Stone Tablets Are Books Too

After hearing her son voice his doubts, Charlotte Linlin, who understood Homies better, laughed and explained, "Mamamama, Rock Assimilation should be an inherent property of the base material itself, while the ability to fly is a new property granted by Mama's Devil Fruit ability~"

"So the base material's innate properties count as one part, and the properties granted by the Soul-Soul Fruit ability count as another. Each occupies a fixed portion of the soul, and they don't conflict with each other? Only new properties—or rather, properties of the same type—compete with one another? That makes sense. Just like how a Devil Fruit user who isn't physically strong can still wield tremendous power through their Fruit ability." Mousse did not fall into a fixed way of thinking this time and quickly understood. He was immediately overjoyed.

To gain the ability to fly, Mousse had sacrificed the Stone Tablet Homie's own offensive power. Yet he had never expected the base material's innate properties to let it transform into a Rock Giant and unleash such formidable Combat Power. This was truly a huge gain!

The only slight regret was that only the Stone Tablet Homie's main body could fly, so there was no point expecting the Rock Giant to take to the air as well. Then again, if something that huge could fly, it would practically be as broken as Golden Lion's Float-Float Fruit in the movie.

Though it could not fly, the Rock Giant's Combat Power alone was already formidable. Its size was not as outrageous as Pica's in Dressrosa, but after thinking it over carefully, Mousse realized that it was actually stronger.

Pica was human and had limited stamina, whereas a Non-Rechargeable Homie like the Stone Tablet Homie possessed infinite stamina, just like those Chess Soldiers.

Pica's assimilated giant could be killed simply by locating his main body, while this fellow's main body...

Perhaps only the Kozuki Family, who had mastered the secret processing technique, and a tiny number of individuals such as Brook, who could attack souls, could currently harm it in this world?

A shrunken-down Pica?

It was really an enhanced Pica!

However, Mousse quickly realized a problem, and his expression immediately turned awkward. "Damn, I got a little too excited. Split-type Homies share life with their master. This Big Head itself has almost no weaknesses, but if someone just kills—not knocks out—me, its weak chicken master whom anyone can bully right now, then it'll be finished too!"

Thus, Mousse decisively chose not to take it along on this trip. Without him nearby to hold it back, this Homie could instead play a greater role.

And if the Marines truly launched an all-out war, Totto Land would be the first to bear the brunt of it. Home needed a powerful force like this, which could rival a Sweet Commander if used properly, even more.

Mousse, on the other hand, was a smaller target and might not even run into the Marines. Besides, even if he brought this fellow along, the Rock Giant's style of fighting made it far more likely to accidentally injure him than protect him.

As he thought about it, Mousse suddenly felt somewhat wistful. Rock Assimilation was certainly a godly skill for crushing weaklings, but its greatest value actually lay in its ability to reshape terrain.

In the world of One Piece, where the land was limited yet mountains abounded, the usefulness of altering terrain could not be overstated.

Unfortunately, the family was in dire peril now. They could only neglect the root for the branches, treating its relatively secondary Combat Power as a treasure while having no time to benefit the people of the world.

Although he had already decided not to bring it, Mousse still had the Stone Tablet Homie display its Mini Form—a seal about the size of a child's fist.

Because it was floating, Mousse easily grabbed it in his hand. But when he tried to bring it before his eyes for a closer look, he made a fool of himself.

Although the Stone Tablet Homie had become so tiny, its mass of over three hundred tons had not decreased in the slightest. Its floating state eliminated its weight, but its inertia—in other words, its mass—remained.

When Mousse grabbed it and pulled it toward himself, it was like a child swinging a giant hammer. He could not control it at all, lost his balance, and nearly fell over.

Charlotte Linlin, standing nearby, displayed no awareness whatsoever of her role as a mother and laughed herself senseless.

Having lost face, Mousse angrily named the Homie "Big Head," leaving it looking aggrieved. It could not resist Mousse, its master, and could only sulkily revert to its original stone tablet form to express its dissatisfaction.

Seeing this, Mousse could not help complaining again that Homies being too humanlike was troublesome. But he stopped halfway through, because he noticed the Poneglyph carved into the stone tablet.

Then Mousse realized that he seemed to have overlooked something important. "A stone tablet isn't an ordinary rock. It bears writing, and very important writing at that. If even blueprints count as books, then a stone tablet should count too, right?"

Mousse first thought that he could directly read the contents of the Poneglyph on the stone tablet, just as he normally read books quickly.

Although he had no interest in becoming the so-called One Piece, perhaps because his body had become younger, his curiosity was far stronger than in his previous life. In the end, he could not resist reaching out to touch it.

Then Mousse understood why Charlotte Linlin in the original story had insisted on waiting for Brulee's Three-Eyed Tribe ability to awaken. The Book-Book Fruit's rapid reading merely imprinted the words and images in a book into one's mind.

If you could understand them, it naturally saved a great deal of time. But if you could not recognize or comprehend them, then after reading, you had merely memorized a bunch of symbols that looked like ghostly scribbles. You still could not understand their meaning.

However, Mousse soon smiled again. "But there's one huge difference between Brother Mondol and me. He never turned a Poneglyph into a Homie!"

Although the original story later changed the setting after introducing Oden Kozuki, saying that Roger's Observation Haki, the Voice of All Things, could only obtain extremely vague information from Poneglyphs, and that they could only be fully deciphered after Oden joined him—allowing him to successfully reach the Final Island, Laugh Tale, and become the One Piece—

Mousse suspected that even so, it was only because the stones themselves lacked intelligence and could not express things clearly. If that was the case, then this Poneglyph had now been made into a Homie, with intelligence greater than that of ordinary humans.

Yet this time, Mousse had miscalculated. Not only could Big Head not decipher the Poneglyph, it did not even know its general meaning.

All it knew was that there were many special stones like itself in this world, and that the ancient writing on these stone tablets recorded great secrets from a very, very long time ago.

Homies could not disobey their master's orders, nor did they dare lie to their master. Thus, although Big Head's answer was disappointing, every word was an unchangeable fact, causing Mousse to fall into thought.

Even before Mousse had transmigrated, readers had questioned the scene in which Rayleigh stated at the Sabaody Archipelago that Roger had learned about the Poneglyphs through the Voice of All Things after Oden appeared. They believed that Oden, a character conceived later, did not fit with the previously written plot, creating a bug.

Judging from Big Head's answer now, that might really have been the case.

The real world had to be internally consistent. If there was a contradiction, one could only choose between them. "It seems this real world follows the later setting?"