_________ POV Narration _________
The journey to the remains of God Valley didn't take as long as Francisco had anticipated it to.
It was somewhat difficult to find however, he had no Log Pose, and he doubted that there were any Log Poses that could point to an island that no longer existed...
Thankfully, he managed to borrow a much older map of the New World, which still had God Valley marked on it.
Francisco's memory was good enough to lead him through the waves from there, his sense of direction was at least good enough to know that he was going in a straight line.
Storms and whirlpools weren't of any concern to Francisco either, as he could easily slash the sky and sea if the situation asked for it.
The only real issue was that he was getting very minimal sleep... Only 2-3 hours a day. It was still a lot better than nothing, so the old pirate was pleased regardless.
Eventually, after around 5 weeks of fighting against the waves, he finally reached it... God Valley...
'A few patches of broken earth... A miracle any of it is even above water really...'
Francisco was lucky enough to find it. He relied heavily on his memories of where the Island should've been. Even then, he had little to go off of since the waters in the New World were extremely sporadic.
Looking at the small patches of land from a distance, it was impossible to tell that there was once an island there... Not just any island, but the biggest island in the entirety of the New World.
Sure, most of it was destroyed during the fall of the Rocks Pirates, but there was really no need for the Government to destroy whatever was left of it...
'Or so you'd think... I guess they thought it really necessary to erase Xebec from history...'
Francisco tied his small ship onto the island with a tight knot, before settling there and sleeping for a few hours.
'Diving deep into the sea is exhausting enough... Might as well do it while not half-asleep.'
And the first thing he did when he woke up was just that... He took off his shirt, rolled up his pants to his knees, took off his shoes and gripped his cutlass in his mouth, before diving right into the depths of the sea.
At first, he studied the places that once made up God Valley, he could only see parts of it deeply buried underneath the sea.
He could only see traces of what was there in the past, but it was hardly recognizable anymore.
The land underneath the waters was so scarred that it looked as if the gods had ravaged it.
Francisco couldn't help but sigh inwardly as he remembered God Valley...
'Xebec's blue flames melting rock and earth... Roger and Reyligh's blades and willpower cut through the land... Garp's fists broke rock and stone with ease... Whitebeard's tremors shook the island to its very core, fragmenting it almost irreparably...'
Francisco smiled a bit as he remembered just how many parties were involved back in that time.
It was a war to topple them all. It made every conflict since then look like a joke...
'And yet... Captain is somehow still cooking up something bigger than that...'
Francisco continued to dive deeper, searching around the flooded remains of God Valley for a while...
He eventually ran into a scorched field, even being underwater for 40 years hadn't healed the damage...
'This must be where Xebec died...
Really, it's a good thing he didn't have the usual invulnerability that Lunarians have... Otherwise, he may have truly never died...'
Ironically, the Celestial Dragons that tortured Xebec and put him on the path he had been on, had also been the ones to ultimately deal the most fatal blow to the Lunarian...
They took away his wings... A Lunarian without wings was just as vulnerable as a regular human, some even more so...
If Xebec had his wings at God Valley...
'Roger and Garp wouldn't have been able to win... Hell, I don't even know who could've killed him at that point... Maybe IM? Or the Elders? Not that we'll ever know...'
Francisco looked at the eternally scorched earth with an empty gaze, before shaking his head and swimming back to the surface to take a breath of air.
That process would continue for a bit, as Francsico did a bit of sightseeing around the remains, reminiscing a bit and even getting a few laughs as he remembered how lively God Valley used to be.
Sure, most of the pirates under Xebec were miserable when he was present... But Francisco still managed to make a lot of beautiful memories with them...
Memories that turned all the more sour when he was stabbed in the back.
But he had already forgiven Whitebeard... He had forgiven them all...
'Xebec ruled through fear... It's only a given that he'd be backstabbed... My loyalty was what led to my downfall. Can I really blame Whitebeard and the others for freeing themselves?
All of them were conquerors, they were people with free will, all subjugated and crushed under Xebec's heel...
At least most of them ended up doing well for themselves... John not included. And Kaido... I guess?'
Eventually, Francisco started swimming towards the place that he burned into his mind. The place where he had 'died'.
Well, at least he went where the spot was supposed to be. That part of the island was completely terraformed by whatever the Government had used to destroy the island.
The more Francisco looked at it, the more he realised that Pluton Cannons were used to destroy the island...
'We had assumed this to be the case, but some confirmation is always nice...'
It was regrettable that there was so little left of his former home, but he didn't dwell too much on it.
Instead, he started swimming around the outskirts of what had formerly been God Valley.
