"Hold on, why'd you stop reading?"
Marcus had suddenly gone quiet, and the Straw Hats all turned to look at him with confused expressions.
He held up the worn logbook. "Because what comes next is basically spoiler territory. Looks like Noland completed his journey through both Paradise and the New World, sailed all the way around the globe back to the North Blue, and then... got publicly executed. Just like the Pirate King."
The crew understood what he was getting at immediately. Even Luffy grasped the meaning, though he took a bit longer to process it. Adventure came from the unknown. If you already knew how everything turned out, what was the point? The mystery was half the fun, right?
He wrestled with his curiosity for a moment, clearly torn between wanting to know what happened and wanting to preserve the sense of discovery. Finally, he made his decision.
"Forget it then. I'm gonna keep looking for treasure!" He grinned and tugged his straw hat down lower before heading deeper into the ruins to search for more gold.
The others looked at him, then at Marcus, then at the logbook that was barely a third of the way finished.
One by one, they drifted away to join the treasure hunt or explore other parts of the ruins. In the end, only Robin remained, sitting cross-legged on the stone floor across from Marcus.
Clearly, the thrill of unknown adventure appealed more to most of the crew than reading about someone else's completed journey.
Marcus looked at her curiously. "Interested in the True History?"
"Yes."
He turned to the next page.
After leaving Skypiea, or rather, after departing from Jaya before it was blasted into the sky, Noland's crew went on to explore many more islands. They visited Long Ring Long Land, where both the animals and plants were absurdly elongated. Then they reached what would eventually become Water 7, though four hundred years ago it was barely worthy of the name "city."
Back then, it was nothing more than a gathering place for failures and castaways, people who had washed up on its shores with nowhere else to go. The island was battered by annual tsunamis that made any kind of stable development nearly impossible. It had no natural resources or indigenous population, and offered nothing but hardship to anyone foolish enough to try settling there.
In the face of such natural disasters, humanity seemed small and pathetic.
But Water 7 eventually prospered, and according to Noland's notes, that transformation began with the arrival of pirates and adventurers. Ships that could survive the brutal journey through the Grand Line often ended up there, either by choice or because the strange currents and devastating tsunamis forced them to make landfall.
At that time, Water 7 was little more than a pirate haven. It was a lawless port where desperate men drank away their sorrows and plotted their next moves.
But Noland changed that.
Or rather, he possessed a quality that drew people to him. No matter what he attempted, he threw himself into it completely, never giving up even when faced with seemingly impossible odds. That drive and refusal to quit, inspired the island's scattered inhabitants. He organized them, gave them purpose, and showed them that they could build something lasting even on this cursed rock.
Before long, the earliest version of Water 7 began taking shape, and shipbuilding became its signature industry.
After all, any vessel that could withstand the wrath of the tsunami Aqua Laguna and still remain seaworthy deserved to be called a quality ship.
"So that's how Water 7 developed," Marcus muttered. "I never knew it started as basically a pirate slum."
Robin wasn't surprised that he knew about these places. "Noland seemed to bring progress wherever he went, especially to the more backward islands. The less developed a place was, the more dramatic the change he inspired."
Marcus glanced at the logbook, still not even halfway through. He thought for a moment, then began flipping rapidly through the pages, scanning entries rather than reading them word by word.
Robin looked surprised but didn't stop him. After all, her goal wasn't to follow Noland's adventures step by step, but to find anything related to the True History that might be recorded in the logbook.
The later entries mostly consisted of trivial observations and complaints about various islands, along with botanical notes about new plant species he'd discovered. But one thing became clear, four hundred years ago, the seas had been just as chaotic and pirate-infested as they were now. Maybe even more so.
The route Noland had taken through his travels closely mirrored what would become Luffy's path through the Grand Line. Almost everything Marcus had seen in the story so far appeared in these notes: Dressrosa in the New World, the closed-off Wano Country, even the giants' homeland of Elbaph.
Then Marcus reached an entry that made him pause.
