The whole Shichiseiken drama had finally blown over, and the crew could get back to what they'd come here for, exploring Skypiea and enjoying the bizarre floating island experience.
Different crew members had different interests. Goliath and Usopp, for instance, had become completely obsessed with the Skypiea's specialized dials, those shell-like devices that could store and release various types of energy.
"What kind of crazy effects could we get if we modified these with the Munch-Munch Fruit's power?" Usopp asked excitedly, holding up an Impact Dial.
Goliath nodded. His Devil Fruit ability let him consume and modify anything, which meant the dials could potentially be enhanced far beyond their normal capabilities.
As for Luffy, he was curious about the legendary City of Gold. But when the crew finally reached the location, inside the skull's right eye, the reality was disappointing.
Simple buildings. Mine carts scattered on the ground. No streets paved with gold, or golden statues, nothing that matched the legendary city's supposed splendor.
"Where's all the gold?" Nami complained, poking at a rusty mine cart.
Robin, however, was thrilled. Scattered throughout the ruins were numerous Poneglyphs and historical texts containing fragments of ancient stories. Most of them were words of praise, admiration, and prayers, additions made by former slaves as expressions of gratitude to their liberator.
After examining every inscription she could find, she came to a conclusion about this place's history.
"Jaya used to be a massive mining operation," she explained to the gathered crew. "The right eye of the skull was where the ruling class lived. The left eye was the actual mine shaft leading deep underground."
"Mining for what?" Nami asked.
"Something the 'visitors' wanted, those beings the ancient people called Gods. Whatever they were mining for was deep in the earth, and they excavated enormous amounts of gold as a byproduct. To these Gods, the gold was just waste material from their real objective. But to the slaves working the mines, that waste gold represented wealth, power, status. They started using it to trade, to show off, to build monuments. That's how the City of Gold was created. And later, these people were saved by the Sun God Nika. The rescued slaves settled here and became the ancestors of the Shandians."
Robin frowned at her notes, clearly troubled. "Though the records are... contradictory. Sometimes they mention the Sun God Nika, sometimes Joy Boy. Many texts claim they're the same person, but others insist they're not. It's almost like..." She paused, trying to make sense of the conflicting information. "Like the Sun God Nika and Joy Boy never appeared at the same time. As if Joy Boy inherited the title of Sun God Nika from a previous bearer."
"That would make more sense," she muttered to herself, still puzzling over the historical inconsistencies.
While Robin was absorbed in archaeological mysteries, Nami had been doing what she did best, finding hidden treasure. She'd discovered gold implements tucked away in secret compartments and forgotten corners, places Enel apparently hadn't bothered to check.
"Not bad," she said, tallying up her finds. "About 100 million berries worth."
Just then, Kira swooped down from above, wings flapping excitedly.
"Nami! We found it! Enel's treasure hoard!"
"Really?!" Nami's eyes lit up.
Everyone had been hoping to find Enel's stash. After all, if the Golden Bell existed, and if this place really had been covered in gold, then Enel must have collected it all somewhere. And since Skypiea couldn't trade with the Blue Sea below, the gold had to still be on the island.
Kira and Chopper, with their keen animal senses, had volunteered to search. Though Chopper hadn't returned yet, which was odd.
The Straw Hats quickly followed Kira to the treasure's location. What they found was... not what they'd expected.
A massive golden ship. Absurdly huge, ornate beyond belief, and covered in enough precious metal to sink a small fleet.
Everyone stood there, jaws hanging open.
"What was Enel planning?" Nami asked in disbelief. "He wanted to go sailing in this thing?"
The ship was beautiful in an excessive, over-the-top way, but it seemed like a ridiculous use of resources. If you wanted to show off wealth, there were better ways than building a floating golden palace.
"Hey Luffy," Nami said, only half-joking, "why don't we use this as our ship instead? It's way more impressive than the Merry."
Her eyes had literally transformed into berry symbols. The others reacted with varying degrees of interest and skepticism.
