"Even farther down?"
Nami's search results instantly stirred everyone's emotions. Every one of them widened their eyes, pondering the meaning behind her words.
Only Luffy, as carefree as ever and without thinking at all, waved his hand broadly.
"Then what are we waiting for?! Since we've already found Laugh Tale's location, let's hurry up and go!"
"Hey, wait a second, Luffy! That's beneath the bedrock at the bottom of the sea! If there's some kind of danger down there, even you won't be able to take it, right?!"
The cautious Usopp tried to get Luffy to think things through before making a decision.
But Luffy was already an arrow on the string. How could he possibly have the patience for that?
"Hmph!" Luffy lifted his nose. "What's there that I can't take?! I don't believe there's anywhere other people can reach that we can't!"
"That does make sense!"
Although Red still had no idea what Laugh Tale's exact situation was, he did not think they should stop here.
"Nami, where is the direction you mentioned? Tell Merry. Let's go take a look."
"It's right there!"
Nami stretched out her slender finger, a lively glint flashing in her eyes as she pointed diagonally downward from the Going Merry.
"All right! Then let's set off!"
Red, who was likewise impatient to witness the truth of this world, smiled faintly.
The next moment, the enormous warship wrapped in a thick bubble swiftly turned its bow and moved rapidly toward the pitch-black deep sea.
Obviously, under normal circumstances, a ship at this depth would almost never possess the ability to move freely across the deep seafloor.
And that whirlpool from earlier—whether it had formed naturally or been designed by human hands—should have existed for one purpose: to guide ships that had found this place through the Road Poneglyphs smoothly forward.
If they had missed that wave, no one knew when the next deep-sea whirlpool would form.
But that did not matter.
This tiny problem meant nothing to Merry, who was now nearly Level 70.
Surging Psychic Power transformed into a pair of gigantic energy palms, lifting the Going Merry as it sped in the direction Nami had indicated.
Soon, the Going Merry arrived in the depths of the seafloor.
And what appeared before them at that moment was a terrifyingly black pit.
Even the Going Merry's extremely powerful searchlights could not pierce through that horrifying dark hole.
Yet in the face of this tunnel that seemed to lead straight into the abyss, the Going Merry showed not the slightest hesitation. It plunged directly into the endless darkness, disappearing from that desolate undersea world.
Gurgle, gurgle...
A strange stream of bubbles suddenly emerged from the pitch-black depths, drifting past the deep-sea zone and floating upward toward the surface.
...
...
Whoosh—boom!
A massive ball of light suddenly flew out from the black world, instantly illuminating the area around the Going Merry.
And it was not until Red released this Flash technique, which contained one-third of the energy in his body, that the Straw Hats finally realized...
They were currently in an area filled with tree branches.
Although those branches were covered in ancient marks, every single one of them radiated a thriving vitality.
All of these branches were alive!
In this uninhabited realm beneath ten thousand meters of sea.
"Strange. It's not like underwater plants don't exist in this world, but no matter how I look at these, their structure seems like something land plants should have, right?"
"What exactly are these things?"
Franky lifted the sunglasses on his face, looking like a curious child.
Red, however, heard his words and his eyes suddenly flickered. He smiled as he replied,
"Maybe... what we're seeing really is a plant from the land."
"Huh? How is that possible?"
"Aren't we in the undersea world ten thousand meters below?"
Uta was puzzled. She leaned both hands against the ship's railing and tried hard to look outward, as though doing so would let her see those distant plant branches more clearly.
"There's nothing strange about it."
Red smiled faintly.
"My guess is that not only do these branches come from above the surface, we may have even seen them not long ago."
"Seen them?"
Robin suddenly looked up in realization.
"Red, you mean..."
"These plant branches come from the World Tree in Elbaf!"
"That's right!" Red smiled and nodded.
"But... we're at least several hundred nautical miles away from Elbaf now, aren't we?!"
"How could the World Tree's branches possibly spread this far?!"
"Why else would it be called the World Tree?"
Red answered his companions' confusion in an even tone, but he was not completely certain.
