Ace did not disturb Shirahoshi. He led Jeno and Sabo over to the enormous dark blue monument.
"So this is the Poneglyph that records Fish-Man Island's piece of the world's true history. Second time seeing one."
Sabo studied the tadpole-like script, utterly illegible to him, and rapped his knuckles against the stone.
Clang.
The sound was dull and heavy. It numbed his fingers.
"This thing is insanely hard. I didn't notice that back on Skypiea." Sabo shook out his hand.
"Forged centuries ago by the Kozuki Family of Wano, using a lost technique. No weapon on this sea can destroy it."
Ace gazed at the monument, speaking casually.
"No weapon can destroy it?" Jeno adjusted his goggles and leaned in. "All that for a rock? What kind of secret could possibly be worth this?"
"A letter of apology," Ace said.
"What?"
Jeno and Sabo both froze.
"An apology?" Sabo could not believe his ears. "Who carves an apology into an indestructible stone?"
"Eight hundred years ago, a man named Joy Boy wrote it to the mermaid princess of that era."
Ace looked at the ancient script. "He failed to keep his promise to bring the fish-men to the surface. So he left this behind."
"Ancient people had a weird sense of drama."
Jeno circled the monument, marveling.
"They did."
Ace turned to face Jeno. "But since no weapon on this sea can destroy it..."
"Jeno."
Ace pointed at the dark blue stone. "If we fed this into your Synthesis Factory, do you think you could digest it?"
The words hung in the water.
The air went still for two full seconds.
"L-Lord Ace! You cannot be serious!"
The Minister of the Right, trailing behind them, nearly choked on his own whiskers. "This is Fish-Man Island's greatest treasure! It must never be destroyed!"
"Why not?"
Ace did not even glance at him. "A centuries-old apology letter. It does more good as armor for my crewman than as a tourist attraction on the ocean floor."
Gulp.
Jeno stared at the dark blue monument and swallowed hard.
His eyes ignited.
"Ordinary physical destruction? No chance. But my Baku Baku no Mi operates on Devil Fruit rules."
Jeno's voice shook with excitement. He strode up to the towering monument, several meters high, and knocked on it with his metal arm.
"Captain, you want me to use the Poneglyph's material to forge my subdermal armor?!"
"Exactly."
Ace nodded. "If the Kozuki Family could carve into it eight centuries ago, then it can be processed and reshaped. Pull this off, and you'll have the most absurd absolute physical defense on this entire sea. Even a Marine Admiral's attack won't punch through you easily."
"Wahahaha! This is insane! Pure genius!"
Jeno practically danced with glee.
"W-Wait! Jeno!"
Chopper panicked and leaped forward, grabbing Jeno's leg. "That stone is enormous! Even if you can swallow it, what if you can't digest it? Your organs will get crushed!"
"Chopper, don't underestimate the rule-force of this fruit!"
Jeno bared his teeth in a wide grin. His eyes blazed with the fevered obsession of a mad scientist.
"Inside my stomach, nothing is indigestible!"
Hum.
Jeno drew a deep breath. His mouth, under the Baku Baku no Mi's power, stretched open to a grotesque extreme, far beyond any human jaw's limit. The gaping maw yawned like a bottomless void that could swallow light itself.
"Get in there!"
Over the Minister of the Right's despairing shriek and Chopper's stunned gaze.
Jeno lunged forward. That black-hole mouth clamped down savagely on the dark blue Poneglyph, meters tall and weighing dozens of tons.
Against that maw, the supposedly indestructible stone, the one no weapon on the sea could scratch, yielded like a giant loaf of bread under the Baku Baku no Mi's absolute rule. Jeno forced it down in one brutal swallow.
Barely ten seconds.
The Poneglyph that had stood in the Sea Forest for centuries vanished completely into Jeno's stomach.
Burp.
Jeno patted his belly, now bulging into a perfect cube, and let out a deep, metallic, echoing belch.
"My god... he actually ate it..." Sabo's eyes went wide. His blue irises were pure shock.
"Don't zone out. Start the synthesis now."
Ace watched Jeno's body, already trembling faintly from absorbing such ultra-dense matter, and spoke the reminder.
"On it!"
Jeno shut his eyes. His legs slammed into a horse stance.
"Armament Fusion: Poneglyph Armor!"
Rumble.
A deep, grinding roar erupted from Jeno's stomach, like two continental plates scraping against each other. The Baku Baku no Mi's Synthesis Factory was running at full power, forcibly restructuring the Poneglyph's material and fusing it with his skeleton, muscle tissue, and subdermal armor.
Thick white steam poured off Jeno's body. Across his original dark-silver metal plating, a deep, ancient blue luster slowly surfaced.
Even stranger, faint patterns resembling the Poneglyph's ancient script began to etch themselves into the newly formed deep-blue metal.
"Perfect... absolutely perfect!"
Ten-odd minutes later, the steam dispersed. Jeno opened his eyes and stared at his own hands in disbelief. Then he drove his fist into the hull of a massive sunken ship nearby.
Boom!
No cannons. No thrusters. Pure, raw physical force.
The wreck, built from reinforced timber and impossibly sturdy, detonated on contact with Jeno's fist. It burst into a cloud of splinters, as if struck head-on by an immovable continent.
"This density and hardness... Ace! My body right now is a walking Wall of Lamentation!" Jeno roared with exhilaration.
Ace stepped forward and examined the deep-blue subdermal armor with satisfaction.
On this sea, the Poneglyph's indestructibility was an absolute rule. Jeno had just made it his own flesh. In the coming battlefields of the New World, the Eclipse Pirates now had an ultimate shield, one that could even tank a direct hit from a Yonko.
"Incredibly hard material."
Sabo drew the Flame Dragon Staff from his waist and tapped it experimentally against Jeno's arm. A crisp metallic ring answered him. Not even a scratch.
"With this armor, next time we run into that old man Garp, I'm charging in and eating a few of his punches head-on!" Jeno thumped his chest, grinning.
Behind them.
Shirahoshi still knelt before Queen Otohime's grave, weeping quietly.
The commotion had startled her, but she did not turn around. She remained lost in her longing for her mother.
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