Nami was still planning to act cute and use her charm to convince Marcus, but he cut her off before she could really get started.
"If I'm not mistaken, this is a Mythical Zoan-type, Model: Chira. Based on market value, this Devil Fruit would be worth at least one billion berries."
Had he read so Devil Fruit encyclopedia? Of course not. He was simply reading the item description that appeared in his interface.
"One billion?!"
Marcus' casual words shocked everyone present. Even Nami's eyes went wide, and for a mont she forgot about trying to be cute.
"Actually, there have been strange things happening on this island for years," he continued, gesturing toward the bizarre animals they'd encountered. "Haven't you noticed that all these creatures look weird? Like that pig-lion thing we saw earlier? That's because of this Devil Fruit. Over ti, it's been slowly fusing with the rock around it. The best way to describe it is like the rock itself ate the Devil Fruit. But since rocks don't have consciousness, the fruit's power just spread outward, affecting everything on the island."
Marcus' explanation suddenly made everything click for everyone listening.
Especially for Gaimon, he understood it perfectly. After all, he'd lived on this island for twenty years. What was most abundant here? Not just strange animals, but also plants he'd never seen anywhere else in his travels.
And their reproduction didn't follow any biological rules he knew about. Animals would just mate with whatever they felt like, regardless of species. They could give birth to live young or lay eggs, and sotis the offspring looked nothing like either parent.
Like if a pig and a goat mated, the result might be a chicken. Completely bizarre.
On any normal island in the world, this would be a mind-blowing phenonon that would have scientists flocking from all over.
Now a major mystery that had puzzled him for so long finally made sense.
However, when he looked at that Devil Fruit, his eyes showed no desire to possess it. He seed content just understanding what had been happening around him all these years.
"Does anyone want to eat it?" Marcus looked around at everyone present, naturally including Gaimon in his offer.
"Oh, by the way," he added, "a person can only eat one Devil Fruit in their lifeti. , Alvida, and Luffy have all already eaten one."
"! ! !" Nami imdiately shot her hand up.
"Are you sure? If you're planning to eat it, you have to do it right here in front of ."
"Aw, can't I take it back to the ship and enjoy it slowly?" Nami asked, though her eyes were already taking on the shape of berry symbols.
Looking at her greed, the others just shook their heads.
Marcus glanced around and saw no one else speaking up, which puzzled him a bit.
"Usopp, you don't want to eat it? This is a Mythical Zoan-type Devil Fruit. That's incredibly rare."
Usopp scratched his head. "It's really tempting. But sothing tells it's not ant for , you know?"
"Is that so?"
Marcus looked at the others. His gaze fell on Zoro, who imdiately shook his head. "My goal is to beco the world's greatest swordsman."
It was a simple answer, but he understood completely. Once you ate a Devil Fruit, a swordsman's path wasn't pure anymore. Many swordsn believed that relying on Devil Fruit powers was a form of weakness.
Then he looked toward Kira and Gaimon.
Gaimon seed surprised. " too? Well... thanks for thinking of , but I'll pass."
Finally, his gaze rested on Kira.
At that mont, Kira t Marcus' eyes, and her expression was conflicted, she wanted to, but also seed hesitant.
"What's wrong?" Marcus naturally noticed her strange expression.
"It's just... I heard that a Chira is supposed to be the embodint of fear, evil, and calamity," Kira said quietly, wrapping her arms around herself.
"..."
Marcus had also heard so of the Chira legends, lion's head, goat's body, snake's tail. Each animal was supposed to represent sothing different: the lion represented fear, the goat represented evil, and the snake represented calamity.
But over ti, "chira" had co to an any grotesque fusion of different animals, or creatures whose features didn't match up properly.
"Legends are just legends, they're stories people made up. Eating a Devil Fruit won't make you—"
He stopped mid-sentence, falling into silence. His abrupt pause puzzled everyone.
"What's wrong?" Usopp asked.
Marcus waved his hand dismissively. "Eating a Devil Fruit shouldn't make you influenced by whatever the fruit represents."
But just now, he had looked at Luffy... and for a split second, he could have sworn he saw the shadow of Nika behind him.
He didn't know if it was because Luffy had always been that way by nature, or if eating the Devil Fruit had sohow been shaping him to beco more like Nika over ti.
At that mont, he also recalled sothing, one of the most popular theories that used to circulate online, that Devil Fruits had their own consciousness and would choose their own hosts.
In the original story, you could see from childhood that the Supernovas were perfectly matched to the fruits they would eventually eat.
