We walked away from the poneglyph to meet back with the rest of Roger's crew.
"Boris! You've been a great help to us! Is there anything we can do to pay you back?" Roger asked sincerely.
"Yeah, I need your crew for manual labor," I bluntly replied.
Roger laughed before replying.
"Sure! I'll help you, what's the plan?"
"First, we need to go back to the village to tell the old man that we found the city. Then we can get to it," I replied.
"You mean the Devil's Wood?" Rayleigh asked.
I nodded affirmitively before looking towards the direction of which the small village that we were in was. I didn't know the exact reason as to why they wanted to find the city of gold was, but I wanted to make sure that he would be able to hold his end of the bargain as well.
I slowly began making my way towards where the Roger Pirates had now gathered near the edge of the Golden city.
"Listen you guys!" Roger announced, "We're gonna help Boris cut down some wood, you hear?"
The crew cheered in response to his announcement. Roger immediately saw me begin to leave the city back towards the direction of the small village. He immediately had his men follow me as we all began the small journey back to the Village. It took about the same time as it took to get to the Golden city.
Fortunately, there wasn't nothing major that happened during the trip back to the village. When we got there, we found Ken and the rest of my crew waiting near the path that we had taken when we had left the village. They looked a bit scruffed, but overall they seemed pretty fine. Ken immediately noticed me and rushed over to me.
"Commander!"
"How was the trip, Ken?"
"We looked into the temple, but we didn't find much there. Most of the temple was abandoned, but there was a village residing nearby. They were not welcoming," Ken reported sincerely.
"That's interesting, did you enter the temple?" I asked.
"We did, but the interior of the temple was empty. They did have some ancient writings on the walls, but we didn't take the time to record them though," Ken replied.
I pondered a bit of his findings.
'So the Devil Fruit wasn't there, then was it where Enel was born?'
I was going to need a bit more time to find out where the actual location of the Devil Fruit was. However, that was going to come later, what I needed to find was that Devil's Wood for the ship.
I started walking towards the hut in the middle of the village. The Roger pirates were close by, but they didn't bother following me into the village. However, Roger and Rayleigh followed me into the hut.
"We found it," I immediately declared as I entered the small hut.
The Old man, who was slightly napping while sitting down, immediately woke up.
"Where?"
"I'm not telling you until you give me the location of the Devil's wood," I replied firmly.
The Old man sighed before getting up and walking near a certain wall. It was then that he used his walking stick to pierce a hole on the wall and pulled a scroll out of it. He then unrolled it, before nodding and rolling it back and throwing it towards me.
"That's the map where our ancestors had claimed that they had managed to find it. The validity of the map is rather questionable, but its the best lead you can get on the island," The Old Man stated.
I unrolled the map before taking a glance of the map. It was old, like, really old. The markings on the map were faded for the most part, and the only reason that I could see them clearly was the fact that my sense of sight was above the norm.
"Alright, the location of the Lost City of Gold is somewhere near the mountain," I explained as I pulled out a map, "It's location is eastwards from the mountain, and you're gonna end up walking for about a day before you get there."
"Thank you."
"May I know why you want to know about the city's location?"
"I wish to die in the city that was once bathed in rays of Gold," the Old Man replied emotionally.
I didn't say anything else, and I immediately left the hut before regrouping with the Roger Pirates and my crew. Roger and Rayleigh were quiet during my entire dialogue, mostly because they weren't interested in the details. They just wanted to help with the collection of the Devil's Wood.
"Kain, Brok, I'm going to need you two here quickly;" I announced.
I pulled out the old map on a tree stump that happened to be nearby and spread it along the surface.
"Listen, we're going to split up again so that we can regroup at the south of our location. The Devil's wood seems to be in this location so we're going to need the ship so we can safely transport it," I instructed.
Roger immediately peered over before asking.
"So are we going to be walking towards that location?"
"Yes, the Devil's Wood might be along the path that we are going to be taking as we go to it. I don't want to take any risks."
Stussy decided to chime in with Pato.
"I'm going to be going with the navigators to the ship. I don't want to walk anymore,"
"Yeah, me too!" Pato added as well.
"You two have gotten closer in the short span that you've been together," I commented blankly.
"Are you jealous?" Stussy asked.
"Far from it, just noting," I replied.
Anyway, now that we had organized what we were going to be doing. Roger and I agreed that we would be wait for the next day to leave. After all, we had been travelling for the past three days, and the men were probably exhausted from all the travelling that we had went through.
I decided to take that brief moment to fly back to the ship so that I could resupply on cigarettes. The journey on map shouldn't have taken more than two days, but if the natives of Skypiea kept ambushing us they way they did when we were looking for the lost city of gold. It would probably take longer than anticipated.
"Looking back at it, we probably should have stayed in the city for a bit longer. Oh well," I briefly commented before pocketing the cigarettes as I stepped out of the cabin of the ship.
As I slowly flew back to the small village, I kept thinking about the possible locations that the Devil fruit might be in. I wasn't too concerned about it at the moment because there were going to be plenty of oppurtunities in the future to get it. However, I was still worried about the conflict brewing within the New World.
Whether or not Roger was going to find the One Piece before it happened was up for debate. However, there wasn't a lot of time that spanned from the event happening.
Something was going to happen sooner or later, and I wanted to be prepared for it.