Chapter 11
"Ugh—"
A wave of nausea spread through Adrian's mouth. Devil Fruits really did taste as awful as the stories said!
Adrian's brows drew tight, but he fought back the urge to vomit and ate every last bit of the fruit.
After a long while, he closed his eyes and felt a new power surging through his body.
A moment later.
Adrian raised a finger. It felt as natural as breathing, without the slightest awkwardness, as a tiny, adorable White Hollow slowly emerged from his fingertip.
The White Hollow, no bigger than a finger joint, kept flapping its little arms as it drifted into the air.
At the same time, the system panel began updating like crazy.
[Detected: Host has consumed a Devil Fruit!] [Detected: Devil Fruit ability is Ghost. Host's Intelligence has increased!] [New Specialty acquired: Ghost Fruit!] [New Specialty acquired: Sea Curse!] [New skill learned: Ghost Creation!] [New skill learned: Spirit Projection!] [New skill learned: Ghost Body!]
Generally speaking, Paramecia Devil Fruits granted their users a corresponding special ability, but those abilities usually fell into three broad categories: superpowers, Superhuman Body, and material creation.
Superpowers included the Float-Float Fruit and Tremor-Tremor Fruit, which gave their users genuine supernatural abilities.
The best-known example of a Superhuman Body was the Child of Destiny Luffy's Gum-Gum Fruit, which, twenty years from now, would turn his entire body into rubber.
Creation-type fruits included the String-String Fruit and Wax-Wax Fruit, which could produce matter out of thin air.
Beyond those three categories, the world also had an exceptionally unusual kind of Paramecia Devil Fruit known as a "Special Paramecia." Charlotte Katakuri's Mochi-Mochi Fruit, for example, combined a Superhuman Body with material creation.
Adrian had thought the Hollow-Hollow Fruit only involved a superpower—the creation of ghosts. He had never expected it to grant a corresponding Superhuman Body as well!
After eating the Hollow-Hollow Fruit, Adrian gained two Specialties and three skills.
Ghost Fruit was Adrian's second Specialty, and its effect was brutally simple: "Intelligence ×2."
It was breathtakingly powerful!
Sea Curse was the unavoidable drawback shared by every Devil Fruit User: an inability to swim for the rest of their life, and a weakness to Seastone.
Ghost Creation and Spirit Projection were the Hollow-Hollow Fruit's most basic abilities. The former could produce ghosts at any time that ignored physical attacks and obstacles, while the latter let his spirit leave his body and move around freely.
The power and size of the ghosts he created, as well as the distance his spirit could travel, all depended on his Intelligence stat.
Of the three new skills the Hollow-Hollow Fruit had given him, the last surprised Adrian the most.
[Ghost Body]: Under the Hollow-Hollow Fruit's influence, your body shows a degree of Ghostification. You gain some ghost abilities and immunity to physical attacks to a certain extent.
Some ghost abilities...
Adrian narrowed his eyes.
As he remembered it, Perona's development of her powers more than twenty years later was still shallow. When she first appeared on Thriller Bark, she had little else worth mentioning beyond her nearly lethal Negative Hollows. Her real body was an obvious weak point.
But two years after the Paramount War, Perona could make her real body float effortlessly, just like a ghost.
Then if Ghost Body reaches a high enough level, could I turn my entire body into a ghost?
Not just gain some immunity to physical attacks, but become like an intangible ghost and be immune to all of them?
The terrifying possibility set Adrian's heart racing.
Then he checked how much experience Ghost Body needed to level up, and his eyes nearly popped out.
"One hundred million???"
"This is only level one Ghost Body, and it takes a full hundred million experience to level up? How much will the later levels cost? Come to think of it, did I even earn thirty million experience over the past two years?"
Adrian took a deep breath and solemnly reminded himself: This is a Devil Fruit!
This is a Devil Fruit!
This is a Devil Fruit!!
After repeating it three times, he finally calmed down.
He glanced at the experience on his panel. Even if he poured all of it into Ghost Body, the bar probably wouldn't reach one percent. Adrian sensibly gave up on leveling the Hollow-Hollow Fruit's abilities with experience.
"Then it's time to spend those Free Attribute Points and Skill Points I've been saving!"
Skill Points and Free Attribute Points were both precious resources, especially the former.
There were roughly three ways to obtain Skill Points: level up, complete certain high-level missions, or max out a skill.
Adrian understood that as he grew stronger, Skill Points would only become harder to obtain. Every single point was precious.
He knew how important Skill Points were for an instant boost in ability. They could let someone learn a skill on the spot or raise its level without regard for bottlenecks.
Since acquiring the system panel, the only time Adrian had used Skill Points was to unlock Six Powers: Life Return ahead of schedule.
By now, Adrian had saved up a full 83 Skill Points! Twenty of those had come from his two new Secondary Professions.
Now was the time to put them to work!
Raising a skill by one level cost a number of Skill Points equal to the new level: one point for level one, two for level two, and so on.
Eighty-three Skill Points were enough for Adrian to max out one skill instantly!
