The first faint rays of dawn appeared along the horizon, no, along the line of the elephant's back, piercing through the forest and shining upon the Dark Swamp area, whose terrain had sunk more than ten meters, resembling an enormous crater.
Sunlight crept across the back side of the stone coffin lid before them, the portions corroded by the swamp, little by little illuminated, passing over the ancient script carved across its surface…
Who knew how long these words had endured? Perhaps several hundred years… perhaps even longer.
After all, the stone coffin was not made of the same material as a Poneglyph. After countless years, much of the ancient script carved into it had been badly worn away. Many details took Robin until dawn to fully decipher.
After waiting through half the night, they finally had results. Nekomamushi and Inuarashi, who had been bickering endlessly nearby, immediately stopped talking, while the Fire Gun Team mink race members, who had been resting with their eyes closed, opened them and all looked over.
They had rested, but Liam had not.
While Robin spent half the night deciphering the coffin lid that bore the Kozuki crest on the front and ancient script on the back, he continued using the Bubble-Bubble Fruit to slowly cleanse the remaining bottom layers of the swamp.
Sicilian glanced toward Giorno, who sat at the edge of the giant swamp crater.
One of the man's hands stretched into the pit, continuously spewing waves of soap bubbles, while the other supported his cheek, and he was actually fast asleep there, snoring away…
Even though he was sleeping, his use of the Devil Fruit ability had not paused in the slightest…
The other mink race members, seeing such a scene, certainly felt shocked, but even more than shock, what they felt was utter confusion.
Was this guy really human??
B.I.B. very much wanted to tell them: what's so surprising about this? Some people can even eat while asleep. Making a fuss over nothing!
It walked behind Robin and listened as she interpreted the ancient writing on the back of the stone coffin lid.
"There actually isn't a large amount of information. It only took so much time because the text is so badly worn away… Even so, parts of it are impossible to restore and have been completely lost."
Robin gently exhaled and muttered thoughtfully:
"And the person who wrote these words used grammatical structures very different from the ancient script I've encountered before. It's almost as though… he was also a learner of the ancient language, and unconsciously incorporated the habits of his native tongue into the way he wrote it…"
Clearly, the owner of the coffin was very likely from Wano Country's Kozuki Clan, and even the ancient script he wrote carried a distinctly Wano-style flavor.
Under the eager gazes of cats, dogs, lions, horses, cows, and the others surrounding her, Robin slowly read aloud the contents engraved on the back of the coffin lid.
"Amatsuki Kumi, my hatred toward you… will never disappear for my entire life."
"The first part appears to be a person's name. Among the damaged fragments I could identify the corresponding characters, so the full name should be 'Amatsuki Kumi.' As for the missing portions, I believe they were on the stone fragment I discovered earlier…"
Robin took out the broken stone fragment from the Den Den Mushi Castle inside her bag and gently placed it into the missing section of the coffin lid. Though the damage prevented a perfect fit, the fragment clearly belonged to the missing part of the inscription.
"So the complete meaning would be,
'Amatsuki Kumi, my resentment and hatred toward you shall never fade for all eternity.'"
Amatsuki Kumi…
Amatsuki…
The other Fire Gun Team mink race members aside, Nekomamushi and Inuarashi repeated the phrase to themselves.
"In Wano Country terms…" Inuarashi muttered, "it would mean something like, 'Amatsuki Kumi, this grudge and hatred shall never disappear for eternity,' right?"
Still, the unfamiliar name "Amatsuki Kumi" left them equally bewildered.
"You've never heard this name before?" Robin asked. "Amatsuki sounds structurally similar to the Kozuki name you mentioned earlier."
Inuarashi shook his head.
"The family we shared a bond with like brothers was the Kozuki Clan… As for many other matters of Wano Country, we actually don't know that much."
Nekomamushi recalled:
"When I followed that person back then, I learned a lot about Wano Country… If I remember correctly, the Amatsuki family was also one of the Daimyo houses. But their bloodline seemed very thin, and I don't know whether any descendants still exist."
"Fūgetsu, Amatsuki, Uzuki, Shimotsuki… and Kurozumi. Those five Daimyo households together served the Kozuki family line of the Shogun."
Inuarashi took a deep breath.
Robin asked curiously why it wasn't called "Black Moon."
Inuarashi continued:
"But why would an ancestor of the Kozuki family harbor such hatred toward someone who should have been his retainer, someone like Amatsuki Kumi? Just what happened during the era of the Wolf Lord hundreds of years ago…?"
Could the brotherly bond between the mink race and the Kozuki Clan be connected to this event? And could it also involve this person named "Amatsuki Kumi"?
