Sabaody Archipelago, Island 50.
In the basement of an ordinary residential house, Sephiroth stepped through a spatial door, Van Der Decken slung over his shoulder.
After dumping the unconscious fishman onto the floor, he retrieved the 100% pure seastone shackles and thick iron chains from the basement and secured them on him.
Snap! Snap!
Sephiroth raised his right hand and slapped Van Der Decken hard across the face twice, making both his cheeks swell.
The intense pain slowly brought Van Der Decken back to consciousness. Gasping, he asked in terror, "Who are you?! What do you want...?"
"I heard your clan inherits the Op-Op curse. How is that power inherited...?"
"It's a special curse of our clan, inherited from birth."
"Heh!"
Sephiroth merely sneered. His vampire fangs quickly extended, and he sank them into Van Der Decken's neck, using Blood Recall to read his memories.
Soon, he learned how Van Der Decken's clan passed down the power of the Op-Op Fruit.
It was very simple, one word... eat!
When their ancestor was on the verge of death, they would quickly dig out their heart and swallow it. The Devil Fruit power, which was wandering outside, would transfer directly to the eater!
Sephiroth took out a handkerchief and wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, muttering, "No wonder they call it a curse... devouring the flesh and blood of close relatives to gain power!
Ordinary people really can't do such a crazy thing. The mental pressure would be too heavy..."
This couldn't help but remind Sephiroth of the previous Soul-Soul Fruit user... Sister Carmel!
Speaking of which, that guy was also quite unlucky. When Big Mom Charlotte Linlin was six years old, she ate cake too happily and accidentally awakened her Conqueror's Haki, knocking out all the orphans and Sister Carmel in the Lamb's House.
Finally, Charlotte Linlin, lost in her meal, hallucinated and ate all the unconscious people, digesting them completely...
From then on, Charlotte Linlin, who had devoured Carmel, became the new Soul-Soul Fruit user!
Van Der Decken twisted his chained body desperately, saying in extreme terror, "You... what did you just do to me?
Why do you know the way our clan's power is inherited..."
In response, Sephiroth just gave him a cold glance and didn't answer.
Then, he drew the butcher knife from his waist, opened a spatial door, and walked in.
Seeing the spatial folding door close and the silver-haired young man disappear, Van Der Decken immediately began to look around the basement, searching for a way out.
But...
He found in despair that the basement door was directly welded shut, and the ventilation shaft had metal bars installed...
The entire basement was a sealed room with no external exit!
After a moment, the spatial door opened again, and Sephiroth walked out.
"Let's talk... please let me go!... I surrender!"
Realizing he couldn't escape the basement, Van Der Decken began to beg for mercy repeatedly.
He still wanted to marry Princess Shirahoshi and become the king who ruled the world. He couldn't die in some unknown basement!
Sephiroth directly ignored the Fishman's pleas. He took box after box of fruits from his personal space, opened the boxes, and placed them next to him.
"Wait... what exactly do you want to do to me!?"
Van Der Decken's eyes widened suddenly, his face filled with fear and unease.
"Of course, I want to take your Op-Op Fruit ability!"
A wicked smile appeared on Sephiroth's face. He threw a red pill into his mouth and swallowed it with a "gulp!", thus activating the Vampire Fruit awakening state.
"No! Don't do this... you are also a Devil Fruit user. Even if you eat my heart, you won't be able to gain my ability, and you might even explode and die!
I'm willing to be your subordinate. From now on, I'll do whatever you tell me to do..."
"Sorry, you're not worthy!
I don't have the habit of taking in useless subordinates..."
Sephiroth's red eyes were filled with indifference. He raised his right hand, extended his index and middle fingers, and pointed them like a sword, forcefully slashing his sharp fingernails across Van Der Decken's throat...
In an instant, bright red blood spurted from his neck!
Immediately after, Sephiroth spread his right hand, and the blood flowing from Van Der Decken, as if bound by an invisible force, quickly wriggled in the air, forming a blood mass.
