Float-Float Fruit Clue Snatched from Shiki

Rektol locked onto the coordinates.

Three hearts contracted simultaneously inside his chest. Like three roaring heavy-duty water pumps, they forced his boiling blood deep into his veins.

Two hundred million volts of violent current instantly coursed through his entire body.

His whole body transformed into a blinding bolt of blue-white lightning and smashed straight through the heavy dome of the stone house's hall.

Broken stones rained in all directions.

Thunder exploded over the Totto Land camp, easily drowning out the roar of the waves in the distance.

Lightning tore across the sky and shot toward the distant sea.

Rektol streaked beneath the clouds at tremendous speed. The air was forcibly ripped apart by the ultra-high-voltage current, producing sharp sonic booms.

The sea was driven back by the powerful voltage, forcibly plowed into a white channel more than ten meters wide.

The schools of fish beneath the water were affected by the static electricity, their white bellies turning upward as they floated to the surface in masses. The air was thick with the pungent smell of ozone and the salty, fishy stench of seawater evaporating in an instant.

Rektol was simply too fast.

But the bones and muscles of a three-year-old child were still in the earliest stages of development.

Under the strain of high-speed flight, his tender muscle fibers let out an unbearable cry. His skin flushed an unnatural red, as though it had been scalded by boiling water.

He clenched his back teeth, and the faint taste of blood spread across his tongue.

He forcibly suppressed the numb, aching sensation throughout his bones.

Twenty minutes later.

An unnamed deserted island appeared at the edge of the horizon.

There was no vegetation on the island. It was completely barren, covered in enormous gray-brown rocks. Several giant seabirds perched along the cliff edge, startled by the distant lightning and flapping away into the clouds.

Lightning crashed to the ground.

Rektol landed on a flat stretch at the center of the deserted island.

The leather boots on his feet slid uncontrollably across the gravel-covered ground, plowing two deep trenches that smoked faintly.

His left foot stepped on a loose round stone. His ankle failed to bear his weight and suddenly twisted outward.

Rektol staggered half a step before pitching forward.

His reflexes were incredibly fast. He thrust out his left hand and braced himself against a broken stone pillar beside him. The rough stone scraped open his palm, and several drops of blood seeped out.

He frowned and shook the beads of blood from his fingertips.

He straightened and looked around.

This was an ancient architectural ruin.

A massive collapsed dome and thick stone walls covered in black moss surrounded him. Headless stone statues, heavily weathered, lay scattered across the ground, while broken weapons had been eroded by time into lumps of rusted metal.

The air was filled with the heavy, moldy stench of stagnant, fermenting water.

Within the All-Knowing Eye's vision, that intense spatial fluctuation came from the deepest part of the ruins.

It was like a powerful magnet, tugging relentlessly at Rektol's nerves.

He moved forward, heading deeper into the ruins.

His boots stepped on withered vines, producing crisp snapping sounds.

After he rounded a massive stone wall that had collapsed halfway, his view suddenly opened up.

Ahead lay a gigantic circular sunken plaza. The stone steps around its edge had crumbled beyond recognition, and dark-red weeds grew thickly between the cracks.

At the very center of the plaza stood a perfectly preserved bluestone altar.

A Devil Fruit lay quietly on the stone platform at the top of the altar.

The entire fruit was a strange snowy white. The patterns on its skin curled and layered over one another, resembling a mass of storm clouds forcibly kneaded together.

Even its top bore a fruit stem curved like a bolt of lightning.

Paramecia, the Float-Float Fruit.

Rektol's breathing grew heavier.

The third heart in his chest, which had yet to be bound to any ability, seemed to sense some kind of opportunity. Its beating suddenly quickened.

"Thump! Thump!"

The sound of his heartbeat was exceptionally clear in the dead-silent ruins.

He stepped onto the slippery, moss-covered stairs and climbed toward the altar one step at a time.

The stone slabs on the altar had loosened from years of weathering, and shifted slightly beneath his feet.

Rektol reached the stone platform and extended his short right hand.

The moment his fingertip touched the skin of the Float-Float Fruit, his expression changed.

The texture was soft, like touching a ball of cold cotton. It lacked the firm feel of an ordinary fruit.

At that instant.

The dazzling sunlight overhead vanished without warning.

Thick shadows descended in vast swaths, like an enormous black cloth covering the entire sunken plaza.

The surrounding temperature plummeted. The wind stopped.

Rektol raised his head.

The sky was gone.

More than thirty enormous three-masted sailing ships flying blood-red skull flags floated densely in midair several hundred meters above the ground, completely defying the laws of gravity.