For days on end, he dove deeper and deeper, coming to the surface only for the occasional breath.
And one day, after around a week of struggle, he finally found it...
'There it is... The Vault of Xebec...'
A pristine golden Cube with strange markings littering all of its sides. It was around 40 meters in length and height, as well as around 70 meters diagonally on the inside.
An object of unknown origin and material, the material itself was harder than anything Francisco had ever seen in the past.
Xebec had salvaged it from the ruins of a strange forgotten island...
The island seemed to have a mind of its own, it had sunk to the depths of the sea after Xebec took the cube from it, and it seemed to vanish there.
'Even after coating our ship and descending to the depths, we were unable to find it... We wasted a few good months down there... The island simply disappeared.'
But the cube was still with them... It was the only proof they had that the island ever existed in the first place and that it wasn't just some mirage in Xebec's mad mind.
No matter what methods they used, the cube was unmoved... Neither Xebec nor Francisco could truly damage it.
Even Whitebeard with his Tremors was unable to put even a dent or a crack on the seemingly impenetrable surface of the cube...
And that was the case for a long time... Until Xebec finally managed to learn how to open it up.
It was rather silly actually...
One day, he just happened to touch a part of the markings on the cube while his hand was covered in haki... And the Cube reacted.
For the first time since they found it, it reacted.
The markings on it shone a bright red, and Xebec's willpower was sapped greatly...
To the point where even the muscle in his hand seemed to have lost its strength.
But Xebec was willful... He managed to fight back in time, pitting its will against that of the cube and recovered his strength as well.
'Someone with a weaker will wouldn't have been able to open it... I was hoping that this would be a good way to test Enel at first, but it's not really needed anymore...'
The cube was tied to a thick chain, Xebec had put it there in case he ever wanted to take it out himself, without the help of Shiki.
There was also once a bubble of air around the Cube, but it seemed to have burst at some point...
'Doesn't matter... This thing was strong enough to shrug off all of our combined efforts... A bit of water and pressure shouldn't be able to do anything to it.'
Without further ado, Francisco grabbed onto the chains and hauled the large cube towards the surface.
It wasn't a light object to carry around, Francsico fought against it for a good hour before he finally dragged it to the surface, resting it on one of the small pieces of land that were still above water.
"... Now to open this thing..."
Francisco shook his head as he spoke out to nobody in particular. He walked to the side, looking for the proper markings to open up the cube.
Upon finding them, he simply covered his right hand in haki and placed his palm on them.
In a split second, he could feel his power being sapped, but he was more than prepared for it.
His will fought against it almost instantly, the ancient cube didn't even get to sap his muscles of strength.
A loud mechanism could be heard within the cube, as the side of the cube Francisco touched started to shift, forming a door, which slid open inwardly, disappearing into the thick wall.
Francisco just sighed and walked in.
The inside was just a large open room, big enough to match the size of the cube.
The interior was also well-lit, there were strange inscriptions on the inside of the cube that seemingly shone at all times.
The walls themselves were all 1 meter thick, so it left a lot of size for the inside, which was filled with...
"Nothing..."
It was almost empty.
Unlike John, Xebec didn't care much for shiny trinkets and useless treasures.
Instead, the Vault of Xebec was home to a few treasures that were easily... Inestimable.
"The type of treasure that you wouldn't be able to get even if you had all the money in the world..."
The first treasure in the vault...
The vault itself.
"The Cube of the ancient city... I'll be bringing this back with me, it would be a waste to leave it here.
It can be a good panic room in case things go sideways... I doubt even a Pluton Cannon can do anything to it..."
The next, arguably even more valuable treasure inside the vault, at least to Francsico...
'The Sabre of Xebec...'
It was a sword that Xebec carried in order to mock all of the swordsmen in the world, yet it lost its name exactly because of that.
It used to be one of the Named Blades, the highest grade at that. But any name it might've had disappeared the second a legend like Xebec put his hands on it.
The sabre was to be only known as the 'Sabre of Xebec' from that moment on.
"Heh... I remember him putting it on his waist just to make fun of me... 'As long as I have this, you better not dare call yourself the strongest swordsman near me!' or so he said..."
Francisco couldn't help but smile as he remembered one of Xebec's most childish moments.
The legendary swordsman then walked over to the sabre, it was about as long as his former blade, but the hilt of the guard was a lot more narrow, the hilt itself was black, instead of green.
Francisco put his hand on it with a blank gaze, slowly pulling it from its sheath as he studied it.
"But dispute only wielding it as a joke... The formerly white blade still turned permanently black in his hands..."