After all, this was only a guess in his heart.
Yet Red's subconscious, which possessed Psychic Power and precognitive ability, was telling him that his guess was very likely correct.
According to the giants' records...
The World Tree from over a thousand years ago had already been as enormous and magnificent as it was today.
The amount of time it had survived on this planet was very likely measured in units of ten thousand years.
After tens of thousands of years, even if someone suddenly told Red that the World Tree's root system had long since wrapped around the core of the entire planet, he might hesitate for a moment before choosing to believe it.
Ten thousand years was an unreachable span of time even for the current Red. No matter how bizarre or fantastical the things that happened during that time were, they would not be impossible.
Moreover, the world they were in was itself filled with fantasy.
The Going Merry continued to descend.
After entering the pitch-black tunnel, the surrounding environment was still nothing but plant branches.
Perhaps the appearance of this tunnel was precisely because of the existence of those plant branches.
Time passed bit by bit.
Because they were too full of anticipation, the Straw Hats did not even care how much time had gone by.
And just like that, under everyone's focused gazes, a light different from the Flash technique suddenly appeared ahead of the tunnel.
In an instant, the nerves of the Straw Hats tightened.
Red waved his hand even more directly, pouring his surging Psychic Power into the area around the Going Merry and making its already considerable speed rise another level.
"It's coming!" Luffy said with an excited expression.
Amid everyone's anticipation, the Going Merry suddenly left the pitch-black tunnel.
A faint, weak light passed through the seawater and fell upon the Straw Hats' faces. Yet to them at this moment, it was so bright, so dazzling.
"Woohoo~!!!"
Usopp and little Chopper excitedly raised their arms, as if they were only waiting for Luffy's order before they began cheering loudly.
But just then...
Clang!
The steady Going Merry suddenly shook violently, causing Red and the others' footing to turn unstable for an instant.
The next moment, after the Going Merry in the water lost the control of Psychic Power, it abruptly moved rapidly upward.
Pop!
With the sound of a massive bubble bursting, the soap coating surrounding the Going Merry suddenly vanished.
And the Straw Hat crew arrived in a mysterious land filled with dreamlike colors.
"This place... is Laugh Tale?!"
Looking at the "sky" overhead, excitement appeared on everyone's faces.
The hazy sky above was shrouded in drifting, illusory rainbow mist, like the final veil blocking the mystery beyond, spread across the top of the entire space.
A faint and gentle light fell from within the rainbow mist, illuminating the entire region in dreamlike colors.
"It's so beautiful!" Little Chopper, taking in the scenery around him, sighed from the bottom of his heart.
For some reason, after entering this space, everyone's hearts inexplicably became relaxed and cheerful.
Because they had just arrived, even Red, who possessed extremely powerful mental power, did not discover anything abnormal.
He simply thought it was because they had finally reached the end of their adventure at sea, making it hard to suppress the surging excitement in his heart.
Instead, it was Robin—who also possessed the Psychic type and an astonishing willpower—who was the first to notice the problem.
"Everyone, something seems wrong!"
Robin's sudden words drew everyone's eyes to her.
Then she spoke again.
"There seems to be a kind of power in the air here that resembles the power in Elbaf's Heaven World."
"I can feel it... this power seems to be influencing us!"
"What?!"
With Robin's reminder, Red was the first to break free from that inexplicable state of joy.
He immediately waved one hand, and his remaining Psychic Power formed one small psychic barrier after another, protecting everyone's bodies.
A moment later, the Straw Hats finally broke free from the inexplicably cheerful atmosphere one by one.
"What's going on? Why did I suddenly feel like laughing just now?"
"What happened, Red? Is this place dangerous?!"
"Be careful. This is the Final Island that only two groups of people have reached in hundreds of years. Who knows what kind of accident might happen here?"
"..."
"..."
As that strange joy was stripped from their minds, Zoro and the others instantly entered combat stances, vigilantly scanning their surroundings.
After releasing the protective barriers, Red also quickly observed the area in every direction, but in the end, he found nothing else unusual.
