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[Next-Stage Mission Unlocked: Sell 30 Devil Fruits]
[Stage Reward: 10 lottery draws or 10,000 Origin Points]
[Note: 1,000 Origin Points are equivalent to one lottery draw. The host may combine rewards freely.]
The system's notification chimed through Rosh's mind like a clean bell strike, sharp, immediate, and impossible to ignore.
He'd barely finished riding the high of his power boost when the next phase arrived, sliding into place with the cold certainty of a contract.
Thirty fruits, Double the previous target.
Normally, that kind of number would've been annoying. A grind. A headache. But Rosh didn't even flinch this time. If anything, he felt… amused.
Because the world had changed.
A few weeks ago, Devil Fruits had been obscure rumors, an underground curiosity that only the desperate or the reckless would chase. Back then, every sale had been a battle. He'd had to work for every customer, explain the impossible to faces full of doubt, and endure long stretches where the shop felt like a ghost town.
Those first months had been brutal.
But now? Now, Devil Fruits were mainstream.
They were everywhere, on screens, in conversations, in arguments, in the nervous "what if" thoughts people had before falling asleep. People didn't need convincing anymore.
They needed directions.
Rosh glanced at the new mission, filed it away like a note on the edge of a map, and let it go. Selling thirty fruits didn't feel difficult anymore, not with the flood of attention still pouring in from every corner of the country.
The real challenge wasn't sales.
It was infrastructure.
Because the Home of the Devil Fruits couldn't keep operating like a tiny storefront with a crowded counter and a line spilling out onto the street. The shop had outgrown its own skin.
It needed an upgrade.
The current place wasn't "bad," exactly… but compared to what Devil Fruits had become, it looked cheap. Like a pop-up kiosk trying to sell miracles. Like a secret that was still pretending it belonged in the shadows.
And then there was branding, real branding.
If Devil Fruits were going to be taken seriously, the business needed a public face that didn't rely on rumors and shaky phone recordings.
A professional website, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. A central hub where people could stop guessing and start learning, where the rules were laid out cleanly, and the world couldn't twist the narrative into nonsense.
It was time to launch official media platforms such as a website, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook, where information about Devil Fruits could be centralized and presented professionally.
All of that was necessary now.
Rosh exhaled slowly, the decision already made.
So he got to work.
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Even while customers continued pouring in, tourists, believers, skeptics, rich thrill-seekers, desperate nobodies, Rosh made one immediate move:
He contacted a recruitment agency and hired an assistant almost immediately.
Rosh didn't want slow interviews or wasting time. He needed someone competent, someone who could operate under pressure without panicking or begging for reassurance. In the end, he found the right person.
Her name was Elizabeth Braddell.
She was sharp, efficient, and frighteningly organized, one of those people who spoke in clean sentences and turned chaos into schedules. The vibe was familiar: the same decisive energy you'd see in someone like Pepper Potts or Hope van Dyne. Not loud, not dramatic, just effective.
Rosh liked her immediately.
Under Elizabeth's management, the business began to evolve in real time.
First, she hired several store clerks to handle front reception, provide explanations, answer basic questions, and handle crowd control. The day-to-day flow. The stuff that had been draining Rosh's mental stamina dry.
With them in place, Rosh no longer had to stand at the counter nonstop like he was chained to it. He could finally breathe.
Then she moved into the public-facing work.
The official website went up, clean, professional, and easy to navigate. Social media channels followed soon after, launched with impressive speed and consistency. No sloppy posts. No half-finished pages. Everything polished, intentional, built like a brand that expected the whole world to be watching.
Because the whole world was watching.
And then came the biggest issue: the storefront itself.
Elizabeth presented several prime locations, real, high-end options that screamed legit. Not a cramped little shop that looked like it sold souvenirs. A place that looked like it belonged in Manhattan's most expensive block.
Rosh reviewed the choices, narrowed them down, and made his decision quickly.
A top-tier office building in Manhattan.
Expensive? Yes.
But Rosh wasn't short on money anymore. Not even close. At this point, cost was just a number, something people worried about when they didn't have power.
Overall, he just didn't care about the cost.
Renovations, permits, design, staffing, logistics, Rosh didn't lift a finger for any of it. He simply handed it all to Elizabeth, and she took it like she'd been born for the job.
All he had to do was wait until everything was ready… and then move.
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The Triskelion, Director's Office
Nick Fury sat behind his desk with the kind of stillness that made other people adjust their posture without realizing it. Stern expression. Rigid shoulders. One eye was sharp enough to cut through lies even before they were spoken.
Across from him stood one of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s most elite agents, and one of his most trusted agents...
Natasha Romanoff.
"Sir," Natasha reported, voice low and steady, "we found Anton Vanko."
She paused just long enough for the name to land.
"But he's dead."
For the first time, Fury's brow rose barely. A small reaction, but for him it might as well have been a shout. He studied her as if he were verifying the words in real time.
