you at the lamplight." Luffy's paw dropped to his blade. "Stay back." "I am no guard." The monk reached into his robe and drew out a small clay pot. "I walk with this caravan because the warlord permits it. He should not." He held out the pot. "Ash and root. Rub it on your fur. It darkens the face and dulls the scent. The gate dogs won't know you." Ludo took the pot. "Why help us?" "Because I know who slaughtered your clan." The monk's voice stayed calm. "So do you." They smeared the paste over their cheeks and muzzles. Their bright markings vanished under gray. The oil stink faded beneath the bitter root. When Luffy touched his own face, he felt like a stranger. The carts rolled forward. Torchlight spread across the tarp. The gate. "Down. Carry a sack each," the monk murmured. "Follow the others. Do not run." The cart stopped. A guard yanked the tarp back. Luffy hoisted a grain sack to his shoulder and stepped down, head low. The guard's lantern swung across his darkened face. He grunted and waved him on. Ludo followed. They walked through the gate in a line of servants, sacks bent over their backs, into the warlord's fortress. Inside the walls, the monk fell in beside them. "You are in now," he said. "But the scroll sits in the warlord's own keep, past his empress and her chained prince. Getting out is harder than getting in." Luffy set down the sack. They had reached the warlord's ground at last. Now the walls surrounded them on every side.

Inside the walls, the fortress spread wide and strange. Elegant halls rose on stone foundations. Lanterns lit long walkways. Servants crossed the yard in gray robes. Luffy and Ludo carried their sacks past koi ponds and bamboo. But they knew nothing of the layout. The keep held the scroll somewhere ahead. Wander into the wrong room, and a guard would gut them. "We can't just walk," Ludo whispered. "We need someone who knows the halls." The blind monk found them first. He shuffled from a shadowed walkway, robe dragging, head tipped as if he heard their heartbeats. "You made it past the gate," he said. "Now you're lost. I feel it in how you stand." He turned his pale eyes toward the tall keep. "There is one who knows every hall. A prince. Chained near the empress. Follow the servant path to the lower deck." They found the prince at the compound's edge. A gray long-haired tabby crouched by a stone post, a chain running from his wrist to an iron ring. His purple coat was torn. His yellow eyes lifted, sharp and angry. This was Max, the empress's captive, once a rival prince, now her ornament. "Two servants who carry blades under grain dust," Max said. He kept his voice low. "You're not here to sweep floors." Luffy knelt and pretended to fix his sandal. "We need the keep. The scroll room. Which way?" Max laughed without sound. "You want the shadow scroll. Everyone does." He glanced at the upper hall. A small brown dog in a jeweled crown stood there, watching servants. The empress, Minnie. Her hard eyes swept the yard. Max lowered his head fast. "She sees everything. Free me, and I'll draw you the way." "We free you after," Ludo said. "You'll never find it without me." Max rattled the chain. "The keep is a maze. Twelve doors look the same. Only one holds the scroll. The others hold guards." Luffy studied the iron ring. He drew a thin pick from his sleeve and worked the lock. Above, Minnie turned. Her gaze crossed the lower deck. Luffy froze, head down. She stared a long breath, then moved on. The lock clicked. The chain fell. Max rubbed his wrist. He crouched and scratched a map in the dirt with one claw. "Down this hall. Second stair. Past the empress's chamber. The scroll sits behind the fourth red door." He smeared the map away. "But she keeps the key on her own neck." Luffy and Ludo looked at each other. They had the path now. They knew the doors. But the key hung around the throat of the one who had watched them from the balcony. "Then we take it from her," Ludo said. Max grinned. "Now you understand your real problem."

