"Why is there a ship over there?" Shachi asked curiously. He leapt off the golden submarine and started toward the sandy shore, aiming straight for the vessel in the distance.
Penguin and the white bear Bepo instinctively followed after him.
"Wait."
A man with a spotted round hat and a long sword raised his hand to stop them. "Something's not right. Don't get close."
Shachi froze, glancing back. "What's not right? Law, aren't you being a little too cautious? It's just a ship."
"It's not that I'm too cautious. It's that you three are far too careless." Trafalgar Law, his black-ringed eyes serious, replied flatly. "Did you already forget what happened last time?"
The three tilted their heads in confusion.
Law exhaled in a long sigh. "That time in the forest—you all spotted an apple on the ground and rushed over to snatch it, only to trigger a pitfall and get caught in a net hanging from the trees."
Ah, that incident.
Shachi and Penguin finally recalled, their faces flushing with embarrassment.
"We were starving that day… there was nothing else to eat."
"Exactly! You can't put all the blame on us. We thought the apple just fell from the tree."
Only the white bear bowed deeply to Law, speaking in human tongue: "I'm sorry!"
"In short," Law waved his hand dismissively, "for a ship to appear inside a submerged spire—especially one that isn't a submarine like ours—that's far from normal. We don't know what it means, so the best option is to keep our distance and minimize risk."
"Yes, we understand!" Shachi and Penguin answered, though their carefree grins made it clear they hadn't taken it to heart.
Bepo, however, bowed again in apology.
Law shook his head. "Enough. Let's climb that cliffside first. We might discover something there."
At last, the path along the whale's spine reached its end.
Alvida glanced at her watch. They had been walking for nearly an hour, their ankles aching and sore, before finally arriving here.
At the end of the path stood a grand stone hall. Murals covered the walls to either side, painted in vivid color. Directly ahead, several pitch-black caverns gaped open like the eyes of a giant beast, staring them down.
"Four openings," Kuro muttered, counting them off. He adjusted his round spectacles with his palm. "Captain, this must be a labyrinth. Otherwise, there'd be no need for multiple entrances."
"I understand," Davy Jones said, his gray-blue eyes resting on the murals. He raised a finger. "Start investigating here. Find out what this place truly is."
"Yes, Captain."
They gathered before the first mural. Davy Jones calmly lit his pipe, puffing away as his crew busied themselves deciphering the images. For now, he relied solely on instinct—whether this place held any true profit would depend on what the murals revealed. If they proved meaningless, he'd simply order everyone to turn back.
The first mural depicted the very spire they now stood within. Yet in this version, the tower was only half built—its upper half still incomplete and stretching skyward, its lower half rooted deep into the land.
Around the spire, people of various races were painted. Giants stood tallest, alongside fish-men and merfolk, followed by humans. There were others too—races with abnormally long arms, or long legs, some with three eyes, and even tiny folk so small they were almost overlooked.
Beneath each mural were several lines of strange writing. None of the crew could identify the script—it belonged to neither any known country nor any known age.
Buggy compared them against the "Poneglyph" text he had once seen, only to shake his head. They were different. The Poneglyph's script was blocky and square, while these words flowed in elegant curves and slants.
Still, though the script was indecipherable, the pictures spoke clearly enough. Alvida voiced their shared conclusion:
"All the world's races gathered together upon one continent to build this spire."
The second mural showed the tower completed, its tip rising to a sharp point. The spire's interior was divided into four tiers: three lower levels, each holding a gem, and the very top where a heart was drawn. Around it, people of every race were shown cracking whips, driving bizarre monsters into the spire.
"They stored their most precious treasures in the spire and drove monsters inside to guard each level."
The third mural depicted monstrous waves crashing over the spire's base, humans flooding into its interior.
The fourth showed the spire sunk beneath the sea.
"Some calamity struck—the land and spire swallowed by the sea. But some humans survived by hiding within the tower."
The fifth mural depicted four figures of differing appearances climbing the spire's stairs. Beneath them lay heaps of bones—skeletons bearing the same masks and weapons as the four above.
The crew hesitated, then pieced together their theory:
"When the spire sank, the survivors had no choice but to climb upward through levels swarming with monsters. Their survival depended on sacrifice and slaughter, and over time they formed four distinct schools of combat."
The sixth mural revealed the labyrinthine passages inside—some connected, some sealed off. The four figures reached toward three floating keys: one red, one green, one blue.
"Their goal was to find three keys hidden within the maze."
The seventh mural showed the keys fitted into a circular stone disk. A massive stone gate, as tall as a mountain, stood open before them.
The eighth mural showed the four figures standing ready for battle, facing a colossal gray heart.
The final murals depicted a hand clutching a smaller, identical gray heart. With it, the four figures leapt from the spire's peak and gazed upon the boundless sea—free at last.
"They gathered the keys, unlocked the gate, and faced the heart itself. After defeating it, they obtained a smaller heart—and with it, they escaped from the spire to the sea above, reclaiming their freedom."
All eyes turned to Davy Jones, awaiting his judgment.
The captain nodded, tucking away his pipe.
His gaze lingered on the spire's structure in the second mural, then upon the massive and miniature hearts in the eighth and ninth.
"They gathered three keys to open a gate at the very top. That heart was both their greatest obstacle and their most precious treasure."
Kuro adjusted his glasses, noting the second mural's depiction of the heart at the summit. He nodded in agreement.
A heart…
Davy Jones's expression grew hard to read.
In this world, only he knew the truth—his greatest weakness was his heart, the one part of his body that could never regenerate. Though no one yet knew the true nature of his powers, nor the secret of his heart, the deeper he sailed into the Grand Line, the more powerful foes he would encounter. Sooner or later, someone might discover it.
I must prepare ahead of time… But that heart atop the spire—could it be of use to me?
His tentacled mouth curled into a smile.
"We will search for the three keys and climb to the spire's summit to see for ourselves."
"Captain," Kuro interjected, "what if those humans already gathered the keys and escaped long ago? The top may hold nothing."
"Then we'll treat it as a brief respite along our voyage," Davy Jones replied smoothly. "They may never have succeeded at all, which is why they left murals and writing to guide their descendants. Perhaps even now, they're still trapped within the spire, struggling on."
"In which case, it's natural you can't read the script—you don't belong to their era."
A chill swept through the crew at their captain's words.
They could hardly imagine it—generations of humans, trapped in this spire beneath the sea, living and dying in endless struggle. What a merciless fate that must be…
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