Chapter 184: Chain-chain Fruit + Add-add Fruit
When a person becomes immersed in a beloved endeavor, the concept of time often becomes blurred.
The unchanging climate exacerbates the severity of this condition, making it hard to notice the passage of time.
This point,
is a fact that Elus personally experienced and realized.
“Marineford Era, 1520… If I remember correctly, the True Chosen One is about to set sail?”
The afternoon on Thriller Bark was as dark and sunless as ever, but today’s fog was much lighter than in the past few days, making it rare good weather here. Elus sat in the courtyard relaxing and resting, easing his overloaded brain and cooling down his nearly boiling brain pulp.
“Unknowingly, I’ve been here for almost half a year.”
In the second half of Marineford Era 1519, he boarded Thriller Bark, and now it’s already 1520. He’s stayed on this island… this ship for nearly half a year. If Elus hadn’t mostly stayed indoors, holed up in the castle doing research, Moria would have suspected that the Black Prince was planning to take over the nest.
Staying here for nearly half a year was of sufficient value.
Researching the Spirit-Spirit Fruit and Underworld-Underworld Fruit gave Elus tremendous help, further elevating his cognition of souls, taking his control over the Hogyoku to the next level, and yielding results in his research on swapping Devil Fruits to control more abilities.
His hypothesis… came true.
Eating a Paramecia Devil Fruit, mastering its corresponding ability, then ‘spitting out’ the Devil Fruit, and eating a new Paramecia Devil Fruit… repeating the cycle, constantly updating to achieve a perfect loop of continuous self-strengthening.
However, there was still a small problem during this process—no, more accurately, a necessary cost.
That is time,
“Go!”
Elus raised his hand and waved lightly, an iron-colored chain shooting out from his palm and piercing the stone pillar standing in the courtyard.
Paramecia: Chain-Chain Fruit.
This was the first Paramecia Devil Fruit that Elus ate. As the name implies, the fruit’s ability allows chains to generate from any part of the body and be freely manipulated… It’s the same type as the String-String Fruit, of course, but this Devil Fruit’s original owner wasn’t as strong as the Heavenly Yaksha.
The original ability user of the Chain-Chain Fruit was a treasure hunter who would stop at nothing to pursue riches.
He was unlucky and entered the Thriller Bark sea area searching for treasure. He didn’t find any treasure but instead became someone else’s treasure, coincidentally encountering Fran who was fishing at the seaside… The result goes without saying: after being beaten by the maid, he was sent to Elus’s laboratory.
After some experimentation, Elus successfully extracted the Devil Fruit from the living ability user.
He had originally worried that the Hogyoku’s ability to extract Devil Fruits could only work on himself. If so, he would have to seek out uneaten Paramecia Devil Fruits… Fortunately, his worry didn’t come true; the cantaloupe-shaped Chain-Chain Fruit dispelled his concerns.
Elus didn’t fuss and directly ate the Chain-Chain Fruit.
Paramecia Devil Fruits and Zoan Devil Fruits are both indescribably awful in taste, but differ greatly in other aspects. Zoan Devil Fruits achieve species transformation, with ‘Beast Form’ turning the body into a genuine animal from a physical perspective.
Paramecia is different,
After eating the Chain-Chain Fruit, Elus naturally mastered the ability to ‘freely manipulate chains’: generate, manipulate, disappear… This was a completely different experience from Zoan Devil Fruits.
He spent a month, with the Hogyoku’s assistance, analyzing the Chain-Chain Fruit’s ability, gaining a complete cognition of it.
Then, with tense anticipation, he washed away the Chain-Chain Fruit, watched the cantaloupe in his hand turn into a new Chain-Chain Fruit, and Elus found he had lost the ability to generate chains.
His mood plummeted instantly.
Fortunately,
Heaven never bars all ways.
Elus lost his cognition and comprehension of ‘generating chains’ but retained his cognition and memory of ‘freely manipulating chains’.
His mind retained all the insights on manipulating chains,
He just didn’t know how to generate chains.
