Chapter 32: Paramecia: Add-add Fruit
Sorcerer,
This was the nickname he earned while roaming his hometown in the East Blue, which was already over a decade ago. At that time, he was just a rookie pirate in a corner of the East Blue, smug about his minor fame. Compared to the great pirate Gol D. Roger, who also hailed from the East Blue, he was truly just a newcomer who had only recently made his debut.
By the way, Gol D. Roger wasn’t the Pirate King back then!
The so-called Pirate Era was a future no one had ever imagined, dismissed as the ravings of a madman. Back then, he was like a wild boar rolling in a mud puddle. He knew the vastness of the mountains and forests but still clung to the comfort of his own little mud puddle, having no interest whatsoever in the Grand Line.
This mindset was in fact the norm for most pirates in the past era.
Only a small handful of ambitious, audacious individuals would challenge the Grand Line.
But everything changed from that day onward, starting from the day Gol D. Roger was executed in Loguetown. Because of the Pirate King’s dying words, countless pirates who had been content with the status quo were stirred into restless hearts, and thus,
The Pirate Era began.
Marcus was also one swept up in this era’s torrent. Unbeknownst to him, the atmosphere of the entire world had changed. All pirates became driven by the dream and glory of charging into the Grand Line to seek the great treasure left behind by the Pirate King. Even Marcus was eventually infected by this fervent atmosphere, leaving his cozy mud puddle behind and charging into the Grand Line with bared fangs.
Unfortunately, like most failures,
Marcus was ultimately not the one destined by heaven. He was just a small pebble in the era. The setbacks he suffered in the New World sobered him from that inexplicable frenzy, but by then, he could no longer return to the mud puddle of his hometown.
So,
He found a new mud puddle and joined Umit’s influence, living leisurely for over a decade.
“Phew! When people get old, they like reminiscing about the past, but come to think of it, thirty-nine shouldn’t count as old yet, right?” Marcus crawled out from the pile of rubble. Full-coverage Armament Haki had helped him block the terrifying shockwave that could whip a human into mincemeat.
“Also, are the young people these days all this terrifying?”
Marcus bared his teeth, his face twisting from the dull pain transmitted through his body.
This was unavoidable. Full-coverage Armament Haki inevitably couldn’t maintain the intensity of small-range coverage. Although it blocked the Earthquake Dragon’s tail whip, it couldn’t achieve a state of perfect unscathed. It could be said that suffering only bruises that didn’t affect movement was already something to thank the heavens for.
Getting distracted in combat and not being directly killed by the enemy was already enough to be considered favored by the goddess of luck. This situation could only be called reaping what he sowed.
“I got careless!”
Marcus reflected on himself while moving his body to check his specific condition.
He wasn’t given extra time to recover. The battle hadn’t yet come to an end; it was still ongoing————
Eschbach’s pursuit swept in like a storm.
Relying on the advantage of his massive build, Eschbach’s thirty-meter-long tail had an incredibly wide attack range, effectively pinning down Marcus, who was hopping around with annoyingly agile movements. This was one of the reasons he had to maintain this form for combat.
“duang~~~!!!”
The thirty-meter-long tail whipped the ground.
There was no expected vibration. The ground suddenly became so elastic that it deeply caved in under the tail’s whip, then erupted with terrifying rebound force after accumulating astonishing kinetic energy.
Amid this wondrous sound effect, Eschbach’s steps were shaken by Marcus’s counterattack for the first time.
The rebound force was so powerful that Eschbach had to shift his footing to dissipate the power transmitted from his tail.
At the same time,
Marcus used the rebound’s kinetic energy to fly once more in front of Eschbach. His tiny figure faced Eschbach’s enormous flat head. The baseball cap had already been knocked off earlier, and his shiny bald head reflected dazzling light under the sun.
He spread his hand, empty-handed, his open palm as if touching something invisible.
“Explode for me!”
Heat began to surge dramatically within the designated space, then the surrounding gas volume rapidly expanded, and the explosion occurred.
“Boom————!!!”
What immense power this explosion had.
The explosive blast wave spread outward like a smoke ring, the blast wind howling toward the distance.
This was Marcus’s strongest attack.
“Ugh——!!”
Eschbach timely closed his eyes, covering his massive face with Armament Haki, but the shockwave from the explosion still made his cheeks feel the pain of being punched hard several times. But that was it. Such injuries weren’t enough to affect his continued combat, and compared to this negligible pain, he was more concerned with the principle behind the earlier explosion.
No chemical reaction, no physical change,
Skipping the prerequisites, heat just abruptly appeared out of thin air—no, not out of thin air, but originating from Marcus.
“Is this your ability? Release—hmm, ‘impart’ would be a more accurate term. Imparting some kind of energy, or rather property? Is this your Devil Fruit ability?”
Eschbach made a guess based on his observations.
“So it was discovered after all! Indeed, it’s unavoidable. Using the ability so frequently, it was only a matter of time before it was figured out······” Marcus, falling from the air, smiled and sighed.
His strongest attack couldn’t inflict sufficiently severe damage on Eschbach. Although he had been mentally prepared, and he had already gauged Eschbach’s strength in this brief clash, the reality of his own harmlessness to this extent was still somewhat disheartening.
“Paramecia, Add-Add Fruit.”
Marcus revealed the name of his ability.
Since his ability’s true nature had already been seen through, there was no harm in naming it now. As long as he could prolong this battle as much as possible and buy more time for his boss, chatting or fighting made no difference.
Yes, as long as he could buy more time.
He would—
“Oh, Add-Add Fruit······ Good stuff!”
Hearing the voice from behind, Marcus’s heart jolted. Observation Haki spread out like flowing water. He ‘saw’ Elus flapping his wings in the air, scrutinizing him from above and below, as well as Umit lying supine in the deep pit.
