Greatest Discovery

Robin's plan was met with mixed results, Cal was on board, but others had the same reserves as I did not want to lose more lives than necessary on an attack that would net them nothing. Eventually, we decided to wait for more information from Evos, but drawback our forces in preparation.

Though everyone left the meeting with a decision in mind, I had already had another idea. Walking into my lab, I grabbed a sample of the purified seastone before reaching into my inventory and taking out a devil fruit.

"Come on. I need you to show me something." Taking a tiny droplet of the seastone, I let it fall onto the devil fruit and waited for anything to happen. But as usual, the devil fruit didn't react with the crystalline liquid.

Knowing that it was a dead effort, I moved on. Though it was a painful process, I started to create miniature clones and expose them to the purified seastone. Each time I felt a lance of pain, but I tried to record what happened to the clone's cells during the process.

But no matter how I tried to lengthen the time for the cell to die, it always seemed as if the seastone instantly killed the cells by some unknown phenomenon. It was infuriating, but I was determined to find a solution.

Realizing that I could work my way back, I decided to work forward. It was a simple matter of getting human blood as I had implemented the importance of having readily available transfusions.

After creating a mixture of the regular blood and crystals, I used my strength to shake the vial around, and when I stopped, the two liquids had separated the crystals on the bottom while the blood floated above.

A clone of mine instantly started to write down the notes, I usually would have Evos as my lab partner, but he was on a much more prominent assignment. Setting the first vial aside, I then created another solution, but I used my blood, hoping I would see a difference in how the solution reacted.

Crossing my fingers, I shook the vial at blurring speeds for a few minutes before I stopped. Opening my clenched hand, I saw that the solution hadn't separated, and I could only see my dark red blood.

The scribble of a pencil reached my ears, but I didn't pay it any mind as I rushed about to repeat the process with a new sample. I must have performed the experiment a hundred times, trying different speeds and ratios.

But each time, the same thing happened after mixing. I could see only the blood. On the last trial, I took the vial over to a microscope and placed a droplet of the solution for viewing.

Under the highest magnification, I could make out the individual blood cells, making my heart skip a beat. The surprising part was that I could not sense the cells at all, which made sense in practice, but I had never made the connection before.

Unfortunately, I could not spot any difference between the blood cells in the sample and the ones in my body. I was going to write off this experiment as a dead end when I noticed something.

I spotted a white blood cell that was actively moving around, performing its duty of seeking out viruses and other harmful sources. Running over to my storage cabinet, I pulled out a jar containing a chunk of normal seastone.

Using a hammer, I chipped off a piece and started to break it apart until I couldn't see it with the naked eye. But after changing the pupil of my eyes, I could easily spot the dust fragment mixed in with the other microscopic debris.

With bated breath, I allowed the seastone dust to mix with the blood sample and waited. I peered through the microscope and watched as the dust collided with blood cells before being absorbed inside.

I watched with rapt attention as red blood cells that came into contact with the seastone were slowly leached of their color, turning transparent. The seastone somehow destroyed the hemoglobin in the blood, which was the protein used to transport oxygen through the body.

Moving away from the microscope, I grabbed my medical dictionary and skipped to sickness that might affect blood cells. As I went down the list, I became more and more disheartened as I saw biological sources like Chronic kidney disease and Cirrhosis.

Then my finger stopped on the source I had been looking for, "lead poisoning." Running back over to the chunk of seastone on the counter, I looked at its blueish hue. Taking one of the fragments, I felt it start to influence me.

Dropping the shard, I looked at my blood cells and could spot the discolored subjects. Grabbing the entire fragment, I rushed over to the fumigation hood before gathering every chemical I could find and sending a request for some fishing weights.

Once the small metallic orbs arrived, I used a solution to clean off the protective coating formed when Lead reacts with air before storing them underneath some oil.

With all my preparation set, I began to expose the lead fishing weights, and the seastone to a wide arrange of chemicals and documenting their results. After three hours of testing, I was confident that my solution was correct.

Seastone was indeed a variation of lead, perhaps an isotope. With that realization, the puzzle fit together, and a long line of questions I had been asking was suddenly answered. With my goal reached, I ordered my clone to start making a draft of my report while a smile played over my face.

The next day I looked at the final draft of my greatest achievement, "My experiments have proved my hypothesis that seastone is in fact a variation of lead one. It is from this that I present the Erosion Theory. My theory states that before humans sailed the globe, seastone was a common metal present on cliffs, beaches, and the seafloor. Over time the ocean would have eaten away at these reserves, breaking them apart into particles too small to see with the naked eye. This would explain why devil fruit users have such an aversion to the ocean, but none devil fruit users don't experience lead poisoning as lead is denser than water so not enough particles rise to the surface to effect swimmers."