Missing a key to unlock the treasure.
This kept him from completely giving up, still holding a sliver of hope, continuously trying to remaster the ability.
At that moment, the Hogyoku responded to his hope, forging a key named ‘generate chains’ using Elus’s soul as raw material and his memory of the Chain-Chain Fruit’s cognition as blueprint. He regained the ability to ‘freely manipulate chains’.
At the same time, he found the Chain-Chain Fruit hadn’t disappeared. He selected a lucky one from his subordinates, had them eat the Chain-Chain Fruit in his presence, and they successfully generated an iron-colored chain.
This action didn’t violate the Devil Fruit’s law of uniqueness.
From this,
Elus vaguely understood the essence of Devil Fruits.
So-called Devil Fruits are embodiments of this world’s rules.
Since they are embodiments, Devil Fruits aren’t mere ‘inanimate objects’. The notion that devils reside in the fruits isn’t entirely superstition; Devil Fruits have consciousness. They choose the first person to eat the fruit as host and won’t choose second or third eaters.
Also,
In Elus’s view, Devil Fruits’ self-consciousness is extremely similar to the Hogyoku: they lack any initiative and only operate according to their preset rules.
Choosing the first eater as host is one such rule.
Next, there’s the rule that one can only eat one Devil Fruit. Elus speculated it’s due to the instinctive consciousness of uniqueness possessed by Devil Fruits, not just manifested in no two identical Devil Fruits existing at the same time,
but also when two different Devil Fruits are eaten by the same ability user, their instinctive consciousness of uniqueness subconsciously clashes, both wanting to monopolize the ability user’s body. The explosive force from the clash shatters the greedy ability user.
Furthermore, Devil Fruits don’t completely perish upon the ability user’s death.
Devil Fruits are embodiments of this world’s rules. Ability users merely wield this power, not digest the embodiment of rules. They don’t belong to the ability user. When the ability user’s life ends, the embodiment of rules recongeals as fruit form somewhere in the world.
Also, Devil Fruit ability users all become landlubbers.
Such rules construct the non-initiative self-consciousness of Devil Fruits.
The ability Elus mastered wasn’t depriving this world’s rule embodiments but rules truly belonging to Elus woven by the Hogyoku imitating Devil Fruits. One belongs to the world, one to Elus; they don’t conflict and thus don’t violate the Devil Fruit’s rule of uniqueness.
To verify his guess, Elus ate a second Paramecia Devil Fruit.
During the time he familiarized himself with mastering the Chain-Chain Fruit’s ability,
The major criminal he specifically requested, imprisoned in the royal palace dungeon, had been delivered and was now held in the castle’s cell.
After mastering ‘freely manipulate chains’, he extracted from this die-hard subordinate—who still hadn’t forgotten “King of Maritime Transport” and remained loyal to Umit—a Paramecia Devil Fruit that greatly interested him.
Its name—
Add-Add Fruit.
This was the second Paramecia Devil Fruit he ate.
After eating this Devil Fruit, he discovered a non-issue issue: depending on the Paramecia Devil Fruit’s ability, the time to analyze it varies. With the Hogyoku’s help, he completed the Chain-Chain Fruit analysis in a month.
This analysis doesn’t mean Elus perfectly mastered the ability.
It just means Elus laid the foundation, with the Hogyoku analyzing and recording future progress possibilities.
But this Add-Add Fruit, over two months later, still hasn’t completed analysis.
He estimated that, barring accidents, it would take another two months or so to finish analyzing the Add-Add Fruit—meaning its analysis might take half a year… This made Elus realize he couldn’t casually consume Paramecia Devil Fruits anymore.
If time were plentiful, Elus wouldn’t mind slowly analyzing one Paramecia Devil Fruit after another.
As the saying goes, more skills don’t burden the body; mastering more abilities currently has no downsides.
Unfortunately, it’s now Marineford Era 1520. The True Chosen One is about to set sail, destiny’s torrent unstoppable as it heads to new heights. Though this world has been utterly changed by Elus, where destiny’s torrent will push the future remains unknown.
