South Blue, Kutsuk Island, slums.
“Kid, you dare touch my woman?
Are you tired of living?”
On the main street of the East District, a sixteen-year-old boy, just over two meters tall with a scar across his face, was glaring fiercely at the opposite side while holding a rusty iron water pipe.
Behind him stood a crowd of over thirty people, the oldest seventeen and the youngest only ten, clutching wrenches, wooden sticks, and broken glass bottles, each with a vicious look on their faces.
The boy opposite him had fair skin, was tossing a huge adjustable wrench in his hand, and had his left arm wrapped around a gaudily dressed girl.
He sneered, his tone full of disdain:
“Why don’t you take a piss and look at your own reflection?
What kind of woman would ever like you?
I didn’t steal her; she came to me of her own free will.”
“You’re courting death!”
The scarred boy roared and charged forward first, waving his water pipe.
The two groups of half-grown Kids collided instantly; shouts, screams, and the dull thuds of iron hitting flesh blended into a chaotic mess.
The World Government never took public education seriously; private schools were the privilege of the rich.
Poor children couldn’t even recognize all the characters, learning early on to mimic adults by fighting for territory, women, and a way to survive.
The void in education was always filled with blood and savagery.
In the shadows at the end of the street, Baccarat watched from afar with her arms crossed, glancing sideways at the man beside her:
“When you were in the gangs before, were you like them, fighting over women all day?”
During these days, she had pestered Lucas to tell her about many things from his past, very curious about his time in the Country of Wild.
“No.” Lucas shook his head.
“Back then, my mind was full of becoming stronger and getting revenge; I didn’t have time to think about such things.”
“Really?”
Baccarat stood on her tiptoes, brought her face close to his, and stared straight at him with her eyes.
She didn’t mind her man having other women.
On this vast sea, the strong never lacked partners.
But she did mind the quality.
If a fickle, gaudily painted girl like the one across the street were to share the same man with her, she would only feel disgusted.
“Why would I lie to you?”
Lucas raised his hand to stroke her Red Hair, and seeing her expression soften, he returned to the main topic,
“The target Devil Fruit has many lightning-shaped protrusions on its appearance and a grey peel.
Let’s split up to search; it’ll be more efficient.”
“I’ll go over there.”
Baccarat pointed casually to the west, and before leaving, she flicked her fingertips, siphoning away a little bit of the meager luck from the group of delinquent youths.
Anyway, these people weren’t good to begin with; it served them right to be plagued by bad luck.
Lucas turned and walked in the opposite direction.
Before long, following an inexplicable intuition, Baccarat stopped at the entrance of a dilapidated repair shop.
In the yard, a red-haired child of about three years old was squatting on the ground, happily waving a wrench thicker than his own arm, banging it against some sheet metal with a clanging sound.
She glanced inside, didn’t linger, and turned to leave.
After walking another hundred meters or so, an old, crooked tree came into view.
The tree was covered in dusty wild fruits, one of which hung on the highest branch, looking particularly striking—its grey peel was covered in spiral patterns, surrounded by a ring of sharp, lightning-shaped protrusions.
Baccarat’s eyes lit up, and she exerted force with her feet suddenly.
“Bang!”
The hard road surface cracked like a spiderweb under her step, and her tall figure soared into the air.
She reached out, grabbed the fruit, and landed steadily.
“Darling!
I found it!”
Her voice carried on the wind, and soon, a silver figure sped over from the distance and landed in front of her.
Lucas looked at the fruit in her palm, and even with his steady temperament, he couldn’t help but be a little surprised.
Paramecia-type: Magnet-Magnet Fruit.
In the original timeline, this was the fruit that belonged to Eustass Kid of the Worst Generation.
This was exactly the third ability he had selected for himself.
Choosing it had been a well-thought-out decision: the Vampire Fruit, combined with his special physique, had derived blood control and plunder abilities, letting him taste the sweetness of ability combinations.
And the combination of magnetism and lightning could give birth to electromagnetic force—this was the route with the highest cost-effectiveness.
Actually, he was just taking a gamble.
After the previous user, John, died, no one knew where this fruit had drifted.
He had only come to Kutsuk Island based on the rule that “Devil Fruits will choose their own masters,” guessing that it would likely appear near the birthplace of the next user.
