But did these people really think they could stroll into Hell Guild territory, show off their Devil Fruits, then take them back when they lost?
Dream on.
Doragonzo Island was Brook's ground. If you came here, you spent until your pockets bled before you left. No one was walking off this island with a top tier Devil Fruit still in their hands.
There were warships for sale. Advanced weapons. Seastone battleships. Even limited edition flying ships.
Brook refused to believe he could not keep these fruits.
And if it truly came down to it, he would not hesitate to mix persuasion with pressure until the sale was forced through.
"Yohohoho! Look at this lineup! So many top tier Devil Fruits!"
Brook held the bidding device, eyes gleaming as he scanned the entries under each bidder number. Some names were familiar. Some had attached photos instead of proper names, fruits so obscure even he could not identify them at a glance.
That only made it more exciting.
He wanted to gamble.
He wanted to see what kind of monsters were hiding in the world's shadows.
"Next, I'll read out a few strong contenders so everyone can get a clearer picture!"
The auction hall's noise dropped instantly.
Even from behind walls and curtains, even from sealed VIP rooms, you could feel the entire world leaning forward.
"Bidder No. 333 offers the Zoan, Elephant Elephant Fruit, Ancient Model Mammoth, and the Paramecia, Bomb Fruit!"
A wave of gasps rolled through the hall.
"Bidder No. 69 offers two Ancient Zoans! The Dragon Dragon Fruit, Ancient Model Pachycephalosaurus, and the Dragon Dragon Fruit, Ancient Model Spinosaurus!"
More shouting, more murmurs, more greedy eyes lighting up.
"Bidder No. 10086 offers the Paramecia, Gold Gold Fruit!"
Somewhere in the crowd, someone choked on their own breath.
Then Brook's grin widened as he continued.
"Bidder No. 18 offers three Devil Fruits! The Paramecia, Teleport Fruit, the Logia, Rain Rain Fruit, and the Zoan, Dragon Dragon Fruit, Ancient Model Serpentine Dragon!"
The hall erupted.
And then Brook tilted his head slightly, as if he had just found something truly ridiculous.
"Bidder No. 250 is offering five Devil Fruits!"
That single line hit harder than a cannon.
"They are the Zoan, Dragon Dragon Fruit, Ancient Model Ankylosaurus, and the Zoan, Dragon Dragon Fruit, Ancient Model Allosaurus, the Logia, Gas Fruit, the Paramecia, Sweet Sweet Fruit, and the Paramecia, Rubber Fruit!"
For a moment, the hall went dead silent.
Then it exploded.
Some bidders who had only offered one Devil Fruit instantly realized they had miscalculated.
So you could win by quantity.
Pirates who did not even know the real names of the fruits they carried suddenly learned the truth from Brook's mouth. Many of them had never seen a complete Devil Fruit encyclopedia in their lives. Only now, hearing their bidder number called, did they discover what they truly possessed.
Inside a VIP room, Lu Feld stared at his bidding device, the number 18 glowing on its surface.
The cigar in his mouth snapped clean in half.
Five fruits.
One of them was a Logia.
Lu Feld's eyelids twitched.
He had not felt safe offering only the Teleport Fruit, so he had added a Logia Rain Rain Fruit and an Ancient Zoan Serpentine Dragon to catch Brook's eye.
But now?
He was no longer confident.
Bidder No. 250 had two Ancient Zoans, one Logia, and two Paramecias. That was a direct threat to his offer.
Elsewhere, Doflamingo clenched his own bidding device, veins bulging.
No. 10086.
Gold Gold Fruit.
He looked like a clown.
Against monsters like these, he barely even qualified to sit in the room.
In the delegation team from the Dick Kingdom, the captain of the royal guard held the bidding device showing No. 250, entering information with steady fingers.
Beside him, several CP agents dressed as soldiers stared in disbelief.
They only had four Devil Fruits.
When did they gain a Rubber Fruit?
And worse.
Wasn't the Rubber Fruit the one the Five Elders had personally ordered them to find?
How did it end up here?
It had been with them the entire time.
If so, could they remove it right now and escort it back to Mary Geoise?
Before that thought could even fully form, the room's air shifted.
A streak of light like lightning slipped through the space, and an elegant figure materialized quietly inside VIP Room 250.
No warning.
No knock.
Just arrival.
The CP agents' bodies went rigid.
Then, on the auction stage, Brook laughed, loud and delighted, and drove the crowd even deeper into madness.
"Yohohoho! Too many choices! Too many temptations! I'm excited, and I'm suffering!"