Max crouched in the shadow of the stone post, rubbing the raw ring on his wrist. "The key hangs on her neck," he whispered. "You can't sneak it. She watches the whole yard." Luffy and Ludo looked up. On the high balcony stood Minnie, the brown palm-chi empress. Her jeweled crown caught the lantern light. She walked upright, hands clasped, small eyes scanning every servant below. The gold key rested against her chest. Ludo pulled Luffy close. "She won't come down for a servant. But she'll come down for a thief." Luffy understood. If they could not reach the key unseen, they would make Minnie chase them somewhere blind. "The lantern oil," Luffy said. He nodded at a rack of paper lanterns strung along the lower walkway. "We give her a fire. She protects her keep. She forgets to watch us." Max shook his head. "She never leaves the balcony." "Then we bring her down," Ludo said. Luffy climbed the servant path fast, robe flapping. He knocked a lantern from its hook. It fell into the dry bamboo below. Flame jumped. Smoke rolled up toward the balcony. Servants shrieked and ran. Minnie leaned over the rail, snarling. "Put it out! The keep, you fools!" She did not leave. Luffy cursed. His plan had failed. Guards poured into the yard, blades drawn, hunting the one who threw the lantern. One pointed straight at Luffy. Ludo moved. He darted up the balcony stair while Minnie screamed at the fire below. She turned too late. Ludo slammed into her small body. They rolled. Her crown skittered across the boards. Ludo grabbed the cord at her throat and yanked. It snapped. The key came free in his paw. Minnie howled. She bit his arm, teeth sharp. Ludo kicked loose and leapt from the rail. He landed hard beside Luffy and Max in the smoke. "Guards!" Minnie shrieked from above. "They have my key! Seal the keep! Seal every door!" The three of them ran through the burning yard. Max led, weaving past ponds and pillars. Luffy held the guards back with two thrown picks. They ducked into the dark mouth of the keep as bells began to ring. Ludo opened his paw. The gold key sat there, warm and bloody. "We have it," he panted. Max stared. "You have the key. But she knows your faces now. She'll flood the keep with guards. The fourth red door is deep inside." He wiped soot from his eyes. "You didn't steal it quiet. You stole it loud. Now the whole fortress hunts us." Above the roar of the fire, Minnie's voice carried down the halls, ordering the doors sealed one by one. Luffy tightened his grip on the key. They had won it. But the quiet path was gone. Between them and the scroll stood a maze of red doors, and every guard in the keep was already moving.

The gold key was warm in Ludo's paw, but the corridor ahead was blocked. Minnie's palm-chi warriors stood shoulder to shoulder across the narrow hall. Brown dogs in armor, upright on hind legs, spears leveled. Behind them waited the deeper halls and the fourth red door. Luffy counted eight guards. Too many to cut through. Bells still rang somewhere in the compound. "We can't break that wall," Max whispered. The gray tabby prince pressed his back to the cold stone. His purple coat still hung loose from the chains Luffy had picked off him. "Push into them and they swarm us. I've watched Minnie drill these dogs. They don't scatter." Fear cracked his voice, but he stayed close. He owed the twins his freedom, and he ran with them now. Luffy looked up. Paper lanterns hung along the beams overhead. Rows of them, strung tight, dripping oil like the ones in the yard. An idea moved through the siblings without a word. Ludo tucked the key inside his vest. Luffy drew two throwing picks. "Max, the far lantern rack," Ludo said. "When it drops, run low and left. Stay under the smoke." Luffy threw. The first pick cut the cord holding the lantern line. The whole row swung loose and crashed down among the guards. Oil splashed. Flame caught fast and spread across the hall floor between the twins and the pack. The warriors yelped and stumbled back from the fire. The wall of spears broke. Half the guards retreated from the flames. The others beat at the burning oil with their cloaks. Smoke filled the corridor and hid the siblings. "Now," Ludo hissed. The three darted low along the left wall, under the rolling smoke, past the coughing guards. A spear jabbed blind and missed. Luffy shoved it aside and kept moving. They burst through the far end of the corridor into a wider hall lined with red doors. They stopped, panting. The sealed corridor lay behind them, choked with fire and confusion. No guards followed yet. Max stared back at the smoke. "You got us through. But that fire won't hold them long." He pointed down the new hall. Four red doors stood in a row. "The fourth door. That's the one." Luffy ran to it and tried the handle. Locked. Ludo pulled out the gold key and fit it to the lock. It turned. The door swung open. But the room inside was not the scroll room. It was a guard post. Six warriors sat at a low table, heads snapping up at the open door. Beyond them, another red door. "Max," Ludo said slowly. "You said the fourth red door." Max went pale. "I counted from the keep entrance. Not from here." He swallowed. "I don't know which door it is anymore." The guards were already rising, reaching for their spears.

