Treatment

Yota couldn't help curling his lip. This medical student had somehow managed to make himself seriously ill—he was obviously not very reliable.

But... wasn't that a good thing? If Deuce was unreliable, wouldn't that just show off Yota's own abilities? Then, naturally, he could join Ace's crew!

As the son of the Pirate King, Ace's physical potential far surpassed Yota's. On top of that, he was bold and open-hearted. Once they got familiar with each other, Yota was confident he would have a chance to analyze the mysteries of Ace's body.

Besides, Ace was the typical adventurous kind of pirate. Being with him was far better than being with those pirates who robbed and plundered.

Not to mention that Ace's Spade Pirates would eventually merge into the Whitebeard Pirates. And aboard Whitebeard's ship was Blackbeard, that treasure-bearded man!

Blackbeard's deformed body, capable of consuming two Devil Fruits, was immensely tempting to Yota!

At that thought, Yota smiled faintly. "I see. But there's no need to go to the trouble of finding a doctor. I'm a doctor myself."

"Really?" Ace's face lit up with surprise after hearing Yota's words. "Drum Kingdom really does deserve its reputation as a legendary medical nation. Even some random teenager is a doctor."

No, I think you have some misunderstanding about Drum Kingdom. The corner of Yota's eye twitched slightly.

How was this any different from how, when Bruce Lee's movies became famous, every foreigner assumed Chinese people knew kung fu? He hadn't expected One Piece World to have this kind of labeling too.

"How could you just run into someone who's a doctor? Yota is a very famous doctor in Drum Kingdom!" Chopper, standing behind Yota, couldn't hold back any longer. He jumped out and shouted.

"Eek!! It's a raccoon dog! The raccoon dog can talk!" Ace exclaimed in astonishment.

"Idiot, I'm clearly an elk! What do you mean, raccoon dog? I'm not a raccoon dog!" Chopper flew into a rage, baring his sharp teeth at Ace.

"An elk?" Ace tilted his head. "I don't believe it. You're obviously a raccoon dog!"

"I'm an elk!" Enraged, Chopper pounced on him, and he and Ace promptly started wrestling around.

Yota's mouth twitched again. Looking at the vice-captain lying on the ground, apparently completely forgotten by Ace, he sincerely felt that the guy was too pitiful. Truly worthy of the name Deuce—he had just been discarded.

Thinking that, Yota casually examined Deuce's body and found a wound on his back that had already begun to rot.

"Damn! I thought it was an ordinary illness. It turns out inflammation from an infected wound caused it."

"Seriously, he can't even deal with this kind of injury? Is this guy really a doctor?"

Yota casually grumbled a couple of times, then suddenly opened his mouth and swallowed Deuce whole.

Ace, who had been fooling around with Chopper, suddenly shouted. He flung Chopper aside and rushed over.

"What did you do? Where's Deuce?"

His face full of panic, Ace grabbed Yota's mouth, forced it wide open, and stuck his head inside.

Then Deuce, spat out from Yota's mouth, sent him flying.

"What? What's going on? Deuce, are you okay?" Dizzy and disoriented, Ace blurted out a few words before seeing Deuce open his eyes.

"I'm so thirsty... Huh, what's going on? Where am I?"

"Deuce, you're awake!" Seeing his companion regain consciousness, Ace's face was filled with joy. Not only that, he found that Deuce's high fever had gone down, and even the wound on his back had completely vanished, leaving behind only a tiny scar.

"What happened? Oh, I remember—I kept running a high fever because my wound got inflamed. I'm better now? How long was I unconscious?" Deuce muttered in confusion. He reached behind himself, only to find that the wound had become nothing more than a small scar.

"Your injury has been healed. The inflammation is gone too." Yota spat a few times. Swallowing a human body hadn't actually felt disgusting; he was just psychologically uncomfortable with it.

The Munch-Munch Fruit's body modification, combined with Yota's medical skills, made treating this sort of external injury and inflammation effortless. The method of treatment just looked a little horrifying.

Ace, meanwhile, wore a stunned expression as he felt Deuce all over. In the end, his increasingly annoyed vice-captain slapped him away.

"You healed everything that quickly? What Devil Fruit ability is that?" With stars in his eyes, Ace ran over to Yota and asked in amazement.

Yota's actions had given him quite a scare earlier, but now that he had recovered from the shock, Ace naturally understood that this had to be some Devil Fruit ability he had never seen before.

"This is the power of the Paramecia-type Munch-Munch Fruit. The Munch-Munch Fruit lets me modify anything I swallow, and the human body is naturally included."

"That's incredible! Does that mean no matter what injury or illness someone has, they'll recover as soon as you swallow them and spit them back out?" Ace asked, his face full of astonishment.

"How could that be? I can only directly cure an illness after swallowing someone if it's one I'm capable of treating. It merely saves the time needed for treatment and recovery," Yota said, shaking his head.

Of course, what Yota didn't say was that as long as a person's organs were intact, even if they had been split in half, he could still restore them to normal if he swallowed them before they died.

But if it were like Ace in the original story, with his entire heart blown away, then Yota wouldn't be able to heal him. After all, the Munch-Munch Fruit could only modify and stitch things together; it couldn't create something from nothing.

"That's still incredibly amazing." Ace's eyes gleamed. "Would you be willing to come aboard our ship as the ship's doctor? That idiot Deuce only knows how to wrap bandages, disinfect wounds, or tell people to drink more hot water. He's way too unreliable."

As soon as Ace finished speaking, the newly recovered Deuce immediately lowered his head and ran off to one side to draw circles. As he drew, he muttered, "I'm only a medical student." "I was clearly forced to join the crew in the first place."

But Ace wasn't paying attention to him now. He kept talking animatedly, thinking to himself that he had to talk someone reliable into joining the crew. He had suffered enough from the incompetence of his own crewmates.

"Our Spade Pirates have only just entered the Grand Line, but..."

"Sure, I agree." Yota answered with a cheerful grin.

"Once we develop further... Huh? You agreed?" Ace was still talking when he suddenly realized that Yota had already agreed.