But Luffy shook his head immediately. "The Going Merry is fine. She's our ship."
Nami hadn't been serious anyway. The Merry was their home, not something to be replaced just because something shinier came along.
"Kira! Go find Marcus and tell him to come strip all this gold off the ship. We're taking it with us."
Kira immediately took flight again, heading off to locate Marcus.
But she'd barely disappeared when Chopper came rushing out of a nearby cave entrance.
"Chopper? What's wrong?"
"I've managed to stabilize about fifty people," Chopper said, breathing hard, "but I'm completely out of medicine. I need to find Marcus immediately, he has more supplies in his inventory."
His tone was unusually heavy, which immediately put everyone on alert.
When they'd first arrived at this area, he had caught the scent of decay but hadn't paid much attention. But as they'd gotten closer to the cave, the smell had intensified. Following it had led him to a horrifying discovery, dozens of people scattered throughout the cave system, some already dead, others barely clinging to life.
These people had been trapped here for far too long. Only sheer willpower had kept them alive, but their bodies were completely depleted. Without proper nutrition and blood replenishment, death was inevitable.
Thankfully, Minecraft's absurdly overpowered healing potions had managed to keep everyone who still had a pulse alive. But Chopper had been carrying limited supplies, only enough to treat seven or eight serious injuries, the standard amount for the crew's needs.
"Let's go," Luffy said immediately, all thoughts of treasure forgotten.
The golden ship and its contents could wait. People were dying.
---
Meanwhile, Marcus was on Angel Island with Usopp and Goliath, deep in research on Skypiea's specialized dials.
His role was mostly technical, using his Minecraft abilities to convert the dials and record their properties on his crafting table interface. He'd discovered that MC-ified dials retained their original functions but operated on durability rather than charge storage.
Once the durability ran out, the dial would simply break and vanish. Turning them into single-use items was actually an advantage in some ways, since they no longer needed to be manually recharged.
Regular dials needed to be "filled" with their respective energy types before use, wind for Breath Dials, impact force for Impact Dials, and so on. The amount they could store depended on their physical size.
But the dials Marcus converted were palm-sized yet matched the output of large commercial dials.
"So why did Reject Dials and Jet Dials go extinct?" Goliath asked, spitting out an Impact Dial he'd just consumed and analyzed. "The Reject Dial is basically the same as an Impact Dial, just way more powerful. Shouldn't evolution favor the stronger version?"
Gan Fall, who'd been observing the experiments, looked at the saliva-free Impact Dial with a complicated expression.
"It's precisely because they were too strong that they were deliberately eliminated."
Wyper took back his Reject Dial. He didn't have any feeling of disgust, he simply wrapped it back onto his arm with the bandages.
"What do you mean?" Usopp asked.
"In Skypiea's history, Reject Dials used to be far more common than Impact Dials, almost to the point of being everywhere. But they came with serious drawbacks. If your body wasn't strong enough to handle the recoil, using a Reject Dial would literally blow your arm apart. And the more you used one, the more likely it was to shatter from its own stored energy."
"That still doesn't explain extinction though."
"Yeah, but the Skypieans got scared of us Shandians," Wyper said flatly. "So they decided to wipe out the Reject Dial shells entirely. Hunted them to extinction by hand."
He recounted this fragment of their centuries-long war.
"Back then, we Shandians were intense. It didn't matter if you were a man, woman, elder, or child, everyone carried a Reject Dial. If someone killed you or threatened your life, you'd use it. The mentality was simple: trade one life for one life. Made it worth it. The Skypieans suffered massive casualties because of that philosophy."
Gan Fall sighed heavily. "That was when your people had just learned to use dials... roughly three hundred years ago."
"Shandians are pretty hardcore," Usopp muttered, rubbing his still-numb arm. He'd tried using an Impact Dial earlier, and he was regretting that decision. If that was just an Impact Dial, he didn't want to imagine what a Reject Dial felt like.
