In just two short years, he had gone from a hotshot rookie to the so-called Fifth Emperor of the Sea.
Nico Robin felt it had happened far too fast.
Just look at the Emperors already ruling the seas—every one of them was an old monster who had spent decades building power.
Even Shanks, the youngest among them, had fought and clawed his way up for more than ten years before becoming one of the Four Emperors.
And Luffy? He had done it in only two years. Did he really deserve the title of Emperor of the Sea?
Robin had always felt that something about it was off.
And the story itself seemed to prove that.
In the Wano arc, when Luffy faced Kaido—one of the Four Emperors—head-on, he gave it everything he had, and all he managed to do was barely scratch the man.
Kaido knocked Luffy out with a single swing of his club.
An instant defeat.
That meant there was still an insurmountable mountain standing between Luffy and the Four Emperors.
But what happened next left Robin stunned.
From the time Luffy was knocked out and thrown in prison to the final battle on Onigashima, it didn't seem like much time had passed at all. Yet when he faced Kaido again, he was somehow able to fight him on equal footing.
Then, through his absurd ability to keep getting back up, plus his Devil Fruit awakening, he transformed into the Sun God Nika and ultimately defeated Kaido, ending Kaido's twenty-year rule over Wano and officially becoming one of the Four Emperors.
This… this… this was straight-up cheating, wasn't it?
"Pretty unbelievable, isn't it?" Rowan asked with a smile, watching the changes in Robin's expression.
Robin didn't try to hide her reaction. She nodded. "It really is unbelievable. Can human growth really happen that fast?"
From getting one-shotted by Kaido to defeating him in the end—was there even a full month between those two points?
Hard to say. Probably not.
In other words, Luffy had taken less than a month to go from being instantly crushed by an Emperor to surpassing Kaido himself.
It was ridiculous.
You could even say it made no sense at all.
"Doesn't that just prove how amazing Kaido is as a teacher?" Rowan said with a grin.
Robin stared at him blankly. "What does that have to do with Kaido being amazing?"
Rowan put on a solemn expression and said, "Fake teacher Rayleigh spent two years only teaching Luffy Haki. Real teacher Kaido gave him Ryuo with one club swing, advanced Conqueror's Coating with the second, and hammered out a Sun God with the third."
"That just goes to show how important a good teacher is for a student."
"As for Rayleigh? Just some nobody."
Sometimes Robin genuinely felt like calling the police. How was this man able to spout such blatant nonsense with a completely straight face?
In the end, she ignored him and kept reading.
On Egghead—during the Egghead Incident—she saw Luffy take on both Kizaru and the Five Elders by himself. She saw Vegapunk die. She saw the world on the verge of sinking beneath the sea. She saw the death of Saturn, one of the Five Elders.
But more importantly, on Elbaf, the land of giants, she saw the version of herself in the manga reunited with Saul.
Only then did Nico Robin realize that Kuzan had not killed Saul after all.
He had let him live.
That sudden revelation shattered her composure completely.
Tears welled up in her eyes and spilled down onto the pages of the manga in her hands.
By pure coincidence, the page she had opened to was the exact scene where she and Saul were clinging to each other and sobbing.
"That's wonderful… that's wonderful… Saul didn't die… he's really still alive…"
Robin kept murmuring to herself, unable to stop the tears from falling.
It took a long while before she finally calmed down, wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes, and let out the emotions she had been holding back.
The gloomy aura hanging around her seemed to melt away in an instant, like snow dissolving under sunlight.
"Thank you. Thank you so much," Robin said to Rowan with a smile.
"Why are you thanking me? I'm not the one who saved Saul," Rowan said, rolling his eyes.
Robin explained, "Thank you for letting me know Saul was still alive."
"You're welcome, I guess. You would've found out sooner or later anyway," Rowan replied casually.
Robin lowered her head and continued reading. Before long, she reached the latest chapter.
"What happens after this?" she asked at once.
"That's it." Rowan shrugged. "The author hasn't drawn the rest yet."
Robin glanced at the author's name: Eiichiro Oda.
"So… I'm actually a character in a manga?" Her expression turned strange. She wanted to complain, but didn't even know where to begin. It felt like something was lodged in her throat.
She couldn't swallow it down, but she couldn't spit it out either.
"I don't know," Rowan said, shaking his head.
Robin looked at him in surprise. "You don't know?"
Rowan looked perfectly calm. "Before I met all of you, I always thought you were manga characters. But now? I can't say for sure anymore whether you're really characters in a manga."
Robin blinked. "Uh…"
That answer actually made a weird kind of sense.
If a manga character suddenly appeared right in front of you, even Robin wouldn't be able to say for certain whether that person was just a fictional character—or whether the author had created a manga based on a real story.
"Where is this Eiichiro Oda?"
The moment he heard that question, Rowan understood what she meant.
"You want to find him."
Robin nodded.
The manga had only revealed the secrets of the World Government and the existence of Imu. It still hadn't explained the true history of the Void Century eight hundred years ago.
So Robin wanted to ask him in person what the truth behind that lost century really was.
"I strongly suggest you don't do that," Rowan said.
Robin asked, "Why not?"
"Because if you show up, there's a very good chance it'll expose my ability to travel between worlds, and that would cause me a huge amount of trouble in my own world."
Rowan answered bluntly, "So no, I'm not letting you go find Eiichiro Oda. And even if you did find him, are you sure you'd actually learn the truth about the Void Century?"
"What do you mean?"
"Simple. Maybe Eiichiro Oda himself hasn't even decided yet how he wants to write the history of the Void Century. After all, he's just a manga artist. What does he really know about One Piece?"
Rowan smiled faintly, then pointed her toward a better option.
"If you really want to know the truth about the Void Century, go to Sabaody and find Rayleigh. Or better yet, go to Elbaf and find Gaban."
"One was the Pirate King's left hand, the other his right. They traveled with Roger all the way to Laugh Tale. They know the truth of that lost century better than anyone."
"You can get the real answer straight from them. That's a much better bet than chasing down Oda."
"And besides, there's one important thing you still haven't figured out."
Robin froze, then looked at Rowan in confusion.
Rowan said calmly, "Your world is going to sink beneath the sea before long, and you're still worried about the Void Century. Is the past really more important than the future?"