The sabre was straight, and its edge was clearly nicked in a few places, but it was almost as if the blade was designed that way...
'At least now I've gotten my hands on a good sword... Good thing Xebec decided to put it in the vault instead of carrying it with him... Well, good thing he wasn't an actual swordsman... Not that he had much talent for it.'
Francisco took another look around the room, before spotting another treasure... The only other treasure that was stored within the cube...
"The Phylactery Urn..."
It was a rather silly toy in Francsico's opinion... It was the result of a superstitious ritual that followed the writings Xebec had found within the cube.
It didn't seem to do anything in particular. But in essence, it was supposed to tie a person's soul to an object, in turn making their bodies immortal, to an extent.
It was, oddly enough, similar to the way Linlin's soul fruit worked. At least in the way the ritual was supposed to manipulate the soul and place it elsewhere, although it was esoteric as all hell.
The only real difference was that the ritual didn't kill the one that did it... Meanwhile, Linlin outright killed people when she pulled out their souls.
'It didn't work... Xebec struggled a lot to translate those inscriptions as well...'
Despite the fact that Francsico considered the item to be nothing more than a waste of time and a mistake... He still felt the strange compulsion to touch it...
And touch it he did... The second his finger touched the urn, it shined a light, it seemed to gain a life of its own as it.
The urn shook before its surface seemed to reflect something strange...
The light reflecting onto the urn seemed to shift uncontrollably, forming a strange illusion. The image that was formed was not one that Francisco recognized immediately...
'The inside of a laboratory...'
But he did manage to make it out in the end... All that he could see was a dark, futuristic laboratory, the focus of the image was a large green tube, which seemed to be filled with water and...
"A growing embryo..."
Francisco gulped as his eyes narrowed.
'Even if the ritual failed, Xebec's soul was still somewhat tied to this thing, which is why we kept it... It always showed the location of his body when someone touched it...'
"Shit... I need to report this to the others..."
__________________________________________________________________
Hope you liked the chapter!
Pretty interesting reveal, huh?
As you might expect, I added a lot of stuff to the OP world, since I like adding stuff. This has been an AU for a long time anyway.
Anyhow, I'm off to sleep, have a long day tomorrow.
If u want to support me look up VeganMaster(Vegan Cult) on Patre_on, you'd also get 15 chapters in advance (or 10/5 depending on tier)
_________ POV Narration _________
The journey to the remains of God Valley didn't take as long as Francisco had anticipated it to.
It was somewhat difficult to find however, he had no Log Pose, and he doubted that there were any Log Poses that could point to an island that no longer existed...
Thankfully, he managed to borrow a much older map of the New World, which still had God Valley marked on it.
Francisco's memory was good enough to lead him through the waves from there, his sense of direction was at least good enough to know that he was going in a straight line.
Storms and whirlpools weren't of any concern to Francisco either, as he could easily slash the sky and sea if the situation asked for it.
The only real issue was that he was getting very minimal sleep... Only 2-3 hours a day. It was still a lot better than nothing, so the old pirate was pleased regardless.
Eventually, after around 5 weeks of fighting against the waves, he finally reached it... God Valley...
'A few patches of broken earth... A miracle any of it is even above water really...'
Francisco was lucky enough to find it. He relied heavily on his memories of where the Island should've been. Even then, he had little to go off of since the waters in the New World were extremely sporadic.
Looking at the small patches of land from a distance, it was impossible to tell that there was once an island there... Not just any island, but the biggest island in the entirety of the New World.
Sure, most of it was destroyed during the fall of the Rocks Pirates, but there was really no need for the Government to destroy whatever was left of it...
'Or so you'd think... I guess they thought it really necessary to erase Xebec from history...'
Francisco tied his small ship onto the island with a tight knot, before settling there and sleeping for a few hours.
'Diving deep into the sea is exhausting enough... Might as well do it while not half-asleep.'
And the first thing he did when he woke up was just that... He took off his shirt, rolled up his pants to his knees, took off his shoes and gripped his cutlass in his mouth, before diving right into the depths of the sea.
At first, he studied the places that once made up God Valley, he could only see parts of it deeply buried underneath the sea.
He could only see traces of what was there in the past, but it was hardly recognizable anymore.
The land underneath the waters was so scarred that it looked as if the gods had ravaged it.
Francisco couldn't help but sigh inwardly as he remembered God Valley...
'Xebec's blue flames melting rock and earth... Roger and Reyligh's blades and willpower cut through the land... Garp's fists broke rock and stone with ease... Whitebeard's tremors shook the island to its very core, fragmenting it almost irreparably...'
Francisco smiled a bit as he remembered just how many parties were involved back in that time.
