Heading for Ohara / Robin: I Knew It

No one knew how long the waves of maddening laughter had gone on, but suddenly, pale arms formed from petals sprouted from the shoulders and necks of the bystanders surrounding Ruidio, precisely squeezing the vital blood vessels in every one of their necks.

Within seconds, their eyes rolled back, and they collapsed to the ground.

Ruidio remained seated, his cheek propped on one hand as he watched the slender shadow of a figure wearing a cowboy hat fall across the ground.

The woman who had appeared silently behind him spoke in a deep, cool voice. "That strange teleportation ability of yours... I'm the target you locked onto, aren't I?"

Chapter 25: Heading for Ohara

[Cover serial: Bonney Basking in the Sun 1: "A New Day"]

[Inside a church in the South Blue, sealed off from all light, Bonney stood on a bed and energetically raised both hands.]

Ruidio didn't turn around. He simply raised his right hand and smiled at the mysterious flower woman behind him. "Shake my hand and I'll tell you."

She didn't shake it.

Tap, tap, tap... The sound of high heels rang out.

A loose white coat with fur trim swept past the corner of his eye as the tall woman behind him walked around to stand before him.

She wore a cowboy hat that shaded her deep-set eyes. Her skin was fair, and her nose was high and sharply defined. Beneath her open sun coat, she wore a revealing combination of a strappy top, denim hot pants, and knee-high, high-heeled boots.

Ruidio studied her.

Nico Robin was observing Ruidio too.

She watched the black-haired boy, whose skills were far from ordinary, rise to his feet. Then she suddenly asked, "Is there really an Ancient Weapon in Wano Country?"

So you were eavesdropping.

"I haven't confirmed it myself," Ruidio said casually, "but it should be pretty close to the truth. Even if your boss goes there and finds nothing, I didn't deliberately lie to him."

"..." Robin stared at him. "How do you know he's my boss?"

Ruidio simply held out his hand again, smiling invitingly.

Robin said, "If someone like Mr. Crocodile got his hands on an Ancient Weapon... do you really want to see the world burn that badly?"

She stared at Ruidio and reached out to give his hand a light shake.

["Why Did Mom Die?" quest accepted]

Ruidio said, "Wano Country is the territory of Kaido, one of the Four Emperors. With your boss's little bag of tricks, going there to pick a fight would be pure suicide, so you don't need to worry. Since I know Crocodile is looking for the Ancient Weapon Pluton, what's so strange about me guessing he'd seek out an Ohara scholar who can read Ancient Script to work with?"

Robin was startled and tried to pull her hand back, but Ruidio seized it.

"With a pretty face like yours, it'd be hard not to recognize you. The Devil Child with a bounty of 79 million, Nico Robin."

Ruidio continued to grip Robin's hand. "My 'strange teleportation ability' locked onto you? Heh, you're right! It's so strange. I don't know why, but I seem to be able to lock onto certain walking corpses who've already lost all attachment to life...

"Nico Robin, do you think you're a walking corpse?"

"...?!"

Robin was shocked and furious. She had never expected an answer like that.

Pain flashed in her eyes. She glared at the boy and demanded, "What did those things you had these people on the ground shout just now mean?!"

"What do you mean, what did they mean?"

Ruidio's attention had been drawn to something else. He let Robin shake his hand off and answered absentmindedly, "I just had them shout whatever. What, have you heard that weird noise before?"

The moment he had taken Robin's hand, the radar quest he had been unable to accept for so long had finally shown some activity. The [quest accepted] notification went without saying, but when Ruidio took a closer look at the quest details, the change in the [distance] line immediately caught his eye—

[Distance: extremely far (teleport available) (delivery available)]

What's this new thing?

Teleport means I can teleport to the client's side, but what does "delivery" mean?

In an instant, numerous guesses flashed through Ruidio's mind.

But just then, petals sprouted across his body, forming eight pale arms belonging to Robin on his shoulders, back, chest, and waist.

The moment they took shape, the arms simultaneously wrapped around Ruidio's neck from behind and bent the joints in his arms and legs backward...

Ruidio was astonished. He couldn't bring any of his usual five tons of strength to bear!

Whenever he tried to move a muscle, the joints twisted by Robin's Flower-Flower Fruit arms immediately went numb and erupted in pain, leaving him unable to exert any force at all!

[Name: Nico Robin]

[Overall strength: ★★★]

[Mastered: Joint Lock (ultimate), Flower-Flower Fruit (expert), running (expert), basic marksmanship (proficient), basic swordsmanship (beginner)]

Ultimate?

It was the first time Ruidio had seen that rating.

Robin's Joint Lock techniques had reached the pinnacle. The arms she had grown on Ruidio were positioned perfectly, each one locking down a critical point where his muscles tensed and his bones transmitted force. They tugged at his nerves, allowing her to use the slightest force and attack angles impossible for a normal human to suppress his brute strength completely.

Before the beast that could easily tear her apart had even bared its claws, she had locked it in a cage.

The eight arms on Ruidio's body had bent him into a bizarre position that left him utterly unable to exert himself, forcing him to look up at the Sand Kingdom's vast sky and the upside-down buildings... He laughed. "No wonder you dare say strength and speed are meaningless against you. You really are impressive!"

When did I ever say that?

Robin's face was taut as she stared fixedly at Ruidio. "I'll ask you one last time. You..."

She stopped before she could finish.

Because Ruidio had suddenly vanished, without the slightest warning.

