One piece: Evolving Towards a New Race

The next day everyone woke up quite early and started preparing themselves for the day, Ars, Oak and Rook prepared their weapons just in case they would be needed, the weapons in question being sabers and swords that Ars had collected from killing the thugs. Lily prepared simply by being hyped about exploring and had already started to run around quite excited, and Koral prepared medical instruments and medicines while keeping an eye on Lily.

They started going up the opening between the trees that looked like an old path. This opening or path led towards the interior of the island, the path in question was quite steep, but with quite a bit of climbing here and there they arrived at what looked like a half moon shaped hole in the rocks.

 When they crossed it they realized the place looked worse from the outside,from the outside it looked like a large cluster of gigantic trees on top of a rock, but on the inside, it had large patches of forests everywhere, they were also places where the terrain was quite good to build their new place. There were rivers, a lake and a lot of flat land to build and cultivate if they needed.

"I have to admit this place looks much more hospitable on the inside than I thought! " Koral commented, and they all agreed. They all looked at Ars who also agreed, a little bit surprised they were thinking he already knew about this but that didn't seem to be the case.

"What??? I'm also surprised about it. I have never been here, I'm just following directions…" Ars looked almost amused by the look on their faces, knowing that they had misunderstood him.

He kept walking in the direction the compass was pointing, while walking he was slowly drawing a rough map of the island or at least the parts they passed by, marking locations with potential to create certain buildings that would make it easier to live on the island. 

After a few kilometers they noticed they were being stalked by a pack of wolves, which was bad news, but there were also good news, their number wasn't too exaggerated, looking like it would only be 5 wolves, that would mean that it was a 3v5 with Lily and Koral sitting this out.

They searched for a place with a good amount of free space so they wouldn't be unexpectedly ambushed in the middle of the fight from a different angle, thankfully they found one soon enough.

They stopped in the middle of the place, it was a clearing close to 50 meters in radius. Shortly after they reached the middle of it, the wolves followed them out. They hesitated when they saw that the prey that they were hunting was standing in the distance looking at them.

Ars looked at the wolves and noticed that they were now cautiously starting to go around slowly, Ars took out his weapon, a sword, it wasn't anything special but it would do the job, Oak and Rook did the same and Lily and Koral got to the middle of them, for protection, but Koral also took out a dagger and coated it with poison.

Suddenly the wolf in the back howled and other four wolves charged at them, Ars being in the front had to deal with two, but he didn't consider this that hard, while the wolves had numbers, they also seemed like they had starved for a while and they also weren't that big. 

With a horizontal slash he made one of the wolves fall back and then charged at the other, he stabbed with all his might for the eye of the beast, it jumped back but Ars still managed to lightly pierce its shoulder, the other wolf came rushing, jumping in, trying to bite Ars arm but Ars dodged and slashed towards its neck, being in the middle of the air he couldn't dodge and got its throat cut open, it didn't die instantly but it would bleed out soon, when he cutted the wolf some blood splashed on him, and he got quite surprised when he discovered he could also connect animal samples, it didn't look like it did much but all help counted.

Oak was struggling to keep up with the wolf but overall he was fine, Rook was pushing the wolf back. All of a sudden everyone heard howling and looked at the wolf that didn't charge, the three surviving wolves rushed back two injured but they would recover, the four wolves gave them one last look and then left.

"Let me examine the wolf." Koral suddenly rushed from the center and started examining the dead wolf. 

"This wolf is quite old, if the pack is the same age, then this pack of wolves is quite old, this one seems to have quite a few old injuries, if the pack is around the same age they shouldn't be able to hunt their normal prey anymore.", Ars hearing that commented "So what you are saying is… They were hungry and decided to try to hunt us because we look like easier prey than their normal prey." 

Koral nodded, and Ars asked "Do you know how to dismantle a wolf ?". 

"No." Koral answered, and Ars looked around, but they all gave a negative answer.

"Then let's just remove the inner organs and then we will take the rest with us, it will be nice to eat meat for the first time in a while. " Ars said, and everyone agreed.

Rook got the new job of wolf carrier, because he was the most fit besides Ars, and Ars was busy with the compass and drawing the map. He really didn't like the idea but he understood the choice.

They kept walking mostly undisturbed most of the morning, with a few stops along the way to rest or to go around animal groups or places that looked dangerous. By noon they reached a place that looked natural but there was something off about it.

At first they didn't notice anything but after a while they realized that what was out of place was the ground itself, while there was dirt and rooks on it it was too flat, unlike the previous, that while it was flat ground without many ups and downs, it was still irregular, but here was completely flat so they cleaned the ground a little, and found artificial floors, they were old and in poor conditions but you could easily see it was manmade.

Ars looked at the compass and it kept pointing towards a small hill in the distance. At first from afar it looked like it was small but when they approached more they started to notice it was actually pretty big in width, on the other hand in height it was only around 10 meters high and was easy to climb on. When they got closer they finally saw how big it was. 

When they started going up suddenly the compass started to point to below them, Ars understood that somewhere in this hill an entrance was hidden, stopped and everyone else also stopped now confused.

"What I'm seeking is under this hill, now we need to find an entrance to go in." Ars said now contemplating what was the most effective way to search for it.

"How do you guys think it would be the fastest way to find the entrance, while staying safe?" he made a pause and then continued "After all Lily and Koral can't stay by themselves. " 

They were all trying to find the best way, and then they reached the conclusion that the best way was to search slowly as a single group. So for the rest of the afternoon they searched all over the hill, and finally they found an old cave with parts of it collapsed on the ground, but at the end of it there was a gigantic door. As they approached they saw an incision on the door that looked like the compass Ars had. 

Ars approached and put the compass on the incision, it fitted perfectly, and the moment the compass was placed there, everyone could hear lots of noise coming from the inside. A few minutes later the doors slowly started to open, but very slowly, it wasn't until 40 minutes later that the door opened enough for people to squeeze through it. Beyond the door there were stairs that lead downwards, it was around 50 meters, and they carefully descended.

Once in, a whole new world awaited them. The place was huge, what they saw outside covered by dirt was only the tip of the dome like roof, besides the dust everywhere, the place was pristine, like it was frozen in time, hundreds of machines spread across the place, in the distance a huge screen. They approached it and once they got close enough it activated automatically. 

"Welcome my heir and inheritor, I hope finding this place was easy for you, but hopefully this place wasn't found by the people we hid it from. I don't know how far in the future you're receiving this message but we have so much to talk, yet so little time."

Besides Ars the others left the hidden place and went back outside, in their eyes Ars was the heir, and the message was only meant for him. 

After a few hours, when it already quite late into the night, the message had ended, Ars had learned a lot about history, but mainly she explained what all the machines did and how to use them, the machines that mostly interested Ars was GAIA and TCP or Time Correction Protocol, it was a machine that allowed the user to travel through time to retrieve people or objects in their prime state. Thanks to this machine, Ars had decided to get a few people that died in the past, especially because it would be interesting and in some cases it could be useful to revive others, whatever the reason it was nice to have that option, he got interested in reviving people related to Luffy and his crew, just to see their reactions. 

Some of the other machines were also useful but these two were the most interesting. Ars after such a day and at such a late hour went back to check on the others, and discovered that they were already asleep and went to sleep himself. 

And before he fell asleep, while lying on some cloth he would use as a bed he was thinking about the next day, and making plans on the best way to use machines to create his kingdom.