It was a war to topple them all. It made every conflict since then look like a joke...
'And yet... Captain is somehow still cooking up something bigger than that...'
Francisco continued to dive deeper, searching around the flooded remains of God Valley for a while...
He eventually ran into a scorched field, even being underwater for 40 years hadn't healed the damage...
'This must be where Xebec died...
Really, it's a good thing he didn't have the usual invulnerability that Lunarians have... Otherwise, he may have truly never died...'
Ironically, the Celestial Dragons that tortured Xebec and put him on the path he had been on, had also been the ones to ultimately deal the most fatal blow to the Lunarian...
They took away his wings... A Lunarian without wings was just as vulnerable as a regular human, some even more so...
If Xebec had his wings at God Valley...
'Roger and Garp wouldn't have been able to win... Hell, I don't even know who could've killed him at that point... Maybe IM? Or the Elders? Not that we'll ever know...'
Francisco looked at the eternally scorched earth with an empty gaze, before shaking his head and swimming back to the surface to take a breath of air.
That process would continue for a bit, as Francsico did a bit of sightseeing around the remains, reminiscing a bit and even getting a few laughs as he remembered how lively God Valley used to be.
Sure, most of the pirates under Xebec were miserable when he was present... But Francisco still managed to make a lot of beautiful memories with them...
Memories that turned all the more sour when he was stabbed in the back.
But he had already forgiven Whitebeard... He had forgiven them all...
'Xebec ruled through fear... It's only a given that he'd be backstabbed... My loyalty was what led to my downfall. Can I really blame Whitebeard and the others for freeing themselves?
All of them were conquerors, they were people with free will, all subjugated and crushed under Xebec's heel...
At least most of them ended up doing well for themselves... John not included. And Kaido... I guess?'
Eventually, Francisco started swimming towards the place that he burned into his mind. The place where he had 'died'.
Well, at least he went where the spot was supposed to be. That part of the island was completely terraformed by whatever the Government had used to destroy the island.
The more Francisco looked at it, the more he realised that Pluton Cannons were used to destroy the island...
'We had assumed this to be the case, but some confirmation is always nice...'
It was regrettable that there was so little left of his former home, but he didn't dwell too much on it.
Instead, he started swimming around the outskirts of what had formerly been God Valley.
For days on end, he dove deeper and deeper, coming to the surface only for the occasional breath.
And one day, after around a week of struggle, he finally found it...
'There it is... The Vault of Xebec...'
A pristine golden Cube with strange markings littering all of its sides. It was around 40 meters in length and height, as well as around 70 meters diagonally on the inside.
An object of unknown origin and material, the material itself was harder than anything Francisco had ever seen in the past.
Xebec had salvaged it from the ruins of a strange forgotten island...
The island seemed to have a mind of its own, it had sunk to the depths of the sea after Xebec took the cube from it, and it seemed to vanish there.
'Even after coating our ship and descending to the depths, we were unable to find it... We wasted a few good months down there... The island simply disappeared.'
But the cube was still with them... It was the only proof they had that the island ever existed in the first place and that it wasn't just some mirage in Xebec's mad mind.
No matter what methods they used, the cube was unmoved... Neither Xebec nor Francisco could truly damage it.
Even Whitebeard with his Tremors was unable to put even a dent or a crack on the seemingly impenetrable surface of the cube...
And that was the case for a long time... Until Xebec finally managed to learn how to open it up.
It was rather silly actually...
One day, he just happened to touch a part of the markings on the cube while his hand was covered in haki... And the Cube reacted.
For the first time since they found it, it reacted.
The markings on it shone a bright red, and Xebec's willpower was sapped greatly...
To the point where even the muscle in his hand seemed to have lost its strength.
But Xebec was willful... He managed to fight back in time, pitting its will against that of the cube and recovered his strength as well.
'Someone with a weaker will wouldn't have been able to open it... I was hoping that this would be a good way to test Enel at first, but it's not really needed anymore...'
The cube was tied to a thick chain, Xebec had put it there in case he ever wanted to take it out himself, without the help of Shiki.
There was also once a bubble of air around the Cube, but it seemed to have burst at some point...
'Doesn't matter... This thing was strong enough to shrug off all of our combined efforts... A bit of water and pressure shouldn't be able to do anything to it.'
Without further ado, Francisco grabbed onto the chains and hauled the large cube towards the surface.
It wasn't a light object to carry around, Francsico fought against it for a good hour before he finally dragged it to the surface, resting it on one of the small pieces of land that were still above water.
"... Now to open this thing..."