Wyper said nothing, which Usopp took as confirmation.
Goliath, however, was getting excited about a different angle. "So if I change the material composition of the dial itself using my Devil Fruit powers, couldn't I theoretically create something that stores and releases energy indefinitely?"
The material-alteration aspect of the Munch-Munch Fruit was something he had gotten pretty good at. And since Reject Dials were inanimate objects, replacing their material should be easier than modifying something complex like a sword.
Wyper showed a flicker of interest at that. He'd seen Goliath demonstrate his Devil Fruit abilities earlier, and the property-changing effects were genuinely impressive. But after thinking it over, he shook his head. "Even if you changed the dial's material, my body still couldn't handle multiple uses. The recoil would tear me apart."
Marcus scratched his head thoughtfully. "What if you stacked an Impact Dial behind the Reject Dial? Could it absorb the recoil force and convert it back into stored energy?"
Usopp's mouth twitched. "Are you seriously trying to make a turducken out of dials right now?"
Still, he looked curiously at Wyper and Gan Fall to see their reactions.
Both men immediately shook their heads.
"Impact and Reject Dials can't handle that kind of pressure," Gan Fall explained patiently. "If you stack them directly together like that, the Impact Dial would shatter the Reject Dial before it could absorb anything."
Usopp fell silent, but his mind was clearly working through the problem. Primitive stacking methods wouldn't work... So instead of putting them directly together, what if there was a buffer plate between them? And what if they were connected by springs to distribute the force?
His eyes suddenly glazed over like he'd been possessed by the ghost of some brilliant inventor. His imagination exploded into overdrive as he grabbed his sketch paper and started drawing furiously.
Goliath leaned over to see what he was working on and gasped. "Usopp, this might work!"
"Of course it will!" Usopp said, not looking up from his increasingly complex diagrams.
"You're both forgetting something pretty important," Marcus cut in, pouring cold water on their enthusiasm. "How exactly do you plan to trigger it? And more importantly... do either of you actually need this?"
Both of them deflated slightly.
Marcus had a point. Impact Dials could give a normal person enough force to break through a wall, which was impressive for civilians. Reject Dials had legitimate destructive power, but compared to the Bomb-Bomb Fruit or the Iron Golem's natural durability... it was kind of unnecessary.
Especially the Bomb-Bomb Fruit, once it reached the F4 stage, it would far surpass anything a Reject Dial could do. And Usopp could already achieve similar results with his current arsenal.
"Ah... well..." Both of them looked dejected.
Sometimes being too strong actually hindered creative thinking.
Just then, Kira approached with Chopper in tow. After a quick explanation about the dying people they'd found in the cave system, Marcus immediately stood up to leave with them.
Usopp and Goliath looked at each other, silently agreeing to stay behind. They wouldn't be much help in a medical emergency anyway.
But Gan Fall rose as well. He'd been searching for his missing subordinates all day without success, and this might finally be a lead.
Seeing him preparing to leave, Usopp stood up too. His current wanted status meant he couldn't exactly walk openly through the streets of Skypiea. And as for staying here to chat with Wyper?
Looking at the warrior's cold, proud demeanor, he honestly preferred talking to Gan Fall. The former god was older, more talkative, and knew way more interesting stories.
At that moment, Kira made an apologetic sound. "Sorry, but I can only carry two people comfortably. Three is pushing it."
She wasn't talking about the number of passengers, she was talking about Goliath's weight. Even in his human form, he was dense as hell.
Goliath showed a helpless expression as he was left behind.
In the end, Kira flew off with Marcus and Gan Fall, leaving the other three standing there awkwardly.
The three remaining men looked at each other.
"So, uh... anyone want to play a card game?" Usopp tried to break the tension. "It's pretty fun."
Wyper glanced sideways at him. "What kind of game?"
"Oh, uh... it's called Munchkin. It's an interesting game about dungeon adventure..." Usopp trailed off, realizing Wyper probably had no idea what he was talking about. "You know what, never mind if you're not interested—"
"How do you play?"
