The moon was bright, and the stars were sparse.
The cold January wind blew gently.
Inside the cabin's study, Noah idly handled a stack of cards.
These cards had not been created by his ability. They were tarot cards he had bought in Loguetown.
A Major Arcana deck.
A Minor Arcana deck.
In the world of One Piece, the person well known for using tarot cards was Hawkins, the man later known as the Magician.
In a sense, Hawkins's Straw-Straw Fruit had little to do with his ability to use tarot cards for divination.
Noah's Card-Card Fruit, on the other hand, was the Devil Fruit naturally suited to the domain of tarot cards.
Until now, he had focused on developing the Card-Card Fruit's spatial storage property. That was because of the boost spatial storage provided to an ability user in the early stages, allowing him to quickly acquire various support and combat cards.
But Noah had now passed the high-risk initial stage. With the Awakening of the Three Types of Haki as well, it was time to open another branch of his card abilities.
Devil Fruits were, in essence, crystallized manifestations of the wishes of the countless living beings in the world of One Piece.
If tarot cards did not exist in this world, it would be extremely difficult for Noah to develop a related ability, and he would get twice the result with half the effort.
A fruit like the Card-Card Fruit, which was half rules and half fantasy, had even greater need of real things and the fantasies of countless people as the "source" of its abilities.
In the case of the Graphite-Graphite Fruit, graphite was a substance that existed in nature, so the "source" for developing its abilities lay in graphite's physical and chemical properties.
That was also the fundamental reason for the enormous differences between Standard, Ancient, and Mythical Zoans.
Mythical Zoans had not only the creature itself as a "source," but also the special "source" of the fantasies of countless people, giving them the equivalent of two cores.
Noah focused, concentrating his Observation Haki on the tarot cards in his hands.
Observation Haki had the basic ability to foresee the future, making it a suitable catalyst for awakening the tarot cards' divination ability.
Under the combined effects of the Card-Card Fruit and Observation Haki, Noah soon noticed the tarot cards in his hands beginning to change.
His stamina and mental energy were being consumed at a frantic rate.
Five minutes later, the tarot cards completed their transformation. Golden flame-cloud patterns appeared on their backs, resembling the awakened form of a Zoan Devil Fruit.
"Let's see how well this works."
First, he took out a blank card and wrote on it: [Location of the Smooth-Smooth Fruit].
Then he deactivated his Observation Haki and tossed the Major Arcana deck in his hand into the air.
The cards scattered like flowers strewn from the heavens, and all twenty-two drifted slowly down.
The tarot card closest to the divination card was "The Fool."
"The Fool? Knowing nothing?" Noah fell into thought.
A moment later, he picked up his pen and changed the writing on the divination card to: [Is the Smooth-Smooth Fruit in the East Blue?]
He tossed the Major Arcana deck into the air again.
This time, the card closest to the divination card was "The World."
"The World? The end?"
He took out the supplementary Minor Arcana deck and tossed it into the air in the same way.
After some testing, he had determined the approximate location of the Smooth-Smooth Fruit. It was on a deserted island near Shells Town.
After that divination, the golden flame-cloud patterns on the cards grew dull.
This made Noah realize that using tarot cards for divination consumed the power stored in them. Stamina was not much of a problem, but the mental energy consumed could not be quickly recovered.
By his estimate, the mental energy he had infused into the tarot cards this time was equivalent to roughly five hours of continuous, high-intensity Observation Haki use.
Through the tarot card divination, he could also vaguely sense its limitations and certain taboos.
For example, the more important the matter or item being divined, or the stronger the target, the more mental energy the divination consumed. A divination beyond what he could bear could not yield a correct result.
Another example was the vague, broad, advice-based kind of divination, which could be used without limit each day, much like Hawkins's divination.
Once it involved specific things, living beings, or locations, however, it required a large amount of the mental energy stored in the cards, and success was not guaranteed.
If Noah tried to divine the location of the Human-Human Fruit, Model: Nika now, the tarot cards would not be able to do so successfully, because it was beyond what he could currently bear.
His Observation Haki was already warning him that he should wait a month between each infusion of mental energy into the tarot cards, or he might suffer serious side effects.
Sure enough, peering into fate often came with enormous risks.
It was only because Noah possessed the Card-Card Fruit, a Devil Fruit naturally suited to divination, that he could obtain accurate results at such a small cost.
With divination like Hawkins's, it was difficult to pinpoint specific things; he could only give broad advice.
As things stood, Noah could essentially perform one specific divination a month. As long as he did not try to divine beings far stronger than himself or god-tier Devil Fruits, his chance of success would be very high.
Now that he had determined the approximate location of the Smooth-Smooth Fruit, he knew from the East Blue nautical charts he had collected that there were sixteen deserted islands near Shells Town. If he searched them one by one, he was certain to find it.
Noah took out his forbidden book.
The book contained the secrets he had compiled and recorded from his memories of his previous life: information about the world of One Piece.
As he recalled them, he wrote down the Devil Fruits that might exist in the East Blue.
He excluded the Smoke-Smoke Fruit, which Smoker had already eaten, the Barrier-Barrier Fruit, which had not yet respawned, and the Smooth-Smooth Fruit, whose location he had already determined.
The Devil Fruits that might still be in the East Blue were the Flame-Flame Fruit, Scythe-Scythe Fruit, Whisper-Whisper Fruit, Sound Wave-Sound Wave Fruit, Steel-Steel Fruit, and Paste-Paste Fruit.
According to the newspapers and wanted posters he had collected, none of those fruits had appeared among the pirates active in the East Blue over the past few years.
The Steel-Steel Fruit, however, belonged to a member of a pirate crew in the New World. Its current host had apparently not kicked the bucket yet.
Among the pirates who had been active in the East Blue over the past few years, there were currently three Devil Fruit users who were still alive:
Buck, captain of the Golden Hook Pirates, a Zoan Porcupine-Porcupine Fruit user.
Jack, captain of the Jack Pirates, a Paramecia Pocket-Pocket Fruit user.
Guro, vice captain of the Blood Knife Pirates, a Zoan Parrot-Parrot Fruit user.
Noah had gathered this information so he could hunt down these pirate crews.
One reason he wanted to hunt them down was to train Joshua and the others. Only by fighting life-or-death battles could they further draw out their potential.
The other reason was to conduct experiments.
Noah wanted to study how to recover Devil Fruits, and he needed these pirates as test subjects.