The six guards rose fast, spears scraping off the low table. Luffy and Ludo stood in the open doorway with nothing behind them but the empty hall. No cover. No time. The nearest warrior lunged, and Luffy twisted aside just as the spear tip nicked the doorframe. Ludo grabbed the door's edge. "Inside," he hissed. "Not the hall." It made no sense to Luffy, but the twins never doubted each other. Both cats sprang into the guard post itself, past the swinging spears, in among the dogs. Close quarters killed the spears' reach. The warriors could not aim long weapons at enemies pressed to their chests. Luffy flowed under a jabbing shaft and drove a heel into a guard's knee. The dog buckled. Ludo flipped the low table on its side and shoved it into two more, pinning their legs against the wall. Max hung at the threshold, frozen, gray fur puffed with fear. "Max, the far door!" Ludo shouted. "Open it! Give us a way out!" Max swallowed and ran for the second red door beyond the table. He wrenched the handle. "Locked!" "Key!" Ludo tossed the gold key across the room. Max caught it against his chest with both paws. A guard broke from the tangle and swung a fist at Luffy's head. Luffy ducked, then rammed a shoulder into the dog's gut and sent him crashing into the table pile. Max jammed the key into the far lock. It turned. The door opened onto a narrow stair, dark and empty. "Here! It goes down!" The twins backed toward him, staying tight together, keeping the wrecked table between themselves and the guards. Two warriors had regained their feet. One grabbed a fallen spear. Luffy threw his last pick. It bit into the dog's paw, and the spear clattered down. "Go, go!" Ludo pushed Max through the doorway. The three tumbled onto the stair. Ludo hauled the door shut and turned the key hard. On the far side, fists pounded the wood. Muffled barks rose. The lock held. They stood in the dark, chests heaving. A single lamp flickered somewhere below. Max pressed the gold key back into Ludo's paw. His hand shook. "You saved us again. I don't deserve to run with you. I miscounted. I nearly got us killed." Luffy gripped his shoulder. Ludo studied the stair falling away beneath them. "You didn't. That fight taught us something. The scroll room isn't up here at all." He pointed down. "Those guards protect a stair to a lower keep. Nobody guards a broom closet like that." Max lifted his head. "Below. Then we count doors from the bottom." But the pounding behind them changed. Wood splintered. A hinge screamed and gave way. The guards were breaking through, and now the whole fortress knew exactly which stair the thieves had taken.

The stair fell away into cold dark. Luffy and Ludo dragged Max down the steps two at a time. Behind them the top door burst open. Barks and boot-thuds chased them down. But the lower keep waited quiet at the bottom, one lamp burning by a single red door. The scroll room. Their stolen clan scroll lay just beyond it. Then the empress stepped out of the shadow beside the door. Minnie was smaller than a guard, a brown dog no taller than the cats. But her crown caught the lamplight, and Max stopped so fast he nearly fell. "Her," he whispered. "She freed no one. She just watches, then breaks you." His tail lashed. This was the ruler who had chained him for years, the one Ludo had torn the key from. Now she blocked the last door herself. "You come far for paper," Minnie said. She raised one open palm. "You will not pass me." Luffy charged. Minnie's palm snapped forward. She never touched him. The air itself struck like a wall. Luffy flew back and slammed the stone. Ludo lunged low from the side. Her other palm turned, and a hard gust knocked his legs out. Both cats hit the floor, breath gone. "Palm-chi," Max breathed. "She fights the air. You can't reach her." The guards were halfway down the stair now. No time for a clean plan. Luffy and Ludo looked at each other. The old twin look. No words. Ludo grabbed the burning lamp and hurled it. Minnie's palm swept the throw aside easily, oil splashing the wall in flame. But that was never the strike. While her palm was busy with the lamp, Luffy was already moving low under the blast, hugging the floor where her push swept over him. He reached her feet. He did not punch. He grabbed her ankle and yanked. Minnie's palm-chi threw force outward, not down. She toppled. Her crown rolled loose. Ludo dropped both knees onto her arms and pinned them flat. Without her palms free, the empress was only a small angry dog kicking on the ground. "The door!" Ludo shouted. "Max, the key!" He flung the gold key across the floor. Max caught it, ran to the red door, and turned the lock. It opened. Inside, on a low stand, lay a rolled scroll bound in black cord. The shadow techniques of their clan. Luffy snatched it up. The cord was old and worn, but the mark stamped on it was their family's. His paws shook holding it. Behind them the guards reached the bottom step, spears leveled. Minnie writhed under Ludo, screaming for them to seize the thieves. "We have it," Ludo said. He hauled Luffy toward a low servant hatch in the far wall. "Now we get out of this fortress alive." They dove through the hatch with the scroll, the empress and her whole army roaring behind them.