He went to Lodestar Island?
The so-called final destination of the Log Pose, the endpoint that supposedly marked the end of the Grand Line, was mentioned in Noland's logbook. But according to his notes, it wasn't some mystical or sacred location. It certainly wasn't One Piece.
It was just an ordinary island.
When Noland's Log Pose reached its end and lost its magnetic target, he'd explored Lodestar Island thoroughly. There he'd discovered something interesting, a red Poneglyph, different from any of the gray ones he'd seen before.
But since he couldn't read the ancient script, he'd simply noted its existence and moved on. Five years after leaving the North Blue, he completed his journey through both Paradise and the New World, then sailed all the way back home to share his stories with his people.
That's when things went wrong.
The King of the North Blue heard Noland speak of the City of Gold on Jaya. Driven by greed, he demanded that Noland lead an expedition to retrieve the treasure.
But when they arrived, Skypiea was gone, shot up into the clouds by a Knock-Up Stream. Everything Noland had described, the golden bell, the ancient city, all of it had vanished without a trace.
So even though he had told the truth, he was branded a liar. The "Liar Noland," they called him. A joke, a cautionary tale, a fool who'd wasted the king's money on fantasies.
Marcus sat back, processing what he'd read. The parallels were striking once you saw them.
Noland told the truth and was remembered as the biggest liar in history. Roger, on the other hand, might have told a lie, and ignited the Great Pirate Era with people treating his words as gospel.
One left behind a "false" City of Gold that was actually real.
The other spoke of a "real" treasure that might not have existed in the way everyone imagined.
It's a deliberate parallel, isn't it? Oda set them up as mirror opposites.
He thought about it more carefully. Noland never studied the Poneglyphs, or cared about ancient history. He just wanted to explore and see new things. But he improved many places he visited, and ultimately died because he told the truth. Roger loved adventure too, but he actively sought out the Poneglyphs and uncovered the True History, and then chose to leave the world with a riddle. Maybe what he said wasn't a complete lie, but neither was it the full truth. Perhaps the One Piece he mentioned wasn't his own, or maybe he never even hid it.
My brain hurts, he rubbed his temples.
"So Lodestar Island isn't actually One Piece..." Robin said, looking thoughtful.
It made sense when you thought about it. Rumors across all the seas claimed that the final point of the Log Pose led to the legendary treasure. But that was clearly wrong.
Plenty of people had completed the journey through Paradise. Even the notoriously difficult New World, while certainly more dangerous with its harsh weather and powerful enemies, wasn't impossible to traverse. An experienced crew could probably make the journey from the New World's entrance to its end in two or three years. Even taking it slow, ten years should be more than enough.
But Roger had been dead for over twenty years now. If Lodestar Island really was One Piece, someone should have found it by now. One of the Four Emperors, maybe, or another powerful crew.
Yet no new Pirate King had emerged.
Which could only mean one thing, the last island on the Log Pose wasn't One Piece itself, but rather held the key to discovering it.
Marcus stretched and yawned. "All this reading's making me tired. Too bad there aren't any training techniques written in here. It would've been nice to learn whatever made Noland so strong."
He handed the logbook back to Robin. "If you find anything interesting about the True History, let me know. I'm gonna go join the treasure hunt before Luffy finds all the good stuff."
Marcus headed off to rejoin the crew, leaving Robin alone with the logbook.
She flipped back to the entry about Lodestar Island, studying it closely.
"A red Poneglyph," she murmured. "So the puzzle pieces are finally appearing. But if there was a red Poneglyph on Lodestar Island four hundred years ago... it's probably long gone by now."
She continued reading, searching for any other mentions of Poneglyphs or hints about their locations.
Unfortunately, Noland never brought them up again. He'd clearly never cared about the ancient stones beyond noting their existence. In his time, Roger hadn't yet turned the True History into the legend of One Piece. Back then, the Poneglyphs were just strange rocks with incomprehensible writing, curiosities without apparent value.
It made sense that most people ignored them.