Not wanting to drift along waiting for the future Pirate King to be crowned, wanting the world to change according to his will—
Elus needs even stronger power to change this world.
Iron-colored chains danced like dragons and serpents in the courtyard, shattering the stone pillar standing there. This ability is extremely similar to the Heavenly Yaksha’s String-String Fruit: lacking its finesse but possessing steel’s cold hardness. Overall, this ‘freely manipulate chains’ ability has sufficient practical value.
With a light motion of his palm, the chains swirling in the courtyard instantly retracted, disintegrated, and vanished.
“—Dah dah dah!”
Footsteps sounded,
Elus stopped his thoughts on testing the ability and looked toward the source of the footsteps,
“Fran, is something the matter?”
“Your Highness, Water 7 has replied.”
“Oh? How’s the situation? Is the target still there?”
“Target person confirmed still in Water 7’s commercial street, operating that bar, no signs of intending to leave… Your Highness, this person is a CP9 agent, right?” When Elus first visited Water 7, Fran accompanied him, and she even led subordinates maids to steal the ‘Pluton Blueprint’.
She also knew the World Government was watching Mayor Iceberg, having dispatched a CP9 agent to lurk in Water 7, plotting for the blueprint of the ancient warship ‘Pluto’.
“I told you last time, huh. Whatever, as long as he hasn’t run off.”
Elus had his eye on the CP9 member lurking in Water 7 running a bar, Bruno, the man with hair styled like bull horns—more precisely, on Bruno’s ability: Paramecia Door-Door Fruit, able to open doors anywhere…
After realizing he couldn’t casually devour Devil Fruits wasting time and energy, Elus began selecting the next target from known accessible Paramecia Devil Fruits.
After screening, the Door-Door Fruit ranked first.
After comprehensive consideration of practicality, acquisition difficulty, etc., Door-Door Fruit was top choice. Others included Op-Op Fruit, Doflamingo’s Devil Fruit, Tremor-Tremor Fruit, Float-Float Fruit, Soul-Soul Fruit, Slow-Slow Fruit, Memory-Memory Fruit, and more.
In Elus’s view, these Paramecia Devil Fruits weren’t of lesser value than the Door-Door Fruit.
But each was either hard to obtain or the ability user’s whereabouts unknown for now. In contrast, Bruno was stuck in Water 7; CP9 isn’t that strong against him, no difficulty at all. The Door-Door Fruit’s near-teleportation ability was also quite tempting.
“Arrange people to keep a close eye on him, don’t let the target suddenly disappear… Forget it, I’ll go personally.”
Elus was still analyzing the Add-Add Fruit and hadn’t planned to move on Bruno urgently, but considering it’s now Marineford Era 1520, who knows if CP9 might become whetstones for the True Chosen One under destiny’s push.
To be safe,
Better secure the Door-Door Fruit first, lest he bolts and can’t be found later.
“Your Highness, setting off now?”
Fran watched Elus rise and head into the castle, asking puzzledly.
“Leaving now, to avoid prolonged delays… Also, pay more attention to news on East Blue and Paradise lately. If any impressive new pirate appears, remember to remind me to read the newspaper.” In the past two months, he’d been immersed in Devil Fruit research and development, not touching newspapers or other entertainment for a long time.
Like today, he said he was relaxing in the courtyard, yet unconsciously started experimenting and training Devil Fruit abilities.
He’d reached the point of forgetting to eat and sleep in his efforts.
Without Fran and a group of capable maids serving him, he’d probably have gone rancid by now.
“I understand.”
Fran nodded in acknowledgment.
Though a bit worried about His Highness’s condition, thinking carefully, with His Highness’s physical quality… he shouldn’t worry about sudden death from too many all-nighters. Setting aside her concerns, the maid turned to arrange the trip.
Water 7 isn’t far from Thriller Bark,
But better safe than sorry; the unpredictable sea is hardest to fathom. Anything can happen on the sea; more preparation is necessary.
