Paramecia: Addition-Addition Fruit

Trickster Mage.

That was the title he had earned while making a name for himself in his homeland of the East Blue, and that was already over a decade ago. Back then, he was just a rookie pirate who had only recently started out, smug over the small fame he had carved out in a corner of the East Blue. Compared to Gol D. Roger, another great pirate who hailed from the same sea, he was truly nothing more than a greenhorn who had barely made a name for himself.

Right, back then, Gol D. Roger wasn't the Pirate King yet!

The so-called Great Pirate Era was a future no one had ever imagined, something that would have been dismissed as the ravings of a madman. At that time, he was like a wild boar rolling around in a mud pit. He knew the vastness of the forest, yet he still clung to the comfort of his own little swamp, having absolutely no interest in the Grand Line.

In truth, this mindset was the norm for most pirates in the bygone era.

Only a handful of ambitious, audacious fools would dare to challenge the Grand Line.

But all of that changed on that day, the day Gol D. Roger was executed in Loguetown. Because of the Pirate King's final words, countless pirates who had been content with their lot felt their restless hearts stirred. And so, the Great Pirate Era began.

Marcus was swept along in the tide of this era. Before he knew it, the entire atmosphere of the world had shifted. Every pirate now saw charging into the Grand Line and finding the great treasure left behind by the Pirate King as their ultimate dream and glory. Even Marcus, caught up in this fervent mood, eventually left his comfortable, cozy mud pit, bared his tusks, and plunged into the Grand Line.

Unfortunately, like most failures, Marcus was ultimately not the one destined to bear the weight of fate. He was just a small pebble in the currents of the era. The setbacks he suffered in the New World jolted him awake from that inexplicable madness. But by then, he could no longer return to the mud pit of his homeland.

So, he found a new mud pit, joined Umit's faction, and spent the next ten-plus years living a leisurely life.

"Phew! When a man gets old, he tends to dwell on the past. But speaking of which, thirty-nine isn't exactly old age, is it?" Marcus crawled out of the pile of rubble. His full-body coating of Armament Haki had shielded him from the terrifying impact that could have pulverized a human into meat paste.

"And seriously, are all young people these days this terrifying?"

Marcus bared his teeth, his face twisted by the dull pain radiating through his body.

It couldn't be helped. A full-body coating of Armament Haki inevitably sacrificed the intensity of a localized coating. While it had blocked the Earthquake Dragon's tail whip, it couldn't achieve a perfect, damage-free state. He should count himself lucky that he only suffered bruises that didn't hinder his movement.

Losing focus in battle and not getting killed outright by the enemy was already a sign of being favored by the goddess of fortune. This situation was simply reaping what he had sown.

"I let my guard down!"

Marcus conducted a self-criticism while moving his body to assess his exact condition.

He wasn't given any extra time to recover. The battle was far from over; it was still in the present tense—

Eschbach's pursuit came sweeping in like a storm.

Leveraging his massive size, Eschbach's thirty-meter-long tail commanded an incredibly wide attack range, effectively pinning down the leaping, darting Marcus, whose movements were so agile they gave him a headache. This was one of the reasons he insisted on maintaining this form for the fight.

"Duang~~~!!!"

The thirty-meter-long tail slammed into the ground.

But there was no expected tremor. Instead, the ground suddenly became incredibly elastic. The tail's strike caused the earth to sink deeply, and after storing up enough kinetic energy, it erupted with a terrifying rebound force.

Amidst this bizarre sound effect, Eschbach's footing was shaken for the first time by Marcus's counterattack.

The rebound force was so powerful that Eschbach had to shift his stance to dissipate the force transmitted through his tail.

At the same time, Marcus used the rebound momentum to fly back up to Eschbach's eye level. His tiny figure faced Eschbach's massive, flat head. His baseball cap had been knocked off earlier, and his gleaming bald head reflected dazzling sunlight.

He spread his hands, empty. His open palms seemed to be touching something intangible.

"Explode for me!"

The heat within the demarcated space began to surge violently. Then the surrounding gas volume expanded rapidly, and an explosion occurred.

"Boom—!!!"

What a devastating blast it was.

The explosive shockwave spread outward like a ring of clouds, and the resulting gale howled into the distance.

This was Marcus's strongest attack.

"Ugh—!!"

Eschbach shut his eyes in time, coating his massive face with Armament Haki. But the shockwave from the explosion still made his cheeks feel the stinging sensation of being punched hard a few times. That was all, though. Such an injury wasn't enough to hinder his continued fighting. And more than this insignificant pain, he was more curious about the principle behind the explosion.

No chemical reaction, no physical change.

The prerequisite conditions were skipped. Heat simply appeared out of thin air. No, not out of thin air—it originated from Marcus.

"Is this your ability? Release, no, 'grant' would be a more accurate term. Grant, granting some kind of energy or property? Is this your Devil Fruit ability?"

Eschbach synthesized his observations and made a guess.

"As expected, you figured it out. Well, it can't be helped. Using my ability this frequently, it was only a matter of time before it was seen through..." Marcus, who was falling from the air, let out a wry sigh.

Even his strongest attack couldn't inflict serious damage on Eschbach. He had mentally prepared himself for this; he had already gotten a sense of Eschbach's strength during their brief exchange. But the reality of being this harmless still stung a little.

"Paramecia, the Addition-Addition Fruit."

Marcus announced the name of his ability.

Since the true nature of his power had already been seen through, there was no harm in naming it. As long as he could drag this fight out as long as possible, buying more time for his boss, chatting or fighting made no real difference.

Yes, as long as he could buy more time.

He—

"Oh, the Addition-Addition Fruit... a fine ability!"

Hearing the voice from behind him, Marcus's heart clenched. Observation Haki spread out like flowing water. He "saw" Aleus fluttering in the air, circling him and sizing him up, as well as Umit lying on his back in the deep crater.