There was no all-devouring darkness surging forth.
Instead, his body underwent a bizarre, twisted transformation.
"What's going on?! Isn't this supposed to be the Dark-Dark Fruit?!"
Teach touched his face in terror. He could clearly feel two sharp tusks growing from the corners of his mouth.
This sensation of bodily beastification was unmistakably the hallmark of a Zoan-type Devil Fruit!
But that was impossible!
For the sake of this fruit, he had memorized the Devil Fruit Encyclopedia inside and out, dreaming about it for nearly thirty years!
Its patterns and shape—there was no doubt about it. It was the Dark-Dark Fruit!
So how the hell did it turn into a Zoan?!
He refused to accept reality—until he stumbled toward the shore.
When he saw the reflection in the water—
That hideous wild boar—
Teach's mindset completely collapsed.
Deep within the uninhabited island.
Deafening booms rang out without end, like the earth itself was shattering, as though some ancient beast had gone berserk.
With his mental state utterly unbalanced, Teach—now transformed into a gigantic wild boar—charged about like a madman.
His already bloated, obese body actually seemed disturbingly well-suited to this boar form.
—BOOM!
With a thunderous crash, a massive boulder dozens of meters tall was smashed apart instantly into a sky full of stone dust by tusks coated in Haki.
It had to be said—although it wasn't the Dark-Dark Fruit, the boost to physical attributes from this Zoan was undeniably powerful.
In order to maintain his façade of being a lazy, good-for-nothing on Whitebeard's ship, Teach's physique had somewhat deteriorated over the years. Now, empowered by this fruit, his body had become thick-skinned and tough, his strength surging dramatically.
But—
Compared to the Dark-Dark Fruit's absurd ability to suppress all other Devil Fruit users, this kind of brute strength was nothing but trash!
After smashing every visible rock on the island into powder, Teach finally ran out of stamina.
He reverted to human form, collapsing into the rubble, panting heavily.
No matter how much he vented, the cruel reality would not change.
For this dream, he had lain low like a dog for nearly thirty years!
And in the end, all he got was an ordinary wild boar form that wasn't even an Ancient Zoan!
As if that devastating blow weren't enough, something even worse followed.
For the sake of this worthless fruit, he had killed Thatch, completely enraged Pops, and was now facing a relentless, life-and-death manhunt by the Whitebeard Pirates!
"Could it be… that my life is really going to end as a complete joke like this?"
Teach stared up at the sky, his eyes sinking into despair.
But just a few seconds later, his expression twisted violently, finally settling into a feral snarl.
He suddenly sat up and roared unwillingly at the heavens:
"How is this possible?! There's no way I'm bowing my head to such a ridiculous fate! I'm one of the D! I'm the man destined to obtain the ultimate treasure!"
The roar was both an outburst and a desperate attempt to hype himself up.
A man's dreams never die!
That was the creed he had always believed in.
As long as he wasn't dead yet, there was still a chance to turn things around!
Aside from the widely known oddity that he "never sleeps," very few people knew that his body itself was an anomaly.
Marshall D. Teach was a monster with "one body, three souls"!
Besides his own, two other "sister" souls resided within him!
That meant that even if he had eaten the wrong fruit, he could still consume other powerful Devil Fruits to make up for his combat power!
However, without the Dark-Dark Fruit, the plan to strip Pops of the Tremor-Tremor Fruit no longer had a one-hundred-percent success rate.
That was indeed a major problem. But right now, the most urgent matter was how to break this deadlock.
If he didn't deal with the Whitebeard Pirates—this colossal force—he'd spend the rest of his life on the run.
"In that case… I'll just have to change the plan."
A vicious glint flickered in Teach's beady eyes.
Originally, he had only intended to capture some pirate with a bounty over a hundred million and hand them over to the government, trading that in for a Warlord title as a protective talisman while slowly accumulating strength.
But now, simply becoming a Warlord was no longer enough.
He had to find a way to trigger a full-scale war between the Whitebeard Pirates and Marine Headquarters!
Only by thoroughly stirring up these waters—preferably getting Pops killed on the battlefield—could he escape the pursuit. He might even be able to fish in troubled waters and gamble on seizing the Tremor-Tremor Fruit.
Once this insane idea surfaced, Ace—the one currently hunting him across the seas—became the perfect chess piece.
Teach had to admit that Ace was monstrously talented. Only two years after joining the crew, he already possessed commander-level strength.
But he had a fatal weakness: he relied too heavily on his Logia abilities. His physical skills and Haki hadn't been honed to the extreme—and his personality was far too reckless.
Teach rubbed his belly. Though he didn't have much confidence in his own Haki either, with dirty tricks and this damage-soaking body, taking down Ace wasn't impossible.
Having made up his mind, Teach forced himself to pull together and began plotting his布局 in the first half of the Grand Line.
Of course, there was also this damn fake fruit!
He refused to believe he'd remembered the encyclopedia wrong—and he refused to believe there were two identical Devil Fruits in the world.
That meant there was only one truth—
Someone had forged it.
Given the fruit's origin, Teach didn't believe some underground gang was responsible. They neither had the guts nor the technology.
The only one capable of this was the Sky Kingdom with its cutting-edge technology!
This was clearly a trap aimed at the Whitebeard Pirates—and he, Teach, had just been unlucky enough to blunder straight into it and take the blame.
If the fake was here, then the real Dark-Dark Fruit had to be in the Sky Kingdom's hands!
"Good… very good. Sky Kingdom, huh!"
Teach ground his teeth, his eyes brimming with venom.
But he knew his limits. Going to provoke that behemoth right now would be suicide.
This resentment—he could only swallow it for now.
"Just wait. We've got plenty of time!"
"Sky General… one day, I'll drag you down from the clouds and grind you into the mud!"
Cursing madly in his heart, Teach dragged his heavy steps back onto the ramshackle ship he had stolen.
To lure Ace into a place beyond Whitebeard's reach, Teach sailed into the first half of the Grand Line, even deliberately leaking bits of his whereabouts from time to time.
And so, amid pursuit and escape, time flew by.
In the blink of an eye, half a year passed.
The wheels of history locked firmly into a special point.
The Year 1520 of the Sea Circle Calendar!
A year of surging winds and rising clouds.
Just as the World Government's great conscription had barely stabilized the balance of the Four Seas, it was as if to herald an impending eruption—the Grand Line suddenly saw a massive influx of rookie pirates of the Worst Generation.
And it was during this special period—
In the East Blue, the Goa Kingdom.
Along the shores of Foosha Village, the afternoon sunlight was warm and serene.
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