What's this? Could it be...
Noah looked through the sparse bamboo leaves. In the slanting afternoon sunlight, a fist-sized fruit hung from the tip of a bamboo branch. Several bamboo plants in the grove had borne fruit, but this one held his gaze.
The reason was that faint patterns covered its surface, making it visibly different from the other bamboo fruits.
He raised his bamboo pole and struck at the fruit.
After five or six minutes of whacking, the fruit finally fell.
Noah threw down the pole and picked up the fallen fruit. Its green surface was covered in spiral arabesque patterns, each formed from overlapping squares.
It really is a Devil Fruit! But I don't seem to recognize a Devil Fruit of this shape and type!
Judging by its appearance, I can rule out the Devil Fruits I already know about. Should I eat it?
His expression shifted as he thought it over for more than ten seconds. Then he gritted his teeth and shoved the entire fruit into his mouth.
Noah did not agonize much over whether to eat a Devil Fruit, because he had no choice. Even if it were an ordinary Zoan, he would not have turned his nose up at it.
Perhaps many people would set their sights on fruits like the Rumble-Rumble Fruit or the Vampire Fruit.
The problem was that he was currently in the East Blue, and he was an ordinary person. Even if he trained himself to the bone, he probably would not immediately gain the combat power of a commodore. Without that level of strength, he could not even leave the East Blue, much less go to the Grand Line and try to seize the Rumble-Rumble Fruit or the Vampire Fruit.
Now that a Devil Fruit lay before him, if he did not eat it and pirates landed on the deserted island tomorrow, or if the island held hidden dangers, it would be too late for regrets.
Gulp... As he swallowed the fruit, a strange wave began to ripple through his body. At the same time, some instinctive information surfaced in his mind.
Cards... I see. So it's the Card-Card Fruit.
Noah slapped his palm against the bamboo pole. A card immediately separated from the bamboo's surface, a blank card.
Creation?
Holding the card, he had countless thoughts flash through his mind. He picked up the stone he had used to smash the bamboo and pressed it against the blank card. The stone rapidly sank into the card as though sinking into water.
As the stone sank into the blank card, a picture of it appeared on the card. Noah could sense the stone inside, as well as the tiny space within the card, a space of roughly one cubic meter.
Just as I thought. That Book-Book Fruit user in the Big Mom Pirates can develop a spatial storage ability using books, and the Card-Card Fruit can do the same. The two are very similar in that respect.
Noah also tried turning his own body into a card, but nothing happened.
Clearly, the Card-Card Fruit belonged to the super-creation, superpower type, not the superhuman type.
He did not complain that the Card-Card Fruit was trash. After all, there were no trash fruits, only trash users. Though that saying was somewhat absolute, it still had a point.
At least Noah did not think the Card-Card Fruit was trash. If developed well, it could be extremely powerful.
After a preliminary test of the fruit's abilities, he looked at the blazing sun in the blue sky. Only two or three hours remained until evening, so he had to put aside any further testing.
Dragging the bamboo he had broken, he came to a spot not far from the rocky slope.
Noah soon found a suitable place to build a shelter. On the side of the rocky slope near the bamboo grove, a large rock jutted out by more than a meter. With a little clearing, there should be room for one person to lie down.
While it was still light, he hurried into the bamboo grove and mangroves to gather a large pile of dead branches and leaves. He also stripped some bark from a palm-like tree; it was well suited for weaving rope.
He soon finished weaving a length of rope and used it, some bamboo, and a dry dead branch to make a crude bow drill.
He smashed a groove into a fairly hard piece of deadwood and put a large pile of prepared wood shavings into it. Then he picked up the bow drill and began pulling it back and forth, rapidly rubbing the hard wooden drill bit against the groove.
More than ten minutes later, Noah, his head covered in sweat, saw a wisp of smoke rise from the groove. He immediately stopped drilling and hurriedly lay down.
"Whew... whew..."
He blew gently, and the tiny ember in the groove gradually spread. When it reached a critical point, a small spark appeared among the wood shavings.
He kept adding dead branches and leaves, and soon the fire began to burn.
With a fire going, Noah felt more at ease.
He put a small pile of large pieces of deadwood on the fire, then lit a dead branch and took it, along with a card containing a cubic meter of sealed dead branches and leaves, beneath the large rock.
Release!
The card's protection came undone, and the dead branches and leaves stored inside spilled out. He set them alight and used the fire and smoke to sweep the area beneath the rock, guarding against any snakes, insects, rats, or ants that might be there.
Half an hour later, he used several cubic meters of sand gathered from the beach to put out the flames beneath the rock. He then dragged over a dozen or so bamboo poles and arranged them around the large rock as a crude barricade.
He built another fire on one side of the large rock.
Evening.
The sun sank in the west.
Several hundred jin of deadwood and a few green coconuts had been piled inside the crude shelter. Half a coconut shell sat over a stone-built stove, with clams and sand crabs boiling in water inside it.
Noah held the other half of the coconut shell and took a sip of hot water.
Then he smeared some plant juice on his face and exposed limbs. It was the juice of a plant called ghost chrysanthemum and kept mosquitoes and insects away. Many residents of Starfish Island gathered it and dried it to make mosquito coils, but he had no time to dry it now, so he could only apply it directly.
After a simple meal of sandy clams and sand crabs, it was completely dark.
He sat cross-legged on the sand, adding wood to the fire as he studied the Card-Card Fruit.
He picked up a burning piece of wood and tried to seal it in a card. But the moment the card touched the flames, it caught fire, and the Card-Card Fruit's power contained in the piece of bamboo dissipated.
Are wooden cards vulnerable to fire?
Noah fell into thought. Then he pried a stone card from the rock wall behind him and tried again to seal the burning wood. This time he succeeded, and an image of a burning piece of wood appeared on the stone card.
Looking at the image on the stone card, another thought occurred to him. Is time frozen inside the card's space?
Half an hour later, he removed the stone card's seal. The burning wood was still exactly as it had been before being sealed. Clearly, time stood still inside the card's space.
Immediately afterward, he took out another card with a sand crab sealed inside. When he removed the seal, the crab was just as lively as before.
He was not particularly surprised, since the Book-Book Fruit could also seal living things.
Compared with the Book-Book Fruit, however, the Card-Card Fruit was somewhat more flexible in its use of sealed objects. Cards could be used individually, after all, whereas an entire book had to be brought out, which could be restrictive in some situations.