In the Vampire awakening state, Sephiroth could not only perfectly control his own blood, but also that of others was within his control!
However, this ability of his had no effect on people who were proficient in Armament Haki. They could cover their entire body with Armament Haki to counteract his manipulation of blood.
Ever since Sephiroth gave Kozuki Hiyori the First Embrace, sharing his source blood with her, he had been contemplating one thing!
Since he could materialize the power of his Vampire Fruit from an abstract concept into a real special substance...
Then, could he use the same method on other Devil Fruit users to extract their Devil Fruit power?
In a state of complete concentration, Sephiroth could clearly feel that he was extracting a very special power from Van Der Decken, who was gradually losing his life, using blood as a medium!
Soon, he had drained all of Van Der Decken's blood, causing him to die and become a withered corpse with a gaunt face.
Perhaps because the special power in the blood did not belong to Sephiroth himself, but was forcibly stripped from someone else, that power was constantly struggling, trying to escape his grasp.
Then, Sephiroth carefully manipulated the blood mass floating in mid-air, moving it over the various wooden boxes filled with fruits, carefully sensing the reaction of the power within the blood mass.
"Hmm!? You're the one!"
After moving it back and forth several times, Sephiroth finally determined which fruit this power reacted most strongly to.
So, he reached into the wooden box with his left hand, selected a dragon fruit, and guided the blood mass to make contact with it.
The moment the two touched, that special power directly burrowed into the dragon fruit!
Immediately after, the entire dragon fruit changed. Its skin turned red, and spiral patterns appeared all over it... Paramecia: Op-Op Fruit!
Sephiroth examined the Devil Fruit in his hand, gently stroking his chin and muttering to himself:
"Hmm!? Was the original fruit of this Devil Fruit a dragon fruit, or did it just have to make do because there were no other options? When selecting the target fruit, it clearly reacted to several fruits, but the dragon fruit was the strongest... The experimental data is insufficient, so it's impossible to judge for now. More samples are needed!"
However, when Sephiroth stripped the Devil Fruit from Van Der Decken and regenerated it, he implicitly understood one thing...
Once a Devil Fruit user eats a Devil Fruit, they have actually obtained all of its basic abilities.
However, due to the user's insufficient development, many powers cannot be fully utilized.
For example, Sephiroth originally developed a simple splitting into bats skill into abilities such as black mist, shared vision, Bat Clone, consciousness hypnosis, and black mist thunder clouds. It seems that these are skills he developed based on the fruit's own abilities after gaining the corresponding strength.
But...
The basis of these skills, they actually existed originally!
Even his current ability to control blood and strip away the power of Devil Fruits is actually a basic ability that existed originally!
However, this power could only be discovered with his strong strength...
Therefore, the reason he was able to regenerate the power of the Devil Fruit on nearby fruits at that time wasn't because he was lucky or it was a coincidence, but because the "future self" gave him a drop of blood containing extremely strong vitality, which helped him fully enhance the characteristics of these basic powers!
His future self, which is his current self, even without taking awakening drugs, already has a very high degree of control over the power in blood!
He can even control other people's blood to a certain extent, for example, when he hypnotizes others' consciousness and creates illusions...
The awakening of the Vampire Fruit just strengthened this characteristic again!
Although that drop of blood from the future was constantly decaying in his body at that time, within three years, the probability of him obtaining Devil Fruits was indeed very high.
After all, when Sephiroth killed a Devil Fruit user, he often wished he could obtain their power. Through the blood control ability, that hope became an invisible pulling force, constantly restricting and drawing in the escaping power of the Devil Fruit.
That was how the power of those Devil Fruits could only regenerate on nearby fruits as carriers. That's why he'd obtained so many of them.
Sephiroth's situation wasn't an exception.
For example, Luffy, who ate the Mythical Zoan Nika Fruit and gained rubber abilities, already had the ability to unconsciously assimilate surrounding objects into rubber!
When Luffy activates Gear Three, when he wants to enlarge his body, his clothes will also unconsciously enlarge with him...