Kindness!

Eric radiated a fierce, menacing aura, but there was something strange in his gaze. He hadn't expected that the one who'd come to help them would be a boy.

His eyes shifted, and he looked at Yol. "Sister, is this young man the partner you mentioned?"

Yol held her gun in both hands and didn't speak. She merely turned her head to look at Merlin. Seeing that, Eric looked at Merlin and gave a wry smile.

"My name's Eric. As you can see, I'm leading these brothers in a desperate fight against those bastards. If they want our lives, then they'll have to pay for them with theirs."

"My name's Merlin."

Merlin looked at the people before him. Their exposed skin was covered in white patches, some large, some small. Everyone here was a young or middle-aged adult.

"Are these all the people you have left?"

At his words, intense hatred filled Eric's eyes, and he cursed through clenched teeth.

"Those beasts have killed almost everyone in this city."

Merlin lowered his eyes. "What are you planning to do now?

"Stay here and keep fighting them? Or look for a chance to escape, then find an opportunity to get revenge later?"

The moment he finished speaking, the survivors erupted into a commotion, their words filled with deep despair.

"The border's sealed, and they have better weapons and equipment than we do. Can we even escape?"

"We all have Lead Platinum Disease. We don't even know if it can be cured outside. They say it's an incurable contagious disease. They won't let us out."

"We don't have many bullets left. We can't hold out for long."

"All we want now is to kill one of them before we die. Every extra one we kill is a bonus."

"..."

Merlin fell silent. These people were like a pack of desperate, cornered beasts, each one a keg of gunpowder.

But...

"If I have a way to get us out of here, will you work with us?"

Merlin turned to Eric and said this.

Eric's mouth twitched. His expression settled, and he replied in a flat voice,

"Get out?"

"Fine. Let's say we can escape. But given the situation, even if we make it out, Lead Platinum Disease is being rumored to be an incurable contagious disease. How are we supposed to survive out there?

"The countries surrounding Flevance are the very ones hunting us down right now."

As Eric spoke, the survivors grew agitated and noisy once more.

There was deep scorn in Eric's eyes. Merlin could tell it wasn't directed at him. He clenched his right hand behind his back, then raised his head to look at Eric.

"I can cure it."

Eric's expression froze, and he fell silent. A few seconds later, he suddenly took a step forward, eyes wide with disbelief as he stared at Merlin.

At the same time, Merlin stepped back and raised his right hand in front of him. He gripped the grenade pin with his left hand and said calmly, "Back off!"

Eric's eyes twitched violently at the sight. He hesitated, looking at Merlin, then stepped back. But his eyes were filled with desperate hope.

"Can it really be cured?"

Merlin didn't trust these people. After losing important people like their family and friends, and having their own lives constantly threatened, it was only natural for them to become unstable. He looked at Eric.

"Really!"

Before Eric could say anything, Merlin raised the grenade in his right hand and gripped the pin between his teeth.

"Give me your hand."

As he spoke, Black Flame surged from his left hand and reached out. Eric hesitated at the sight of the Black Flame, which filled him with a sense of foreboding, but then gritted his teeth and clasped Merlin's hand.

The next moment, a black glow spread around him. Merlin sensed the familiar calamity of Lead Platinum Disease within his body.

Several dozen seconds later,

Merlin let go. The white patch on his left index finger had turned even paler.

Eric stared in shock as he held out both hands. The white patches on his arms had vanished, and so had the pain that had plagued him ever since they first appeared.

He instinctively understood one thing: his Lead Platinum Disease was gone.

He looked at Merlin, overcome with excitement, his lips trembling.

"My Lead Platinum Disease is really cured!"

In an instant, everyone there grew excited and stared at Merlin with feverish eyes.

"Brother, please cure me too!"

"And me! And me! I don't want to die. Sob..."

"Brother, I—I—I..."

Yol, standing off to the side, looked at Merlin with a complicated expression.

At the same time, Eric looked at Merlin hopefully. He wanted his brothers to recover, too.

But Merlin raised the index finger of his left hand to his lips. They all understood the gesture for silence, and fell quiet at once. Merlin spoke.

