Chapter Ninety-Four: The Encounter Battle

“Something about this feels wrong...”

As the saying goes, the first time is tense, the second time familiar, and by the third time everything runs smoothly. In just a few short months, Autumn White and his companions had already made the passage over Reverse Mountain three times, so Bepo had become a seasoned helmsman. By now he could handle those raging currents with ease, whether going up or coming down.

By this point, the Interna had already returned to the North Blue, but an indistinct sense of unease would not leave Autumn White alone. It was not that he possessed any miraculous gift of prophecy; it was simply the product of common sense, choice, and judgment.

No matter how one looked at it, Donquixote Doflamingo’s reaction had been far too abnormal. By rights, Autumn White had botched the job, and Doflamingo should never have been that calm about it.

In a man like Joker, there was probably only one thing that mattered: success or failure. Whatever unavoidable obstacles had appeared along the way would not enter into his calculations. So however reasonable Autumn White’s excuses might have been, the result had still been failure, and the amount of effort spent in between meant nothing at all.

So after losing a billion, Doflamingo had not uttered a single cutting word? Impossible.

This time was completely different from what had happened in Flevance. Back then, the operation had been, in essence, an attempt to seize what belonged to someone else. But with the mermaid affair, Autumn White had lost something that had originally belonged to Doflamingo himself.

That made the matter far more serious, serious enough that it could never simply be brushed aside. Or perhaps, once he returned to the family, some punishment was already waiting for him.

Autumn White did not know. In any case, he still had to go back.

“Hel- help!”

Just then, the expected cry for help snapped him out of his thoughts. He glanced at Bepo flailing in the sea, then reached for the rope beside him and began hauling it in.

The swimming expert of only a few months ago was now unable even to dog paddle. The reason was simple: he had eaten something with an especially nasty taste.

“How do you feel?” Autumn White asked after pulling him aboard.

Bepo did not even have time to deal with the seawater soaking every inch of him. He collapsed against the deck, breathing hard in panic.

“I-I almost drowned.”

He had never hated seawater so much. But in the end, this was his own fault for eating a devil fruit and still clinging to the foolish hope that he might somehow keep swimming. The experiment had already made the truth obvious: once a power user fell into the water, death by drowning was the only outcome.

By body fat alone, Bepo ought to have floated there like a corpse without lifting a finger. Instead, he had sunk straight to the bottom like a brick, in blatant defiance of physics. The curse of the sea... it really was absurdly lethal and unforgiving.

“As I said before, this is unavoidable. Still...” Autumn White lifted the eaten fruit again. “At least my advice did help a little. Your process of eating the devil fruit was not nearly as painful as it could have been. Unlike certain people, who can endure a taste that vile and still force down the entire thing.”

The fruit in his hand was the size-altering devil fruit Bepo had consumed. At first glance it looked unchanged, but in truth, if anyone swallowed it now, all they would get was that unforgettable blast of revolting flavor. The ability, however, was gone forever.

“Tell me... what if we sold this one again?” Autumn White said suddenly.

One had to admit, his bright ideas were as shamelessly wicked as ever.

Bepo had eaten the fruit in a rather refined fashion, like some highborn gourmet eating watermelon: he had cut a small opening in the side with a spoon, scooped out just a little flesh, eaten it, and then neatly restored the opening as though nothing had ever happened.

So unless one inspected it very carefully, no one would suspect that it was not a normal devil fruit anymore.

Devil fruits came in endless varieties, but no two granted exactly the same ability. Perhaps because of that exclusivity, only the first person to eat a fruit would gain its power, whether they had taken one bite or swallowed the whole thing.

The remainder no longer contained that mysterious force.

Put simply, whether or not one gained an ability had nothing to do with how much was eaten. Once eaten, the power was obtained; that was all. The amount consumed did not affect how the ability worked.

Using this size-altering fruit as an example, there was no such thing as Bepo only getting up to a tenfold increase because he had eaten only a little, while someone who finished the whole fruit would gain a hundredfold transformation.

It did not matter how much was eaten. So long as one was not obsessed with bizarre flavors and did not want to be driven half-mad by the taste, there was really no need to finish an entire devil fruit.

But however one looked at it, Autumn White’s way of thinking was far too much like that of a crooked merchant. If he really sold the fruit again, that would no longer be a matter of counterfeit goods; it would be trafficking poison.

“I don’t think that would be very good,” Bepo objected, speaking up on the grounds of justice and courage.

Something like that would be disgraceful, filthy, and deeply embarrassing. Better to show a little restraint.

