"Whoosh—"
In an instant, Mieko's muscles tensed all over. The small iron ball clenched in his hand shot out like an arrow loosed from a bow, streaking straight toward Enel's face.
"Who?!"
Enel's expression changed at the sound. He whirled around—and saw a pitch-black little iron ball tearing through the air, aimed right at his head. At the same time, what entered his eyes was Mieko's twisted, ferocious, ice-cold face. Enel's heart jolted, terror flooding him.
"Bang!"
"AAAH—" The iron ball was insanely fast. Enel didn't even have time to dodge before it slammed into his face. His left cheek instantly became a bloody mess, and he staggered backward and fell, letting out a piercing scream.
At the same time, Mieko's lean yet agile body moved like a predator finally springing. He burst forward. With a flip of his right hand, a razor-sharp knife had appeared at some point without anyone noticing. Wearing a cold, ruthless expression, he charged at Enel, who was on the ground clutching his mangled, bleeding left cheek and screaming nonstop.
Enel was both shocked and enraged. He glared, eyes wide, at Mieko rushing in. He had no idea why Mieko had suddenly become so vicious—like he was determined to end his life—but he knew one thing: he couldn't just wait to die.
"Whoosh—"
Enel shot to his feet, his face sinking. He swung his iron club hard, the wind howling with the weight of a mountain as it smashed down at Mieko.
"Bang!!!"
Mieko shifted his body to the side and cleanly slipped past the savage blow.
"Swish!"
Mieko's movements were lightning-fast. He stepped in along the path of the iron club, his body dropping into a forward lunge. Under Enel's horrified gaze, the knife in Mieko's right hand snapped forward like a streak of cold light, stabbing straight for Enel's throat!
"Thud!"
Enel felt his life force draining away. His fingers loosened, the iron club falling from his grasp. He clutched at his throat in agony—where the knife had sunk in to the hilt and blood was spraying out—then his body crashed to the ground. His eyes were wide, filled with disbelief as he stared at Mieko's merciless face.
"Why… are you killing me?" Enel pressed a hand to his throat, forcing the words out with difficulty.
"Because you got something that never should've been yours." Mieko answered without expression. Then he bent down, grabbed the pale azure Devil Fruit, and bit into it without hesitation—peel and all.
"Ugh…" The moment he bit off a small piece, a fierce wave of nausea surged up. His face instantly turned ashen-blue, and he couldn't help retching—yet nothing came up.
"W-why…" Enel's eyes widened further, filled with confusion and unwillingness, and a deep attachment to the world he was leaving behind. He couldn't understand why Mieko would steal that fruit. Slowly, his gaze began to lose focus…
Mieko didn't spare Enel's corpse even a glance. To prevent any unpredictable consequences from only taking a single bite, he endured the nausea and forced the rest of the fruit down in one go. Immediately, his face turned even more ashen, ugly as hell, and he doubled over to the side, retching again and again.
"Haha…" A few minutes later, Mieko finally managed to suppress the retching, then suddenly threw his head back and laughed loudly. The laughter echoed through the forest, startling nearby birds into flight. Even distant beasts seemed provoked, answering with thunderous roars.
"Power is surging out of my body nonstop… This feeling… it's absolutely incredible!"
Mieko cut off his wild laughter and spread his hands. With a thought, thin, dazzling arcs of electricity burst from his palms, crackling madly.
"Bzzzt… bzzzt…" As the arcs continued to flicker, the light grew brighter and brighter, and a slightly ear-piercing sound rippled outward. Mieko was almost completely wrapped in lightning. At this moment, he finally understood why a mere ordinary man like Enel could, in just a year or two, gain terrifying power enough to destroy an entire Birka island.
Not every Devil Fruit does nothing the moment you eat it, and not every Devil Fruit can make an ordinary person instantly become monstrously strong. But there are indeed some Devil Fruits that can grant an ordinary person superhuman abilities in an instant. Even if those abilities might be nothing in front of top-tier monsters, using them to crush ordinary soldiers is more than enough.
The Rumble-Rumble Fruit was clearly the best of the best among them!
"Pew!" Mieko extended his right index finger, aiming at a huge tree in the distance that would take several people to wrap their arms around. With a thought, a beam of lightning shot from his fingertip.
"BOOM!"
That seemingly thin beam struck like thunder. A lightning-fast attack smashed into the tree, instantly blasting a charred, nearly translucent small hole through the trunk—though the shot clearly wasn't perfectly accurate and was a bit off-center.
Mieko stared at the smoking, still-warm blackened hole in the tree. A grin tugged at his lips, and he laughed loudly.
"Even if I can't control this power however I want yet, the destructive force is already pretty damn good. Next… it's just a matter of time…"
Then his gaze shifted to the ground. Enel lay there, eyes wide open, dead with resentment lingering in them. Mieko frowned slightly, thinking in silence.
"This guy has a decent relationship with the patrol captain in this neighborhood. If I leave him here, someone will notice something is off within two days and come looking… I just ate the Rumble-Rumble Fruit. Even as a Logia-type user, I'm not afraid of ordinary physical attacks—but who can guarantee this country doesn't have weapons made from Seastone…"
Mieko wasn't naive enough to think eating the Rumble-Rumble Fruit made him unbeatable. A kingdom would definitely have hidden experts. He'd only just obtained a Logia-type Devil Fruit, and aside from the Rumble-Rumble Fruit's trait of ignoring normal physical attacks, he truly couldn't be sure he could stand up to those experts.
"Better to stay in this forest and train in seclusion for a few months first. Once I've developed some of the abilities, then I'll head out." Mieko acted decisively and quickly made up his mind.
"ROAR!!!"
Just as he was about to drag Enel's corpse deeper into the forest to feed the wild beasts, several earthshaking roars suddenly erupted nearby, making Mieko chuckle.
"Talk about perfect timing. Saves me the trouble."
Mieko turned toward the not-too-distant brush. Several wild spotted leopards were sprinting over after catching the scent of blood. He lifted the thick iron club—far taller than he was and heavy-looking—and stomped the ground. His whole body moved as light as a swallow as he leapt up onto a thick branch above…
(End of Chapter)
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