"I ate a Devil Fruit. I'm the user of the Transfer-Transfer Fruit.

"I can transfer other people's negative conditions onto myself.

"Look at my index finger. Hasn't it gotten paler?"

Merlin looked at their expectant faces as he spoke.

"Of course, if I can transfer other people's negative conditions onto myself, I can also transfer my own negative conditions to someone else.

"But right now, my ability can only transfer the burden of four people. Counting Eric, I'm already carrying the negative condition of Lead Platinum Disease from four people."

"I've given you hope of staying alive. So, will you join us in escaping from here?"

"I have a plan. If you take part, our chances of escaping alive will be much higher."

"The executioners from the neighboring countries slaughtered our friends and family. I can transfer the Lead Platinum Disease I take from you to them. What do you think?"

As he finished,

they had a common enemy.

Everyone's eyes lit up, and they grinned viciously.

"Heh heh, that's exactly what we should do."

"Don't they think Lead Platinum Disease is contagious? Then let's infect every last one of them."

"That's right. Brother Merlin, tell us your plan. We'll all follow your orders."

After hearing them out, Merlin turned to their leader, Eric. Eric nodded firmly at him.

"Brother Merlin, you saved our lives. Whatever you tell us to do, we'll do it."

At that, Merlin breathed a sigh of relief. Misrepresenting his calamity as a transfer was also a way to conceal the nature of his ability.

Merlin didn't trust them. This was the only way he could get them to obey.

By curing their leader, Eric, he had given them hope. Then he'd drawn them together with a shared goal.

That way, they would follow his orders until they escaped.

Next, Merlin told them his plan: to distract the enemy, slip through their defenses, and use battle to seize better weapons and supplies.

He only withheld the final escape route, which would take them through the back mountain.

It was best to keep something in reserve. They only had one chance.

He couldn't lay out his entire plan to these strangers.

After listening,

Eric's eyes filled with thought. He guessed that Merlin was hiding something, but he had to admit the plan was good.

Then he asked, "Are we going to work together from now on?"

Merlin shook his head. "The hospital ruins, the church, and the fountain in the city center.

"These are our meeting points. We'll meet at the hospital ruins at nine in the morning, the church at three in the afternoon, and the fountain at nine at night. We'll go to those three places at those times.

"Once the time is right, I'll gather you all at one point and lead you in a breakout.

"Until then, we'll operate separately. Our goal is to gather survivors, fight the executioners in the streets, and capture their superior weapons and equipment."

As he spoke, Merlin pointed at the soldiers' corpses around them.

"I'll take the grenades. I'll leave the guns and bullets for you."

Eric nodded seriously. "All right. We'll do as you say."

As he spoke, a bright glimmer of hope had already appeared in his eyes. If they could live, who would choose to die?

After parting ways with them,

the three of them walked down the alley. Yol looked at Merlin as if she wanted to say something. Merlin noticed and asked her,

"Is there something you want to ask?"

Thinking of what Merlin had said about transferring other people's negative conditions onto himself, Yol looked uneasy.

"Was what you told them about your Devil Fruit power true? Can you really transfer it?"

Her eyes unconsciously drifted to the thumb, index finger, and middle finger of Merlin's left hand, which looked different from the rest.

Merlin kept walking and replied calmly, "I don't trust them. I lied to them."

Yol couldn't help but sigh with relief. Then joy welled up inside her. Merlin was saying that he trusted her. But she grew curious and asked,

"Was it all a lie?"

"I lied about my ability. And I left out the last step of my plan. Everything else was true."

Yol looked at Merlin with shining eyes. "I knew you were kind.

"You're not as useless as you say you are. You're much kinder than I am."

At that, Merlin's mouth twitched. He rolled his eyes at her, exasperated.

"Couldn't I just be using them as cannon fodder? Giving them hope and bringing them along when we escape would make us safer.

"I'm not kind. We're just using each other to get what we want.

"If I were really kind, I would've cured every one of them just now.

"At best, I'm only being falsely kind."

Hearing this, Yol, walking beside Merlin, remained unmoved.

"No matter what happens in the end, you're the one who gave them hope of survival right now.

"Isn't that kindness?

"Even false kindness is still kindness."