Chapter 109: The Uniqueness Of Devil Fruits
“The gorilla turned into a monkey. Caesar, do you think such a thing is reasonable?”
Elus muttered in a low voice, not loud, but enough for Caesar standing nearby to hear.
However,
Caesar looked as if he had seen a ghost at this moment,
No, with the Spirit-Spirit Fruit and Soul-Soul Fruit, seeing a ghost wasn’t impossible. In comparison, turning an artificial Devil Fruit into a real Devil Fruit in this short one minute… that was far rarer than ghosts, something completely unheard of.
It was just that he didn’t know Elus had also helped his subordinates upgrade ordinary Zoan Devil Fruits into Ancient Zoan ones, but after spending enough time under Elus, he would inevitably learn about it sooner or later.
“Your Highness, you… no, you, how exactly did you do it?”
As a scientist,
He wasn’t like those ignorant aides-de-camp under Elus.
Even Mythical Zoan… Mythical Zoan, using Mythical Zoan as an excuse was still quite forced, but Elus’s Mythical Zoan fruit was one the World Government had never recorded. Perhaps it truly had some wondrous ability to interfere with artificial Devil Fruits?
Caesar was nearly tormented to death.
He mustered his courage and tried asking.
The result was—
“That arm just now clearly looked like a gorilla’s, but now it’s turned into an ape’s appearance… That’s very strange! There’s quite a gap between gorillas and apes… Caesar? Caesar? Hey, what are you spacing out for? Did you hear me? I’m asking you!”
A gaze as cold as a frosty blade pierced over.
The soul pressure as heavy as a vast ocean was faintly visible.
Caesar shrank his neck, not daring to ask further. He turned his head to look at the old pirate lying on the ground, thought for a moment, and said: “The abilities of Devil Fruits are unique. The same fruit won’t appear on the Sea at the same time. Only after the original fruit’s owner dies will such a fruit appear again…”
The experiment on artificial Devil Fruits was personally overseen by Vegapunk. Initially, he extracted genes from single organisms and injected them into fruit embryos, but midway through the experiment, he noticed a problem, a rule: the same fruit wouldn’t appear at the same time. This was a regularity discovered from centuries of accumulated time.
So,
Would artificial Devil Fruits also be constrained by this rule?
If the Devil Fruit one wanted to create already existed on the Sea, could such a Devil Fruit even be made? Vegapunk conducted extensive research on this, but unfortunately, creating artificial Devil Fruits was extremely difficult in itself, and this experiment ultimately couldn’t be verified.
After successfully creating one Devil Fruit, Vegapunk halted this research for various reasons.
Also, midway through the experiment, Vegapunk repeatedly failed with injecting genes from single organisms and saw no hope of success, so he made a change. He no longer injected genes from single organisms but collected genes from numerous organisms, mixed them, and injected them into the fruit embryo together.
But even so, there were still many failures, and the one-time success couldn’t prove that injecting mixed organism genes was the only method. However, Caesar now used the method of injecting multiple mixed organism genes to create artificial Devil Fruits.
“…I’ve read the Devil Fruit Encyclopedia’s records on Zoan Devil Fruits, and there’s exactly a branch on the Human-Human Fruit. Excluding Mythical Zoan and Ancient Zoan, there are a total of eight.”
“And from the intelligence gathered so far, two of these eight Devil Fruits have clearly been eaten. The chimpanzee form and gorilla form are both branches of the Human-Human Fruit. The ability users of these two Devil Fruits are both in the Navy, one in Paradise, one in the West Sea.”
“The other five haven’t been eaten, but they’ve already been discovered and collected in different places. Only the so-called most useless human form Human-Human Fruit’s whereabouts are unknown.”
Caesar’s explanation was quite verbose.
But Elus showed no dissatisfaction and listened very seriously. This knowledge was unfamiliar to him. Unlike Devil Fruits, the Devil Fruit Encyclopedia was compiled by humans based on past experiences. Different influences each collected different Devil Fruit Encyclopedias.
