"As expected. These two Devil Fruits really were in Moria's hands already."
"Wouldn't surprise me if he dug them out of some grave."
Yuto set the boxes down and gave Aramaki an approving nod.
"Not bad. Did you end up clashing with Moria?"
Aramaki's expression held a touch of disdain.
"There was a bit of friction, Your Highness, but that guy's combat ability is nothing to speak of. He could not even use Haki. I only needed two moves to defeat him."
That was actually selling Moria a little short.
For all his flaws, Moria was still a pirate who had survived in the New World. It was not as if he literally did not know Haki.
The problem was that Haki as a concept could be very arbitrary. After Kaido smashed his crew into the ground and shattered his fighting spirit, it was only natural that Moria could no longer draw on his Haki.
Looking at it that way, surviving Kaido's "lessons" was already beyond most people.
"Moria lost his will to fight because Kaido wiped out his crew. That does not mean every great pirate on the sea is at his level."
Yuto reminded him once. Seeing that Aramaki seemed to take it to heart, he did not nag further.
Life quieted down again. Yuto went back to training and getting stronger, and to drifting from island to island, sightseeing and sampling local customs.
…
The next day, before dawn, the only sound in Stella's room was her slow, even breathing.
Suddenly, the door creaked open. Perona's little pink haired head peeked out. She furtively scanned the corridor. Only after confirming that no one was around did she finally let out a breath.
"I finally waited until everyone was gone."
She clenched her tiny fists.
"That awful guy wants to make this young lady his slave. I have to run away while they are not paying attention."
She hoisted a small bundle onto her back from who knew where. Her legs buckled and she almost toppled forward.
"So heavy…"
The bundle was stuffed with all the little trinkets Stella had used to coax and entertain her the previous afternoon. Perona had picked through them over and over. In the end she could not bear to leave a single one behind, so she simply wrapped them all up and took them.
Gritting her teeth, Perona tiptoed out of the room and gently closed the door.
"Huh? Why did my shadow suddenly get so big?"
Moonlight poured across the deck and cast her shadow onto the door. Just as she finished closing it, she caught a glimpse of her own silhouette suddenly ballooning in size.
She turned her head, trembling, and saw Yuto in his pajamas standing behind her, smiling in a way that could only be described as maliciously amused.
"I… I was just going to the bathroom…"
Perona could not think of any clever excuse on such short notice, so she decided to treat a dead horse as if it were still alive and see what happened.
Yuto nodded with a smile.
"Do you think I believe you?"
"You… believe me…?"
Believe your head.
Yuto grabbed her like a kitten by the back of her collar and walked back into the room.
"Let go of me!"
Perona flailed in midair, kicking and squirming, but his hand on the back of her neck might as well have been the grip of fate.
Her shrieks woke Stella. She opened her eyes to see Yuto walking over with Perona dangling from his hand.
She was about to get up and bow, but Yuto did not even look at her. He plunked Perona down on Stella's bed, lifted his hand and gave a brisk series of smacks to her soft backside, making Perona's eyes well up with tears.
"Uuu… So mean… I am definitely going to escape one day…"
Smack. Smack. Smack.
"Uuu… Do not hit me… I will not dare do it again…"
…
Two months later, on Ohara, inside the Tree of Knowledge.
"Honored Saint Yuto, this is the Tree of Knowledge. There are hundreds of thousands of volumes here, preserving important documents from scholars all over the world."
A short man was walking at Yuto's side.
He looked to be middle aged. The front of his head was shaved smooth, with green hair left on the top and back. Together with his huge, exaggerated beard, he really did look like a three leaf clover.
He wore a red and white vertically striped shirt, a wide belt and trousers, and a blue black coat.
He was the leader of Ohara's scholars: Professor Clover.
Sunlight filtered evenly through specially made panes of glass, falling over bronze bookcases. Hundreds of thousands of ancient tomes were arranged by subject. Copper plates on their spines glinted with etched titles.
Suspended spiral staircases of special metal wound upward, their surfaces coated with matte anti corrosion paint.
In both his previous life and this one, Yuto was seeing the inside of the Tree of Knowledge for the first time. He was genuinely curious.
Objectively speaking, less than a million books would not even rival a mid sized city library. But the sheer scale of the Tree of Knowledge and the way generations of Ohara scholars had reshaped its interior gave the place a sense of fresh wonder.
If even Yuto felt that way, there was no need to mention Stella and Perona.
"Wow. There are so many books."
Perona was dangling from Yuto's hand. She was not even a meter tall yet, and in his three meter tall grip she looked exactly like a big hotdog held upright.
Her big eyes sparkled as she looked around, exclaiming nonstop.
After two months of wits and will against Yuto, she still had not managed to escape from the Sanctuary. Somewhere along the way she had completely stopped being afraid of him and even took to provoking him on purpose, to the terror of the ship's servants.
They were always afraid that one day Yuto would finally lose his temper at Perona and the punishment would somehow fall on their heads instead.
Yuto pinched Perona's cheek, making her puff up her face in anger all over again.
"This is probably the largest library in the world other than Mary Geoise. I imagine you have quite a lot of history books here, Professor."
He glanced at Professor Clover as he spoke.
A bead of cold sweat slid down Clover's forehead.
"What did he mean by that…?"
"Has the World Government already noticed what we have been doing?"
"No. If Olvia and the others had been exposed, there is no way a Celestial Dragon would come here in person. Calm down. Calm down…"
His mind spun through a hundred possibilities, but outwardly he remained composed.
"I wonder, what area of history does Your Highness wish to read about? The books here were deposited by scholars from every corner of the world."
"To be honest, even I have not managed to finish everything in the Tree of Knowledge. There are some historical texts, but I cannot guarantee they will meet your expectations."
Yuto chuckled.
"In that case, forget it. I was only asking casually."
In his heart, however, he thought to himself:
"This old man acted like a pure bookworm in the original story. I did not expect him to have a bit of wit."
In the original timeline, before the Buster Call, the World Government had actually arranged an evacuation ship to take Ohara's civilians away.
But when Clover spoke with Saturn, he had gone on and on at length, basically reporting all of Ohara's research results himself.
Saturn listened and thought, so, you people already know this much.
That would not do. They had to be wiped out, roots and all.
Only then did he order the navy to sink the evacuation ship.
Because of this incident, Yuto had always assumed Professor Clover was a straightforward, honest man.
It did not really matter though. Yuto had not come here for him this time.
It was already Sea Circle Calendar 1499. Ohara's destruction was less than a year away. Nico Robin should have essentially finished learning how to read the Poneglyphs. Yuto had decided to take her away early.
First, having someone at his side who could read the ancient characters would cut down on a lot of trouble.
Yes, there must be people within the World Government who could read them too, but those were not the sort of people a "waste faction" Celestial Dragon like Yuto was supposed to have contact with.
Second, Yuto particularly liked Robin's personality in the original story.
Third, Perona was still a child. If she did not have a friend around her own age, it would not be surprising if she ended up warped into the slightly neurotic girl she became in canon.
She was his little slave now, after all. It would be troublesome if his own property developed psychological problems.