Deep wounds covered Teach from head to toe, exposing bone. Every breath he took reeked of thick, cloying blood.
Yet all his attention was fixed on the fruit in his hand.
Twisted, bizarre spirals covered its black-purple skin. It had no known name, and no one knew its power.
Ever since he had acquired it, the Dark-Dark Fruit within him had churned like mad. Uncontrollable wisps of darkness seeped down his right arm and coiled around the fruit.
Teach stared at it for two seconds, then suddenly grinned.
"Zehahahaha..."
"You want this?"
He no longer had the luxury of studying it at his leisure.
The Blackbeard Pirates had been wiped out, and the pain from the sword wounds Shanks had inflicted had nearly killed him.
Teach opened his mouth and bit down hard.
Crunch.
The foul, bitter, astringent taste shot straight into his skull. Teach's face instantly turned a sickly, liverish color.
Even though he had already eaten the Dark-Dark Fruit once, he still almost vomited on the spot.
The next second.
Strange black-purple markings spread down his neck and across his entire body in an instant.
Shattered bones cracked and clicked, torn muscles drew together and fused, and even his pulverized organs began slowly repairing themselves.
Teach grinned. "A Mythical Zoan, just as I thought..."
His injuries had not fully healed. His stamina, Haki, and vitality had not recovered in the slightest.
But at least he had crawled back from death's door.
Teach looked down at his newly closed wounds and roared with laughter.
"Zehahahaha!"
"I knew I wasn't going to die—!!!"
Beneath his skin, several tentacle-like black-purple markings flashed briefly before vanishing.
Deep within the Dark-Dark Fruit, something truly "awakened" for the first time and sensed this body.
At the highest point of Pangaea Castle.
Boom!
The