Usopp blinked, surprised by Wyper's serious tone. "You've never played games before?"
"No."
So Usopp explained the rules, dealing out the starting hands. Within minutes, the three of them were deeply engrossed in the game, the earlier awkwardness completely forgotten.
---
Meanwhile, when Gan Fall arrived at the location where Enel had hidden his massive golden ship, he immediately spotted familiar faces among the survivors.
His former subordinates. People he'd thought were dead or lost forever.
For a long moment, he couldn't find words to express what he was feeling. Relief, guilt, anger at Enel, it all mixed together into something indescribable.
Marcus didn't waste time on emotional reunions. He went down the line of injured people, tossing splash potions of healing at each one. The red liquid splashed across their bodies and immediately began working, closing wounds and restoring color to pale faces.
Then he handed Chopper a full inventory of medical supplies, bandages, antiseptics, surgical tools, and more potions.
"The healing potions will stabilize them, but they're like a temporary fix. It restores their condition, but if someone's already at death's door, it just keeps them hovering there. Kind of like how milk can cure most status effects but won't help if you're actively drowning in seawater, the core problem is still there."
Chopper nodded, already moving to treat the most critical cases with medical procedures. The potions would buy him time, but these people needed proper care to fully recover.
Seeing that Chopper had everything under control, Marcus turned his attention to the massive golden ship outside the cave.
This was the "Ark Maxim," the flying vessel Enel had ridden when he tried to destroy Skypiea. It was a ship that supposedly ran entirely on electricity.
Marcus walked around it slowly, taking in the absurd scale of the thing. This ship could make tons of gold float through the air using nothing but electrical power.
And gold was a heavy metal. Dense as hell.
In a manga or anime, you could handwave the physics away. But he was living in this world now, and gravity worked just fine here. So how did this thing fly?
He climbed aboard and started exploring the interior, looking for some kind of antigravity engine or propulsion system.
What he found instead was... gears. Lots and lots of gears.
There were also some inexplicable water tanks, complex mechanical linkages, and what looked like electrical conduits running throughout the ship. But no obvious power source or flight mechanism that made sense.
In his mind, he had expected to find some kind of core component, maybe an exotic power plant or a revolutionary engine design. Something that would explain how this ship could achieve flight. But after wandering through the ship's interior for over an hour, all he'd found were interconnected gear systems that seemed to serve no purpose except turning other gears. The whole thing was like a massive mechanical clock, except instead of telling time, it just existed.
"There's no way this thing flies just because some gears are spinning," he muttered, examining a particularly large gear assembly. "That's not how physics works."
No matter how he looked at it, the design made no sense from an engineering perspective.
Finally, after completing a full circuit of the ship without finding anything resembling an antigravity engine, Marcus stopped in what appeared to be the bridge and tried to think it through logically.
"Maybe it uses the Rumble-Rumble Fruit's power to create magnetic levitation? And the propellers driven by these gear systems just control altitude and directional movement?"
That would actually make sense. In the original story, when Sanji had sabotaged the mechanisms and caused the gears to malfunction, the Ark Maxim had descended slowly. That suggested the gears affected flight characteristics but weren't the primary source of lift.
And since Enel could control the entire ship by himself, the only logical conclusion was that his Devil Fruit powers were doing most of the heavy lifting, literally.
"So this whole thing is basically a giant dial that stores and releases electrical energy. The ship's structure acts as a conductor and battery, and Enel's lightning keeps it charged. The mechanical systems just provide fine control."
Of course, all of this was purely hypothetical. He wasn't an engineer, and he could easily be wrong. But in his mind, it made a certain kind of sense: build a massive conductor shaped like a ship, pump it full of electrical energy, use electromagnetic forces to achieve levitation, and rely on mechanical systems for steering.
Still didn't explain where all the water tanks factored in, but he decided he'd spent enough time trying to reverse-engineer Enel's flying golden RV.