Seeing the pensive look on Buggy's face, Robin blinked in quiet surprise."What is it?" she asked softly. "Is something wrong?If what's written in the historical texts is true, then it's not strange that other civilizations exist beyond our world. There are countless planets out there in the universe."
Buggy gave a half-smile and raised a hand in casual dismissal."No problem at all," he said. "Go on. What happened to that scientist from the Nerona family after they made contact with the alien civilization?"
"Hm… After that, the Sun God Kingdom established a dedicated research base for extraterrestrial communication," Robin explained, her tone thoughtful as she recalled the details. "The Nerona family was at the forefront of the project. They led the research efforts. Other families involved in that department were also recorded—"
She was interrupted when Buggy suddenly cut in."Wait… don't tell me—the same twenty families who later became the Twenty Kings?"
Robin blinked, genuinely taken aback."Huh? How did you know that?"
Buggy didn't answer immediately. He turned and locked eyes with Vegapunk. The two of them stared at one another in silence, something unspoken passing between them. A shared realization. Neither said a word, but both wore heavy expressions.
Sensing the weight in the air, Robin didn't press them further. She simply continued.
Later, the civilization of the Sun God Kingdom continued to advance. Their technology had reached unimaginable heights. But then… things began to change. Scientists started dying—strangely. At first, it was subtle. Isolated cases. But when the deaths piled up, the authorities were forced to intervene. Investigations revealed a disturbing truth—every one of them had committed suicide."
She paused, her voice lowering.
"And they all left behind letters... final messages. Some read like desperate warnings, others like the mad scribbles of men who'd stared too long into the abyss. A few claimed that science was pointless—that the world itself was a lie crafted by hands far above their reach."
"They spoke of being nothing more than 'bait fish' swimming in a barrel, watched by 'giant fishermen' ready to reel them in at any moment... whatever that means. Some even wrote that something was coming for them, and some… some wrote of a presence. Something is watching and waiting for them. Not from the sea, nor the sky... but from above, even that. As if the stars themselves had turned their gaze upon them."
The room had gone still.
"At first," Robin went on, "they suspected internal enemies. Dissidents trying to topple the kingdom. But the deeper the investigation went, the more shaken the rulers became. Whoever was behind this… wasn't just strong. They were beyond comprehension.No one could trace them. No records. No leads. Nothing."
She took a breath.
"And then, something terrifying happened. Scientists began to see countdowns before their eyes—literal numbers ticking down, even when their eyes were closed. Some endured it for days. Others broke instantly. In the end, many chose death over madness."
A heavy silence fell.
"That was the beginning of the decline," she said quietly. "Technology began to fail across the board. Power generators stopped working. Weapons lost their edge. Vehicles stalled and fell from the sky. Within a few short decades, the technological marvel that had sustained the Sun God Kingdom crumbled. And worst of all… no one could stop it. Not even their mightiest Emperor could sense or fight the enemy. Their kingdom, once bathed in the light of progress, began to sink into fear."
She looked around the cavern, her voice the only sound echoing through the air.
"Day by day, their world shrank. The miracles of the past became legends. And the enemy… remained unseen."
The Sun God Kingdom, once a shining beacon of progress and innovation, began to crumble. With their technology failing, the world regressed—sailing reverted to the age of wooden masts and canvas sails.
Despite the dire straits, the scientists of the Sun God Kingdom did not sit idly. They launched a desperate rescue initiative. Their plan? Seek out the land of the Country of Harmony—known in the present day as Wano Kuni—an old ally of the Sun God Kingdom. Their goal was to acquire seastone, a resource that could still be dismantled, repurposed, and used as a temporary energy source.
To Wano, seastone held limited value. But for the Sun God Kingdom, whose technologies had collapsed, it was more precious than gold. With energy systems gone, sailing became the only viable method of travel once again—and without seastone, even that was perilous.
When they learned that Wano's people held gold in high esteem, the Sun God Kingdom scoured the world for it. They amassed an enormous hoard—an entire mountain of gold—and in exchange, received from Wano an equally massive mountain of seastone.
At this part of Robin's tale, the room stirred with excitement. The listeners couldn't help but glance at one another, minds racing with the same thought: they had seen it. The golden mountain beneath Wano. The golden mountain here on Raftel.
Robin noticed the silent exchange and smiled knowingly.
"You're all thinking it, aren't you?" she said. "The two golden mountains I mentioned earlier—very likely, they're the same gold Wano received in that ancient trade."
Everyone nodded in unison.
"To be honest, I thought so too," Robin added with a mischievous wink.
She went on, her voice softening. "It was from this exchange that a deep bond was forged between Wano and the Sun God Kingdom. To ensure the safe delivery of the seastone, Wano dispatched their most legendary creature—the giant elephant known as Zunesha."
A few jaws dropped.
