Today's second update: Chapter 2230! 2/2!
The Devil Fruit Tree itself had been carrying out its plan of splitting its origin to create Devil Fruits for an unknown length of time. It was not only being carried out within the current Asura Race; it had also been the key reason why the Demon Race, despite lacking Demon bloodlines, had been able to earn the name of demons.
But the main target of this plan was internal.
The number of genuine Devil Fruits, regardless of grade, was fixed.
And those Fruit ability users who had consumed genuine Devil Fruits could be regarded as... offspring before the Devil Fruit Tree harvested them!
That was indeed one way to see it.
Offspring or inheritors—either term worked.
Because those who consumed Devil Fruits would find their path of growth becoming incomparably broad. This was especially true for those whose Fruits shared the same origin as their own bloodline or talent; the effect was far more than a simple one plus one equals two!
But likewise, the Devil Fruit Tree, which Xu Erpang called the Big Bad Tree, possessed no such thing as parental affection.
These so-called offspring and inheritors had another name: sacrifices!
The Devil Fruit Tree had already partaken of sacrifices once.
That time was the destruction of the Demon Race!
It could be understood this way: the Demon Race had been destroyed because the Devil Fruit Tree sensed that the time was ripe, that the sacrifices it had raised had all matured. If it did not harvest them then, when would it?
And so, a pack of sharks that had smelled blood came swarming in!
The Demon Race had merely been a sacrifice under the Devil Fruit Tree's plan, utterly incapable of resistance.
The result of consuming those sacrifices was that