Sea Circle Calendar 1515, July 8. One of the seven routes in the first half of the Grand Line.
A pirate ship drifted slowly across the sea, its deck littered with corpses.
The bodies had died in brutal ways. Some had their heads twisted a full one hundred and eighty degrees. Some had been split open by a weapon or by some unknown force. Others had been pierced clean through.
Fortunately, the sea breeze was strong today. Otherwise, the heavy stench of blood and the reek of corpses baked under the blazing sun would have made anyone who came near gag on rising bile.
Those with weak nerves would likely have vomited on the spot and suffered nightmares the whole night.
Not only the deck. The cabins inside were also filled with bodies.
Their manner of death was much the same as those on the deck.
Some were embedded in the wall like hanging pictures. Some were stuck in the ceiling or the wooden floor. The obvious cause was an irresistible, crushing impact.
"Hahahahaha..."
At that moment, a laugh full of excitement and ecstasy erupted from the captain's quarters, echoing through the ship, carrying through the bulkheads and out over the sea.
With a volume like that, the owner of the laugh had iron lungs.
To make someone laugh that way, either treasure had been found, or some great fortune had occurred.
In fact, that was exactly the case.
"The Dark-Dark Fruit. It's really the Dark-Dark Fruit. Hahahahaha..."
Inside the captain's room, Yami held a fruit in both hands. Its whole body was purple, shaped like a pineapple, its surface coiled in snail-like spirals.
Beside him lay a corpse tortured to death in misery, the late captain of this pirate ship.
After carefully examining the Devil Fruit in his hands, Yami could not suppress another burst of manic laughter. "Hahahaha... To obtain the Dark-Dark Fruit like this, either my luck is heaven-defying, or that guy Blackbeard got abandoned and it chose me as its master."
"In that case, become my power and help me stir this sea sky-high."
When he finished, Yami opened his mouth and bit into the Dark-Dark Fruit.
With a Devil Fruit, a single bite is enough to gain its power.
But Yami chose to eat the entire fruit.
The indescribable taste did not make him pull an exaggerated face.
Yami, age twenty-three, was a transmigrator.
Unlike those whose souls cross time and space to seize another's body and live under someone else's name, or who reincarnate into a new world to start over, his was a body traversal.
A sub-healthy weakling suddenly appearing in the pirate world, a world crowded with races and monsters, was undoubtedly a hell-difficulty start.
First, in terms of potential, Yami did not know how many times he would have to break his limits for his strength to reach the level of a fish-man.
Fish-men, aside from a few elites, are cannon fodder in the New World.
Second, there was the question of native boons. If this world had a will of its own and it decreed that only natives could comprehend this world's unique cutting steel and Haki, then Yami would be fated never to become a great swordsman or awaken Haki.
So body traversal was truly despair.
Unless he started by eating a powerful Devil Fruit, surviving alone would be difficult.
But Yami wasn't worried at all.
Because his traversal wasn't simple. He was a man with a system.
Although the system wasn't very reliable. It had no name and fell into slumber after bringing him into this world.
Yet before it slept, it gave Yami a newbie gift pack.
That very gift pack turned his hell opening into a god-tier start in an instant.
Because in that newbie pack was a constitution called Born Monster Multi-Ability Physique.
In the pirate world, aside from certain races with innate talents, a few chosen humans are born with special gifts.
These chosen are called born monsters.
For example, Charlotte Linlin and Blackbeard are born monsters.
Those born with Observation Haki, such as the Red Count and Otohime, can also be called born monsters.
The former type excels in body. The latter in spirit.
Yami's constitution belonged to the former.
The Born Monster Multi-Ability Physique was a combined, upgraded version of Charlotte Linlin and Blackbeard.
Their constitutions were terrifying, but each had obvious flaws.
Charlotte Linlin possessed defenses impervious to blades and bullets, monstrous strength, and endurance like a beast, but precisely because her bodily talent was too extreme, her appetite since childhood was astonishing and she suffered from a severe eating disorder.
Blackbeard was another case. His body structure might differ from ordinary people. He almost never needed sleep and could eat two Devil Fruits, perhaps even more.
But Blackbeard's raw physicality was not as outrageous as Charlotte Linlin's.
Yami's physique was akin to a fusion of the two, without those defects.
He had no so-called inner vision, and he did not noticeably feel any change to his internal organs. They seemed the same as before.
But one thing was certain. His lineage factor was no longer what it used to be.
Before he crossed over, One Piece had revealed the principle by which humans gain powers from Devil Fruits.
Everyone is born with a complete set of lineage factors. After one eats a Devil Fruit, the power of the devil integrates into the cells and restructures the original lineage factors.
Each person's lineage factors can only be restructured once. Eat another Devil Fruit and the two powers will clash, ending in an exploding death.
Yami was now the exception. No matter how many Devil Fruits he ate, his lineage factors would restructure accordingly.
Those devil powers would not clash within him.
His stamina allowed him to stay awake for twenty-four hours straight. It was uncanny.
After obtaining the born monster physique, Yami instantly changed from a sub-healthy weakling into a giant in strength, a body impervious to blades and bullets, a monster opening his story invincible across the seas.
By the way, Yami crossed over at the start of Sea Circle Calendar 1515, in the North Blue.
After spending half a year mastering the power of his new body, Yami left the North Blue, entered the Grand Line, and set out for the New World to search for the Logia Dark-Dark Fruit.
With a multi-ability physique, no Devil Fruit fit him better than the Logia Dark-Dark Fruit.
So he planned to do as Blackbeard did, entering the New World first to search for it.
If he failed to find the Dark-Dark Fruit, he would join the Whitebeard Pirates, lie low for a few years, and build good ties with Thatch and Ace before Ace joined Whitebeard.
When Thatch obtained the Dark-Dark Fruit, he would get there before Blackbeard and take it.
Once he had the Dark-Dark Fruit, with the monstrous stamina that came with being a born monster, Yami could then eat a top-tier second Devil Fruit and immediately unleash power comparable to Blackbeard wielding the Tremor-Tremor Fruit.
As it turned out, Yami didn't even enter the New World. He obtained the Logia Dark-Dark Fruit in the first half of the Grand Line.
He casually hunted down a pirate crew and, while looting the spoils, opened a random treasure chest and found the Logia Dark-Dark Fruit Blackbeard had longed for. No wonder Yami burst out laughing.
Just as people say.
Either the luck was heaven-defying.
Or the Dark-Dark Fruit had abandoned Blackbeard and chosen Yami as its new master.
When Yami crossed over, the pirate world happened to introduce a new setting. The most top-tier Devil Fruits seemed to choose their owners.
Since the Nika Fruit can choose its owner, it isn't surprising that its opposite, the Logia Dark-Dark Fruit, would do the same.
But whichever it was, Yami didn't care.
After all, he was a man with a system for a safety net.