"But something went wrong," she continued. "The entire shipment of seastone, meant to restore energy to the Sun God Kingdom, vanished en route. No one knew what had happened. Not even Zunesha.
The incident sparked political outrage. Wano's ruling daimyo at the time, furious and ashamed, exiled the elephant. The Mink Tribe—one of Wano's close allies—was charged with watching over it. And so, Zunesha was sentenced to wander the seas for eternity, forbidden to return unless summoned by divine order."
Her words left the room in silence, the weight of that ancient tragedy sinking in like stone.
Robin took a breath and resumed. "After the seastone shipment disappeared, the Sun God Kingdom spiraled into further chaos. Their energy crisis worsened. At the same time, an unknown force began sabotaging their portal gates, severing communication with allied nations.
The user of the Door-Door Fruit in that generation had not yet awakened their powers, so no one could rebuild the portals. With technology regressing and their world becoming more isolated by the day, the Sun God Kingdom was forced to rely once again on den den mushi communication."
She paused, her voice dropping.
"But before they could reestablish contact, a war broke out. Sudden. Sweeping. Devastating. It consumed the entire world. And leading the charge… was the very same family that had once spearheaded research into alien civilizations."
Her gaze swept over the crew.
"They didn't just wage war. They shattered the old order. Their power was overwhelming—fast, brutal, and unlike anything the world had ever seen."
With their extensive research into Lunarian physiology and careful tactical planning, the invading faction quickly gained the upper hand. The battlefield became a massacre.
Although the Sun God Kingdom still boasted formidable warriors, centuries of rapid scientific advancement had birthed devastating weaponry—machines and bombs so powerful that not even the most hardened combatants could withstand them. No amount of training could save a man from vaporization.
Over time, the royal bloodline grew complacent. With power so easily won through technology, few in the Sun God line bothered to hone their strength. And tragically, in the later generations, no figure ever arose to match the legend of the Sun God Sovereign. No prodigy. No protector.
Even so, the Sun God Kingdom's heritage was vast, a legacy forged over centuries—it was not easily crushed. The war dragged on for decades.
But in the end... the kingdom fell.
Its glory reduced to ashes, its history buried. The victors—twenty influential families—declared themselves rulers. They became known as the Twenty Kings. And to solidify their rule, they enacted a brutal, decades-long purge.
They erased everything.
Countless lives were lost in the flames of this revision. Survivors were enslaved, their names and bloodlines stripped. Those captives—Robin's voice quieted here—were the very same ones sent to labor on the massive bridge... the one where you found me.
When the bloodshed ended and the resistance was extinguished, nineteen of the twenty kings settled in the ruins of the Sun God Kingdom's capital, perched high upon the Red Line.
They renamed the sacred city. They called it Mary Geoise.
There, they began to rewrite the world. Through fear, fire, and lies, they spread their new gospel: that they were the creators of the world, celestial dragons, descendants of the Gods.
Thus, the Celestial Dragons were born.
Robin's voice trailed off. For a long moment, she simply breathed, exhaling deeply, the weight of the truth pressing against her ribs.
Silence blanketed the room.
Then, chaos.
The Buggy Pirates erupted into disbelief and outrage.
"Seriously?! That's how it happened?"
"I still don't get it... Why would the members of the kingdom betray the Sun God Kingdom?"
"Exactly!" Crocodile else chimed in. "Weren't they living comfortably? That kingdom was still powerful! Even with the tech regression, why rebel?"
"Maybe it was fear?" mused Lucci. "Or jealousy over the royal family's control?"
"Or maybe... something else entirely?"
Long turned to Robin, eyes sharp. "Is there anything in the records about their motives? Why did they turn traitor?"
Robin shook her head slowly. "What I've told you is all the historical record contains. That hundred-year void…It's exactly that. A void. The remaining Poneglyphs contain mostly fragmented details about the Sun God Kingdom's technology, scientific archives, and warnings."
She paused, brow furrowed.
"Interestingly, many scientists from later eras disagreed with the idea of technological regression. They believed it impossible. They theorized that only an external force could've caused such a widespread collapse in science. But at the time, they lacked the means to identify or fight back against that force."
She looked at them, her voice steady but laced with a strange tension.
"Which is why—before their final fall—those scientists engraved as much of their knowledge as they could into the Poneglyphs. The last remnants of the Sun God Kingdom... recorded not in books or scrolls, but in stone."
Some of the Sun God Kingdom's greatest scientists managed to hide away a few of their most devastating weapons—but they were pressed for time, outnumbered, and surrounded by traitors. In the end, they only had the chance to conceal one: Pluton, the ship of destruction.
As for the rest—their groundbreaking research, their core technologies—they had no choice but to etch them into indestructible stone, inscribing them in the ancient language. Their final hope... was that one day, descendants of the free world would rediscover them, revive that lost brilliance, and once again usher in an era of peace, prosperity, and unmatched strength.
