The armies of the Twenty Royal Families swiftly broke through the Ancient Kingdom's defenses, destroying its facilities and defensive arrangements one after another.
When Joy Boy received the news, he had no choice but to halt the relocation plan for Fish-Man Island and hurry back to the Ancient Kingdom to confront the Twenty Kings.
He wanted to ask them why they were doing this.
But the Twenty Kings, whose arrow had already been nocked to the string, had no intention of communicating with Joy Boy at all.
They simply destroyed, occupied, and trampled over the hard-won peace with ease.
In the end, after peace talks proved futile, Joy Boy flew into a rage. He summoned the Ancient Kingdom's army and his allies, launching a counterattack against the armies of the Twenty Kings.
With the arrival of war, the world once again fell into chaos. Combined with the continual rise of the sea level, people were swallowed by death every moment amid pleas and prayers.
Cannon fire, smoke, slaughter, and wailing became the main melody of the world.
The cruelty of this battle far exceeded even the previous war between Joy Boy's faction and the Lunarians.
Countless warriors died on the battlefield, and the people who had only just survived the enormous tsunami before they could recover were displaced once more.
The war continued for years.
In the end, with the aid of the three Ancient Weapons—Pluton, Uranus, and Poseidon—and Joy Boy's own power of Nika, the Ancient Kingdom that the Twenty Kings had worked so hard to capture was taken back by Joy Boy once again.
However, the Ancient Kingdom at this time no longer possessed its former prosperity. Everywhere one looked, there were the remnants of war and lingering flames, and its people had been driven from their homes.
Looking upon the devastated Ancient Kingdom, Joy Boy felt boundless heartache, yet there was nothing he could do.
Still unable to understand, he once again sent a request for peace talks to the Twenty Kings.
In Joy Boy's eyes, war was the one thing that should never exist in this world.
He wanted to understand exactly why the Twenty Kings had ignited war once more.
This time, the Twenty Kings, having been beaten into submission by Joy Boy, agreed to his request. They sent two of the more prestigious among the Twenty Kings as representatives for the talks.
One of them was naturally Nerona Imu, who had inherited the ambitions of his ancestors.
The other was the queen from the desert kingdom—Nefertari Lily.
Of these two, Imu was the strongest among the Twenty Royal Families, his strength second only to Joy Boy's. Lily, meanwhile, enjoyed an extremely high reputation among the people. Even among the Twenty Royal Families, quite a few had been won over by her charisma.
This charisma did not refer to Lily's beauty, but rather the bearing she possessed as a ruler.
However, Imu was suspicious by nature and did not dare enter Joy Boy's Ancient Kingdom. Instead, he arranged to meet Joy Boy on an uninhabited island.
After a round of exchanges, Joy Boy finally came to understand why his former allies had suddenly turned against him.
And in order to bring true peace to the world, Joy Boy made a decision that neither Imu nor Lily could comprehend…
He was willing to step down and hand power to the worthy, allowing the Twenty Kings to become the actual rulers of the Ancient Kingdom!
Joy Boy's magnanimity and bearing shocked both Imu and Lily.
Just how terrifying was the strength of the Ancient Kingdom?
It could be said that whoever ruled the Ancient Kingdom held the possibility of ruling the world.
Yet in the face of such an overwhelming temptation of power, Joy Boy was actually able to remain so calm. Even Lily, a queen renowned for her benevolent royal bearing, could not help but look at Joy Boy with wavering eyes.
In the past, she had thought Joy Boy was merely a man with tremendous power. But this time, even she, a ruler known for the bearing of a benevolent king, was moved by Joy Boy's decision.
Only Imu, after his initial shock, felt an indescribable fury ignite within his heart!
Why?!
Why was it that something his ancestors had sacrificed generation after generation just to have a chance to touch was something this man could simply throw away, abandon as though it meant nothing?!
If that was the case, then had the endurance and patience of the Nerona clan not become a joke?!
The meeting ended, and both sides returned to their respective camps.
When the Twenty Kings learned of Joy Boy's decision, they were naturally filled with delight.
Yet the two who had participated in the meeting fell into contemplation within their respective royal courts after reporting the outcome.
Joy Boy's indifferent attitude was no different from a slap across the face to the narrow-minded Imu.
This also caused Imu's hatred toward Joy Boy to grow invisibly.