The eight arms she had grown on Ruidio with her ability were left like rootless duckweed. They broke apart into a flurry of petals that drifted to the ground...

Just as he had in Crocodile's office and in the town of Yuba, the boy had vanished into thin air right before her eyes once again.

And where Ruidio had disappeared, a transparent prism rotated gently counterclockwise...

[Whenever Nico Robin awoke from her dreams at midnight, she always asked herself again and again why her mother had died that day. If she had been a little more selfish back then, might her mother have been willing to give up her dream, leave with her, and live on together?]

[Quest objective: ensure Nico Olvia survives the Buster Call.]

[Client: Nico Robin]

[Estimated difficulty: ★★★★★]

It was a small island covered in greenery. The gigantic ancient tree towering over its center was especially conspicuous. This was the world-famous Tree of Knowledge, five thousand years old, with an even more famous enormous library built inside it.

In the woods several hundred meters west of the Tree of Knowledge, Ruidio had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. He stared at the enormous tree in the distance, somewhat dazed.

On the open grass near the Tree of Knowledge, a group of agents in black suits had herded a group of ordinarily dressed people together at gunpoint and placed them under guard. Inside the clear space in the crowd, an old man with a clover-shaped hairstyle appeared to be injured. He lay facedown on the ground, his fate unknown.

The leader of the black-suited agents stood there casually as two of his subordinates dragged away a long, white-haired woman whose figure was remarkably similar to Robin's. But just then, a little black-haired girl rushed out of the captive crowd and shouted something after them...

"Boom!"

A thunderous crash suddenly rang out overhead! Even the ground beneath his feet seemed to tremble.

"..." Ruidio looked away and leaped between several trees in the woods. He soon reached the highest point, emerged through the dense canopy, and looked into the distance.

To the northwest, a male giant twenty meters tall charged through the dense woods as though plowing through a wheat field, racing toward the Tree of Knowledge.

Due west, a panicked crowd scrambled to board an evacuation ship.

And all around the island...

On the boundless blue sea, ten large warships stood in pairs in every direction, surrounding the island so completely that nothing could get through.

Every warship flashed repeatedly with gunfire. Shell after shell mercilessly bombarded the island, raining down everywhere and sending flames and thick smoke billowing into the sky.

"Boom!" "Boom!" "Boom!" "Boom!"...

The ten large warships blanketed the island with artillery fire, destroying everything in sight.

This was the Navy's emergency mobilization, the Buster Call—the Buster Call that Ruidio's quest required him to ensure Nico Olvia survived.

The white-haired woman being dragged away by the agents was Nico Olvia.

Nico Robin's mother.

And the little girl who had rushed out of the crowd to call after her was naturally eight-year-old Nico Robin.

This was Ohara in the West Blue.

Ohara, seventeen years ago, as it was being wiped off the map by the Buster Call.

"Oh..."

Ruidio was somewhat at a loss for words. He glanced at the system. Apart from Robin's quest, all the other quests on the list were grayed out and unavailable. "Damn."

Am I fighting monkeys, chickens, and dogs? Is this for real?

Chapter 26: Robin: I Knew It

[Cover serial: Bonney Basking in the Sun 2: "Following the Doctor's Orders"]

[Bonney obediently took her medicine → Queen Mother Connie poured a bottle of green medicine into a bathtub → Bonney soaked weakly in the green medicinal bath, happily humming Nika's drumbeat → Bonney changed into new clothes and admired herself in the mirror.]

"Robin! There you are! I was looking for you! You found Olvia!"

The nearly twenty-meter-tall male giant, dressed in rags, had raced all the way there. He finally reached the burning Tree of Knowledge and panted with exhaustion.

Fire and thick smoke filled the surroundings, but the panic and screams of the crowd failed to disturb the mother and daughter as they embraced in tears after their long separation.

Olvia made a swift decision and shouted to the giant, "Jaguar D. Saul! I'm counting on you to take care of Robin! Please, you have to get my daughter out of here!"

"No!" Eight-year-old Robin wept uncontrollably, clutching Olvia's clothes. "Mom, what about you? Aren't you coming with me?"

"Olvia... you..." Jaguar D. Saul's expression changed, deeply moved.

"I still have something to take care of." Olvia smiled faintly. Robin cried out, "Mom! I don't want to be separated from you again!" Olvia held her daughter's frail, trembling shoulders and said calmly, "Robin, if you're a true scholar of Ohara, you should understand that 'history' is a precious treasure belonging to all humanity. It can illuminate the 'future' you will live in."

"Our research is over, and Ohara cannot escape destruction today..."

Olvia turned to look at the Tree of Knowledge, now engulfed in flames. Under the Buster Call's bombardment, the World Government agents had been too busy looking after themselves, allowing the dozens of scholars they had held captive to escape. But not one of them had fled. Instead, they had rushed without hesitation into the sea of fire around the Tree of Knowledge to save the historical research materials and precious books.

"Even if we save just one more book, that too is your future." Her gaze grew resolute. "We must never give up!"

"Mom!!"

Little Robin wailed in anguish as the twenty-meter giant Jaguar D. Saul, his eyes red, carried her in his hand and raced toward the western shore without looking back, his pounding footsteps shaking the ground like an earthquake.

"..."

Olvia covered her face and wept bitterly.

Beside her, Dr. Clover, with his clover-shaped hair, had remained silent all this time. Tears fell silently from his eyes as he sighed. "Let's go."

"Yes!"