The hatch spilled Luffy, Ludo, and Max into cold night air. They ran across a garden of raked stone and koi ponds, then out through a broken gate into the woods. Behind them the fortress lit torch after torch. But they had the scroll. Luffy held it tight against his chest as they crashed into the trees. They stopped by a shadowed road that wound deep into the forest. Luffy bent over, gasping. That was when he saw the ash on his paws had washed away in the fight. Ludo's dark disguise was gone too. Their white fur glowed pale in the dark. "Our scent," Ludo said. He touched his bare face. "The paste masked it. It's gone." Max's ears flattened. He knew this fortress better than either cat. "Palm-chi trackers," he said. "They ride the wind. They'll smell you for miles now." His tail lashed the same way it had when he first saw the empress block the door. "Minnie will send them all." As he spoke, a low horn sounded far behind them. Then dogs bayed. The hunt had started. Luffy looked down the strange road. The stones glowed faint blue, cracked and old. Something in the woods felt watchful. But the trackers followed scent, not sight. Scent needed still air to hold. "Water," Ludo said. He'd caught the same thought. "We break the trail with water." Max shook his head. "No stream close enough. They'll reach us first." Luffy thought of the koi ponds behind the gate. Then he thought of the scroll in his arms. The shadow techniques of their clan. He had no time to study them. But their mother had taught them one lesson before she died. Shadow hides scent as well as sight. "The road," Luffy said. He pointed at the glowing cracks. "Enchanted ground. The old tales say magic dulls the nose." He wasn't sure. But the baying grew louder. They ran onto the blue-lit stones. At once the air felt thick and strange. Luffy's own scent seemed to fade in his nose. Behind them the dogs reached the treeline and stopped. Confused barks broke out. The trackers circled, sniffing, losing the trail where the road began. The three of them did not slow until the barking fell far behind. The magic of the road had swallowed their scent whole. Max slumped against a twisted root, breathing hard. "It worked," he said. He looked at Luffy with something new in his yellow eyes. Not the bitter caution of the chained prince. Something closer to trust. "You gambled our lives on a story." "It's our story now," Ludo said. He nodded at the scroll. But the road ran deeper into darkness ahead. Strange lights hung in the trees. They had lost the trackers. Now they were lost themselves, alone on enchanted ground, with no way back and no map forward.

The blue road ended at a clearing. Stone lanterns stood among raked gravel and a small koi pond. A wooden bridge arched over the water. Luffy and Ludo knew the place. The blind monk had spoken of a garden hidden deep in these woods. Now they had found it. Bruno sat on the bridge, his white eyes turned toward nothing, as if he had waited for them. Max stopped walking. His yellow eyes fixed on the monk. "You," he said. His paw dropped to the knife at his belt. "You served in the fortress. I saw you near Minnie's hall." His tail lashed. "How do I know you won't run back and trade us for coin?" Bruno did not rise. "You don't," he said. "But he does." He tipped his nose at Max. "A prince with no crown. Minnie holds his throne. He knows every door in that keep, and now he knows how you took the scroll. That knife should point the other way." Luffy turned. Ludo turned with him. The truth landed hard. Max had led them through the maze. Max had seen them beat the empress. If his loyalty cracked, he could sell them all back to Minnie for his crown. "He's right," Ludo said quietly. "Max. Look at me." Max's ears flattened. For a long moment no one moved. Water dripped off the bridge. Then Max let the knife go. He knelt by the pond and pulled the chain from his belt, the last chain Minnie had locked on him. He dropped it into the koi pond. It sank in a curl of silver. "I don't want her crown," Max said. "I want it burned." He looked up at the siblings. "She chained me for six winters. You broke the lock. I'll never wear anything she touched. Point your blades at me if you need to. But I'm with you." Luffy crossed the gravel. He held out the scroll, then pressed Max's paw against it. "Then you carry it next," Luffy said. "A traitor doesn't guard the prize." Max's grip closed on the scroll. Something changed in his face. The cautious rival was gone. Now he was one of them. Bruno rose at last. "Good," he said. "Because the warlord who killed your clan waits past this forest. And Minnie has already sent word to him. He knows the scroll walks free." He limped toward a path beyond the pond. "Rest here tonight. Tomorrow I take you to his gate." Luffy and Ludo looked at each other. Max stood beside them now, the scroll against his chest. They had feared him. That fear was dead. But a new one took its place. The warlord knew they were coming.