After returning, his mind was no longer on how he and the Twenty Kings should rule the Ancient Kingdom. Instead, he devoted all his thoughts to finding a reason to kill Joy Boy.
On the other side, Queen Lily of the desert kingdom also sank into deep thought after returning to her nation.
No one knew that the Nefertari clan was actually not a pure-blooded human race.
They were, in truth, descendants of the Half-Moon bloodline, which everyone in the world now condemned and hunted!
It was only because they had descended from the Red Line to the earth in an age far too distant, and because the ancestors of the Nefertari clan had intentionally created a kingdom that could peacefully coexist with all people, that they had voluntarily abandoned the inheritance of the Moon bloodline.
This was something only the rulers of the Nefertari line were permitted to know.
Lily had only learned of it from her clan's records after ascending the throne as queen.
Originally, she had intended to do as her ancestors had done and bury this matter forever in her heart, until the Half-Moon bloodline was forgotten by everyone.
And her purpose in joining the Twenty Kings had also been sincere. She truly wanted to overthrow the oppressive rule of the Lunarians, who might have been her ancestors, and return a clear, bright world to all humanity.
Later, after learning that the land was being swallowed by the sea, she became anxious for a time and followed the armies of the Twenty Royal Families in attacking the Ancient Kingdom, wanting to bring her people onto the Red Line.
But after seeing Joy Boy's open-mindedness, Lily could not help but begin to reflect on herself.
Was everything she had done truly right?
Would Joy Boy really become the world's next dictator through his peerless strength, just as Imu claimed?
Would all land truly be swallowed by the sea, leaving humanity with no space to survive?
Question after question kept surfacing in Lily's mind, yet she could not find the answers at all.
Perhaps, in her eyes, the only time she could seek those answers would be the next time she met Joy Boy.
At this time, after returning to the Ancient Kingdom, Joy Boy also sank into contemplation.
For the past several years, the sea level had been constantly rising, and the world was going to be swallowed by the sea?!
Damn it!
All these years, he had either been on the Red Line managing the affairs of the Ancient Kingdom, or deep beneath the sea discussing the relocation of the Ryugu Kingdom with the mermaid princess…
As a result, he had actually never discovered the rising sea level.
In other words, this world would one day in the future be completely submerged by seawater, and humanity would completely lose the space it needed to survive?!
Having just learned this news, Joy Boy felt his head grow heavy and his thoughts turn chaotic.
Compared to the lives of everyone under heaven, a mere position as ruler of the Ancient Kingdom was, in his eyes, nothing at all.
So after the talks ended, Joy Boy began to think about how he could save all living beings under heaven.
The first point was…
He had to make the people of the world adapt to life on the sea. He had to make more people who were accustomed to living on land become familiar with the ocean.
Only when the people of the world became familiar with the sea would more of them have the possibility of surviving!
Thus, in the end, Joy Boy decided to spread a great lie across the world.
First, he found his close friend, the head of the Kozuki clan at the time, and asked them to use the Kozuki clan's unique techniques to help him carve four Road Poneglyphs.
And the location ultimately indicated by those four Road Poneglyphs was none other than a fantastical land he had accidentally discovered during his previous adventures!
Back then, he had merely thought that the formation of that place was incredibly interesting. He had never imagined that one day in the future, it would serve such a tremendous purpose!
Just like that…
The legendary final island, said to contain endless treasure and later destined to lure countless people into setting sail and entering the sea, was born!!!
Facts proved that Joy Boy's plan was extremely successful.
It was precisely because news of such a mysterious island appeared in the world that countless people began to enter the sea from that point onward.
And this also caused a world that had originally leaned more toward land-based technology to turn the focus of its attention toward the ocean.
Not long after, technologies such as the Log Pose, shipbuilding techniques, and navigation began to burst forth one after another across this planet.
At the same time, the originally mysterious and terrifying sea became far less dangerous in the eyes of the world.
However, such a method that treated only the symptoms and not the root cause was naturally not Joy Boy's only plan.
After using the Ancient Kingdom's energy to spread news of the final island, Joy Boy once again asked the Kozuki clan to help them create stone tablets capable of recording historical documents.
The first reason was that during the previous war, Joy Boy had discovered that the tiny seeds of civilization people had struggled so hard to cultivate had once again been reduced to almost nothing because of the flames of war.
