Hours later, Senor Pink stood swaying, cut and bloodied from head to toe. He lifted his eyes to the sky where Ron hovered, a little winded but unhurt, and rasped, "You win."
He pitched forward and hit the ground.
Rubbing at his temples, Ron sighed. "So stubborn."
Anyone else would have bailed the moment every advantage was stripped away. Pink refused. With Armament Haki he could not be one-shot, so the fight stretched three to four hours until Ron wore him down. In truth, the man never had a path to escape.
Swim-Swim did nothing over open sea, and Ron controlled the air.
What stuck with Ron was how tough Pink had been. Armament let him tank Gale Rend with only shallow cuts and even eat a wind-fire combo and keep moving. Far harder than Arlong.
"If I had a third-tier spell, even hardened Armament should crumble in one hit. A solid fourth-tier might trouble even Doflamingo," Ron murmured, a spark of hunger rising. The mage in him craved bigger runes, heavier laws, more power.
He steadied himself and took stock. Against an elite Headquarters Vice Admiral who used Armament and Moonwalk, he might well lose. Against a typical branch Vice Admiral, especially one without Haki, he would likely end it in a few casts. That placed him somewhere between those tiers.
Here in the East Blue, that was already overwhelming. The real climb would begin on the Grand Line, where achievements were richer and more numerous.
With those, he could push past elite Vice Admirals and into Supernova territory, enough to roam the first half of the Grand Line freely.
He drew a long breath, eyes bright. Time to go.
Then he glanced toward the prize they had both avoided damaging during the fight.
Sitting intact on a wooden cask was a strange, patterned fruit.
Ron drifted down and picked it up.
[System: Achievement unlocked, "Curious Fruit." +1 AP]
"Pink said it was Paramecia," he muttered, turning it in his hand. The achievement panel tracked collecting Devil Fruits but offered no identification. And Paramecia spanned everything from near useless to reality-warping.
If it were a Logia like the Fire-Fire, he would have eaten it on the spot. This was not that.
He hesitated. Becoming a user meant the sea would hate him. Without knowing the power, it was a gamble.
His perception flicked, and God Mode bloomed.
The fruit changed in his sight. The whole thing glowed with an eerie pink radiance, and at its core churned a clot of black mist.
"So that is the curse," Ron whispered. The pink was an unfamiliar energy, vivid and enticing. The black was cold and wrong.
As he watched, a strange yearning rose, not in his body but in his spirit. The glowing fruit felt like a ripe peach on a summer day, begging for a bite. He pushed the urge down. It swelled higher.
A low hum resonated through his soul. His spirit reached out on its own like a rolling fog, opened wide, and bit.
The Devil Fruit's pink motes streamed into him, sinking into his soul like cool snow. Delight flooded his mind. His spiritual power swelled in smooth, steady surges.
It lasted only moments.
When the last pink ember vanished inside him, his spirit recoiled as if it had crunched into grit. With a sharp twist, it spat something out.
The black core.
It tumbled free of his spiritual grasp, writhing into a smear of shadowy vapor that crept toward him again, stubborn and vile.
Ron's fingers opened on reflex. The fruit fell from his hand and clattered away. Separated from its vessel, the black haze faltered, unable to cling to thin air, and dispersed around the discarded husk.
He exhaled slowly, eyes still bright with the lingering chill of that pink energy and the clean rise of his spirit.
"So that is how the sea's curse binds. And so it can be refused."
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