One Piece: A Guide for Ordinary Players

Holding York's headset, Robert impatiently channeled electricity into it, trying to communicate with any device that could establish a connection.

The expected, perpetually languid voice did not appear; only a faint electrical signal flickered like a distant lighthouse.

Robert returned to the tree hollow he had found earlier, put the little giant Cologne back on, and quickly headed toward the direction where the signal had been received through the earpiece.

Although Cologne was a giant, he was still young and had his nerves blocked by Robert's electric current, putting him into a coma. He was completely unable to resist electromagnetic assimilation.

With a clear goal in mind, the two sped across the sea of ​​clouds until they were nearing the end of the Grand Line, where they could even vaguely see the Red Line ahead.

The signal didn't come from the sea, but was hidden in the clouds, and Robert rushed straight in.

A huge shadow floated in mid-air, like a giant castle. Robert didn't have time to marvel at the size of the ship, nor did he care to find out why it could float in the air. He threw Cologne onto the deck and rushed into the towering bridge.

The moment he found the giant ship, Robert used all his detection methods to try to find York's whereabouts.

But what troubled him was that the ship, which was suspended in the clouds, was lifeless, like a ghost ship floating in the Devil's Triangle, with no sign of life on board.

Electromagnetic induction located a mangled human figure in Cambridge. Robert was breathing heavily and didn't even dare to examine it closely. He forced himself to push open the bridge door with trembling hands.

York leaned against the gleaming control panel, his eyes vacant. One of his long legs was missing, and the other was twisted into a bizarre shape. The huge penetrating wound in his chest and abdomen even allowed him to see the indicator lights on the control panel behind him.

Robert felt his breath trembling and his heart clenching with pain.

[Unlocking a new anchor point for desire: pain]

Experiencing pain can slow down the process of becoming conditioned by rules.

Robert didn't even notice the sudden notification; he simply walked to York's side like a zombie and held her enormous head in his arms.

Regardless of whether York is a traitor in the original storyline, at least in his own world, York is just a child who has only been created for two years and has an incredibly simple mind.

He wanted Vegapunk's technology and used various benefits to get York to his side, even implanting a false memory into her.

During the short time they spent together, aside from spending some time with her on the Kizaru warship, he mostly hid her in the Punk Hazard laboratory.

Robert slapped himself hard several times, and tears streamed down his face.

A light laugh rang out: "Hahaha! You actually cried!"

Robert stood frozen in place as the surrounding lights came on and the screens on the bridge turned on one by one, making the whole ship seem to come alive.

Yorkcaron's image appeared on the screen, winking at Robert: "Little Robert, you look so cute when you cry!"

Robert wiped away his tears and plopped down on the ground, instantly relaxing. He kept muttering, "You scared me to death, I'm so glad you're alright..."

York said, as if showing off, "Hey, I'm Vegapunk. I don't die so easily. That body is just a vessel. Eghard has plenty of replacement bodies. Just find another one."

Robert recalled the punk clones that York had killed in the original storyline. Whether it was Shakya, Pythagoras, or even Atlas who self-destructed to stop Satan, they were actually not dead.

Their consciousness is stored in the Punk Records, and as long as the world's smartest brain is still active, these Punk clones are essentially immortal.

“I’ll go to Egerhead right away to help you rebuild your body, York. I’ll never let you leave my side again.”

York, unusually, didn't immediately agree, as if deliberately avoiding the topic: "If you go to Eghelm now, Lilith and the others will kill you..."

"Look at our ship! How about that? Aren't I awesome?"

Robert doesn't care about Hades at all now. Because of building this wrecked ship, his master was imprisoned back in Impel Down, and York was almost torn to pieces.

"I've figured it out. The type of ship doesn't matter. People are the most important. If you encounter something like this again, just run away and don't worry about these material things."

York retorted stubbornly, "How can that be! This is my life's work! I'm Vegapunk too, but all they've ever done is let me eat, drink, and sleep!"

"This ship is the first treasure I've ever built with my own hands!"

Robert smiled as he watched York's sullen face on the screen and couldn't help but defend her. In the original story, York became a traitor who betrayed Vegapunk, and it was probably not simply because she longed for the life of a Celestial Dragon. Her seemingly insignificant additional goal of becoming the only Vegapunk was probably the core reason.