Kid had loved robots and chanical things since he was little, and he ended up eating the Magnet-Magnet Fruit.
Capone Bege had been obsessed with fortresses and castles since childhood, and he ate the Castle-Castle Fruit.
Scratchn Apoo had loved music since he was young, and he got the Sound-Sound Fruit.
So it wasn't unreasonable to think that Devil Fruits might choose their users rather than the other way around.
And now, here was a fruit that had never appeared in the original One Piece story. Could Kira, who also never appeared, be the one this Devil Fruit had been waiting for?
Marcus looked at Kira carefully.
She was staring at the Devil Fruit in his hand.
Finally, she reached out and took it carefully.
"Can I... can I really eat this?"
Marcus glanced at the others. They all shrugged, no one had any objections. Even Nami, despite her disappointnt about losing out on a billion-berry payday, nodded.
"It's your choice."
Taking a deep breath, Kira bit into the fruit. Her expression imdiately twisted in disgust.
"What's wrong?!"
"It's... so... disgusting," she managed to gasp out, her face turning green.
She forced herself to swallow what was in her mouth, tears streaming down her face from the awful taste.
"You need to finish the whole thing," Marcus said with a strange smile. "If you don't believe , ask Luffy, he ate his entire Devil Fruit. Alvida did too."
Both of them nodded in confirmation, with Luffy adding, "Yeah! It tastes horrible, but you gotta eat it all!"
So with a grim look, like she was marching to her execution, Kira forced herself to finish the entire Devil Fruit, gagging and crying the whole ti.
After she'd choked down the last bite, they all waited for sothing to happen. But after several minutes passed, nothing seed to change about her appearance.
However, Marcus noticed sothing happening that the others couldn't see. From everyone present except Gaimon, a massive amount of experience was flowing toward him.
In just a few seconds, he jumped to Level 30.
He was completely stunned by the sudden surge.
Holy shit.
This ant that before, Kira's changes had only slightly altered fate, not enough to significantly affect the Straw Hats' destined path. But now, clearly, a lot had changed.
Whether those changes would be for better or worse remained to be seen.
He quickly checked his newly unlocked features while trying to keep his expression neutral.
The first upgrade was exactly what he'd expected, his item stack limit had increased from 64 to 1000, including items stored inside chests. That was going to make resource managent so much easier.
The second unlock was also sothing he'd hoped for, the Transmutation Tablet.
It didn't require crafting like most things. Instead, a new interface had appeared next to his main panel, showing the familiar Transmutation Tablet screen from the mod.
In the original mod, the left side was the charging slot, and the right was the grid for item transmutation. In the lower left was the EMC value display.
But this version had so changes.
EMC, Energy-Matter Covalence, was still EMC, but the charging slot now had an additional label: "Repair - Transmute." One glance told Marcus what this ant.
"Repair" was self-explanatory, it would restore durability to damaged items.
"Transmute" should allow him to convert things from the One Piece world into proper Minecraft items.
Curious to test it out, he imdiately sold 640 cobblestones into the system.
The EMC value at the bottom beca 640, just like he'd expected. Apparently, stone values were roughly the sa as in the ga's transmutation pricing.
He sold everything he had except his armor and weapons to build up a decent EMC balance.
Then he placed his damaged iron helt in the repair slot.
He could see the EMC value decreasing slowly, but thankfully, repairs didn't cost much. It only took about thirty EMC to fully restore the helt's durability.
This surprised him, but it also made sense. After all, this wasn't the pure Minecraft world, ga difficulty and item acquisition had to be balanced differently. In the One Piece world, if he used the exact sa chanics as the original ga, he'd probably suffer badly from the increased difficulty.
But when he tried to buy back an item he wanted from the Transmutation Tablet, he froze.
Cobblestone, which had been worth 1 EMC when he sold it, now cost 2 EMC to buy back. And every other item was the sa, buyback prices were exactly double the selling price.
-----
SPOILER!
It seems so readers are still seeing Sanji in Chapter 37. I had edited that chapter after soone ntioned in Chapter 36 that Gaimon might sll, and honestly, I didn't even think of it at first. Since I was already about 30 chapters further ahead, where more crew mbers had joined, I mistakenly ntioned Sanji when I rewrote the beginning of Chapter 37 with a new scene. The old version was just Marcus gaining exp and Gaimon telling his story.
Another point I want to ntion is the Transmutation Tablet. I know this addition with the mod might displease so readers, but it was already added back when so said it would be too overpowered. EMC is pretty important for Nether. There have been so price adjustnts, and the mod after the Transmutation Tablet has already been decided.
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