This world would be swallowed by the sea forever!
All living beings who dwelled upon the land would die beneath the endless waves!
Perhaps it was because, in the distant past, the Lunarians' ancestors had once used the Solar Crystal to trigger the wrath of the earth, yet failed to completely exterminate humanity.
This time, the God-King of the Lunarians chose to wield the power of the sea!
However, compared to the wish power absorbed by the Solar Crystal last time, although people's desires were now even deeper, the difference in time meant that the effect the Solar Crystal could unleash this time was far weaker.
The sea did not devour everything immediately.
Even so, due to the violent movement of the oceans, the already fractured continents began to be swallowed by seawater. And, much like the Red Line…
A stretch of ocean where almost no one could survive appeared in the central region of the planet, the area where living beings were most concentrated and the ecosystem was most abundant. Together with the Red Line, it divided the world into four regions.
This upheaval once again caused the deaths of countless land-dwelling creatures.
Only, at that time, Joy Boy and the others standing atop the Red Line did not notice any of this at all.
They merely saw the distant sky turn dark, completely unaware that it had already become the graveyard of countless humans.
With his overwhelming power, Joy Boy defeated the God-King and seized the Lunarians' treasure from his hands—the Solar Crystal.
But the joy of victory did not last long on their faces. The terrible news that followed plunged every nation that had taken part in the battle into panic.
Even Joy Boy had no choice but to immediately leave the Red Line and throw himself into the effort to save the world.
The tsunamis across the world lasted for a full three years!
During those three years, the world underwent another tremendous transformation.
Vast stretches of land were submerged by the sea. Human civilization, which had only just managed to grow once again, was swallowed by the enraged sea god and reduced to a broken ruin.
Fortunately, with the help of Joy Boy and the twenty powerful dynasties, humanity ultimately survived this worldwide catastrophe.
And among them, the Fish-Men, who could move freely through the sea, played an indispensable role.
Because of this, Joy Boy made a promise with the Fish-Men. Once everything stabilized, the Fish-Men would be allowed to possess territory of their own upon the land and establish their own kingdom.
And so, the world gradually settled down.
The nations that had survived the disaster also gradually began post-disaster reconstruction and planning.
This time, without the Lunarians standing above them and constantly demanding slaves and resources, the various nations developed at an astonishing pace.
And under the recommendation of the Twenty Kings, Joy Boy established an entirely new Great Kingdom upon the foundation of the Lunarians' divine nation, gaining access to many advanced technologies left behind by the Lunarians.
However, Joy Boy's purpose in overthrowing the Lunarians had never been to place himself high above everyone else. Therefore, he had never once thought of making himself some great king.
After refusing several times, Joy Boy and the Twenty Kings reached an agreement…
He would become the leader of this Great Kingdom, but not as its king.
At Joy Boy's suggestion, the twenty kingdoms would build an "Empty Throne" for him.
This Empty Throne would represent Joy Boy's status, but he would not truly sit upon it.
At the same time, Joy Boy requested that the Twenty Kings leave their weapons there. On one hand, it represented a restraint upon Joy Boy, the only person qualified to unite the world. On the other, it symbolized that war would never again break out between kingdoms, allowing peace to endure forever.
The moment the Empty Kingdom was completed, Joy Boy led the Twenty Kings in swearing an oath together: all nations would be equal to one another, and none would ever harbor ambitions of dictatorship.
However, what Joy Boy did not know was…
At the very moment they swore that oath, a cold glint suddenly flashed through one person's eyes.
And this person's identity was anything but simple.
He was none other than the descendant of the man from ancient times who had touched the taboo of the sun and triggered the Solar Crystal's rampage!
In truth, the Solar Crystal's rampage had not been a coincidence.
Although the Lunarians of ancient times were naive, they were not foolish enough to trust absolutely everyone.
Thus, long ago, they had established an oath within the Solar Crystal: only those who possessed lunar blood were qualified to use the Solar Crystal's power!
And that greedy human of the Blue Planet had also learned of this oath from the Lunarians long before.