Six clones were created at the same time. They were all genius scientists, so why did everyone else work on the island to help with research, while York just ate and slept all day, and after waking up, he ate and drank, and could only be reduced to a tool to help the other clones satisfy their physiological desires?

Robert chimed in, echoing York's words, "Tell me about your treasure! I was curious before; I've seen the blueprints for Pluto, and they didn't say it could fly, did they?"

York's voice was full of pride: "Oh, this is a modification I made specifically for Hades, based on the flight capabilities of your Ark Proverb."

Robert had almost forgotten about the Ark Maxim. Ever since his first flight to the moon, he had left the Ark Maxim on the moon and returned on a faster space pirate ship instead.

"Wait a minute? You know about the Ark's Maxims? I clearly remember that ship..."

York didn't care at all: "You mean you clearly put it on the moon, right? The old man took Pythagoras and Atlas and dismantled it for you, didn't they tell you?"

Chapter 36 The Dragon Bone Has Become a Spirit

If it were anyone else acting so presumptuously, Robert would have really lost his temper, but it was Vegapunk who did it.

Vegapunk has already dismantled two of Robert's ships. The first was the space pirate ship he sailed back from the moon, which also dismantled several mechanical engineers.

"Didn't he already dismantle the other spaceship? Why would he dismantle my handmade Ark Maxim?"

York said in a tone that suggested he couldn't explain it clearly, "Gold's ductility, antioxidant properties, chemical stability, and excellent electrical conductivity are all irreplaceable. You have no idea how much material is needed to assemble the Punk Records. With those gold, the old men wouldn't need to make so many trips to the moon."

"And it's all thanks to their disassembly and study of the Ark Maxim before, otherwise the technology of that iron-plated spaceship couldn't have been directly transferred to Hades."

York gestured for Robert to put on her enormous headphones, and they took a tour of the ship.

"This ship is actually a half-finished product, not because the Red-Haired Pirates suddenly attacked us, but because we had stopped construction for a long time and didn't know how to continue building it."

Robert looked around the huge ship while communicating with her through York's headset:

"This is already quite complete. I see that it has everything it should have. Why do you all say that it's not finished?"

York said mysteriously, "Do you remember why we insisted on returning to Elbaf to build this ship?"

Robert replied cooperatively, "Didn't you say it was to find the dragon bones? So we went to Elbaf to find the precious tree Adam."

York said excitedly, "That's right. Adam Wood is the hardest wood in the world. If you use it to make the keel, even if other parts are damaged, you can replace or repair them on the basis of the keel, so that the ship will not be completely scrapped because the keel is destroyed."

Robert recalled the Going Merry, Luffy's first ship, which couldn't be repaired even in Water 7 because of a damaged keel.

York continued, "But what if the keel is also damaged? How will the ship be repaired?"

Robert was taken aback: "Didn't you say that using the Adam Tree to create the dragon bones would prevent damage?"

York said angrily, "What tree in this world is completely indestructible? If it really can't be damaged, how do we cut it down and shape it into a dragon bone?"

Robert thought it made sense. He originally thought that in the magical world of One Piece, there would exist some kind of rare tree that was harder than gold and iron and would never be damaged.

But as York said, if there really were trees that could not be broken by knives and axes, and could not be damaged by lightning or fire, how would people cut them down and build them into the shape of ship keels?

Thinking of this, Robert couldn't help but feel deflated. After all that, the so-called invincible warship was just a little more durable than ordinary ships, not truly invincible.

York sensed Robert's emotions and felt he had provoked him enough, so he revealed the answer directly.

"But think about it, what if this dragon bone were alive?"

Robert's expression froze: "Alive? You caught an animal to use as dragon bones? It wasn't something that ate the fruit of the giant serpent Jormungandr, was it?"

York was amused by Robert's wild imagination: "What giant serpent Jormungandr? I've never even heard of that. I'm talking about a living tree, Adam!"

Robert asked in confusion, "I really didn't understand."

York explained his ingenious idea: "After we arrived in Elbaf, apart from the first few days of attending endless banquets to celebrate the return of the giants who had been away from home for a hundred years, the first thing we did was to find suitable trees to build boats."

"Elbaf itself is a giant precious tree, Adam. In fact, we can directly find a suitable branch from the crown of the tree in the mortal world to build the keel of the ship, and the planks of other parts can also be made from the precious tree Adam."

