For some time afterward,
Noah stopped searching for treasure on the seabed. Instead, he made several secret trips to Loguetown, purchasing a large quantity of steel, shipbuilding equipment, construction materials, and navigational instruments.
He then trained during the day and built a secret dock in the northwestern bay at night.
The site of the secret dock had been a small hill beside the coast. Noah, Vic, and the others worked together to hollow it out, excavating a chamber fifty meters high and nearly 30,000 square meters in area.
They also dug a tunnel through the cliff on the coastal side, wide enough for a ship to pass through. The exit gate had a steel frame covered with a layer of rock.
Building the secret dock took Noah and the others a month and a half.
Jay, an apprentice shipwright, followed Noah there every night to help build the family's second vessel with his own hands.
Uncle Joseph, Joshua, Anthony, and the others also came to help carry materials and parts.
Although Noah was not a professional naval architect, the vessel he was building this time was not a traditional wooden sailing ship, but a submarine made of steel.
Compared with a fancy sailing ship, Noah felt a submarine was better suited to his family.
The first submarine had been rather crude and simple, after all, but Noah intended to design the second one carefully.
It was designed to be 56 meters long, displace 400 tons, and accommodate 20 people of ordinary size.
It had hybrid propulsion-water jets, a manually pedaled propeller, and an electric propeller-a battery system, an internal air-exchange system that could be replenished with air stored in cards, an electric lighting system, a separate washroom, a diving chamber, a temporary food storeroom, a sleeping compartment, a control room, and a periscope with an all-round view.
To increase the room inside, Noah improved the way buoyancy was controlled. Previously, he had changed buoyancy by taking in and expelling water. This time, he used cards to add or remove iron blocks instead.
Iron was about seven times as dense as water, after all, which meant that replacing the old water tanks with iron compartments reduced their volume to one-seventh of what it had been.
This improvement more than doubled the space available to move around inside the submarine.
Clearly, this submarine was a version made specifically for Noah. No one else could use it at all.
For Noah, who lacked much specialized shipbuilding expertise, it was an inevitable choice.
Of course, for safety's sake, he also added emergency escape equipment this time, something he had not provided on the first submarine.
For example, he had a diving equipment company in Loguetown custom-make a batch of advanced diving suits. The 30 suits cost him more than forty million Beli.
When lives were at stake, tens of millions of Beli were nothing.
He also ordered a batch of high-strength alloy steel to strengthen the submarine's frame.
Building the submarine had cost nearly five hundred million Beli in total, not counting their labor.
It was not until September 1503
that the submarine completed its sea trials.
September 11.
Inside the secret dock.
The family's members had all gathered together. Looking at the steel submarine before them, they felt proud to have taken part in building it.
Noah pulled down the red cloth covering one side.
Painted beneath it was the submarine's name: the Nautilus.
"Family! Let's board and set out to sea!"
Before long, everyone had boarded the Nautilus.
Noah even brought Uncle Joseph aboard.
As for the Noah Family's businesses on the island, they hired two clerks for the hardware store and temporarily closed up the estate and orchard. Noah took the equipment from the hardware workshop and some of the wind turbines with him in cards.
He did the same with the equipment at the secret dock, taking all of it with him in cards.
The family did not know when they would return after leaving Starfish Island. If someone discovered the secret dock while they were gone, the equipment might be damaged or seized.
Noah did not want to come back and find that someone had robbed him while he was away.
The Nautilus left the secret dock through its underwater opening and entered the vast, boundless sea.
As soon as they reached the sea, Noah instructed Joshua and Mary to take turns using Observation Haki to sense their surroundings and train their Observation Haki.
Joshua's talent for Observation Haki was much like Noah's, likewise leaning toward Ultra-Wide Area coverage. He could sense everything within a radius of about one kilometer.
Mary's talent for Observation Haki, on the other hand, leaned toward emotions. She could sense other people's moods, though her range was only a little over a hundred meters.
Everyone aboard had their own duties.
Uncle Joseph served as lookout, in charge of the periscope, with Tomani as his substitute.
Joshua and Mary served as safety officers, taking turns using Observation Haki to survey their surroundings.
Vic and Anthony provided propulsion, taking turns pedaling to drive the propeller.
Lilith was the navigator, Lilian the cook, Ray the logistics officer, and Jay the shipwright.
"Full speed ahead toward Shells Town."
Lilith consulted the nautical chart and quickly picked up a pen to plot their course.
The area where Shells Town was located lay in the northeastern East Blue. The town was part of the Four-Leaf Clover Kingdom and stood on the main island of the Four-Leaf Clover Islands.
Along the way, they would pass Hobby Island, where Cocoyasi Village was located; Moonlight Island, where Syrup Village was located; and the Organ Islands, where Orange Town was located. Only then would they reach Shells Town in the Four-Leaf Clover Islands.
Noah had little interest in approaching the so-called members of the protagonist group along the way. Apart from Nami's family, whom he could try to win over, the other members of the group and the Noah Family were destined to follow different paths.
Behind King Luffy stood his grandfather, a Marine Vice Admiral; his father, the leader of the Revolutionary Army; his mentor, the Celestial Dragon Red-Haired Shanks; his eldest brother, the Pirate King's son; and his second brother, the Revolutionary Army's chief of staff.
Zoro was from a branch of the Shimotsuki Family, and his master was Shimotsuki Koshiro. Wano Country and the Revolutionary Army were involved behind him.
Usopp was Yasopp's son, and Yasopp was the sniper of the Red Hair Pirates.
Sanji was a member of the Vinsmoke Family. And what kind of man was Vinsmoke Judge? A warmonger who destroyed countries and slaughtered cities.
Nami and Luffy's group were not on the same path at all. The Oykot Kingdom, where she was born, had been destroyed by pirates just last year, and her birth parents had died at pirates' hands. Later, her adoptive mother, Bellemere, had also died because of the Arlong Pirates, and Nami and her hometown had been enslaved by the Arlong Pirates for more than eight years.
If Noah were Nami, he would never join the Straw Hat Pirates or any other pirate force, no matter what.
Not to mention that the Straw Hat Pirates later took Jinbe on as their helmsman, which was simply rubbing salt in Nami's wounds.
If Luffy had not done Nami the favor of defeating the Arlong Pirates back then, she could never have joined the Straw Hat Pirates. Moreover, the Straw Hat Pirates had not killed Arlong, Nezumi, and the others, leaving Cocoyasi Village exposed to a grave threat.
If the Five Elders had even a little sense, the Straw Hat Pirates would have died a hundred times over.
For example, they could have sent CP to kidnap Nami's sister, Kaya, and the others, then set a trap for the Straw Hat Pirates to walk into. The Straw Hat Pirates would have taken the bait, one hundred percent.
For that reason, Noah and his group did not approach the protagonist group.
As for Nami, she was only two years old now and had not suffered under the Arlong Pirates' oppression. Her adoptive mother was also a retired Marine, so it was not a suitable time to approach her either.