Undoubtedly, the World Government possessed the Devil Fruit Encyclopedia with the most records, accumulated over eight hundred years, incredibly rich. Not only did it include a vast number of Devil Fruit entries, but it also recorded data on the most outstanding ability users of various eras. With these, collecting the same fruits could greatly improve the efficiency of training experts.
These data records were kept only in the World Government’s hands, used to train CP0. Even the Navy was unaware of this information, possessing only a copy of the Devil Fruit Encyclopedia.
What Caesar had read was such a copy.
Of course, even the World Government wouldn’t dare claim their compiled Devil Fruit Encyclopedia covered all Devil Fruits in the world. Caesar was merely providing Elus with a possible hypothesis based on the intelligence he had.
“Perhaps that human form Human-Human Fruit was eaten or collected by someone. Your Highness, you used… that special power to transform the artificial Devil Fruit into a real Devil Fruit, but since the Human-Human Fruit branches had no vacancies, it could only shift to a similar form.”
This long string of explanation,
In summary, due to the uniqueness of Devil Fruits, no two identical ones exist at the same time, so the old pirate’s form changed from gorilla to ape… The above explanation was all speculation, with no reliable evidence to prove Caesar’s hypothesis was correct.
However,
After hearing it, Elus felt this explanation was quite reliable.
“The uniqueness of Devil Fruits… Interesting!” Elus narrowed his eyes, recalling the changes in Eschbach and several aides-de-camp. Eschbach’s ordinary Zoan Lizard-Lizard Fruit Komodo Dragon form had evolved into the Ancient Zoan Dragon-Dragon Fruit Earthquake Dragon form under the Hogyoku’s influence, and the others were similar.
From those evolution processes, perhaps the hypothesis of Devil Fruits’ uniqueness wasn’t wrong.
“Caesar, this guy is yours now. Do whatever you want with him—dissect him, raise him, whatever… My only requirement is that the next time I see a 100% successful artificial Devil Fruit, even a half-finished product is fine, as long as it doesn’t turn into one of those laughing freaks.”
Elus reached out and patted Caesar’s shoulder.
Caesar cleverly suppressed his elementalization on his own. This action made Elus smile silently. He removed his hand from Caesar’s shoulder and left directly with Fran.
————
North Blue.
The storm had just subsided, the clouds on the horizon not yet dispersed, the air filled with damp moisture.
On a sparsely populated small island, the villagers had come out to repair houses ravaged by the storm. Several wisps of smoke rose crookedly from chimneys, twisted by the faint sea breeze toward the sky. If one followed the smoke upward, they would see on the other side of the island, along a coastline unsuitable for ships due to the reefs, a strangely shaped large ship docked.
Unlike ordinary sharp-bowed and sharp-sterned, bamboo-leaf-like designs, this large ship had rounded bow and stern like a giant shell. At the bow was a massive snail—yes, that’s right, this large ship was actually a gigantic snail. Even more wondrously, on the snail’s back shell were buildings like a palace and towers. Black sails and banners raised on these buildings bore the number ’66’ mark.
The snail’s forehead between its two antennae also had a black ’66’ number.
This was—
The mark of the Jermma Kingdom.
A portal opened on the snail ship’s back shell,
A much smaller but still massive giant snail was lowered from the ship. It didn’t sink into the sea but floated on the surface, advancing toward the island at considerable speed. On this giant snail’s back shell was installed a very comfortable luxurious seat, where one man and one woman sat talking.
“Is this the Revolutionary Army’s contact point?”
“That’s right. This is the place the Revolutionary Army proactively agreed on. I wasted a lot of effort contacting these cowardly guys. Each one is like a rat; finding them was downright annoying.”
“Sounds like a trap!”
“Perhaps! But… my sister, you’re not scared, are you?”
