Chapter 199: Ancient Weapon (3)

——

Cling!

Clang!

In Alabasta, 320 meters under the Royal Palace, an underground chamber existed. Currently, hundreds of people wearing lab coats along with thousands of people with collars around their necks, clearly slaves, were working on a huge clump of metal.

The slaves were hammering different parts of the metal chunk so the whole place was filled with sounds of metal clattering each other.

Though calling it a "metal chunk" wouldn't be quite right as it was a futuristic machine, in the form of a giant Earthworm.

Around the pointy head of the 'Earthworm', Vivi and Amon were standing side by side.

-

—

-

|Amon Pov|

We are currently underground. Under Alabasta. Remember the Poneglyph in Alabasta, and how it was under the ground? Turns out there is another floor under that floor a few hundred meters below.

How did I find this? The Ponegyplh above had the information written on it that Robin read for me. It seems she lied to Crocodile in cannon, smart girl.

Either way, in this "floor", Pluton, the literal Ancient Weapon is present. I had theorised a lot about what Pluton and Uranus are, and while I still don't know what the latter is, the first one is pretty clear to me.

A giant Mechanical Earthworm? Yeah, I didn't expect this when I found it two years ago. And why is this soooo big?

I looked ahead, my eyes were slightly awestruck.

"Wow... I can never get enough of this sight." I heard Vivi's voice from my side as I noted she was right.

From my point of view, I can only see the head of the 'Earthworm'. But with my sensing ability from Goro, I can tell this thing is 3 kilometres big, easily able to take down cities just by rolling around.

We weren't alone in this place. Many, by many I mean thousands, of slaves and scientists, were working on the metallic body of the Ancient Weapon while I and Vivi stood a little far.

As for why Vivi is here... she is the only one who can operate the thing, well, other than me. Having electrical powers is absolute when your target is a machine.

Yet, honestly, there is no need for her to be here, today at least.

"Vivi," I called as she turned around with her bright blue eyes. "You didn't need to come today. You should have rested." I said as she smiled.

"No way. I can't just leave my husband alone, that would be inappropriate for a wife." She nudged me and wrapped her arms on my arm. "I will go everywhere you go."

I kissed her on the forehead briefly and turned to the Ancient Weapon again. I tried my best to not smack Vivi on the face because of her clingy personality. So I rather started to think of random things.

First of all, why am I here? More so, why did I say to Raki that I would stay here for months?

The answer to that question is: as much as I don't want to spend time with the seriously clingy Vivi, I need to be here. The ancient weapon is in a bad shape, very much destroyed. Parts of it are missing and there is no way to fix it.

Why? The first problem was – I didn't know how to fix it. I know quite a lot of things because my speed lets me learn anything I want in less than an hour, but that knowledge wasn't enough to make me think of ways where I can fix such a thing as this. So I did what needed to be done, get my hands on the blueprints...

Yet after that, I still couldn't progress at all, because the metal the weapon is made out of is the most durable metal known to man, it probably is made of some variation of the Poneglyphs, and Poneglyphs are made of materials that can't be melted even after I use my Plasma attacks.

So in that case, attaching normal metals to fix this is not acceptable. It would be destroyed soon if I did that. So what now?

That's where Wapol's fruit comes to play. In canon, Wapol had created something called "Wapol Metal" that he created by chewing on different metals and creating a stronger one. Scientists were fascinated by it if I remember correctly.

Wapol could eat anything, even things like magma and poison yet still be fine. So the best way to create a metal that can match the durability of Pluton is to make Wapol eat the Poneglyphs and spit them out as moldable materials. So that's what I am doing.

Since Wapol is dead and I had his fruit, I gave the fruit to a Giant who has a big enough mouth to chew on a whole Poneglyph without a problem. Of course, I didn't have a Giant subordinate, so I had to buy a slave from Saobaody.

People might assume the hardest part was to get the Poneglyph, but that's not the case. Apparently, the Ponegylph of O'hara was underwater. As I said, the Ponegylphs can't be destroyed, so when the island was destroyed, the thing just submerged to the bottom of the sea. Robin never went to fetch it since she was too scared, so I had to do it.

I only got one Poneglyph from there, and I have 10 more that I got from different parts of the world. I wonder how the government would react knowing I'm stealing Poneglyphs left and right... anyway.

The giant I bought is a slave, so I don't have to treat it like a human. He works all day and night, chewing on normal metals and creating strong metals, and when the metal can't become any stronger, he takes a bite from a Ponegyplh and chews it along with an already strengthened metal.

And thus, "Amon Metal" gets created.

Finally, after a few months of work, enough Amon Metal has been created to be used to fix the missing parts of Pluton. So here I am, I came here since only I can mould the metal as I please using a bit of electromagnetism manipulation.

"Follow me," I asked Vivi as she nodded and followed behind me. I walked towards the giant who was munching on metals and spitting them out, his eyes hollow as he kept staring at the ground above.

I touched a chunk of metal that he had spat out and controlled myself from feeling disgusted. I slowly streamed electricity on the metal, as it started to heat up, slowly becoming red in colour.

As I said, Ponegyplh metal can even withstand my plasma attacks, but this is not pure Poneglyph metal. It is mixed with different types of other metals so it is a lot weaker than the actual thing, though it's still way more durable than any other alternatives. Either way, I can now heat it up enough to mould it. Just because I have electricity power doesn't mean I have full control over Electromagnetism, I think I need to awaken my fruit for that, so for now, the best I can do is mould the electromagnetic field around the metal and reform it only when it's heated enough.

Zzhhhh~

The metal was now fully heated, and I could see Vivi standing a few steps back because of the heat. The awe was clear in her eyes. The metal then slowly reformed, taking the form of a humanoid being and soon eyes, nose, mouth and hairline appeared in the humanoid being's face.

"Wait..." Vivi's voice rang out from behind. "Is that me? Wow!"

I chuckled softly as I started forming the torso of the metal. Soon, breasts matching the size of Vivi appeared in the body as I noticed many people looking this way. Vivi's face reddened as she yelled.

"Hey! S- stop! What are you doing! People are watching!"

I chuckled and again reformed the metal, the metal became almost-liquid and fell on the floor as Vivi released a relieved sigh. Alright, the teasing aside, this works. The metal is weak enough for me to barely control but strong enough to match Pluton's durability.

I then turned to Vivi. "Princess, you should return now. I would work here for at least 10 days straight. After that, I would need you to work with me, so take a break from everything for these 10 days, I want you to be in peak condition when I need you." I said sternly as she nodded.

This thing in front of me is not Pluton. Only when the machine would have a descendant of the Nefertiti family inside it, controlling it, would the machine be enough to be called "Pluton". So Pluton is not a single thing, it's two things that make a "Pluton".

And why Vivi? To make this thing function, one needs to use Haki as its power source. But not everybody's Haki would work. Only the Haki of a person of the Nefertiti family can make this machine work. Well, at least for now. It's only a matter of time before I break this restriction.

Suddenly the decision of marrying Vivi wasn't just a politically horny thought. As my loyal Wife, she would be a perfect weapon. Nice.

**

**

**