That was why, at the time, he had taken a Lunarian child hostage and used the child's bloodline to activate the Solar Crystal, attempting to obtain its power.
But what he had not expected was…
The oath of the Solar Crystal was conceptual in nature!
Even though he used Lunarian blood to trigger the Solar Crystal, when the Solar Crystal detected that the true user was him, it still refused to grant his wish.
Yet the Solar Crystal, once activated, could no longer be stopped. That was what caused the Solar Crystal's rampage.
One could only say that those capable of causing great events in every era, whether good or evil, possessed minds and fortune far beyond ordinary people.
Although that greedy Blue Planet human failed to obtain the power within the Solar Crystal and fulfill his ambitions, he did successfully use the wish power that leaked out from the Solar Crystal to add a layer of contract to his own bloodline…
His bloodline would become like the lunar bloodline, capable of using the Solar Crystal's power.
He firmly believed that since someone like him had appeared in this era, then one day in the future, his bloodline would surely take his place and fulfill his ambition of controlling the sun!
And so, amid the wrath of the Lunarians, he met his death—yet left all hope to his descendants.
His name was no longer that important.
But his surname luckily survived through the turmoil that followed, and eventually became one of the Twenty Kings who overthrew the Lunarians' rule!
At this moment, the name of the person staring at Joy Boy's back as they swore the oath was, shockingly…
Nerona Imu!
Peace had truly arrived.
After the oath was sworn, Joy Boy naturally became the leader of the Great Kingdom.
And the Twenty Kings, who had accomplished the great feat of overthrowing the previous dynasty, also returned to their respective nations and began developing their own military forces.
However, as the saying went, human desire would never disappear.
Although Joy Boy repeatedly assured the Twenty Kings that he had absolutely no intention of becoming a dictator, nor would he ever walk the same path as the Lunarians…
One could never truly know another person's heart.
No one could guarantee that what Joy Boy said was truly what he thought deep inside, or that his thoughts would never change.
The Twenty Royal Families submitted only to Joy Boy's strength, not to his will.
At first, everything was as peaceful and harmonious as it appeared on the surface.
In the years after the Great Kingdom was founded, Joy Boy hardly rested at all. He devoted everything he had to fulfilling the promises he had made before the war.
First, using the technology left behind by the divine nation, he asked the outstanding shipwrights of Water 7 to build an enormous pitch-black battleship.
The firepower of that battleship could destroy a mighty kingdom in an instant!
Of course, the cannons were merely an incidental feature of the blueprints.
Joy Boy's true idea was to use the terrifying mobility of this battleship to allow people to cross the oceans and rebuild the bonds that had existed before the world was swallowed by the sea.
Likewise, in the divine nation, he found a powerful flying device that could only be activated with the Solar Crystal.
Unfortunately, because of the Lunarian God-King's final decision, there was not much energy left within the Solar Crystal now. It was nowhere near enough to repeatedly operate that flying device.
Otherwise, its power alone would have provided Joy Boy with even greater aid.
Time slowly passed.
The Great Kingdom, which had inherited the legacy of the divine nation, grew at a speed even more terrifying than anyone had imagined!
Under Joy Boy's leadership, the Great Kingdom not only completed its basic infrastructure, but through his decentralization of authority, it also transformed technologies that even the Lunarians had never widely utilized into civilian technology, granting its citizens happy living conditions.
At the same time, Joy Boy sent invitations to every race across the world.
As long as someone was willing to come, the Great Kingdom would have a place for them.
Under the influence of these various policies, the Great Kingdom developed comprehensively in population, technology, military strength, and many other fields. Soon, it surpassed the former divine nation that had once placed the Lunarians above all.
At the same time, many powerful races and nations across the world also shared deep bonds of friendship with Joy Boy.
For example, Wano Country, which had accidentally discovered Seastone mines after the disaster, and the Ryugu Kingdom, which could move freely through the sea and unleash tremendous power.
The former could restrict the power of the vast majority of strong individuals in this world, including the Twenty Kings!
The latter possessed an innate advantage in this world already swallowed by the sea, making it a force no one dared underestimate.