"But the Great Hammer Legion pointed out that the materials of branches and trunks are different. Even the branches of the World Tree are not as strong as the trunk of a single, independently growing treasure tree, Adam."

Robert listened quietly without interrupting, only adding filler words like "um," "ah," "eh," "oh," "go to hell," "I've never heard of it," etc., at key moments to help York build up his emotions and adjust his rhythm.

"But nature is actually very cruel, especially in the plant kingdom. With the World Tree, the world's largest precious tree, Adam, around it, it is impossible for another small tree to grow around it, not even its own child."

“All new seedlings that take root at its base will face problems such as lack of sunlight and not being able to compete for the eagle’s eye, and eventually wither and die.”

"Our initial goal was to find such a dead tree. After all, even a seedling of the precious tree Adam that died in extreme conditions would still be a towering tree in the world, with strength far exceeding that of other materials."

"But just as we descended into the underworld to search, we discovered something astonishing!"

"There really is a living sapling around Elbaf!"

Robert also became interested. He had heard of a term called the "forest window effect," which means that saplings in a forest never grow very large unless a natural disaster or man-made calamity destroys the original towering trees, leaving a gap like a window.

The small portion of the ground that is exposed to sunlight will experience ecological activities that are completely different from the surrounding area, until a new large tree grows and seals the forest window above it again.

York continued her story: "It was a small tree that grew on the very edge of the underworld. Theoretically, tree species shouldn't have fallen to that location; they should have been concentrated around the trunk."

"But there, a small sapling grew there, barely able to grow with the sunlight reflected off the sea."

"As for the nutrients, that's even more interesting. The giants of the mortal realm say that a sinful giant is tied to the trunk of an Elbaf tree; he is their prince."

"Although this prince is extremely cruel, he is also very powerful. All the huge creatures in the entire underworld obey his commands, so he makes those animals called mountain lords clean up his excrement every day."

"Perhaps a giant ape was in a playful mood and wanted to see just how big this sapling growing by the sea could grow, so it deliberately poured the giant's excrement at its roots, and that's how the tree miraculously survived!"

Robert couldn't help but complain, "They had such a hard life, and instead of dying from the World Tree's suppression, you guys cut them down and turned them into a ship..."

York wasn't angry at all; on the contrary, he said with great pride:

"That's not true! It begged us to take it away!"

"It volunteered to become a ship!"

Chapter 37 I Have Everything You Want

Even though Robert always felt that he was really talented, he had to admit that compared to the true protagonist of this world, he was just an ordinary person.

Although he possesses all three types of Haki, he can only say that he has mastered the basics at most, and he has not mastered much of the deeper development.

Take his own Observation Haki, which he awakened first, for example. Compared to the native innate talents of this world, it is far inferior.

Among the various development paths of Observation Haki, the easiest to achieve is long-range observation. With the help of the Rumble-Rumble Fruit, I mastered it from the beginning, and due to my extremely high mental attributes, I currently far surpass the vast majority of masters in the world.

Secondly, there's the ability to foresee the future. When Rayleigh was explaining Haki, he mentioned that some people were able to develop their Observation Haki to the point of foreseeing the future. The only people who have truly demonstrated this ability are Katakuri, Luffy, and Shanks.

Robert did trigger the ability to foresee the future once, but he cannot currently control it freely.

The last few types of Observation Haki cannot be achieved through training at all. For example, the ability of Queen Otohime of the Mermaid Kingdom to sense other people's emotions and even transmit her own consciousness to others and change their values ​​is purely a matter of personal talent.

Robert's master, Redfield, was able to read minds using Observation Haki, and could even read a limited amount of other people's memories; this was an innate ability of his.

Hearing the voice of all things is Roger's signature skill. He can even use Observation Haki to read the Poneglyphs directly, and communicating with plants and animals is naturally no problem for him.

Since Roger's death, only Luffy has the potential to develop the ability to hear the voice of all things. Although Momonosuke, that bastard, has also heard the voice of Zunesha, it is uncertain whether it is the effect of hearing the voice of all things.

Robert didn't consider himself one of those monsters with top-tier talents. When York mentioned that the ship was alive, he tried his best to scan it with his Observation Haki, but found nothing.

"You're saying that tree willingly begged you to take it away from Elbaf? Are there any Titans in the Great Hammer Chapter who can understand trees?"