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"Hey hey hey, Ba Ye, come on—take it out already!"
On the deck of the Going Merry, Luffy's excited voice rang out.
He was staring at Ba Ye, face glowing with anticipation.
Ba Ye twitched a little at the attention. He didn't know why, but even though he knew that's not what Luffy meant... it still sounded weird.
Fighting the urge to blast him with a Light Charm, Ba Ye waved his right hand—and suddenly, a pile of pearls and gemstones appeared on the deck.
Back in the Rainbow Mist, everyone had picked up a decent haul, but compared to Ba Ye—who controlled the entire mist—they'd barely scraped the surface.
So when they found out Ba Ye had the entire treasure trove, everyone begged him to show off his loot.
Which led to the scene just now.
"Whoa! Gems! So many gems!!"
Naturally, Nami was the most excited of the bunch.
Her eyes sparkled like the treasure, and she looked like she wanted to roll around in the pile.
"And next up... this."
With a twist of his wrist, Ba Ye revealed two finely-crafted swords.
Zoro immediately perked up. He used to struggle with just getting three decent swords—now he even had spares!
As Ba Ye kept sorting through the treasures from the Rainbow Mist, he picked out only the most interesting items.
Stuff like regular gold and silver? He wasn't even interested—he just stored all of that away inside his inner space.
But there were some real gems in there—figuratively speaking.
Like a book of herbal remedies from around 180 years ago, listing plants even Chopper had never seen before.
Or some species of fish that had long since gone extinct.
When Ba Ye brought those out, Sanji nearly exploded with excitement. He dropkicked the lunging Luffy away and immediately declared he'd raise those rare ingredients onboard.
Then Ba Ye found a whole ship filled with ancient books and handed them over to Robin.
And finally, the most unbelievable find—a torn, crumbling sheet of paper.
The material itself wasn't anything special.
But the writing on it?
Ba Ye had a hunch about it...
"Ancient script," Robin blurted the moment she saw it, almost gasping.
"What?! You mean like the kind on Poneglyphs?" Usopp exclaimed, eyes wide.
Everyone who had been through the Alabasta incident knew what those characters represented.
"Could it be... something from the Void Century?" Chopper asked, looking up at them with big eyes.
"Let Robin translate it," Ba Ye said casually as he handed over the paper.
He almost damaged it again from not handling it properly—making Robin panic and shoot him a look full of silent judgment.
She quickly went to her room and grabbed her archaeology tools.
After giving the fragile paper some basic preservation, she began carefully deciphering its contents.
There wasn't much text on it, but Robin stared at it for a long time.
Eventually, she looked up, her expression hard to describe.
"This… really does record part of the history from the Void Century."
Everyone on deck widened their eyes in shock.
Well—everyone except Luffy.
He only cared about pirate stuff. History? Not so much.
Robin began reading out the text:
"We came from the Infinite Earth… …and united everyone to build the ideal nation."
"Damn it!! Betrayal! We were betrayed—those bastards..."
"This world... was never ours to begin with?"
"D is our friend. The only one who chose to help us."
"The world… was split apart..."
When Robin finished translating, silence blanketed the ship.
Everyone was stunned by what they had just heard.
Especially Ba Ye.
As someone who had read the original manga, he probably knew the most out of all of them.
He couldn't help but connect the dots in his mind.
That last line—"the world… was split apart…"—it felt like it had a double meaning.
Sure, "split apart" could mean a nation collapsing...
But that didn't fully make sense. After all, when the Great Kingdom fell, it wasn't like the world became a bunch of warring states.
It was more like a regime change—the Celestial Dragons took over.
Unless... this paper was written before the World Government was even formed?
Still, Ba Ye was more inclined to believe a different theory:
That the entire planet had literally been split.
During the Void Century, the Great Kingdom—or maybe even the whole ocean—was once part of a single, united continent.
But when the Twenty Kingdoms overthrew the Great Kingdom, they used some kind of ridiculously powerful force…
One that reshaped the world itself.
And that led to the current geography we know today.
"That 'ideal nation'... it must have been the Great Kingdom, right?" Robin guessed first.
"The one that existed before the World Government. The legendary civilization."
Ba Ye nodded. He agreed completely.
"Betrayal, huh?"
Sanji lit a cigarette, blowing out smoke as he spoke.
"Sounds like the World Government stole whatever achievements the Great Kingdom had."
"...Doesn't that sound kinda familiar?"
Hearing that, Zoro suddenly remembered something.
"Like what Crocodile tried to do to Alabasta?"
"But that line—'D is our friend'—that's what really stands out."
Usopp suddenly butted in and said,
"Wait a sec… this 'D' guy—could it be Luffy's 'D'?"
As soon as he said that, everyone turned to look.
Right then, Luffy was casually picking his nose while munching on a skewer of meat.
Everyone: …Yeah, probably not.
After a moment of awkward silence, Chopper changed the subject and asked,
"What's this 'Endless Earth' place anyway?"
Nami jumped in too,
"Yeah, and that guy said the world doesn't belong to them."
"Could it be… they're from another world or something?"
Luffy's eyes lit up instantly,
"Another world?! That sounds awesome!"
At that moment, Robin finally spoke,
"I've actually heard of the 'Endless Earth' before."
Everyone looked over at her, and Robin didn't keep them guessing—she started sharing what she knew.
"I read about it in an old book once," she said.
"It said that the Endless Earth is a land that doesn't belong to the sea."
"And the record also mentioned that when the Endless Earth appeared, so did… Sky Island."
She paused for a moment to recall, then added:
"Sky Island? What's that? Like, an island floating in the air?"
Luffy was clearly hooked.
"To be exact," Robin corrected him, "it's not the island that floats… it's the sea."
"....."