Uta, who was likewise powerful in terms of mental power, slowly opened her eyes after completing her investigation and murmured softly,
"It looks like aside from the mist in the air, there shouldn't be any other anomalies here."
Red nodded, but still said, "In any case, it's better to be careful. I won't remove the barriers. Everyone, watch out for each other."
A glint flashed in Nami's eyes as she studied the seawater beneath the Going Merry.
"Although the Going Merry did rise for a while just now, it probably didn't move very far, right?"
"So we should still be underground beneath the deep sea."
"It really is amazing. To think there would be a place like this underground beneath the deep sea."
Sanji sighed in amazement, then became puzzled again.
"Strange. Why is there air here?"
"I think it's because of that thing!"
Just then, Jinbe suddenly raised one hand and pointed toward the distance diagonally above them.
Everyone's attention followed his gesture, looking in the direction Jinbe was pointing.
Then they saw...
A brilliant light source was bringing light to the entire space through the dreamlike rainbow mist in the sky.
Jinbe explained, "That should be... the same principle as the giant tree on Fish-Man Island, the Sunlight Tree Eve. It transmits sunlight from outside through the roots and stems of the plant into this place."
Franky's eyes lit up. "So above that rainbow mist, there's actually one of the World Tree's roots, huh?!"
At this moment, quite a few members of the Straw Hats had already guessed the reason this space had come into existence.
Under the influence of the World Tree's expanding branches, the accumulated rock here had been pushed away by the hard roots of the World Tree, forming an undersea cavern.
Then, over an unknown span of years, the World Tree's roots had released gases into this space through respiration, including those strange substances that could influence people's emotions.
As time went on, the seawater in this space had been pushed away by the gas, causing this place to become, in a different sense, a habitable zone.
Red smiled faintly. "Interesting. I never expected the legendary Final Island to be hidden in a place like this."
After a brief exchange, the Going Merry set sail again.
Red and the others had already seen it...
Within this strange cavern, there was a mass of thick root-like things coiled in the center of the seawater.
They were called roots, but no matter how one put it, they came from the World Tree.
Just a few interwoven roots were enough to create a region here like a small island.
And after the passage of time, this place had completely become an island not much different from those outside.
"The Final Island, Laugh Tale!"
"We're here!!!"
Boom!
The Going Merry slowly advanced, but when it reached the shoreline, it suddenly accelerated, causing more than half of its bow to ram deeply into the soil of Laugh Tale. In a way, this counted as a landing method unique to Merry.
The Straw Hats jumped down from the bow one after another, stepping onto the soft sandy soil and impatiently exploring deeper inside.
Laugh Tale was neither large nor small.
It was large because, after all, it was formed from the coiled roots of the World Tree. Even if it were placed on the sea, this place would count as an island of medium size or larger.
But aside from that, there was nothing worth seeing on this island.
There were no rising hills, no sunken wetlands, and not even the slightest trace of living creatures.
This space was so clean... it felt eerie.
"Looks like the only things on all of Laugh Tale should be those things at the center of the island!"
In just over ten minutes, the Straw Hat Pirates searched the whole of Laugh Tale from top to bottom, inside and out, in a carpet-style sweep.
In the end, however, all they found at the center of the island was a series of Poneglyphs, along with a gigantic skeleton that had been dead for who knew how long, yet still appeared pitch-black and gleamed with a metallic luster.
Unfortunately, this giant skeleton was not one of Brook's kind.
It could not speak, nor did it have an afro. It was simply a genuine corpse of withered bones.
And based on Red and Robin's deductions, they both agreed that the owner of this giant skeleton should be the hero who appeared during the Void Century—Joy Boy!
"Hey, Robin!"
"Hurry up and take a look at what's written on these things!"
Although they had not found the treasures Pirate King Roger had spoken of on Laugh Tale, to Luffy at this moment, treasure or no treasure no longer mattered.
After leading his companions to land on Laugh Tale, he was already the Pirate King in both name and reality!
So much so that today, he was even fired up about the Poneglyphs, something he had never shown interest in before!
(End of Chapter)