Further Development of the Biscuit-Biscuit Fruit

Even with complete concentration, he could only properly control one Biscuit Soldier. That really was no better than taking matters into his own hands.

But Mousse was far smarter than Cracker. With a quick turn of his mind, he realized there was a flaw in the latter's thinking. "Are controlling Biscuit Soldiers and fighting in person necessarily contradictory? Brother Cracker, you can control the Biscuit Armor you wear to perform the same movements you're about to make! That shouldn't be difficult, right? Even if they aren't synchronized enough at first, you'll get used to it with practice. After all, your field of vision is the same, and the body size is similar too."

"Ah! Ah!" Cracker cried out twice instinctively, as though he had gone stupid.

The joy in his heart was simply too overwhelming, to the point that he could not even speak normally. What Mousse said made so much sense that he knew it would work without even testing it. Why had he never thought of it himself?

After adopting Mousse's "synchronization" suggestion, Cracker could animate the Biscuit Armor he wore and gain its assistance.

If nothing else, Cracker's strength nearly doubled. From then on, every attack could draw on both his own strength and that of the Biscuit Armor/Soldier, raising his attack power by no less than fifty percent from that alone!

Furthermore, the Biscuit Armor on Cracker's body would no longer obstruct or interfere with his use of Body Techniques. In the future, he could wear Biscuit Armor, maintain extremely high physical defense, and freely unleash all sorts of sharp swordsmanship. That was no minor improvement either!

After all, even the Cracker from more than twenty years later in the One Piece manga only used those unique Body Technique moves he had developed himself after putting on Biscuit Armor.

Yet Cracker himself was extremely afraid of pain, so without the protection of Biscuit Armor, he followed an evasive style completely different from his usual combat approach.

In other words, Cracker had needed to develop and practice two clearly distinct sets of Body Techniques at the same time. That undoubtedly wasted a great deal of time and energy and delayed his growth.

Clearly, after Mousse's further guidance, Cracker's strength and potential had both improved greatly again. Even if he encountered a powerful enemy in the future, he would no longer be like before, able to rely only on an army of soldiers to wear them down.

A one-on-one fight was just a one-on-one fight. What did Cracker have to fear?

The enormous surprise made Cracker completely forget Mousse's earlier question. Fortunately, Mousse remembered and asked again, though Cracker's answer left him somewhat disappointed.

It turned out that although controlling Biscuit Soldiers did not consume much mental energy, and he could maintain more than a hundred of them at once,

their intelligence was too low. Even the first step—deciding which target to attack—required Cracker to designate it personally. Even if he gave only a few simple commands, he could control at most seven or eight Biscuit Soldiers in battle.

And the battlefield could not be too chaotic. In reality, he was far from being a one-man army as he had boasted.

But Mousse was no ordinary smart person. His eyes rolled, and he came up with another idea. "Wait, Brother Cracker. Can you order them to attack freely? Kill anything alive except you. No matter how stupid they are, they shouldn't be unable to recognize you as their master, right? Wouldn't that let more Biscuit Soldiers join the fight?"

"Actually, even without an order, no Biscuit Soldier would attack me." Cracker's eyes lit up immediately upon hearing this, but then he felt somewhat regretful. "But if I do that, I'll only be able to act alone from now on."

Mousse only frowned in thought for a moment after hearing that. "They can't recognize other targets? Uh, so apart from you, whom they naturally won't attack, you can only designate one more target not to attack? Then just bring one sibling they can reach. I mean, bring the others somewhere they can't attack in the first place, like those who can fly. Wouldn't that work?"

"Mousse, you really are too smart!" Cracker could not help voicing his heartfelt admiration.

But Mousse had not finished with his suggestion. "Alright, since you can have more than a hundred of them, their role becomes pure cannon fodder. Since there are enough of them, losing some won't matter much. Then there's no need to carry a huge shield and increase the burden. Holding swords in both hands to improve attack power would be more worthwhile, right? And once they're lighter, their speed should increase a little too. Don't use two-sword style. You already have enough swords, so wielding one sword with both hands is better. You have an army of soldiers! It's not a duel. As long as you can break their defense, you can win. So the key is high attack power—as high as possible. One-sword style is the true path."

"Oh, right. Earlier, when your sword was cut in half, Brother Cracker, you just clapped your hands and repaired it. So if the sword is completely gone, can you still restore it? If you can, could you have the Biscuit Soldiers throw their swords for ranged attacks? That would threaten enemies at low altitude too, and allow better focused fire. Right, in close combat, at most four or five people can surround one opponent, but at range, more than a dozen—or even dozens—can focus their attacks on one target. The firepower would be far greater and harder to evade. As long as they can break through the defense, they can use an army of ants to gnaw an elephant to death."

Mousse's endless stream of suggestions made Cracker so happy that he was nearly numb, while his strength and potential unknowingly climbed to new heights along with these new ideas.

Mousse's earlier idea about Compressed Biscuits had already allowed Cracker to undergo a transformation. At the time, Katakuri believed that Cracker's personal strength was already no weaker than that of most Marine Headquarters Rear Admirals.

And unless someone possessed a way to counter his limitless creation of Biscuit Soldiers, even those renowned elite Marine Headquarters Vice Admirals might not necessarily be able to defeat him.

Now Mousse had added so many more ideas to make things even better. Once Cracker spent a few months fully absorbing them, his personal strength alone would be enough to steadily defeat the latter. In terms of bounty, he would be worth at least more than 800 million Berries—and that was only his own strength!

The power of his sea of Biscuit Soldiers exceeded even Mousse's original expectations by far. At that point, each individual Biscuit Soldier would possess the strength of an ordinary Marine Headquarters Vice Admiral, equivalent to a bounty of 300 to 400 million Berries. Yet their numbers would grow from the mere handful he had when fighting Luffy to more than a hundred, perhaps even several hundred—considering that Cracker's Devil Fruit ability had not yet been fully developed at this time!

In theory, Cracker alone could sweep through every Marine Headquarters officer and soldier who could not fly. Mousse did not even know how high his bounty would need to be to accurately reflect his threat level.

One billion was definitely too low. One and a half billion still seemed too low. But that was already the peak of first-rate powerhouses—the so-called First Mate tier, wasn't it?

And Cracker would probably have only just turned twenty-one by then! Other than Luffy, who had protagonist's luck, who else could compare?

Once again, please keep reading and vote with recommendation tickets~