He lifted his hand.
"And because of that, I've decided something."
He reached behind him and, to the shock of everyone watching, produced two more pure gold rings.
"For the last minute, I'm adding two more pure gold rings!"
The hall detonated.
"Everyone, bid again! Put everything you have into your device! Devil Fruits, rare materials, anything you dare to stake!"
Brook's voice boomed through the Den Den Mushi speakers like a festival drum.
"The three offers that satisfy me will each receive a pure gold ring!"
As he said it, Brook's grin grew wider and wider.
Because on that updated list, he had seen it.
Rubber Fruit.
His mouth stretched into a savage smile.
He never expected to encounter the Sun God Nika Fruit at this auction, delivered in this ridiculous way.
He already knew Celestial Dragon representatives were mixed into certain teams, but he did not know why the Rubber Fruit would appear in a Celestial Dragon delegation.
It did not matter.
He had already sent Redfield to move.
This World Expo was worth everything.
And it was not just the Rubber Fruit.
There was the Gold Gold Fruit. The Sweet Sweet Fruit. Two rare Logias. A mountain of Ancient Zoans.
No one was shameless enough to bring trash to this auction and embarrass themselves.
That "ordinary" Rubber Fruit was probably tossed in as filler, a careless addition.
Otherwise, given how desperately the World Government hunted it, a mistake like this should never have happened.
As expected, a Devil Fruit with its own will could slip through nets in ways no one could predict.
When Brook revealed the two additional rings, the entire auction hall lost what little sanity it had left.
Even Doflamingo, poor by comparison, ground his teeth and added his last remaining bargaining chip.
The Paramecia, Boom Boom Fruit.
A fruit whose ability mirrored the Bomb Fruit.
Lu Feld's face darkened. He grabbed a Den Den Mushi, barked a short order to a confidant, then returned to his device and added two more fruits with a bitter glare.
A Zoan, Ancient Model Poison Butterfly.
And a Paramecia, Winch Fruit.
Across the island, underground emperors and core kingdom kings began digging up secrets they had sworn would never see daylight.
If there had been only one ring, many of them would not have dared to believe they could win.
But now there were three.
They had to seize one, no matter what.
This was a once in a lifetime chance.
Who knew when Brook would hold another auction and release so many pure gold rings again?
The bidding list kept updating, faster and faster, as offers piled up like a tsunami.
And Brook's smile threatened to split the heavens.
Today, he wanted all of it.
Every Devil Fruit.
Every rare material.
Every hidden treasure dragged into the light by greed.
What right did the World Government have to fight the Universal Government in the future?
Brook's army of Devil Fruit users would crash down like a storm, and even if it became a fight to the death, they would grind Imu and the Five Elders to dust through sheer, brutal attrition.
-------------
Inside VIP Room No. 250, a CP0 agent assigned exclusively to a Celestial Dragon family snatched the treasure chest from the Dick Kingdom's guard captain.
His teeth clenched as he forced the lid open.
Inside lay the Devil Fruit the World Government had hunted for years.
The Rubber Fruit.
"How… why is it here, now of all times…?"
Pompeo's breath caught. As a CP0 agent with access to the Celestial Dragons' deepest secrets, he had heard the legends of the Sun God Nika. He knew the whispers that never reached the public.
And this "ordinary" Paramecia, the Rubber Fruit, had been personally ordered by the Five Elders.
That alone made it suspicious.
It was very likely the Sun God Nika Fruit itself.
Pompeo stared at the purple fruit, his expression twisting between greed, fear, and indecision.
Should he pretend ignorance and keep bidding for a pure gold ring for his Celestial Dragon master?
Or should he take the fruit right now, slip out of Doragonzo Island, and hand it directly to the Five Elders?
But he did not know whether Brook recognized the truth.
Brook's sixth son was named Nika, and that child could command the Lord of the Elephants. Brook was the ruler of the New World, the highest authority of the Universal Government.
There was no chance he did not know the legend.
So this was a gamble.
If Brook did not know the Rubber Fruit's true identity, Pompeo could steal it away, deliver it to the Five Elders, and still use the remaining four high level fruits to compete for a ring.
But if Brook knew?
Then VIP Room 250 had already become a grave.
If Pompeo continued bidding with five Devil Fruits, maybe he could survive long enough to leave, ring in hand, and call it a miracle.
Pompeo's fingers tightened on the fruit.
If he had not already eaten a Devil Fruit, he would have swallowed it himself on the spot.
His eyes flicked to the young man beside him, a CP9 genius rookie only eighteen years old, Foz F.
