Paramecia: Addition-Addition Fruit

Trickster Mage,

That was the name he'd been given while making a name for himself in his East Blue homeland. It had happened more than ten years ago, when he was still a rookie pirate, smugly pleased with the little fame he'd earned in some corner of the East Blue. Compared to the Great Pirate Gol D. Roger, who had also come from the East Blue, he was nothing more than a newcomer who'd only recently made a name for himself.

Oh, right. Back then, Gol D. Roger wasn't the Pirate King yet!

The so-called Great Pirate Era had been an unimaginable future, something that would have been dismissed as the ravings of a madman. Back then, he'd been like a wild boar rolling in a mud pit. He knew how vast the mountains and forests were, yet still cherished the comfort of his own little mud pit. He'd had no interest whatsoever in the Grand Line.

In fact, that mindset had been the norm for most pirates in the old days.

Only a small number of ambitious, reckless fools had dared to challenge the Grand Line.

But everything changed that day. It began when Gol D. Roger was executed in Loguetown. The Pirate King's dying words stirred the restless hearts of countless pirates who had once been content with their lot. And so,

the Great Pirate Era began.

Marcus was one of those swept up in the tide of that era. Before he knew it, the atmosphere of the entire world had changed. Every pirate's greatest dream and glory had become charging into the Grand Line and searching for the great treasure left behind by the Pirate King. Even Marcus had eventually been caught up in the fervor. He left his comfortable little mud pit behind and charged into the Grand Line, tusks bared.

Unfortunately, like most of those who failed,

Marcus was never the one destined to bear the mantle of fate. He was merely a tiny pebble in the tide of the era. His defeat in the New World had jolted him out of that inexplicable frenzy, but by then, he could no longer return to the mud pit of his homeland.

So,

he found himself a new mud pit and joined Umit's forces, where he'd spent the past decade or so living at ease.

"Whew! When you get old, you start reminiscing about the past. But now that I think about it, thirty-nine isn't old, is it?" Marcus crawled out of the rubble. His full-body Armament Haki had protected him from the terrifying impact, which would have beaten an ordinary human into a pulp.

"And are young people these days always this terrifying?"

Marcus grimaced, baring his teeth as a dull ache spread through his body.

It couldn't be helped. Full-body Armament Haki couldn't maintain the same strength as a localized coating. It had stopped the Earthquake Dragon's tail from whipping him away, but it hadn't left him completely unharmed. He should be grateful that his injuries were only bruises that wouldn't hinder his movements.

Losing focus in a fight and not getting killed outright by your enemy was already a stroke of luck. In this situation, he could only blame himself.

"I got careless!"

Marcus chided himself as he moved his body, checking the extent of his injuries.

He had no time to recover. The battle hadn't reached its end; it was still very much underway—

Eschbach's pursuit swept after him like a storm.

Relying on his massive size, Eschbach had an enormous attack range thanks to his thirty-meter-long tail. It could effectively keep Marcus in check as he bounced around, moving so nimbly that it was a headache to deal with. That was one of the reasons Eschbach had to keep fighting in this form.

"DUANG~~~!!!"

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

The ground didn't shake as expected. Instead, it suddenly became incredibly elastic. The impact of the tail drove it deep into the earth, then, after building up an astonishing amount of kinetic energy, unleashed a terrifying rebound.

Amid that strange sound, Marcus's counterattack finally made Eschbach take his first step back.

The rebounding force was so strong that Eschbach had to shift his footing to dispel the power traveling up from his tail.

At the same time,

Marcus used the rebound's momentum to fly back in front of Eschbach. His tiny figure faced Eschbach's enormous, flat head. His baseball cap had already been knocked off, and his gleaming bald head reflected the sunlight.

He opened his hand. It was empty, his outstretched palm seeming to touch something invisible.

"Explode!"

The temperature within the enclosed space began to rise rapidly. The surrounding gas expanded in volume at an incredible rate, and then the explosion went off.

"BOOM—!!!"

What tremendous power.

The shock wave spread in all directions like a ring of clouds, and the blast wind howled into the distance.

This was Marcus's strongest attack.

"Mm—!!"

Eschbach shut his eyes in time and coated his big face with Armament Haki. Even so, the shock wave kicked up by the explosion made his cheeks feel as though someone had landed several hard punches on them. But that was all. His injuries weren't enough to interfere with the fight. More than that minor pain, he was interested in how the explosion had worked.

There had been no chemical reaction and no physical change.

It had skipped the necessary steps, and heat had appeared out of nowhere. No—not out of nowhere. It had come from Marcus.

"Is this your ability? Release—no, 'bestow' would be more accurate. Bestow some kind of energy or property? Is that your Devil Fruit ability?"

Eschbach made a guess based on what he had observed.

"So you figured it out after all! I suppose it couldn't be helped. I've been using my ability so often that it was only a matter of time before you saw through it..." Marcus said with a sigh as he fell from the sky.

Even his strongest attack hadn't been able to deal Eschbach serious damage. He'd been prepared for that; he'd already gotten a sense of how powerful Eschbach was during their brief fight. Still, it was hard to accept just how little harm he'd done.

"Paramecia: Addition-Addition Fruit."

Marcus named his ability.

Now that the true nature of his power had been seen through, there was no harm in telling him its name. As long as he could drag the battle out for as long as possible and buy his boss a little more time, chatting and fighting weren't all that different.

That was right. As long as he could buy more time.

Then he—

"Oh, the Addition-Addition Fruit... What a useful power!"

At the voice from behind him, Marcus's heart gave a sudden lurch. His Observation Haki spread out like flowing water. He "saw" Aleus, flying after him in the air and sizing him up, as well as Umit, lying on his back at the bottom of a deep crater.