Bruno's ears snapped up. He raised one paw for silence. Luffy and Ludo froze on the gravel. Max held the scroll tight against his chest. Then they all heard it. Bird calls, but wrong. Sharp, spaced, moving through the trees. Bruno tapped the bridge with his nose. "Minnie's trackers," he said. "They found the road's end. If you stay, they'll pin you against the pond." Luffy scanned the garden. Stone lanterns. Raked gravel that would hold a paw print. Trimmed pines too thin to climb. The bridge was the only crossing, and beyond it lay open ground. "We run, they follow the tracks," Luffy said. "We fight here, they surround us." "Then we make them chase nothing," Ludo said. She pointed at the pond. "The blind monk hid this place. There's a way out he hasn't shown us." Bruno's white eyes turned toward her. He almost smiled. "Under the bridge," he said. "A drain runs beneath the water. It leads to the forest wall. But it floods. You'll cross in the dark, blind as me." The bird calls grew louder. Shapes moved past the far pines. Max stepped forward. "Give me a lantern," he said. He grabbed a stone lantern from the gravel and set it on the bridge rail, lit. "They'll think we crossed. I'll drag branches over the far path. Fresh tracks going out." "You'll be alone out there," Luffy said. "I know the keep," Max said. "I know how they read a trail." He shoved the scroll into Ludo's paws. "Take it. If I fall, it can't fall with me." Luffy caught his shoulder. For a breath they held each other's eyes. The rival was gone. This was a brother now. "Meet us at the forest wall," Luffy said. "North side. Don't be late." Max bolted across the bridge, dragging a pine branch behind him. The dragged trail cut into the far gravel. Then he vanished into the trees. Luffy and Ludo dropped into the pond. Cold water closed over their fur. Bruno slid in behind them and found the drain lip with his paw. "Follow my tail," he said. He went under. They swam blind through the stone throat. Water pressed their ears. Ludo held the scroll high above the surface. Luffy counted his own heartbeats to keep from panic. Then air. They broke through at the forest wall, coughing, alive. Behind them, the bird calls swarmed the garden. The trackers had reached the bridge. They found the lit lantern and the dragged trail. Their calls turned and chased Max's false path into the deep woods. Luffy pulled himself onto the mossy bank. Ludo set the scroll down, safe and dry. But Max was gone into the trees, the trackers on his trail. The garden was behind them. The forest wall was crossed. And the warlord still waited past the last line of trees, closer now than ever.

Luffy and Ludo crept along the tree line, fur still damp from the drain. The forest wall lay behind them. Ahead, the last pines thinned toward open ground. But that ground was not empty. Six of the warlord's soldiers stood watch at the forest edge, spears planted, dogs pacing at their feet. Ludo pressed the scroll to her chest and dropped low. "They're waiting for us," she whispered. "Just like Bruno said." Luffy studied the patrol. No gap. No shadow deep enough to hide two white cats. "We can't slip past. Not tired like this." His legs shook. Ludo's ears drooped. They had swum, run, and fought for a day with no rest. A rustle came from the ferns beside them. Luffy spun, claws out. A black wiener dog in a gray robe stepped free of the brush, moving without a sound. His white eyes saw nothing, yet he faced them exactly. Bruno. The blind monk had followed the drain too. "You came back," Luffy breathed. "You need eyes that don't rely on light," Bruno said. His nose twitched toward the patrol. "Two of the dogs are downwind. They'll catch your scent in a hundred heartbeats." He tapped the ground with one paw. "The scroll you carry. Have you read it?" Ludo froze. "There wasn't time." "Then open it. The first technique is the one your clan hid best." Bruno's voice stayed calm. "Shadow-step. It hides you in your own darkness. But it takes two who move as one." Luffy unrolled the scroll a hand's width. Old ink showed two cats standing back to back, tails crossed. Ludo read the marks beside the drawing. "We breathe together," she said. "We step where the other steps. Our shadows fold into one." "Do it now," Bruno said. "I'll pull the dogs." He scooped a pawful of wet root paste from his robe and smeared it across a stone, then flung the stone far down the tree line. A scent-trail, thrown wide. The dogs' heads snapped toward the stone. They strained at their leashes. The soldiers turned to follow. Luffy and Ludo pressed spine to spine. They matched their breaths. Luffy stepped left; Ludo stepped left. Their two shadows drew together into a single dark shape. They crossed the open ground as one, silent, low, folded into the gloom. A soldier glanced back. He saw only a lone shadow from a passing cloud. He turned away. They reached the far rocks and broke apart, gasping. The patrol was behind them. The forest edge was crossed. The technique had worked. Bruno did not follow. His voice carried once from the ferns, faint. "Go north. The warlord's fortress lies past the ridge. He knows your faces now." Ludo gripped the scroll. It was no longer just a stolen thing to reclaim. It was a weapon they could use. Ahead, past the ridge, the warlord waited with all his forces. And now Luffy and Ludo knew how to walk unseen.