The kid had not eaten a fruit yet, and he clearly knew the Nika legend too.
If Brook tried to seize the fruit by force, should Pompeo order Foz F to eat it immediately, then hide him?
Or destroy the fruit outright?
Then Pompeo remembered Brook's methods, his technology, his ability to recycle Devil Fruits.
Even if Foz F ate it, it would not matter. If they were caught, it would still be ripped back out of their hands.
Just as Pompeo's mind churned to the breaking point, lightning flashed through the room.
And the Rubber Fruit vanished from his grasp.
Instantly, the entire VIP room erupted. Chairs scraped, blades half drew, bodies went tense.
Had the Hell Pirates decided to rob them in the middle of the auction?
A calm voice answered that question before anyone could move.
"Your bid has been accepted. I'll be taking these five Devil Fruits."
Lightning coiled, then shaped itself into a tall, elegant figure.
Redfield stood there, the purple Rubber Fruit in his hand, smiling at the guard captain of the Dick Kingdom, the man who had been placed in charge on the surface.
Redfield did not even bother looking at Pompeo or Foz F.
To him, they were soldiers in borrowed uniforms, insects wearing armor.
Even though his Observation Haki and his mind reading had already peeled away every mask in the room.
If Brook had not ordered him to keep the auction clean, to avoid stirring chaos that would stain the Expo's reputation, Redfield would have turned every CP agent present into charcoal without blinking.
After all, these were "honored guests" who had just delivered him a top tier Devil Fruit.
It would be rude to kill them in the auction hall.
Much better to wait until they left Hell Guild territory.
Extreme storms were common on the seas, after all.
Under the faint pressure of Redfield's leaking Haki, the Dick Kingdom guard captain went pale. Pompeo and the others stiffened like statues as Redfield walked out with the Rubber Fruit and four other treasure chests containing Devil Fruits.
Pompeo could not even activate his ability.
His Paramecia, the Lie Lie Fruit, could make enemies believe his lies, trust him deeply, even bend their judgment toward whatever story he wanted them to accept.
But in front of Redfield's monstrous Haki and that unnatural Observation, it was worthless.
Pompeo's chest sank.
"It's over…"
Before a pure gold ring had even been delivered, Brook had already taken all five fruits.
Because of the Rubber Fruit, Pompeo might not be able to complete his Celestial Dragon master's mission at all.
He turned a murderous glare toward the Dick Kingdom delegation.
If they had not slipped the Rubber Fruit into the offer, none of this would have happened.
Not only had he lost the Rubber Fruit, he had lost the four high level Devil Fruits meant to secure a ring.
Pompeo was about to snap, to slaughter the incompetent delegation where they stood, when the VIP room door opened again.
A familiar presence returned like thunder.
"We, the Hell Guild, are not a shameless force that breaks its promises."
Redfield reappeared in a flash of electricity, a pure gold ring in hand. He casually tossed it toward the guard captain.
"This pure gold ring is now yours."
Then he vanished again, lightning ripping away into the corridor as if he had never been there.
As for whether the Dick Kingdom delegation could safely leave the New World after this?
That was another story.
Storms. Tsunamis. Accidents.
The sea was full of possibilities.
Pompeo snatched the pure gold ring from the guard captain's hands, his eyes burning with excitement, fear, and naked greed.
Immortality.
A ring that could make you live forever.
He swallowed hard, then spoke sharply, his tone leaving no room for resistance.
"Captain Fran, you've already swallowed the pure gold ring. You will escort it back at all costs."
He turned to the young rookie.
"Foz F, you are the true leader of this operation. Protect the Dick Kingdom delegation and return."
His Devil Fruit power activated instantly.
The Lie Lie Fruit twisted the air, wrapped his words in authority, and planted trust like a nail driven into wood.
The people in the room nodded without hesitation, eyes full of conviction, as if Pompeo's commands were the only truth left in the world.
Pompeo smiled.
Satisfied.
He lied. He cheated. He stole.
That was how he survived, how he climbed, how he became a CP0 agent trusted by Celestial Dragons.
He had even deceived the Celestial Dragons themselves.
This time would be no different.
He slipped out of the VIP room, already preparing another escape route.
But as he moved through the corridors, several Hell Guild cadres watched him from the shadows.
And elsewhere, some truly dangerous figures, people with their own plans and their own greed, also took note of him.
Back in the auction hall, Brook had already decided the winners of the other two pure gold rings.
Lu Feld paid a brutal price, five high level Devil Fruits, and finally secured one of the rings.
.....
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