Francisco shook his head as he spoke out to nobody in particular. He walked to the side, looking for the proper markings to open up the cube.
Upon finding them, he simply covered his right hand in haki and placed his palm on them.
In a split second, he could feel his power being sapped, but he was more than prepared for it.
His will fought against it almost instantly, the ancient cube didn't even get to sap his muscles of strength.
A loud mechanism could be heard within the cube, as the side of the cube Francisco touched started to shift, forming a door, which slid open inwardly, disappearing into the thick wall.
Francisco just sighed and walked in.
The inside was just a large open room, big enough to match the size of the cube.
The interior was also well-lit, there were strange inscriptions on the inside of the cube that seemingly shone at all times.
The walls themselves were all 1 meter thick, so it left a lot of size for the inside, which was filled with...
"Nothing..."
It was almost empty.
Unlike John, Xebec didn't care much for shiny trinkets and useless treasures.
Instead, the Vault of Xebec was home to a few treasures that were easily... Inestimable.
"The type of treasure that you wouldn't be able to get even if you had all the money in the world..."
The first treasure in the vault...
The vault itself.
"The Cube of the ancient city... I'll be bringing this back with me, it would be a waste to leave it here.
It can be a good panic room in case things go sideways... I doubt even a Pluton Cannon can do anything to it..."
The next, arguably even more valuable treasure inside the vault, at least to Francsico...
'The Sabre of Xebec...'
It was a sword that Xebec carried in order to mock all of the swordsmen in the world, yet it lost its name exactly because of that.
It used to be one of the Named Blades, the highest grade at that. But any name it might've had disappeared the second a legend like Xebec put his hands on it.
The sabre was to be only known as the 'Sabre of Xebec' from that moment on.
"Heh... I remember him putting it on his waist just to make fun of me... 'As long as I have this, you better not dare call yourself the strongest swordsman near me!' or so he said..."
Francisco couldn't help but smile as he remembered one of Xebec's most childish moments.
The legendary swordsman then walked over to the sabre, it was about as long as his former blade, but the hilt of the guard was a lot more narrow, the hilt itself was black, instead of green.
Francisco put his hand on it with a blank gaze, slowly pulling it from its sheath as he studied it.
"But dispute only wielding it as a joke... The formerly white blade still turned permanently black in his hands..."
The sabre was straight, and its edge was clearly nicked in a few places, but it was almost as if the blade was designed that way...
'At least now I've gotten my hands on a good sword... Good thing Xebec decided to put it in the vault instead of carrying it with him... Well, good thing he wasn't an actual swordsman... Not that he had much talent for it.'
Francisco took another look around the room, before spotting another treasure... The only other treasure that was stored within the cube...
"The Phylactery Urn..."
It was a rather silly toy in Francsico's opinion... It was the result of a superstitious ritual that followed the writings Xebec had found within the cube.
It didn't seem to do anything in particular. But in essence, it was supposed to tie a person's soul to an object, in turn making their bodies immortal, to an extent.
It was, oddly enough, similar to the way Linlin's soul fruit worked. At least in the way the ritual was supposed to manipulate the soul and place it elsewhere, although it was esoteric as all hell.
The only real difference was that the ritual didn't kill the one that did it... Meanwhile, Linlin outright killed people when she pulled out their souls.
'It didn't work... Xebec struggled a lot to translate those inscriptions as well...'
Despite the fact that Francsico considered the item to be nothing more than a waste of time and a mistake... He still felt the strange compulsion to touch it...
And touch it he did... The second his finger touched the urn, it shined a light, it seemed to gain a life of its own as it.
The urn shook before its surface seemed to reflect something strange...
The light reflecting onto the urn seemed to shift uncontrollably, forming a strange illusion. The image that was formed was not one that Francisco recognized immediately...
'The inside of a laboratory...'
But he did manage to make it out in the end... All that he could see was a dark, futuristic laboratory, the focus of the image was a large green tube, which seemed to be filled with water and...
"A growing embryo..."
Francisco gulped as his eyes narrowed.
'Even if the ritual failed, Xebec's soul was still somewhat tied to this thing, which is why we kept it... It always showed the location of his body when someone touched it...'
"Shit... I need to report this to the others..."
__________________________________________________________________
Hope you liked the chapter!
Pretty interesting reveal, huh?
As you might expect, I added a lot of stuff to the OP world, since I like adding stuff. This has been an AU for a long time anyway.
Anyhow, I'm off to sleep, have a long day tomorrow.
If u want to support me look up VeganMaster(Vegan Cult) on Patre_on, you'd also get 15 chapters in advance (or 10/5 depending on tier)
