Tabito's gaze—like someone appraising merchandise—lingered on Nami for a moment, and it made her feel a panic she couldn't put into words. She hadn't seen that possessive look only once in her life, but coming from someone so terrifying—someone who had effortlessly wiped out the entire Treasure Pirates—it sent a chill straight up from the bottom of her heart, as if every thought of running had nowhere to hide beneath that calm stare.
"You two—who knows navigation?" Tabito withdrew his eyes, his tone flat, as if the suffocating scrutiny just now had been an illusion. He pointed at the two bulging packs strapped to the tiger corpse puppet's back. "Take me to the nearest village or town with people. As payment, you're each allowed to pick two things from those."
Before Nami could open her mouth through her inner struggle, Carina beat her to it, plastering on a sweet, obedient smile. "Tabito-sama, Nami is an excellent navigator! We accept your request!" She quietly tugged at Nami's sleeve.
Nami caught Carina's hint and understood that, right now, strength decided everything. Besides… the glittering gold light inside those packs had a lethal pull on her. She nodded in silence, taking it as agreed. For money—and for temporary safety.
"Good." Tabito nodded with satisfaction, then swung himself back onto the tiger's back. "Then what are you waiting for? Get on."
Carina and Nami looked at the ferocious tiger-shaped corpse puppet, swallowed hard, and in the end still mustered their courage. They carefully climbed up and sat behind Tabito, one on each side, gripping the tiger's cold, rigid hide for dear life.
"Hold tight. If you fall, I'm not fishing anyone out." Tabito tossed out the warning and lightly patted the tiger's neck.
"Roaaar!" The tiger corpse puppet rumbled low. Its four limbs surged with force as it sprang off the wreckage of the Gem Shark—still slowly sinking—dropping cleanly onto the sea's surface. Then it broke into a run, stepping across the waves at blistering speed!
"Eek—!"
"S-slow down!"
The sudden acceleration and the wind slamming into their faces made Carina and Nami—who had never experienced anything like this—scream in a flurry. They clung to the tiger's back, terrified of being flung off.
Tabito, however, sat as steady as a mountain, even having the leisure to turn his head and remind them, "Navigator, don't forget to give directions."
Nami forced down her fear and her churning stomach, lifting her head to judge the sun's position and the distant cloud shapes on instinct. "L-left a bit! The heading's a little off!"
Tabito adjusted as told. The tiger corpse puppet carved a white wake across the vast open ocean, streaking toward the direction Nami indicated.
With Nami's professional navigation, before midnight fully arrived, the group finally spotted the black silhouette of an island. After landing, they found it was still a deserted island—jagged rocks, dense jungle, a silent beach—without a single light or sign of people.
"You're in charge of making a fire." Tabito hopped off the tiger's back, left the corpse puppet sitting in place, and headed toward the pitch-black jungle. "I'll get something to eat."
Watching Tabito vanish into the jungle's darkness, Nami and Carina exchanged a glance, their heartbeats quickening. The urge to run stirred again—only to freeze instantly when their eyes landed on the tiger corpse puppet squatting quietly on the sand. Its crimson eyes glowed faintly in the night, "watching" them.
Both of them forced a grin uglier than crying, resigned, and began dividing tasks—trembling as they gathered dry branches and struggled to start a fire by friction.
…
Deep in the jungle, after confirming he was out of the girls' sight, Tabito found an open patch of ground. With a thought, the Human Emperor Banner appeared in his hand.
Today, he had absorbed over a hundred souls from the Treasure Pirates—especially the captain's high-quality, vicious soul. The Human Emperor Banner's might had clearly increased by a notch. The banner cloth was darker; the baleful aura around it had nearly condensed into something tangible. The internal space had expanded and stabilized as well, and the refined energy feeding back into him made even his Qi Refining Third Layer cultivation feel significantly more secure.
He sank his spiritual sense into the banner's inner space and quickly "saw" the most conspicuous vicious soul—howling and struggling amid countless wronged spirits—Mad Treasure. Its soul-body was solid and dense, radiating chain-shaped fluctuations, brimming with brutality and unwillingness.