A month and a half ago, Fury had handed her a classified task: track down Howard Stark's former partner, the one ghost that kept reappearing whenever the word "Arc Reactor" showed up in places it didn't belong.
Not an easy assignment.
Vanko had been exiled decades ago, booted out of the U.S., shipped back to the Soviet Union, then shoved aside again until he eventually vanished into the blank white nowhere of Siberia.
Finding someone who wanted to stay lost was hard enough.
Finding someone who'd been erased by governments, poverty, and time? That was the kind of work people didn't brag about. It was slow, ugly, and full of dead ends.
Even for S.H.I.E.L.D.
But the agency didn't do "impossible." It did persistent. It built nets so wide that even a rumor had nowhere to run. One weak thread, one slip, one careless transaction, eventually, something always twitched.
Fury leaned back slightly, fingers steepled, voice flat as asphalt. "So," he said, "what's the robber's connection to Anton Vanko?"
Natasha answered instantly, like she'd already predicted the question before he asked it. "The man's name is Ivan Vanko," she said. "Anton's son."
Fury let out a low, dry chuckle, more humorless than amused.
"Is that so?" he murmured. "Then we should thank this dutiful son."
Because it was true. Anton Vanko hadn't been found through old files or dusty intel. He'd been found because someone in the present had started making noise.
Half a month ago, shortly after Rosh's public appearance alongside Tony Stark, the agency had flagged a string of robberies with a weird pattern. Not random smash-and-grabs, nor a desperate crime. It was targeted and clean.
And the suspect? He wasn't using a gun; he was using something else.
Surveillance footage showed a man fighting with two electrified whips, crackling lines of blue-white energy that snapped through the air like living lightning. One strike carved into steel plating as if it were cheap aluminum. Another split the side of a car with a scream of metal and sparks.
The design looked crude and brutal, almost improvised, like it had been welded together by someone who didn't care if it looked pretty as long as it worked.
But the tech underneath it? That was the part that made Fury's attention sharpen.
Because the thing embedded in the man's chest, an energy unit glowing through his shirt like a captive star, didn't look like a battery.
It looked like a miniature Arc Reactor.
And once that connection formed, the conclusion was automatic. If Arc Reactor technology existed outside Stark Industries, then it didn't come from nowhere.
It came from history, from old work. From one name that refused to stay buried, Anton Vanko.
Naturally, Natasha followed the thread and, as always, it led somewhere ugly.
The robber was Anton's son. Which meant every raid, every stolen bar of gold, every crude burst of lightning wasn't random violence.
It was a breadcrumb trail.
And that was how Anton Vanko was finally found.
Only…
No one expected him to already be dead.
And the timing made it worse.
Anton Vanko had died on the very day Tony Stark announced he was Iron Man, on the same day Rosh stepped onto that stage and made Devil Fruits a global obsession.
That coincidence wasn't just unsettling; it was loud.
Natasha's lips smirked, faint but real, her version of humor, dry as sand.
"We should really be thanking Rosh," Natasha said. "Ivan Vanko was robbing gold. Most likely, he wanted to buy a Devil Fruit… to use against Stark."
Fury gave a small nod. He'd already connected the same dots.
Gold wasn't just valuable.
Gold was currency now because Rosh had made it the currency. And the kind of man building illegal arc-tech weapons wasn't robbing gold for fun. He was gathering it like ammunition.
But Fury wasn't particularly interested in Ivan's motive.
He leveled his single eye at Natasha, voice heavy enough to press on the air. "Where is Ivan Vanko now?"
"After the last shipment of gold," Natasha replied, "He disappeared. We haven't found him yet."
Fury's expression tightened, the hard line of his mouth flattening into something colder.
Because if S.H.I.E.L.D. had eyes on Ivan Vanko, then someone else did too. Fury had no doubt his former superior, Alexander Pierce, would have eyes on him, too.
And if Pierce got to Ivan first…
Then Hydra didn't just get a dangerous man. It will bring the Arc Reactor technology too, a miniature sun that could power weapons, armies, and operations for decades.
That was unacceptable.
Fury wouldn't allow Hydra to tighten its grip any further. Not after all the quiet damage they'd already done.
"And that," Natasha said, tone shifting into something sharper, "is exactly why I'm here, sir."
She stepped forward half a pace, not aggressive, just direct. Her delivery was controlled, but underneath it was urgency.
"We've narrowed him down to three possible regions," she continued. "We're confident he's in one of them."
"But sweeping them will take time and resources." Her eyes narrowed slightly. "And it could alert the wrong people."
She paused, then looked directly at Fury.
"If you handle it personally, sir… it won't be the same."
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Next Chapter: Super-Soldier vs. Superpower
Next Next Chapter: Zoan Power Dominates
Next Next Next Chapter: Fury's Miscalculation
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