Spandine clicked his tongue.
"How boring."
"Hey! Give it to him!"
"Let him speak."
Dr. Clover whispered to Robin beside him:
"Robin, get out of here."
"Once you hear what I have to say, you'll become a criminal too."
Robin stared blankly at Dr. Clover.
"Doctor..."
Under his urgent gaze, she gritted her teeth, turned, and left.
The Den Den Mushi was handed to Dr. Clover, and the voice of one of the Five Elders came through:
"You are Dr. Clover of Ohara, the authority on archaeology, correct?"
"You have made outstanding contributions to the world's culture."
"Yet you chose to take the path of crime."
"What a pity."
Dr. Clover said:
"History belongs to all humanity."
"No one has the right to suppress people's curiosity about it."
"Spare me your hypocrisy, Five Elders."
The Elder on the other end said:
"If you decipher the Poneglyphs, you could awaken an Ancient Weapon."
"If someone with ulterior motives exploited it, it would endanger the world."
Dr. Clover spoke in a low voice:
"Whatever history may hold..."
"As long as humans created it, we should accept all of it."
"If we can learn everything without fear..."
"Then no matter what happens, we'll have a way to deal with it."
The Elder on the other end of the Den Den Mushi said:
"Your thinking is far too idealistic."
Dr. Clover said:
"Is it?"
"I suspect it's because history holds secrets you don't want anyone to know."
"More than what the Poneglyphs record, we want to know why they exist."
"Why did our ancestors record their history on indestructible stone tablets, scattering them across the world for future generations?"
"Because there was a risk that those records would be destroyed, wasn't it?"
"In other words, there was a force in the world that