Since he could not guarantee the success of Golden Lion's Apostle conversion for the time being, Noah had no choice but to use a conservative backup plan.
Noah activated the secret base he had previously kept in reserve.
Sikasis Island.
Ray opened a teleportation wormhole and brought some of the IQ Plants and the feathered villagers to Sikasis Island.
Noah sealed the beasts Indigo had created through modification in cards. He also sealed the floating islets in cards.
Some of the enormous floating islands were divided into several pieces and sealed separately.
By now, Noah's card space had reached a maximum size equivalent to a cube three kilometers on each side, giving it a volume of 27 cubic kilometers. It could just barely fit some of the smaller islands.
As for the seawater and fresh water Golden Lion had taken up, Noah let it fall back into the sea after sealing Golden Lion.
Meanwhile, on Sikasis Island.
The more than two thousand feathered villagers also accepted the Noah Family's rule. After all, unlike the cold and ruthless Golden Lion, Noah at least would not force them to do anything. As long as they helped cultivate the IQ Plants and selected some of their people to become peripheral members of the Noah Family, Noah promised they could live safely on Sikasis Island.
Although Sikasis Island was barren, that was not necessarily a bad thing, nor was it impossible to change.
While managing affairs on the island, Lilith and Mary also captured the strange birds there.
Sikasis Island had a sizable population of strange birds, more than thirteen hundred of all sizes. The adults were enormous and had considerable attacking power, enough to kill an unprepared ordinary person in an instant.
Lilith used her ability to concoct a special toxin that made the strange birds addicted to it after eating it.
Of course, the addiction was not particularly strong, roughly equivalent to the effect of catnip on cats.
She also prepared drugs that made the strange birds' bodies itch, along with an antidote. She secretly poisoned the birds, then had the feathered people feed them the antidote, thereby fostering closeness between them.
With the strange birds and feathered people as its core, Lilith formed an aerial cavalry unit two hundred strong.
In the world of pirates, the seas were vast, and air forces were more flexible and mobile than ground or naval forces.
Although an adult strange bird could carry a maximum load of only a little over six hundred kilograms, that was not impossible to change.
IQ Plants, for example, could make animals grow enormous and turn berserk, causing their strength to soar.
To be precise, IQ Plants contained a substance that could cause living creatures to evolve.
The Noah Family naturally thought little of Golden Lion's legion of berserk beasts, but the possibility of increasing the strange birds' size was a research direction worth pursuing.
In the future, the Noah Family would surely recruit scientists specializing in biology and medicine, putting research into the IQ Plant on the right track.
The Drum Kingdom, for example, had many skilled doctors and pharmaceutical researchers.
For now, however, it was too early to set their sights on the Drum Kingdom's doctors.
The Drum Kingdom's king at this time was still Wapol's father. Wapol had probably ascended the throne around the year 1510 of the Sea Circle Calendar.
Noah had worked that out from Princess Vivi's memories. In 1512, Princess Vivi had accompanied Cobra to Mary Geoise for a World Government meeting, during which Wapol had slapped her.
Their conflict had broken out because Cobra had publicly criticized Wapol's plan to "exterminate the doctors."
Clearly, given Wapol's personality, he would surely have introduced the "exterminate the doctors" plan soon after ascending the throne, within a year or two. Noah therefore surmised that Wapol had ascended the throne around 1510.
Of course, Noah certainly would not wait until 1510. The Drum Kingdom had some valuable Devil Fruits, such as the Munch-Munch Fruit, the Mushroom-Mushroom Fruit, and the Human-Human Fruit, Model: Ordinary Human. Those Devil Fruits were worth going there early for.
Besides forming the aerial cavalry unit, Lilith also used special toxin-based pheromones to successfully subdue some of the black ants beneath Sikasis Island.
The reason for subduing the Hell Black Ants was not their combat power, but their ecological niche on Sikasis Island. They were cultivators rather than predators.
After all, aside from the strange birds that could fly, there were only poisonous sweet potatoes and bitter banyan trees on Sikasis Island, with few other large animals. The thumb-sized Hell Black Ants simply could not obtain food by hunting animals.
As a result, the Hell Black Ants constantly dug underground caverns and gathered leaves from the bitter banyan trees and poisonous sweet potatoes to use as a growing medium for several kinds of edible fungi.
By growing mushrooms, the Hell Black Ants were able to maintain their population.
Lilith's younger sister, Lilian, had previously discovered many delicious mushrooms on Sikasis Island, including "cream mushrooms," "honey mushrooms," "beef mushrooms," and "cilantro mushrooms."
These mushrooms were delicious and highly nutritious.
Lilith planned to have the Hell Black Ants supply mushrooms to the feathered people's village, while the village supplied the ants with sea beast meat.
The Hell Black Ants needed sea beast meat because a diet of mushrooms alone would leave their larvae underdeveloped.
To obtain sea beast meat, the Hell Black Ants dug pools into the rocky cliffs along the coast, taking advantage of the rise and fall of the tides. They then placed various mushrooms inside to attract sea beasts and fish during high tide. When the tide receded, some of the sea beasts and fish would be left in the pools.
But this method yielded only a small amount of sea beast meat, which was another reason the Hell Black Ant population struggled to grow.
By making use of this, the feathered people and the Hell Black Ants could establish a basic symbiotic relationship.
That way, Sikasis Island could become largely self-sufficient, preventing its food supply from being cut off by an unexpected situation.
Of course, to prevent uninvited guests from entering Sikasis Island, Lilith followed Noah's instructions and set up numerous hidden sentry posts to monitor the surrounding waters.
At the same time, they used Ray's Hole-Hole Fruit to remodel the underground caverns of Sikasis Island into a true subterranean labyrinth and set a considerable number of traps inside.
Noah also took action, selecting some ordinary islands from among Golden Lion's floating islands and cutting them into pieces. He then used the pieces to fill in several small beaches on Sikasis Island, ensuring there were no tidal flats where outside ships could land.
With the addition of the aerial cavalry unit, Sikasis Island's basic defense system was complete.
But this was not yet the final version.
After all, at its present stage, Sikasis Island could only remain fixed in these waters. Any fixed island would be difficult to defend once it came into conflict with the World Government.
Therefore, Sikasis Island's future was to become a floating fortress high in the sky. Only then could they ensure it would not be easily located and destroyed by the World Government.
As the initial remodeling of Sikasis Island neared completion, Anthony and Vic, who were in the Domini Islands, finally found the Paste-Paste Fruit growing on a deserted island.