The heavy wooden hulls pressed against one another in the air, creaking painfully. They blocked out the sky and sun.

"Gyahahahaha!"

A wildly arrogant laugh pierced through the heavy hulls and slammed straight down from overhead.

The sound was exceptionally domineering, shaking the moss from the stone walls of the ruins in a constant shower.

A figure leaped down from the figurehead of the lead flagship.

Without slowing down or opening a parachute, he fell like a solid meteor, plunging straight toward the ground with a shrill whistle of wind.

"Boom!"

The figure landed heavily on top of a circular stone pillar more than ten meters tall beside the altar.

The hard granite at the top of the pillar cracked in a web beneath his wooden sandals. Shards of stone clattered onto the floor below the altar.

His golden hair danced wildly in the airflow like a lion's mane.

Golden Lion Shiki.

He wore a loose yellow-and-black striped kimono. Two unsheathed famous swords hung from the red sash around his waist, one on each side.

Oto and Kogarashi.

Shiki clenched half of a thick, cheap cigar between his teeth. Its scarlet ember flickered on and off, while smoke drifted upward with the sea breeze.

"I came all the way from the other end of the New World. I thought some incredible big shot was trying to steal something from me."

Shiki crouched atop the stone pillar.

He removed the cigar from his mouth and exhaled a cloud of thick smoke. It slowly dispersed in the cold air.

"But it turns out to be that little brat from Linlin's family who's only just been weaned."

Shiki lowered his head and looked down at Rektol on the altar.

His bloodshot eyes were filled with undisguised contempt and ferocity.

Of course, he knew that a few days earlier at the camp, this brat had used lightning to drive back John and Silver Axe.

But in Shiki's eyes, those were merely two useless drunkards who had let their guard down and been ambushed by a freak who had eaten a Logia.

A brat who had obtained a powerful fruit through luck was not worthy of entering his sight.

"Hey, brat."

With the fingers holding his cigar, Shiki pointed at the white fruit beneath Rektol's hand.

"That thing is prey I claimed a long time ago."

He slowly rose to his feet. His wooden sandal ground against the cracked stone pillar, producing a harsh scraping sound.

"Take your filthy claws off it."

Rektol did not move.

His right hand remained pressed against the Float-Float Fruit. The faint blue glow in his eyes rotated slowly, and even the rhythm of his breathing did not change in the slightest.

Seeing Rektol remain completely unmoved, Shiki's brows drew sharply together.

He casually tossed the unfinished cigar into the air.

He raised his thick right hand and gripped the hilt of Oto at his waist.

His thumb pushed open the brass guard.

"Clang."

A section of gleaming blade slid from the sheath. The crisp metallic ring echoed back and forth through the empty ruins.

As he drew his sword, the more than thirty enormous floating warships overhead simultaneously released a uniform mechanical roar.

All the gun ports along the sides of the warships were pushed open.

Hundreds of pitch-black heavy cannons, operated by the pirates, aimed in unison at the deserted island below.

A suffocating pressure capable of erasing the entire island from the map crashed down upon them.

"I'm in a pretty good mood today. I don't feel like teaching Linlin's son a lesson for her."

Shiki looked down at Rektol from above. His voice was cold, like steel scraping across bone.

"Put down the fruit and get lost."

"Say one word of refusal, and I'll grind you and this lousy island into minced meat."

A fierce wind suddenly rose from the ground.

Shiki's long golden hair was pulled straight by the wind. A terrifying invisible sword aura whirled around his body, scraping the weathered surface clean from the nearby stone pillars.

Rektol stood on the altar.

His three-year-old body looked less than a speck of dust before the enormous ancient pillars and the warships blanketing the sky with cannons.

But he did not even raise his head.

Rektol paid no attention to Shiki in the air, nor did he look at those pitch-black gun barrels.

He stared fixedly at the cloud-like Devil Fruit before him.

According to the iron law of the sea, anyone who ate two Devil Fruits would have their body directly blown apart by the two conflicting powers, leaving only a pile of shredded flesh.

No one had ever dared challenge this taboo.

Shiki's fingers had already tightened completely around the hilt. He had no patience left to wait.

He was preparing to slash out with sword aura and cut down this ignorant brat along with that arm.

"Brat, you're courting death." Shiki gritted his teeth, and the muscles in his arm bulged instantly.

At the precise tenth of a second before Shiki was about to draw and slash.

Rektol suddenly exerted force with his right hand and snatched the Float-Float Fruit from the altar.

He opened his mouth, revealing two rows of small, not-so-sharp teeth.

Right in front of Golden Lion Shiki, he sank his teeth viciously into a large mouthful of fruit flesh!