"Amatsuki Kumi, my hatred toward you will never disappear for my entire life…"
Just a single short sentence seemed to conceal countless secrets and long-buried events.
Composing himself, Inuarashi asked:
"Is that all?"
Robin lowered her gaze back onto the worn, ancient script on the coffin lid's reverse side and slowly continued:
"My guilt toward all of you… cannot be repaid even across multiple lifetimes…"
"This section is even more heavily damaged. I can only roughly decipher that meaning."
Nekomamushi and Inuarashi were immersed in shock, while the other mink race members were mostly just confused and unable to make sense of it all.
Amatsuki…
A faint white glimmer flashed through B.I.B.'s narrow eyes as it rapidly searched through memories of manga it had once read.
In Chapter 964, when Kozuki Oden first met his wife after joining the Whitebeard Pirates and setting sail, her original name had in fact been Amatsuki Toki. Unfortunately, Oden was far too unreliable; he had absolutely no reaction to the name "Amatsuki Toki," making it impossible to infer anything from it.
As for other mentions of "Amatsuki," there was only Chapter 965, during the rainy-night conversation where the old woman Higurashi, the user of the Mane Mane no Mi (Clone-Clone Fruit), spoke to Kurozumi Orochi. She briefly mentioned the Amatsuki name, but only in passing. The old hag had been too busy brainwashing Orochi about the wrongs the Kozuki Clan had done to the Kurozumi Family and stirring up his hatred and desire for revenge against the Kozuki family, she had no time to elaborate on the histories of the other noble houses…
As for the manga chapters after that, Liam had already transmigrated into this world. How would he know what happened later? For all he knew, maybe the series had ended terribly!
Nekomamushi, Inuarashi, and the other Fire Gun Team mink race members stood shoulder to shoulder at the edge of the great swamp, gazing at the massive pit that was gradually nearing the bottom under Giorno's efforts, even while the man slept, waves of bubbles continued pouring out endlessly…
"Why is he still sleeping?" the lion Sicilian grumbled, unable to tolerate such a lax attitude. Walking over, he shouted loudly:
"Wake up already! Giorno, you're almost done washing away the swamp! We're nearly at the bottom, wake up!"
Unfortunately, no matter how much noise he made beside Liam's ear, Liam showed absolutely no sign of waking up. Instead, perhaps because of whatever he was dreaming about, he somehow slept even more soundly. At the same time, his black hair curled into several arm-like tendrils and launched a furious flurry of strikes toward the source of the beastly roaring.
Bang!
Caught completely off guard, Sicilian was sent flying.
"He couldn't have dreamed about fighting wild beasts because of Sicilian's voice, right…" the other Fire Gun Team members secretly thought. "But this is way too ridiculous, he can even beat people up while asleep?!"
Nekomamushi frowned around his pipe.
"This is troublesome, meow…"
Setting the stone coffin lid aside for the moment, Robin walked over to Liam, who was dozing on the ground, under everyone's watchful gazes.
As Robin approached, Liam's long hair slowly withdrew from its arm-like forms, quickly arranging itself neatly back into place…
Robin smoothed down her clothes around her hips and legs, crouched beside him, gently stroked his chin, and softly called out:
"Wake up. Time to get up."
Her voice wasn't loud at all, yet Giorno immediately groggily opened his eyes. The sight made Sicilian, who had just climbed back to his feet, so furious that he almost wanted to swipe the pair of them with his claws.
The first thing Liam saw upon opening his eyes was Robin's flawless, beautiful face, so naturally, he was in a good mood. He yawned, stood up, and looked around in confusion.
"What's going on? Why does everyone look so serious? Huh? Sicilian, why is your face swollen?"
Sicilian rolled his eyes and let out two low growls, unwilling to answer him.
Completely baffled, Liam then saw the Stand pointing toward the swamp. Turning around, he realized that the huge expanse of Dark Swamp that had still been there before he fell asleep had now been completely washed clean by the enormous quantities of soap bubbles, revealing the underground tomb Robin had theorized about earlier.
The cat and dog duo stared deeply at the underground tomb chamber at the bottom of the enormous pit and said in grave voices:
"Let's go down and take a look."
They jumped down first, while Sicilian and the other Fire Gun Team members hurriedly followed after them.
Liam had B.I.B. help remove the Bubble-Bubble Fruit and replace it with the Magnet-Magnet Fruit. Then, together with Robin, he stepped onto a metal staff controlled by magnetic force and slowly floated down into the depths of the pit…
(End Of This Chapter)
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