As for Ain, she said nothing at all, merely throwing Autumn White a look of utter contempt.

Bepo shook the seawater from his body and went back to the helm. It was clear that he was not nearly as crushed by the loss of his swimming ability as one might expect. The reason was simple: he had received an excellent replacement.

For many devil fruits, one needed some degree of exploration, trial, or training before the power could truly be used. For others, however, the moment they were swallowed, an astonishing change would occur. The size-altering fruit was obviously one of the latter, and Bepo had already tested its transformation into a giant bear.

How should one describe that feeling? Looking down from above? In any case, sometimes the scenery from the top is far more intoxicating than the view from below.

“Just kidding. I was only joking. You all know I don’t care about money one bit...” That part was true; Autumn White had only been entertaining the notion because he thought it would be amusing.

But he never got to finish the sentence.

Because of that odd feeling from before, he had been talking nonsense the whole time, yet in truth he remained on high alert. Still, no matter how vigilant one was, that was only mental preparation. It could never compare with an enemy who had come ready and waiting.

All of Autumn White’s route, heading, timing, and every other detail had already been leaked. Under those circumstances, how could he possibly respond in time?

A blow from behind was always the deadliest.

The sea around them was calm and clear, and Bepo was steering the Interna around the outer edge of a reef. But the moment the ship had just begun to swing into its new course, the attack struck.

For most people worthy of being called strong, cannons were not especially effective in one-on-one combat. But quantitative change could become qualitative change, and a simultaneous volley from more than forty guns was another matter entirely.

A huge pirate ship had been hidden among the rocks, in an angle from which it could not have been seen before the Interna changed course.

All of its gunports facing this side had already been opened, and in an instant the voices of the god of war overlapped. The thunderous roar seemed to send ripples across the entire sea.

Fire and smoke surged into the sky. The pirate vessel, far larger than an ordinary warship, was instantly swallowed in the haze, and the immense recoil of the broadside shoved it several meters sideways toward the opposite side of its hull.

Under such close-range saturation fire, a small craft like the Interna was like an infant with a fifty-millimeter shotgun pressed to its forehead. The outcome was obvious.

The change from clear weather to the end of the world took only a single instant too fast for anyone to react.

Dense masses of shot screamed toward them. Autumn White had no time to think; he lunged forward at once and seized Ain, but before he could do anything else, there was no time left.

In theory, his conceptual shield would have absolute defense against cannon fire and other thrown weapons. But that shield could not intercept at medium or long range, and he could not even let go of it. He was standing in the middle of the ship, and there was no way to keep the seven rings of blazing protection in front of the bow without moving his feet.

And after that forward motion, it was already too late to project the shield. The petals had only just begun to bloom from the flames when the rain of cannonballs arrived.

He did not even have the chance to shout for everyone to jump.

In that sudden, knife-edged moment, the strain on his nerves sharpened his senses to an almost frightening degree, so acute it felt unprecedented.

Though the cannonballs seemed to swell before his eyes, the first thing he sensed was not danger, but the Interna pitching backward. Then, before any shot could land, the ship itself began to rupture under the pressure and weight it could no longer bear.

Bepo’s newly acquired power was put to use at once—as an extraordinarily dependable shield of flesh.

A fuzzy white wall rose before Autumn White’s eyes. It was Bepo’s arm. At the same time, a giant bear more than ten meters tall appeared above the sea.

Given the scale of the bombardment, transforming into such a huge target was a profoundly foolish decision. Yet judged by reaction time alone, Bepo seemed to have done it without even thinking.

And so the cannonballs came in droves, landing softly against his fur, while the hot iron spheres, driven by overwhelming momentum, tore through his skin and buried themselves in his muscles.

Then Bepo let out a tremendous roar, impossible to tell whether it carried pain inside anger or anger inside pain. But his enlarged form still had not been undone.

An ambush? A raid? An attempt to silence them forever?

Autumn White had lost his footing, but not his ability to think. In fact, he reached an extremely accurate conclusion and was already prepared for his next move: with all the strength he could muster, calling himself a berserker and putting every ounce of force he possessed behind it, he hurled the useless size-altering fruit toward the deep sea.

The little thing, not even eight inches across, vanished in an instant, streaking out of everyone’s sight like a shooting star.

Perhaps if this had simply been a kill-and-bury-the-dead affair, then in these shallow waters near the reefs they could have found what they wanted by diving down and searching the corpses. But now...

Were these unidentified attackers after the Hobby Fruit?

Then they could go and find it themselves.

If they could not find it, that was fortunate. If they did, then it was their misfortune.