Chapter 272

Studying the inscriptions throughout Shandora's main ruins, Robin links a passage about a bell to the one Noland set down in his journal. She deduces a Poneglyph was carried into the city during its war with the enemy, a conflict that brought ruin upon it. Noland's writing leads her to expect the bell where the four altars converge, but in that spot she finds only the beanstalk, evidence the bell never rose into the sky. Enel arrives, complimenting the splendor of Shandora and her skill at archaeology, and confesses he has already claimed the gold, though his bafflement makes plain he has no knowledge of the golden bell.

Recalling the four-hundred-year-old account of the island lifting away on a lovely sound named the Song of the Land, both grow eager at the prospect that the bell still hangs somewhere above, Robin most of all over the Poneglyph it might accompany. Meanwhile Conis and Pagaya come upon one of Enel's soldiers near death, who warns that Enel means to drop Sky Island toward the Blue Seas and slip away on the ark Maxim. Lightning lances at them, but Pagaya shoves Conis from its path. After Zoro stumbles onto the fact that Holy obeys anyone and orders the dog to knock itself out, Enel shatters the support cloud, sending the upper ruins plunging while Conis sprints off to warn everyone of the scheme.

Robin works out that the people of Shandora were shielding a Poneglyph, and that the city's bell, though absent, should still lie within. Enel admits stealing all of Shandora's gold while professing ignorance of the bell's whereabouts. The death game has eight minutes left on its clock. One of Enel's own soldiers reaches Conis and Pagaya to warn that the god means to slaughter everyone across Skypiea, only for both the messenger and Pagaya to be struck down. Having beaten Ohm, Zoro commands Holy to knock itself out, and Enel strikes the Giant Jack platform, drawing Zoro, Wyper, and the serpent toward the final clash.

The cover opens "Ace's Great Blackbeard Search," with Ace dining and dashing at the Pasta Lake cafe in a distant kingdom. The wiki observes that the title "Play" steps away from musical terms toward theater, suiting a chapter built largely on dialogue and monologue, one said to contain historical, tragic, and comic strands. Pandaman and the Tomato Gang sit at an outdoor table on the cover. This installment falls within the Skypiea Arc.