One Piece was a series that cared a great deal about bloodlines.
Or rather, most Japanese manga worshipped bloodlines.
During the Onigashima battle, Kaido declared that only Haki stood above all else—then got beaten by Luffy using the Nika Fruit.
Of course, that was not the point.
The point was this: if Kaido truly believed Haki mattered above everything else, then why had he eaten the Azure Dragon Fruit in the first place?
The answer was simple. Back when he was on Rocks's ship, he had seen Whitebeard use the Tremor-Tremor Fruit to raise a tsunami, and from that moment on, Kaido had developed the desire to find a powerful Devil Fruit of his own.
Because the truth was not that Haki stood above all else.
To be precise, only Conqueror's Haki stood above all else.
And the maddening part was that Conqueror's Haki could not be strengthened through training alone.
Looking at every notable user of Conqueror's Haki, the pattern was obvious.
Garp, Dragon, and Luffy—three generations of the Monkey family, all top Conqueror's Haki users. Clearly a bloodline issue.
Garling, Shanks, and Shamrock belonged to the Figarland family, the Celestial Dragons' military elite.
Kozuki Oden came from the hereditary daimyo line of Wano.
Loki was a prince of the giants.
Rocks, Teach, Roger... all of them were members of the D clan.
With Kaido's background, if he had not relied on a Devil Fruit, then no matter how hard he trained, the highest he could ever have reached was the level of a top-tier silver medalist like Rayleigh, Gaban, or Benn Beckman.
Which raised an important question.
What gave Blake the confidence to plan on profiting from the clash between the Sun God and Imu?
The answer was simple.
He had a cheat.
As soon as the words left his mouth, Blake's consciousness appeared in a boundless azure space.
Ahead of him floated a screen with a distinctly sci-fi design.
Ten slots were arranged across it, each one holding a card.
Each card bore the portrait of a different person along with a name:
Borsalino (young), Monkey D. Garp (young), Shiki (prime), Charlotte Linlin (child)...
Beneath the row of cards sat a glowing golden box.
"Same as always. Draw first."
Blake pressed a hand against the box.
It trembled, then a single card flew out.
The portrait on it showed a woman.
She wore a rose-colored suit, a Marine justice coat draped over her shoulders, and a pair of dark purple gloves. Her long pale-pink hair fell over her shoulders, styled neatly, and a pair of purple sunglasses rested atop her head.
Tina (prime)
"Hm... Tina? That one's worth trying."
Blake rubbed his chin.
"Enter."
The instant he spoke, his figure vanished.
When he reappeared, he found himself on a deserted island.
"An island terrain this time? That should favor her. Better be a little more careful."
Blake moved toward the center of the island, pushing his Observation Haki to its limit, alert for an enemy that could emerge from any direction.
Then, suddenly, within the range of his perception, a valiant-looking woman stepped out from the forest ahead.
But the Tina before him had no light in her eyes at all. Only a cold emptiness.
Blake's gaze sharpened, and he charged straight at her with astonishing speed.
His right fist drew back in an arcing motion, black Armament Haki beginning to spread across it.
Fast as he was, without anything like Future Sight negation, Blake could not completely overwhelm Tina's reaction speed. She crossed her arms in front of herself, coating them with Armament Haki as well.
Blake's fist slammed into her guard and sent her flying backward.
He refused to let up and chased after her at once.
Still airborne, Tina spread both hands toward him.
"Black Spear Formation!"
In an instant, metal rods materialized out of thin air, stabbing toward Blake from every direction.
Thanks to the sharp perception of his Observation Haki, Blake dodged them all, but his speed dropped.
Tina landed and whipped a spinning kick straight at his head, her long leg flashing in the sunlight.
Blake was in no mood to admire it.
He had already shifted his balance to evade her Devil Fruit ability, and now dodging was no longer an option. He could only raise a fist and take it head-on.
With a heavy crash, their attacks collided.
Normally, kicks carried significantly more force than punches, but Blake's physical strength was superior to Tina's. This exchange ended in an even split.
In that instant of deadlock, Blake lifted his right leg and drove a kick toward Tina's waist.
Tina jumped back to evade it, and Blake took the opportunity to step in, dragging the fight into close-quarters combat.
That was exactly what he wanted.
Judging from the few times Tina had fought in the anime, her Devil Fruit was more suited to ranged attacks, wide-area control, and restraint techniques.
When both sides had similar Haki, the one with a Devil Fruit held a major advantage.
Blake's own strengths, on the other hand, lay in his superior physique and his Observation Haki, which allowed him to sense the enemy first.
After several exchanges, Blake formed a clear judgment of Tina's level.
"Her Armament Haki is a little stronger than mine, but not by much. If I rely on my physical ability and drag this into a battle of endurance, I can win!"
That conclusion made his confidence surge, and even his attacks seemed to speed up.
The night passed in the blink of an eye.
Then Blake reappeared in the azure space once more, a card in his hand.
Armament Haki (Prime Tina)
As soon as the words were spoken, the card vanished, and a surge of power rose within Blake's body. Both the quality and quantity of his Armament Haki increased dramatically.
That was Blake's system—
a stiff, silent cheat that never spoke a single word.
First, Blake could draw one card every month.
The person on the card was random. Sometimes it would be a famous powerhouse from the original story, and sometimes it would be an unknown nobody.
The odds of drawing a named character from the original story were much higher than drawing a random extra.
At the same time, though, the same character could differ wildly in strength depending on what point of their life the card represented.
Blake could challenge the person he drew.
If he won, he would receive an ability card taken from them.
That ability card might be one of their three forms of Haki, their Devil Fruit power, or some special constitution.
If he lost—or simply did not want to challenge the card yet—he could store it in the card pool above.
The pool had ten slots in total and could hold only ten cards, allowing Blake to wait until he had a reasonable chance before deciding to fight.
Over the past sixteen years, Blake had filled all ten slots with cards he had carefully selected.
Every one of them had relatively strong abilities while still being comparatively easier to challenge.
Aside from Shiki the Golden Lion and Red Count Barorick Redfield, who had each only appeared once, the rest had all been from more manageable periods of their lives.
Take Garp, for example. Young Garp was obviously much easier to fight than Prime Garp or Old Garp.
And among all ten cards, the most valuable of them all was Charlotte Linlin (child).
Out of the ten, child Linlin was the weakest one. At that age, she had neither Haki nor a Devil Fruit—only one special inborn gift:
Iron Balloon.
As long as Blake could defeat her, he would be guaranteed to obtain the Iron Balloon ability card.
The tragedy was that even at sixteen, Blake still could not beat child Charlotte Linlin...