"Good material." Tabito's mouth lifted slightly as he began the experiment he'd been anticipating.
First: corpse-puppet refinement.
He circulated his method, formed hand seals, and the Human Emperor Banner stirred without wind. A dense black current split off from the banner like a tentacle reaching out. At the same time, Tabito transferred Treasure's still mostly intact corpse out from the banner's inner space. The black current wrapped the corpse at once and seeped into it, beginning the basic refinement—reinforcing sinew, muscle, and bone, and branding control runes into it.
About half an hour later, a "Treasure" corpse puppet was complete: gray-black skin, empty eyes, standing motionless yet giving off a faint, ominous aura. But it was only a shell.
The crucial step came next. Tabito's expression turned solemn as he barked, "Soul—return to your place!"
Inside the Human Emperor Banner, Treasure's vicious soul was forcibly guided out. It let out a soundless shriek, struggling as the black current seized it and rammed it—brutally—into the corpse puppet body below, one of the same origin!
Hummm—
The Treasure corpse puppet shuddered violently. Two points of crimson light flared to life in its hollow eyes! A savage miasma far stronger than an ordinary corpse puppet spread out, and across its body, several pitch-black chains wriggled out like living creatures, coiling and slithering on their own!
Tabito's eyes lit up. He immediately issued commands to test it. Under his control, the Treasure corpse puppet fluidly unleashed all sorts of chain attacks. It had lost some of the sly agility it possessed in life, but its power, speed, and the hardness of its chains were preserved at roughly eighty percent. Most importantly, the Devil Fruit ability truly remained!
"So it really works." Tabito's heart surged with excitement.
By this world's common sense, when a Devil Fruit user dies, the ability is reborn somewhere in the world within a fruit. But the Human Emperor Banner seemed to bind the ability to the soul by some method he did not yet fully understand—and when that soul was injected into a same-origin body, the power could reappear. The principle might involve the nature of souls and the level of rules themselves. He couldn't probe it deeply for now, and could only attribute it to the banner's own mysterious divinity.
After confirming the feasibility of Devil Fruit corpse puppets, Tabito didn't stop. He began the second experiment—one that would more directly boost his own combat power: soul possession.
As an experienced demonic cultivator, the Heavenly Demon Soul-Devouring Art recorded plenty of obscure tricks. One of them was to "invite" a powerful vicious soul from within the banner into one's body for a short time, temporarily gaining part of that soul's abilities—and even combat experience—at the cost of heavy mana consumption and strain on one's own spirit.
Tabito steadied his breath and focused, changing hand seals again while murmuring an incantation. The Human Emperor Banner snapped and rustled as it pointed at the Treasure corpse puppet. Within the corpse puppet, the vicious soul that had only just settled was forcibly torn free—its core soul-force extracted in part—turning into a black-red streak of light that slammed straight into Tabito's brow!
"Gh—!" Tabito staggered. A brutal, greedy foreign will crashed into his sea of consciousness. At the same time, a strange sense of power—along with a hazy understanding of "chains"—flowed through his entire body. He willed it into motion.
Clatter-clatter!
Several chains—slightly thinner than his arm, yet just as black and tough—actually drilled out from his palms, elbows, and other places!
"It worked." Tabito endured the discomfort in his mind and the rapid drain on his mana, controlling the chains to thrust, bind, and wrap. He was nowhere near as skilled as Treasure himself—or even the corpse puppet—and his range was far smaller, but it was undeniably the chain Devil Fruit ability!
After testing, with his current Qi Refining Third Layer cultivation, this "vicious-soul possession" state could last at most one stick of incense—about half an hour. And once it ended, he would feel mentally exhausted with his mana bottomed out. Even so, there was no doubt: it had become a trump card powerful enough to reverse the situation at a critical moment.
"One more bit of capital to stand firm in this chaotic world." Tabito dispersed the possession state, returned the slightly weakened vicious soul to the Human Emperor Banner to be nurtured, and stored the newly refined chain corpse puppet back into the banner's inner space as well. Only then did he casually hunt a wild boar foraging nearby, hoist the prey onto his shoulder, and return to the beach.
(End of Chapter)
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