When Robin finished, the room fell into a confused silence.
Everyone scratched their heads, still struggling to understand how the Celestial Dragons had ever succeeded in the first place.
"I mean… they won?"
"Even if the Sun God Kingdom's tech had regressed somehow, it was still insanely powerful! To think it lost to the Twenty Kings… It's just—"
"Too strange," Enel muttered.
At last, Vegapunk exhaled with a deep sigh, the kind only a man burdened by too many half-truths could make.
"Yes," he said quietly. "It's all too strange."
The other five Vegapunks—each a facet of the same genius—nodded gravely.
Dragon stepped forward, his expression tense. "Doctor, what is it? You've noticed something, haven't you?"
Vegapunk's gaze sharpened.
"You're perceptive, Dragon. As expected from the world's most dangerous revolutionary."
He folded his arms behind his back.
"The hundred-year blank history we've pieced together—it might be incomplete. Worse, it might have been tampered with. Think about it: most of the records we have come from the perspective of the Sun God Kingdom. But when it comes to the Celestial Dragons... the account is rushed. Vague. Almost as if someone deliberately cut that part out."
A beat of silence passed. The implications were staggering.
"There are only two possibilities," Vegapunk continued. "Either someone from the Sun God Kingdom deliberately omitted that section... perhaps to hide something. But frankly, I doubt even they had a place more secret than Raftel to stash forbidden truths."
"Which leads to the second possibility."
Someone had stolen it.
". . .Someone from the Celestial Dragons?" Dragon asked, frowning. He shook his head. "No. That doesn't make sense. If the Celestial Dragons found incriminating records, they would have destroyed them outright. Why keep anything that dirties their image?"
A sly grin crept across Buggy's face. "Unless... it wasn't just any Celestial Dragon."
He tilted his head and tossed out a name like a lit match.
"What if it was the queen of the Nefertari family?"
Everyone froze.
Of course—the Nefertaris. One of the original twenty royal families... yet the only one that refused to move to Mary Geoise. Instead, they returned to the desert and built the Kingdom of Alabasta.
A murmur swept the room.
"That... would explain a lot," Dragon whispered.
Robin's eyes lit with recognition. "Yes. There is a Poneglyph hidden beneath Alabasta. The World Government claimed it pointed to Pluton, but it doesn't. All it says is that Pluton isn't located in Alabasta. What is written there… is a message from Queen Lily."
She paused.
"And a warning. Doubts she had... about the nineteen kings who went to the Red Line."
Buggy leaned forward, eyes sharp. "Spell it out. What kind of doubts?"
"Hm?"
Everyone turned to Buggy in surprise. Why the sudden shift in mood? Weren't they just talking about Queen Lily's doubts? Was that worth getting so worked up over?
But Buggy's expression said otherwise. His brows were furrowed, his grin gone. Something absurd had taken root in his mind—a wild theory, unformed at first, but now... now it was gaining weight.
Robin noticed it instantly. That look in his eye—he had connected something.
She didn't waste time.
Taking a breath, she began:
"According to Queen Lily, during the war… many of her former comrades began to act strangely. Like they were no longer the same people. She said their personalities changed drastically."
Robin's tone turned serious, her words deliberate.
"She said they became cold. Distant. Violent. Especially one woman… Nerona Imu."
The room fell still.
"She was once the Minister of Science for the Sun God Kingdom. A brilliant woman—intellectual, calm, deeply respected. Queen Lily admired her. But after the war broke out, Imu changed. She became ruthless. Bloodthirsty."
Robin's eyes darkened.
"She ordered the slaughter of entire branches of the Sun God's royal bloodline. No survivors. No mercy. It was horrifying."
A hush swept across the room.
"Queen Lily couldn't understand it. Couldn't accept it. The people she once trusted—their cruelty became unrecognizable. So she made a choice: she left. Abandoned the others and settled in Alabasta, refusing to become a Celestial Dragon."
Robin glanced down.
"That wasn't the full story, though. There must be another Poneglyph—another stone that completes her warning. But in the underground palace beneath Alabasta, there was only one."
Vegapunk stepped forward, voice grim. "Then we have to find the rest. That missing Poneglyph could be the key. It might tell us why Queen Lily left the other nineteen kings—why she walked away from power."
Dragon nodded, his mind racing. "It's strange. If this had happened during the war, maybe you could explain it. War changes people. It hardens hearts."
He narrowed his eyes.
"But Lily's words suggest something else. The change didn't happen because of the war. It happened with it. As if something triggered it the moment the fighting began."
He paused."And that woman—Nerona Imu—was head of the Science Division…"
Then he froze. A chill swept through him as the realization clicked.
"Wait… Buggy." He turned, voice low.
"That name you mentioned before. The one who sits on the Void Throne… ruling the world in secret for over 800 years…"
He swallowed.
"Could Nerona Imu… be Imu-sama?"
---
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