“Scared? We don’t have the luxury of such emotions, you utterly unlovable little brother.”
Sister—more precisely, she was Vinsmoke Reiju, the eldest daughter of the Vinsmoke family, the eldest princess of the Jermma Kingdom. This princess, who had just turned twenty this year, had an elegant smile. Her pink medium-length hair covered her right eye, but her beautiful left eye like amethyst showed no hint of amusement.
“Haha, that makes me a bit nostalgic for that idiot Sanji!” Vinsmoke Ichiji, the eldest prince of the Jermma Kingdom, showed a cruel smile on his face.
As modified humans, they had no such boring emotion as fear.
Not even death could make them feel dread.
The giant snail easily crossed the reef area, climbed the steep cliff, entered the forest, startling countless birds, crashing through and snapping large swaths of trees along the way. Broken branches and leaves fell in a messy heap, irritating Ichiji, who swung his right hand. “Spark, Whirl.”
A blazing, shining flame burst from his palm, brutally destroying the falling debris.
If not for the recent storm retreat leaving the air extremely humid and the tree branches and leaves still wet and not dried, Ichiji’s move alone could have ignited a massive fire to engulf the entire forest.
“Too rough.”
Reiju gazed ahead, her Vinsmoke family’s signature curly eyebrow twitching slightly. She smiled and said: “Look, little brother, your trouble has arrived.”
Shadows flickered in the forest,
Before Ichiji could retort, an angry shout reached the siblings’ ears.
“Damn it, is this how the prince and princess of the Jermma Kingdom come visiting?” The young man in a top hat charging out of the forest glared angrily at the siblings on the snail’s back. “You…”
He couldn’t finish his words.
The massive, mountain-climbing, sea-crossing snail charged over with unstoppable momentum.
“Good, good!”
The young man in the top hat—Sabo—halted his unfinished rebuke. For such incorrigible villains, words had little effect; only fists could teach them manners.
He stuck the pure steel pipe he held into the soft ground, assumed a stance, and readied himself.
“Dragon Claw Fist.”
His right hand’s five fingers clenched and curved, mimicking a three-toed dragon claw. Facing the giant snail charging at him, he unleashed a lightning-fast heavy punch into the snail’s neck. A visible ripple spread from the impact point like water waves, and the giant snail immediately stopped.
It,
Passed out, its two long antennae drooping limply.
Sabo’s resolve wasn’t hard enough; he hadn’t used his fingertips capable of piercing steel holes on the snail but curled his fingers, striking with the protruding knuckles to knock out this unnaturally tough soft-bodied creature.
Otherwise, that punch could have killed the snail outright.
The giant snail braked suddenly, but its massive inertia failed to throw off the two on its back.
The Vinsmoke family’s prince and princess sat steadily.
However,
Neither dared underestimate Sabo, who had stopped the giant snail barehanded. They knew best how strong these scientifically cultivated giant snails were; the trees uprooted along the way were the best proof.
Yet Sabo had stopped the giant snail.
With just one hand.
Revolutionary Army, indeed worthy of an organization daring to challenge the World Government.
“Hello, young man. Sorry about that, my little brother is a thorough scoundrel. Destroying trees is already a very kind act for him.” The Vinsmoke family’s princess jumped down from the snail’s back. Her pink combat suit outlined her alluring figure, and the cape behind her was as beautiful as butterfly wings.
“Reiju, are you provoking me?”
The arrogant, cold-blooded prince turned an icy gaze on his sister, his violent killing intent absolutely genuine.
“Do emotionless machines even know what provocation is?”
Sabo: “Uh…”
The scene left Sabo stunned. He had prepared to teach the prince and princess a lesson, only to knock out a giant snail, after which the prince and princess started mocking each other. The hostile atmosphere suggested the siblings might start fighting any moment.
This situation was completely unexpected for Sabo.
However,
He now vaguely sensed that dealing with these two would absolutely not be easy.
