Fruit Fusion

The black vortex slowly contracted. By now, the dark clouds in the sky and the black mist over the sea had all been absorbed, revealing Yota’s figure within.

In Yota’s hand was a black-and-red Devil Fruit with strange patterns. The two leaves atop it resembled bat wings.

As Yota slowly descended from the sky, he glanced around. He had caused far too much commotion, and every living person aboard the Ghost Ship had gathered below, looking up at him as he came down.

"Captain, has your Devil Fruit awakened?" Charlotte Pudding asked excitedly.

"That’s right. I finally succeeded." Yota smiled at Charlotte Pudding. "Now I can replace—or rather, enhance—your Devil Fruit!"

After saying that, Yota stretched out his hand. Amid a sweep of black mist, he extracted Charlotte Pudding’s Memory Fruit.

He then activated the Munch-Munch Fruit’s modification ability, fusing Charlotte Pudding’s Memory Fruit with the enhanced Shadow Bat Vampire Fruit in his hand.

"This Vampire Fruit has fused the Shadow Fruit, an ordinary Bat Fruit, and your Memory Fruit. Even among Mythical Zoan-types, it could be considered one of the very best."

"There may still be some danger, though. Perhaps we should find someone to test it first…"

"No need." Charlotte Pudding eagerly took it from him. "As long as I still have one breath left, Captain, you can save me. Let me be the test subject."

With that, Charlotte Pudding took a bite.

A powerful aura immediately erupted from Charlotte Pudding’s body. In an instant, her entire body burst into countless red and black bats that filled the sky.

The red bats were formed from her flesh, while the black bats were her shadow. After the two kinds of bats whirled through the air like a storm, they gathered once more into her body and shadow.

"So strong! I feel unbelievably strong right now!" Charlotte Pudding said happily, clenching her fist before turning her gaze toward Ulti again.

Ulti: Gasp!

Was it still too late to apologize and surrender?

Obviously, it was too late…

After a sparring match with Ulti, Charlotte Pudding roughly came to understand the abilities of her enhanced Fruit.

In addition to the abilities of the original four Fruits, she had gained abilities such as bat transformation, shadow lurking, and mental hypnosis.

Bat transformation was similar to a Logia-type’s immunity to physical attacks. She could turn her body directly into a swarm of bats and fly around. This ability had clearly come from the Bat Fruit, and she could also use those bats to drain blood and heal her injuries.

Shadow lurking allowed her to hide within another person’s shadow. It was clearly the result of the Shadow Fruit and Vampire Fruit working together. Moria’s Shadow Fruit was powerful, but it did not possess this ability to directly use one’s physical body to lurk in shadows.

As for mental hypnosis, it was clearly related to the Memory Fruit. She only needed to make eye contact to hypnotize weaker opponents, and when paired with Memory Deletion, its power was downright terrifying.

The increase to her physical abilities was not even inferior to the strength granted by the Azure Dragon Fruit. Clearly, it was the result of two Zoan-types stacking their physical enhancements.

Because of that, even without using her Mangekyo Sharingan, Charlotte Pudding still beat Ulti until she was black and blue.

In terms of physical strength, even after eating this super Vampire Fruit, Charlotte Pudding was at most on par with the current Ulti, and she was even slightly inferior in Haki.

But she simply had too many tricks at her disposal. Shadow abilities, mental abilities, vampire abilities—any one of those three was already absurdly powerful. Used together, Ulti had no ability to fight back at all.

First, she would drain your vitality and inflict aging on you. Then she would use mental abilities to disrupt the flow of your Haki, before following up with a series of eerie shadow attacks.

After those three moves, let alone Ulti, even a Naval Admiral would probably be caught off guard by such an assault. One slip, and they might even be defeated by Charlotte Pudding.

After all, Charlotte Pudding now possessed the Uchiha clan’s Susanoo as well. Her offensive power was anything but weak.

After witnessing the power of fused Fruits, not only Yota’s subordinates, but even the Moria Pirates wore incredulous expressions. Gecko Moria in particular looked utterly miserable when he realized that his Devil Fruit ability had been completely integrated into the Vampire Fruit’s abilities.

Watching his Fruit ability become nourishment for someone else’s Devil Fruit was a feeling that was difficult to put into words.

At the same time, however, Gecko Moria began to entertain other thoughts. Although he could not get his Shadow Fruit back, if he could cling to Yota, might he also be able to obtain this kind of fused Devil Fruit?

Powerful Devil Fruits were hard to find, but ordinary Zoan-type Devil Fruits were plentiful. If several Zoan-type Devil Fruits were fused together, their power might not be much weaker than that of so-called Mythical Zoans!

Gecko Moria was not the only one with that thought. Almost everyone thought of it at the same time.

Ulti, especially, had just been beaten black and blue. Yota had long ago promised her that as long as she found a stronger Devil Fruit, she could come to him at any time to replace hers.

There were not many Devil Fruits stronger than the Ancient Zoan she possessed, and each of their users was stronger than her. But if she could find a whole bunch of Devil Fruits to fuse together, the result would not be bad either!

For a moment, everyone’s eyes burned with excitement.

Yota looked at them, then shook his head. "Devil Fruits aren’t so easy to fuse at will. At the very least, two Devil Fruits must have something in common. Otherwise, I have no way to fuse them together."

"For example, Ulti and Page One, the Fruits you can fuse should be Dragon-Dragon Fruits, Lizard-Lizard Fruits, or perhaps certain Paramecia-type Devil Fruits related to the body."

"And Violet, what you can fuse are perception-type Fruits. The Devil Fruits must at least be related in some way. Otherwise, forcing a fusion won’t produce an effect where one plus one equals two. It’ll only make things worse."

Yota was not lying. After his Devil Fruit abilities had awakened, Fruit fusion was no longer a problem for him. Even two completely unrelated Devil Fruits could be fused together with ease.

But in terms of actual results, only Devil Fruits with some connection to one another could bring out their true potential. Otherwise, they would only have the opposite effect.