Disclaimer: I own nothing, this is purely a fanfic for enjoyment.
Cross-over from various games, books, anime, manga, and movies.
The familiar characters you see here belong to their respected authors and owners.
"Speech"
Time*
Chapter 86: Who? What? Where? Why?
30 minutes later*
Well, somehow, someway, I've lost the two extremely powerful Devil Fruits, and I have no idea why or how. I might genuinely be one of the worst people alive to lose those specific Devil Fruits out of all the others. The only reason I didn't eat either of them is that my Spirituality warned me not to, but still.
In hindsight, maybe I shouldn't have stored them inside the Card of Tyrant or any of the Cards of Blasphemy, for that matter, considering how unique and dangerous they are. I should've kept them somewhere separate instead of assuming they would remain safely contained.
Ah, I shouldn't even bother thinking too much about it until I can enter Sefirah Castle again and perform Computational Divination to discover exactly why and how they disappeared. Until then, I would only be wasting my time guessing without enough information.
"Chikao! Look what I got!" Momoyo rushes over to me as I sit on a large rock near the water, her excitement clear from the wide grin on her face. "I got a bounty!" She waves the wanted poster in her left hand before eagerly handing it over to me.
"How did they get these out so fast?" I mutter to myself as I stare at the bounty placed on Momoyo's head. "Eh? A billion?" I blink rapidly and narrow my eyes, wondering if I somehow counted the number of zeroes wrong. I recount them three times just to be certain. "That... shouldn't be possible." I scratch my head in disbelief, unable to understand how her first bounty could possibly be this high.
"That's what Bon Clay said too! He didn't think it should be possible either, but after everything I showed everyone back there, someone must've realized just how insanely strong I am." Momoyo says proudly, placing one hand on her hip with a confident grin.
"Well, uh, congratulations." I keep staring at the wanted poster, especially the close-up of Momoyo's face with a smear of blood across the left side of her cheek, making her look more like a serial killer than anything else. "Although I did say I wanted you and Alucard to be in the spotlight, I was kind of expecting it to take a month or two after the battle at Marineford. In fact, I knew there would probably be a bounty by tomorrow or the next day, but for it to come out this soon—and be this high..." I trail off, still having trouble wrapping my head around the number.
"Want to know the best part?" Momoyo's grin grows just a little more smug. Then, without even waiting for me to answer, she continues. "Alucard didn't get a bounty yet!" She declares triumphantly, clearly taking far too much satisfaction in being the first one to receive one.
"How did Alucard take this?" I ask Momoyo.
Before she can answer, a sudden explosion erupts from the opposite side of the island, the distant boom carrying across the landscape. I turn my head toward it and stare for a moment.
"Hm. If that's her..." I pause, already having a pretty good idea of what happened. "Not well, I would guess."
"I'm going back to rub it in her face again!" Momoyo says before rushing off toward where Alucard is, snatching the wanted poster straight out of my hand as she passes.
I barely have time to react before she's already gone, clearly far too eager to provoke Alucard a second time.
Well, that was a random moment with Momoyo, I guess. Anyway, back to... what was I about to do again after deciding to stop wasting my time thinking about the two missing Devil Fruits before Momoyo showed up?
Oh, yeah. I didn't even get the chance to think of something else to do before she suddenly appeared. Now I'm right back where I started, sitting here with absolutely no plan in mind.
Without any warning, the 22 Cards of Blasphemy suddenly appear before me, circling around my body for several seconds before the Card of Tyrant and the Card of the Hanged Man move to the front.
That's when I notice something strange.
The final 1% needed to advance to the next Sequence—the remaining Beyonder Characteristic required for the potion—has somehow appeared, raising both of them from 99% to 100%.
"...Huh." I stare at the two Cards of Blasphemy for a moment, processing what this means. I can now advance to Sequence 8 in both the Tyrant Pathway and the Hanged Man Pathway. "Wait... does this mean I can convert Devil Fruits into Beyonder Characteristics?!" My eyes widen as the realization finally hits me. "I was wondering why the hell most of the Computational Divination results from before the Sefirot went crazy kept showing me hunting down so many Devil Fruits!"
I glance between the two Cards of Blasphemy again, my previous confusion over the missing Devil Fruits starting to make a lot more sense.
Wait, would this only count as a single Beyonder Characteristic, or would it be considered a complete set reaching all the way to Sequence 1? I stare at the two Cards of Blasphemy, tempted to investigate further.
No time to find out right now. Whatever the answer is, I'll have to deal with it later.
An hour later*
Pain. All I know is pain. Deep, relentless pain.
I completely forgot just how dangerous Sequence 8: Listener of the Hanged Man Pathway is.
