Seawater's Debilitation of Ability Users

City of Water, Central Street, No. 136.

The four stood outside a three-story garden villa.

Sephiroth carried several large and small bags in his hands. Looking at the tightly shut iron gate, he could not help but sigh.

The keys and all that had long since sunk into the sea...

With that thought in mind, Sephiroth set the ingredients neatly on the ground, rolled up his sleeves, and climbed the iron gate, whose gaps were only three fingers wide.

"Sephiroth, is this really your home?" the green-haired girl, Boa Sandersonia, asked suspiciously.

"Uh!? I lost the keys when I was shipwrecked. Don't worry, I still have a spare..."

As he spoke, Sephiroth had already climbed over the more than five-meter-high iron gate and landed in the villa's front yard.

He quickly walked to the villa's mahogany front door. Stopping beside a potted areca palm to the right of the entrance, he crouched down, lifted one corner of the pot with his right hand, and felt around beneath it with his left, pulling out a ring of keys.

The original owner had actually secretly left spare keys here. Wasn't he afraid of burglars?... Sephiroth muttered inwardly as he turned around, walked back to the iron gate, and opened it for the three girls.

Besides flowers and greenery planted along the walls, the villa's front yard also had a swimming pool fed with seawater from outside. It was twenty-five meters long, eleven meters wide, and one and a half meters deep.

The original owner had liked swimming and had been quite good at it. As for Sephiroth now...?

Looking at the shimmering pool, Sephiroth felt that, as a Devil Fruit user, he would probably drown if he soaked in that one-and-a-half-meter-deep seawater...

He unlocked the villa's front door, revealing a spacious living room to the four of them.

The villa's interior had something of a European style, with exquisitely designed details. From the hollow patterns on the walls to the fireplace's placement and the furniture layout, everything pursued a sense of visual elegance.

Sephiroth casually ran his hand over the long sofa and table. He found that, despite having been gone for nearly half a month, not much dust had accumulated on the furniture. It was still barely acceptable, so there was no need to hire maids from a housekeeping company to clean.

Boa Hancock looked around the living room before tentatively asking, "Sephiroth, do you have a Den Den Mushi at home?"

"Yes, in the study on the second floor."

He nodded and brought Boa Hancock to the second-floor study.

Besides a desk and two bookshelves, the spacious room had a glass display cabinet containing all kinds of ship models.

Although Sephiroth's father was the purchasing manager of a shipbuilding company, he was actually a fairly skilled shipwright himself and possessed an inexplicable love for ships.

The original Sephiroth, however, had not been interested in ships. He believed that the island's shipbuilding industry was nearing its end...

It was only natural for him to think that way back then.

After all, with the arrival of the Great Pirate Era and pirates running rampant, the shipbuilding business in the City of Water had become increasingly difficult.

But...

Sephiroth now knew that once the Sea Train was successfully built, the island would regain hope, and its shipbuilding industry would flourish once more!

As he thought of that, an idea suddenly flashed through his mind...

In the original story, the Smoking Tom used a steam engine, so its energy efficiency was not very high.

What would happen if it were replaced with an Internal Combustion Engine?

In terms of energy efficiency, an Internal Combustion Engine completely outclassed a steam engine...

After all, this world had petroleum. They had even refined diesel fuel!

For now, though, no one had considered using them as fuel for mechanical power.

Then, would changing the power system speed up the Sea Train's completion?

This place was his hometown, after all. If he could help, he certainly would not refuse. Besides, this would also allow him to befriend Tom and his disciples...

With the craftsmanship of those three, there would inevitably come a day when he needed their help...

The Den Den Mushi sat in a glass box on the desk. Boa Hancock reached out and lightly tapped the shell of the ball-sized Den Den Mushi, waking it from its slumber.

After the Den Den Mushi had fully opened its eyes, the black-haired girl used her slender fingers to press the number buttons on the right side of its shell one by one, dialing a number.

Purururu~!

A moment later, the call connected, and a young woman's voice came from the Den Den Mushi's mouth.

"Hello! Who is this?"

"Is that Belladonna? It's Hancock!"

"E-E-Eh...! Hancock, where on earth have you three sisters been all this time? We've been looking for you for so long and couldn't find you. Do you know how worried we were?"

"Sorry! It's like this..."

Hancock hurriedly explained how the three of them had been captured by a Slave Trader Group and escaped to the City of Water.

Since the Kuja Pirates were currently far away from the City of Water, the Den Den Mushi's other side decided that the three girls should wait on the island for a few days before they could come and take them back to Nine Serpent Island.

There were many empty rooms in the villa, so Sephiroth arranged a separate room for each of the three girls.

At noon.

After the three girls enjoyed the lavish lunch Sephiroth had prepared, they changed into the cool swimsuits they had each bought from the clothing store. Boa Sandersonia wore a green bikini, while Boa Marigold wore a pink one.

At the enthusiastic invitation of the three beautiful girls in swimsuits, Sephiroth had no choice but to postpone drawing the Internal Combustion Engine blueprints until that evening.

He put on a swim ring, submerged his lower body in the seawater, and played water volleyball in the pool with the three beautiful girls.

It had to be said that seawater's suppressive effect on Devil Fruit users was extremely pronounced. Sephiroth had merely soaked his lower body in the pool, yet his body already felt weak. His strength and speed had dropped by more than half, and his stamina was being drained severely.

However, Sephiroth was surprised to discover that although he was currently soaking in seawater, he could still rapidly restore his stamina by consuming lifespan if he wished. It was just far less efficient than under normal conditions.

Seawater only rendered Devil Fruit users powerless and caused them to sink into the ocean; it did not suppress the abilities themselves. Just like how Aokiji could freeze the sea—he feared seawater, yet he could still freeze it...

Did that mean that, if he adapted to seawater's debilitating effect in the future, he might be able to convert lifespan into stamina and barely swim in the ocean without drowning...?