Thus, in order to allow civilization to continue more effectively, Joy Boy thought of the Kozuki clan's powerful recording techniques.
As for the second purpose, Joy Boy also hoped to use these histories to warn later generations, hoping that people in the future would not imitate what they had done and bring war to this world again.
It could be said that Joy Boy had always been a pure idealist from beginning to end.
He no longer wanted to see the emergence of war. For this reason, he could hand the power in his grasp over to the Twenty Kings without the slightest hesitation.
At the same time, in order to prevent the Twenty Kings from continuing to fear him, Joy Boy even prepared to seal away all powerful forces, including himself.
The first to bear the brunt was the Pluton warship, which he had used as a transport ship, but which in reality possessed immense might.
Relying on his relationship with the Kozuki clan, Joy Boy secretly used the power of Nika to open a gap in Wano Country, which at that time had not yet been submerged by so much seawater, and hid Pluton within it.
Then, he had the Kozuki clan, who likewise possessed Half-Moon blood, help him use the power of the Solar Crystal to send Uranus, which he had also used as an aerial transport ship, into true outer space.
At this point, aside from the mermaid princess who possessed the name of Poseidon, he had already sealed away all the powers he had displayed in the previous great war against the Twenty Royal Families, making it difficult for them to appear in the world again.
Finally, he had the Kozuki clan write an apology letter to the mermaid princess on his behalf.
Although Joy Boy still had at least a hundred years of life remaining, after experiencing so many things, his heart had long since grown lonely and desolate.
But what Joy Boy had never expected was…
Even after he had gone this far, the Twenty Royal Families still refused to let him go. They still refused to let go of this hard-won peace.
To be precise, it was Imu, who had not achieved his own goal, who refused to let go of everything.
On the day before the transfer of power, Imu secretly found the other nineteen kings. He wanted to use the power of Seastone to completely kill Joy Boy during the transfer of authority—this man who possessed a power none of them could resist.
Seeing that the greatest power in the world was about to fall into their hands, the other Twenty Kings naturally did not wish for someone more suitable than them to rule the world to continue existing. Thus, they gladly agreed to Imu's plan.
And all of this allowed Lily of the Nefertari clan to thoroughly see the true faces of the Twenty Kings!
She never could have imagined that pure-blooded humans, unrelated to the Moon bloodline, would possess the darkest hearts in this world.
For a time, she actually could no longer tell who the real demons of this world were.
It was precisely because of this that the seed of rebellion began to take root in Lily's heart.
Time passed.
After Joy Boy finished arranging everything in the Ancient Kingdom, he formally and peacefully handed power over to the Twenty Kings under the witness of all the people of the Ancient Kingdom.
That very day, Imu also proposed to Joy Boy the idea of transferring the Solar Crystal.
At this time, Joy Boy, who had already become somewhat disheartened, no longer had many thoughts. And since he had no need to continue keeping the Solar Crystal, he naturally agreed readily.
At Imu's suggestion, not too many people participated in the transfer of the Solar Crystal.
It was still he and Lily who acted as representatives of the Twenty Kings to complete the handover with Joy Boy.
The other eighteen families among the Twenty Kings had no objections to this.
In fact, they also had no thoughts regarding the so-called Solar Crystal. After all, by this time, they already knew that the Solar Crystal could only be used by those who possessed Moon blood.
The Solar Crystal, which possessed tremendous power, was nothing more than a beautiful ornament in their hands.
Just like that, Imu, Lily, and Joy Boy traveled together to the place where the Solar Crystal was stored. With Joy Boy taking the initiative, they obtained the Solar Crystal.
Because Lily herself possessed Half-Moon blood, and because she was worried that her bloodline might cause an abnormal reaction in the Solar Crystal, she did not touch it immediately.
Instead, she gave this opportunity to Imu, who was a pure-blooded human.
But what neither she nor Joy Boy had expected was…
When Imu touched the Solar Crystal, that divine artifact, which should not have reacted at all, suddenly erupted with an unprecedented pitch-black radiance!!!
The countless years of scheming by the Nerona ancestors finally revealed its true dagger at this moment.
And amid bursts of unrestrained, maniacal laughter, Imu allowed that pitch-black energy to devour him.
The true and only demon of this world had been born!!!
(End of Chapter)