Literally, this Sequence only grants one new ability: Listen. Every Listener can hear the whispers of secret entities directly, which means they frequently come into contact with information originating from powerful, distorted, and utterly unique beings.
Worse, at this stage, the Beyonder power is always active in a passive state. Normally, there is no real way to simply turn it off until reaching Sequence 7: Shadow Ascetic. Those entities can always speak to a Listener whenever they want, even if the Listener were to remove their own ears.
So, yeah. Advancing might have been a terrible idea.
Luckily for me, having the Hanged Man's Uniqueness means I can actually turn Listen off. It only takes a few minutes of me banging my head against the sandy beach before I finally manage it.
Because apparently, one of the first things I get to hear is the freaking sea itself screaming in pain from being forced to produce far more water than should normally be possible.
...Yeah. I'm never turning that back on casually again.
I rub my aching head, still recovering from the experience.
So damn loud that I thought my eardrums were about to burst. Even with Listen turned off now, the memory of that overwhelming voice still seems to echo faintly in the back of my mind.
Wiping the tears from my eyes, I check the Card of Tyrant and the Card of the Hanged Man. Both now show 1% progress toward the ingredients needed for their Sequence 7 potions.
So, my current guess is that the two Devil Fruits were converted into complete sets of Beyonder Characteristics reaching all the way up to Sequence 1—or at least, I really hope they reach Sequence 1. That would save me an absurd amount of time compared to gathering every characteristic normally.
Either way, the Beyonder Characteristics alone aren't enough. I still need to gather the remaining supplementary ingredients and put everything through the proper rituals and processing before they can become suitable ingredients for the actual potions.
Honestly, I probably shouldn't even be mad about this. If anything, I'm extremely lucky to have stumbled across another method of obtaining Beyonder Characteristics.
The only problem is that now I have to deal with the Sefirot, which started whispering directly into my ears after only half an hour of being a Sequence 8: Listener.
And somehow, that's not even the worst part.
The worst part is that my brain isn't remotely at the level of comprehension needed to actually understand the words the Sefirot are using to speak to me. I can hear them perfectly fine, yet whatever they're saying is so far beyond me that it might as well be meaningless noise.
Although my Spirituality is giving me the distinct feeling that I'm in serious danger, I can't pinpoint exactly where that danger is coming from.
Still, going by everything I've already checked through Computational Divination, I'm willing to bet Fate Lust is somehow behind this. After all, I nearly ended up taking Ace's Devil Fruit, but that situation spiraled completely out of control before I could actually do anything with it.
If Fate Lust really is responsible, then I have a feeling that from now on, obtaining other Devil Fruits from existing users who are still alive or have recently died isn't going to be easy for me.
At the very least, I should probably expect something to go wrong whenever I try.
I rub my chin, wondering if it's possible to grab Ace's Devil Fruit by now. At this point, it should've already respawned into an ordinary fruit somewhere out there, converting it into a Devil Fruit. Maybe I can go grab it now, since no one should've eaten it yet.
But with Fate Lust involved, or maybe not, I can't be 100% sure anymore. There's still the possibility that something or someone is influencing the results of my divination, which makes blindly trusting them a lot more dangerous.
Ugh, having to Listen to the voices of the Sefirot is giving me one hell of a headache. Even with the help of both the Visionary's Uniqueness and the Hanged Man's Uniqueness, it still isn't enough to completely block them out.
Then again, the Sefirot are above the level of Uniqueness in the first place. On top of that, I'm not dealing with just one Sefirot constantly talking into my ears.
So, I guess I should be grateful that I can still think barely clearly enough to avoid doing something I might regret for the rest of my life while my head feels like it's being torn apart from the inside.
The 22 Cards of Blasphemy suddenly begin circling around me again, causing my entire body to tense up immediately.
Spirituality begins to spill out from each Card of Blasphemy, briefly taking on various forms before all of it merges back into my body. My vision immediately shifts away from the sandy beach, and in the next instant, I find myself seeing all the Sefirot.
They're no longer fighting among themselves.
Instead, I'm standing directly at the center of them all, surrounded on every side as the full weight of their presence presses down on me at once.
I have absolutely no idea what's going on, and I definitely don't feel comfortable being surrounded like this.
My eyes move from one Sefirot to another, but I don't dare make any sudden movements. Being at the center of all of them feels less like being welcomed and more like standing inside something I really shouldn't be part of.
However, as the seconds pass, my confusion only grows. Somehow, little by little, I'm starting to understand the words the Sefirot are using.
That realization makes me even more uneasy.
Something about suddenly being able to comprehend them feels deeply wrong, and I can already think of far too many reasons why this probably isn't a good thing.
I seriously hope this doesn't end with something far worse than simply dying.
Because with the Sefirot involved, death is starting to sound like one of the more merciful possibilities.