Unexpectedly, he really found it.
It went without saying that this was definitely Baccarat’s credit.
Being able to accurately find what one wants is, in itself, a top-tier form of luck.
In a sense, this was no different from a protagonist’s halo.
Thinking of this, his gaze toward Baccarat couldn’t help but heat up a little.
Being stared at like this, Baccarat’s cheeks instantly burned, and she subconsciously shrank back:
“Here…
there isn’t even a hotel, we can’t…”
“What are you thinking about?”
Lucas was amused by her and reached out to take the fruit from her palm,
“Meeting you is my true blessing.”
According to Dr.
Kureha’s diagnosis, he could still accommodate the Lineage Factor of one more Devil Fruit.
But this was a different matter from eating the fruit directly.
A cluster of crimson blood surged from Lucas’s fingertips, wrapping around the entire Magnet-Magnet Fruit as if it had a life of its own.
Invisible forces pulled and sifted within the blood mass, peeling away the core Lineage Factor from the fruit’s flesh bit by bit.
Baccarat opened her eyes wide with curiosity, watching his movements without blinking.
In her shocked gaze, the lightning-shaped protrusions on the fruit’s surface slowly smoothed out, and the spiral patterns dissipated like a receding tide.
Soon, that unique Devil Fruit had turned into a completely ordinary grey wild fruit.
Lucas raised his hand and slowly drew the blood mass, which was floating in front of him and wrapped around the Lineage Factor, into his body.
The millions of volts of lightning dormant deep within his cells were instantly activated, colliding and merging with the invading magnetic Lineage Factor.
Like the convergence of Yin and Yang, it derived a brand-new, more dominant power.
He closed his eyes, sensing the changes within his body in detail.
A few seconds later, Lucas opened his eyes, held his right hand flat, and gently clenched it towards the ground.
The earth trembled slightly.
Countless tiny grey-black metallic elements were forcibly extracted from the soil, surging out of the ground like a tide, and gathered in front of him into a rolling wave of metal.
“It’s really different.”
The Magnet-Magnet Fruit in the original timeline could only manipulate ready-made metal objects.
Once in a place without metal, the user’s strength would be greatly discounted.
But Lucas was different.
Electromagnetic force granted him the ability to directly strip metallic elements from the soil.
As long as it wasn’t an extreme environment like a polar glacier, he could create weapons out of thin air anytime, anywhere.
This was no longer an ability of the same dimension.
“Is this your third ability?”
Baccarat extended her fingertip and gently poked the flowing metal wave in front of her; it was cool, and the sensation was wonderful.
“No.” Lucas shook his head to correct her.
“To be precise, magnetism is the third.
This is electromagnetic force, which counts as the fourth.”
A difference of one word, a world of difference.
What magnetism can do, electromagnetic force can do; what electromagnetic force can do, magnetism might not be able to do.
Baccarat nodded, seemingly understanding, yet not quite.
“Let me show you something impressive.”
Lucas raised his arm, and electric arcs crackled between his fingers.
A sudden gust of wind whipped up on the flat ground, sending dust flying.
A brilliant blue-white beam of light, as thick as a thumb, tore through the air and blasted into the trunk of a large tree ahead.
“Boom!”
With a dull thud, a small hole was blasted through the tree trunk, and wood chips flew everywhere.
The air was silent for two seconds.
“Uh…”
Baccarat spoke cautiously, her voice filled with a gentleness that struggled to suppress a laugh.
“It’s okay, small things can be impressive too.”
Lucas’s mouth twitched, his face turned dark for a moment, but he quickly returned to normal.
For the first attempt, the effect was indeed barely satisfactory.
But it was not without gains.
At least it proved that his electromagnetic cannon didn’t need coins as a medium, nor did it need complex mechanical devices to be manually assembled like Kid’s; he could fire it just by raising his hand.
No pre-cast actions, no reliance on mediums—this had significant implications in actual combat.
At least he didn’t have to worry about being sliced in half by the opponent’s Divine Departure before his ultimate move was ready.
It was a bit thin for now.
As long as he continued to develop it, one day, this beam of light would become thick and powerful enough.
By then, blasting an island to pieces with one shot would not be impossible.