Adrian took a closer look at the three skills the Hollow-Hollow Fruit had given him.
Spirit Projection had no obvious use for now. Pass!
He could improve Ghost Creation's proficiency later by practicing and making ghosts. Pass!
That left Ghost Body. Improving its proficiency probably meant getting hit over and over—a long, painful process with no end in sight...
That settled it!
Adrian dumped 55 Skill Points into Ghost Body in an instant!
[Ghost Body] LV3 (0/400 million): Your body shows a slight Ghostification tendency. You gain some ghost abilities, can float into the air like a ghost, and are immune to physical attacks to a certain extent. [...] [Ghost Body] LV6 (0/3.2 billion): Your body shows a significant Ghostification tendency. You can briefly transform into a ghost, change size, ignore physical obstacles, and become immune to physical attacks. [...] [Ghost Body] LV9 (0/25.6 billion): You can remain in ghost form for an extended period. [Ghost Body] LV10 (0/51.2 billion): You can enter a ghost state anytime, anywhere, ignoring physical obstacles and becoming immune to all physical attacks.
With the last ten Skill Points invested, Ghost Body finally reached its maximum level.
Its max-level effect was even more frightening.
[Ghost Body] LV10 (MAX): Passive skill. No cost. Ghostification. Immunity to all physical attacks!
"Holy shit! I got a Logia passive out of a Paramecia!"
Adrian couldn't help swearing. Who could stand up to a passive skill like that?!
And Ghostification wasn't simply turning into a natural substance.
Ghostification had four major traits: flight, size-changing, the ability to ignore physical obstacles, and immunity to physical attacks!
It was absurdly powerful!
Adrian looked at his remaining 28 Skill Points and fought hard against the urge to spend them.
The rush was addictive!
But then he remembered the experience bars he had glimpsed while leveling Ghost Body, and his teeth ached.
25.6 billion. 51.2 billion...
Who would have thought the experience cost of leveling Devil Fruit skills grew ex-po-nen-tial-ly?
How the hell was anyone supposed to grind that much experience?
All the experience Adrian had saved over the past two years didn't even add up to a hundred million!
If he'd had to level the Hollow-Hollow Fruit with experience, reaching the maximum level would probably have taken three thousand years!
Given the Ghost Fruit Specialty's stat bonus, Adrian put all his remaining Free Attribute Points into Intelligence.
His panel now looked completely different.
-- Name: Adrian Level: 29 (Version 1.0 public beta begins in: 364 days, 2 hours, 37 minutes, 56 seconds) Secondary Professions: Shipwright LV10 (MAX), Doctor LV10 (MAX) Attributes: Strength 80, Agility 70, Stamina 74, Intelligence 250, Charm 25, Luck 1 Free Attribute Points: 0 Skill Points: 28 Specialties: [Low-Level Toughness], [Ghost Fruit], [Sea Curse] Skills: [Ghost Body] (MAX), [Six Powers: Shave] (LV8), [Six Powers: Paper Art] (LV6), [Ghost Creation] (LV1), [Spirit Projection] (LV1) --
What more was there to say? With those attributes, those Specialties, and especially those skills, he could cross the first half of the Grand Line backward!
And his Intelligence stat, boosted by the Ghost Fruit Specialty's "Intelligence ×2," was through the roof!
Two hundred and fifty points!
Under normal circumstances, a level-sixty character would have to put every attribute point into Intelligence to reach that figure. Adrian was only level twenty-nine!
It was downright terrifying!
Thrilled, Adrian immediately tested the power of his max-level Ghost Body.
His figure turned hazy for an instant, and he entered his ghost state.
"This feeling..."
Adrian raised a hand and clenched his fist. It felt no different.
But when he swung his arm at the tea table in front of him, it passed straight through. Carried by the motion, his arm even swept through the tatami floor.
"Ignore physical obstacles!"
Adrian's eyes lit up. He tested Ghostification's other abilities one by one—flight and size-changing—and both worked remarkably well.
That wasn't all. Adrian noticed something else.
With Ghost Body at max level, he could maintain his ghost state at all times, experiencing what it was like to be a ghost every second of the day.
For the Hollow-Hollow Fruit's other two skills, that experience was like a passive experience buff.
Spirit Projection gained some benefit, but Ghost Creation's experience rose at an unbelievable rate!
In just a few breaths, Ghost Creation gained nearly a few hundred experience—roughly ten points per second!
In other words, even if Adrian did nothing, Ghost Creation would reach level two in four months!
I wonder how long this will last...
Adrian let his imagination run. If it kept up at this rate, he'd gain one level in four months, another in twelve months, a third in twenty-eight months, a fourth in sixty months, and a fifth in 124 months...
Uh. Put that way, it's not all that fast. Level five would take ten years...
Oh well. It's a passive buff, and it came free.
One word summed it up: Sweet!
Next, Adrian tested Ghost Creation's effects.
Although he had only just eaten the Devil Fruit, Adrian already had plenty of ideas for developing the Hollow-Hollow Fruit. At worst, he could learn from Perona in the original story!