Not to mention, the mermaid ruler of the Ryugu Kingdom possessed the terrifying power to command the Sea Kings.
If, when the Great Kingdom had first been founded, Joy Boy had merely been the world leader elected by the Twenty Kings…
Then today, after all his efforts, Joy Boy, relying on his own power, the strength of his nation, and his many allies, was already qualified in both name and reality to be called the "leader of the world."
And this was precisely what the Twenty Kings did not want to see!
They were willing to acknowledge the person they themselves had chosen, but that did not mean they could accept a true "leader."
And so, for the first time, a rift appeared between the Twenty Kings and Joy Boy.
Only, at the time, Joy Boy was busy trying to move the Ryugu Kingdom and Fish-Man Island from the deep sea to the land, and he did not notice this at all!
After his attempt to use a gigantic soap bubble to float the entire island up from the seabed failed, Joy Boy came up with another method…
He would create a colossal ark, load everyone on Fish-Man Island into it, and then have gigantic Sea Kings pull the ark to the surface.
This plan could be called foolish beyond belief.
Yet it was the final, plainest, and most foolproof plan Joy Boy and the mermaid princess of that era had discussed and devised.
However, what Joy Boy never expected was…
This plan still failed!
Because not long after the ark named Noah was completed, a war against the Great Kingdom suddenly broke out!
And the opponent in this war was someone Joy Boy had never expected at all—his former allies, the Twenty Royal Families!
It turned out that recently, some attentive members of the Twenty Royal Families had discovered something…
The curse left behind by the Lunarian God-King before his death had definitely not been mere words.
They were horrified to observe that the sea of this world had not stopped devouring the land just because the tsunamis had ended. Instead, it was still slowly eroding humanity's living space bit by bit every year.
And this made the Twenty Royal Families realize that continuing to remain in their own kingdoms was nothing but slow suicide!
If they wanted to truly escape this crisis, they also had to ascend the Red Line!
But although the Red Line was the largest stretch of land left in the world after the disaster, its surface was entirely made of hard rock and was fundamentally unsuitable for production.
Therefore, if they rashly moved onto the Red Line, the only outcomes awaiting them were either becoming vassals of the Great Kingdom or struggling to survive on their own.
To some of the Twenty Royal Families, who had also participated in overthrowing the Lunarians' rule and bringing new life to the world, this was simply unreasonable.
During this period, the Twenty Royal Families also secretly held several small meetings behind the Great Kingdom's back.
In the end, they decided to take up their weapons once more, march against the Great Kingdom, and reclaim the throne that should have belonged to them.
The pitiful Twenty Kings still did not know…
Every thought they had now was nothing more than a seed Imu had planted in them over the course of many years.
And from beginning to end, Imu had only one goal!
To seize the Solar Crystal from Joy Boy's hands, fulfill his ancestor's final wish, and rule this world!
Of course, Joy Boy's actions in making the Great Kingdom better were also one of the straws weighing down the Twenty Royal Families.
In order to prevent their descendants or kingdoms from becoming vassals of some other power in the future, this was a decision they had no choice but to make.
Under Imu's instigation, the Twenty Royal Families quickly began gathering their armies and launched an attack on the Great Kingdom!
And when Joy Boy learned of this news, he was completely stunned!
He could not understand why his former teammates and companions would suddenly turn against him and attack him.
The long lifespan of the giant race gave him a different sense of time from ordinary humans.
To the Twenty Royal Families, perhaps a very long time had already passed. But to Joy Boy, it was only a small portion of his life.
Naive as he was, he could not understand any of this.
And because everything happened far too suddenly, even though Joy Boy held three great divine weapons—the giant battleship, the friendship of the mermaid princess, and the flying device of the divine nation—he was still caught completely off guard by the Twenty Royal Families.
The Great Kingdom was defeated at lightning speed.
After all, the Twenty Kings who had dared to stand up and challenge the Lunarians were not weaklings.
By the time Joy Boy reacted and wanted to do something…
Everything was already too late!
(End of Chapter)