After collecting his money, Sebastian quietly slipped out of the group chat, found a corner, and went back to grinding levels.
Ever since he publicly announced his so-called "Justice of Order", he hadn't bothered responding to the arguments raging outside.
Ideological battles were nothing but fertilizer for his popularity. With the amount of "ink" in his belly, he wasn't about to give people a real answer to that kind of philosophical debate.
Whether it succeeded or not… he didn't care.
What mattered was how much profit he could extract from it. His only goal was simple: maintain the field of leeks, and harvest on schedule.
As for the lack of depth in his ideal? He only needed to toss out the concept. After that, the vested interests behind him would happily refine it, polish it, build rituals, build dogma—no effort required.
John, on the other hand, loved being in the spotlight. He dove into the debate with manic enthusiasm, determined to study the field thoroughly. He devoured books, policy papers, whitepapers, and even joined public lectures like he was running for office, quickly gathering a huge following.
With the way he held himself, Sebastian almost wondered if the man had started secretly writing a book.
But Sebastian had no interest.
John's potential was capped—he could only find fun in new hobbies. Sebastian was different. His potential was limitless, and his priority now was to sort through his spoils from the second arena.
First—Wapol Xiao's Core Ability: the Munch-Munch Fruit.
Before Sebastian transmigrated, Devil Fruits had undergone an epic wave of upgrades. What were previously just superpower fruits had now reached godhead-level artifacts.
Every fruit was essentially a piece of divine authority.
Not only did they have conceptual power, they could absorb faith to grow, absorb past users' strength, and evolve after their host died.
Most importantly—
Devil Fruits were alive now.
It wasn't the person choosing the fruit; it was the fruit choosing its host.
In other words, they had become treasures only an absolute fool wouldn't eat.
Eat a good fruit, and it was the equivalent of equipping a divine special-attack plug-in.
Of course, even an epic-tier Devil Fruit had weaknesses.
So Sebastian separated the fruit's weaknesses from its powers.
After one round of farming, Sebastian not only obtained the complete Swallow ability with zero weaknesses, he also gained innate transformation and energy-absorption powers.
Then Sebastian discovered something shocking:
The Swallow-Swallow Fruit didn't disappear after being dismantled.
It reincarnated itself into a new fruit.
The Devil Fruit was silently protesting:
"You can have my power, but you can't have my body. Hmph~~"
Even Sebastian had to give the new fruit a thumbs-up.
Absolutely impressive.
He praised it as a rule-level fruit corresponding to a godhead—something even the Dimensional Farm couldn't fully convert into his property.
Sebastian gave this steel-willed Devil Fruit his highest approval…
…then immediately locked it in a warehouse with permanently frozen time.
Wiping the sweat from his forehead, he muttered:
"Damn—this thing really is alive."
Other than the Devil Fruit, nothing else from Wapol Xiao mattered.
The pirate world really had very little Sebastian considered valuable.
A few conceptual Devil Fruits.
Some rare exotic beasts.
And most importantly—he'd wanted ancient black-tech.
Unfortunately, Wapol Xiao had none of that.
As for physical strength?
The only truly noteworthy skill was "Life Return," the art of perfect bodily control—but Wapol Shaw couldn't use it either.
And domineering?
Sebastian himself was already a top-tier Haki expert; there was nothing to learn.
Besides, Haki was clearly inferior to true superpowers—otherwise wouldn't have lost to Xi Hanmei.
Truthfully, the pirate world just didn't have much for him. Its upper limit was too low, and the cultural gap too large.
In fact, despite all the strange abilities in the pirate world, if you traced them back, they all led to technology.
Long ago, the world had hosted an extremely advanced technological civilization. They used their tech to create all kinds of miraculous tools.
But extreme prosperity invited extreme destruction; whether it was foreign invasion or civil war, Sebastian didn't know.
An apocalyptic war shattered the ancient civilization, regressed the world, and reduced the globe to scattered islands.
After all, both the Grand Line and the Red Line—splitting the world into four seas—were man-made. Nature couldn't produce something like that.
Genetic modification.
Devil Fruits.
Superweapons.
All remnants of ancient tech.
To put it bluntly, 80% of the pirate world's power came from ancient technology, and all progress now relied on archaeological excavation.
The Drum Kingdom
The Drum Kingdom was a winter island with scarce resources, yet it could sustain a 100,000-strong army.
That was thanks entirely to Wapol Shaw.
By turning Drum into a medical superpower, the nation produced countless doctors—the most advanced medical civilization in the world.
But that was it.
The island was too small; development had reached maximum capacity. It couldn't support more people.
Expanding outward was impossible.
To the left was the Giant's Little Garden.
To the right was Alabasta—the descendants of the Twenty Sacred Families.
There was no room to grow, and the World Government would never allow expansion.
Now, Sebastian had several options:
Option 1: Overturn the table.
Flatten the entire pirate world with brute force.
Pros:
He'd obtain the resources of an entire world.
Cons:
Collecting them was difficult. The Space Gate lacked absorption functions.
He'd have to move resources manually. Too slow, too inefficient.
Worse—
Destroying the pirate world might attract unknown higher entities.
He could end up killed by some destiny-favored ability user.
After all, the pirate world possessed a cosmic setting; cosmic pirates existed.
The One Piece planet was just one blue dot in a remote corner of a vast universe.
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