The weather was fair, and the blue sky was clear.
A pitch-black steel ship rode the current toward Sikasis Island.
After passing through a current zone more than twenty kilometers wide, they finally came within sight of the lush, green Sikasis Island.
Apart from a few small beaches, the coast consisted of cliffs hundreds of meters high, riddled with countless caves.
There was nothing else around except a few strange birds circling overhead.
The Nautilus came to a stop beside a relatively low cliff.
After everyone emerged from the cabin, Noah casually sealed the Nautilus away.
"Let's set up camp first. I plan to rest here for a month and train everyone's abilities at the same time."
Uncle Joseph nodded. "Sounds good. After living in the submarine for almost a month, I've been missing life on land."
The group soon found a suitable place to set up camp. Noah released the wooden house and living facilities he had stored away, then installed some training equipment.
After lunch, they split into three groups. One stayed behind to guard the camp, while the other two began a thorough search.
After searching for more than two hours, they found the Flame-Flame Fruit among a large pile of refuse in a tidal cave by the shore.
They gave the fruit to Lilian, since fire powers were well suited to a cook.
After finding the Flame-Flame Fruit, they did not stop. There was a legend about treasure on the island, and although they did not know whether it was true, they decided to search the whole island thoroughly.
The caves inside Sikasis Island connected in every direction, so it took them three days of searching to finish exploring the entire island.
In the end, they came away with about 200 million Beli's worth of treasure.
The treasure had most likely been left behind by people who had come to explore the island or had ended up stranded there.
After all, Sikasis Island had no large edible animals. The coastal cliffs were nesting grounds for the strange birds, while black ants nested underground. The only plants were bitter banyan trees and poisonous sweet potatoes, and there were no visible freshwater rivers.
An ordinary person stranded here without food or fresh water would not last even a week. Unable to leave by sailboat, they could do little but wait for death.
Noah and the others picked up quite a few diaries in the island's caves. Many recorded the despair of those trapped there, as well as some horrific events.
After thoroughly looting the island, everyone began training.
Of course, Noah had not forgotten the shipwrecks on the seabed around Sikasis Island. Since he was here, he naturally would not pass them up.
This time, he did not do it himself. Instead, he had Vic go without a diving suit and take only an oxygen tank, diving down to the seabed in search of treasure.
Jay was put in charge of searching the areas beyond a certain depth.
Jay's plan for finding treasure on the seabed was simple: he would use graphite puppets connected by special graphene wires and control them from shore.
The multilayer composite graphene wires could currently extend more than ten kilometers without breaking.
This allowed Jay to control the graphite puppets from a distance and search the deep seabed for treasure.
Over the centuries, countless ships had sunk on the seabed around Sikasis Island, forming an underwater ship graveyard.
Although the number of wrecks here could not compare with the waters around the Sabaody Archipelago, the wrecks there had long since been picked over several times by Fish-Men.
The wrecks beneath the waters around Sikasis Island, however, remained untouched.
Using the graphene wires, Jay achieved an effect similar to projecting his consciousness, possessing one of the graphite puppets to observe the seabed.
The graphite puppets wore special searchlights on their heads and broke into the cabins of the sunken ships. With more than a dozen puppets under Jay's control, they quickly searched an entire wreck.
His targets were simple: gold, silver, jewels, swords, blades, Devil Fruits, Log Poses, or anything unusual.
On the fifth day, they found a Devil Fruit on the seabed northwest of Sikasis Island.
After Noah identified it, he confirmed that it was a Zoan-type Dog-Dog Fruit, Model: Red Fox. It was put away for the time being.
On the twelfth day, they found a stone stele covered in Ancient Script deep in a trench on the seabed south of Sikasis Island.
On the fifteenth day, they found another Devil Fruit. After identifying it, they confirmed it was the Paramecia-type Hole-Hole Fruit, which Ray ate.
The Hole-Hole Fruit granted spatial abilities much like the Door-Door Fruit, but besides opening wormholes, it could also be used to dig quickly.
However, long-distance teleportation through a wormhole had one prerequisite: a spatial coordinate had to be established in advance. For now, Ray could only establish five coordinates; he could not maintain any more than that.
The Hole-Hole Fruit also lacked the alternate space of the Door-Door Fruit, which had both advantages and disadvantages.
The advantage was that Wormhole Teleportation happened in an instant, without the need to travel through an alternate space as with the Door-Door Fruit.
The disadvantage was that the spatial coordinates had to be kept safe. Unlike a Door-Door Fruit user, who could hide in a nearby alternate space and secretly observe the normal world, he had no such option.
The Hole-Hole Fruit was very important to the Noah Family. Its ability could keep family members safe and offered considerable flexibility for both emergency retreats and emergency support.
After finding two Devil Fruits on the seabed around Sikasis Island, they found no more in the nearby waters.
When the month-long break came to an end,
Vic and Jay's haul from the seabed around Sikasis Island amounted to roughly 3.7 billion Beli's worth of treasure, two Devil Fruits, a Great Grade Sword in the form of a long miaodao, and an alloy war hammer of Skillful Grade Sword quality.
There were also 173 Log Poses, 24 Eternal Poses, one ancient stone tablet, 16 sailing logs, 34 treasure maps, 532 kilograms of Blue Tungsten Stone-a mixture containing tungsten and another unidentified rare metal-22 kilograms of Millennium Dragon bone, and three pieces of Adam Wood taken from shipwrecks.
As for other things such as steel, copper, and ceramics, Jay and Vic had no time to bring them back.
In fact, their underwater treasure hunt had not turned up every wreck in those waters. Some had sunk so long ago that they were buried beneath seabed sediment and marine life.
Even so, Noah was satisfied. Their planned time was up, and he had no intention of staying on Sikasis Island any longer. He only had Ray leave a spatial coordinate on the island.
The island had natural barriers and, on the surface, was a godforsaken place, making it well suited as a secret base or refuge.
If they encountered an enemy they could not defeat, he could bring people here to escape.
The Nautilus set sail again, heading due east for Nami's homeland, the Oykot Kingdom. Along the way, they would have to pass five inhabited island nations.