As one of the world's top masters, Kaido and Charlotte Linlin of course understood perfectly well what Devil Fruit awakening entailed.
Even Kaido himself was someone who'd awakened his ability.
He was an Zoan-type user, possessing the Fish-Fish Fruit, Mythical Beast variety, Blue Dragon form, fully awakened.
The awakening of Zoan-type abilities was the most common and widespread among all Devil Fruit users.
Of course, the awakening of these Zoan-type abilities was also the most monotonous.
Because the awakening of most Zoan Devil Fruit users manifested as comprehensive improvements in physical qualities such as vitality, endurance, and strength.
In other words, they became more durable, with some improvements related to their specific bloodlines. For example, leopards would become faster, mammoths would have thicker health pools.
Kaido's subordinate, Drought Jack.
He was the Mammoth Fruit user. Putting everything else aside, he was exceptionally good at taking a beating.
He wasn't called the "Shipping King" for nothing. Don't worry about whether he could win fights or not. He just dared to challenge anyone because he was tough with an enormous health bar!
That's why, even though Jack constantly lost, he never died.
If it were any other ability user, they would have died on the spot if they fought like him.
Why did Kaido dare call himself the "strongest creature"?
It was because he himself possessed an extremely powerful physique and physical fitness, then became a Mythical Beast-type user in the Blue Dragon form, which was so exceptional it conquered all three realms of land, sea, and air.
At this point, he'd basically reached the pinnacle of physical fitness. But he'd also awakened his own abilities, which made him essentially invincible. So he dared call himself "the strongest creature in the three realms of sea, land, and air." In terms of physical fitness alone, Kaido was indeed fully worthy of this title!
But if we set aside Zoan Devil Fruit users and looked at Logia and Paramecia-type Devil Fruit users, we'd find that the number of their awakenings was generally far lower than Zoan users.
Especially for the Logia system, there was almost no possibility of awakening. At least in this era, no one had heard of any Logia ability user awakening.
Currently, the Logia benchmarks on the seas were basically in the Marines, including Sakazuki's Magma Fruit, Borsalino's Light Fruit, Kuzan's Ice Fruit, Gion's Rumble-Rumble Fruit, and the young Ace's Flame-Flame Fruit.
Basically, all the Logia masters were in the Marines. Among pirates, the only ones who could be called famous now were the Smoke Fruit user, White Hunter Smoker, and Crocodile's Sand Fruit.
After years of intensive development, Smoker's Smoke Fruit wasn't as underwhelming as in the original timeline. It was now a very powerful ability, leading many people to believe the Smoke Fruit was also one of the top Logia abilities.
For example, Smoker's dense smoke suffocation was an absolutely lethal killer move. When a puff of smoke enveloped you, the more you breathed, the faster you died. Simultaneously, Smoker's smoke had also developed the characteristics of low-temperature combustion, somewhat like ash. Anyway, although his current strength couldn't be called absolute top-tier, he'd definitely stepped into the threshold of top-level combatants. Otherwise, Whitebeard wouldn't respect him just because of his financial resources.
But whether it was the famous Admiral-level Logia ability users in the Marines, or the two Warlord heroes among pirates, Smoker and Crocodile.
In short, none of these top Logia Devil Fruit users of this generation dared claim they'd awakened their abilities.
Therefore, Zoan abilities were generally considered the easiest and simplest Devil Fruit abilities to awaken.
Logia ability users were widely considered to have the most difficult and least likely Devil Fruit ability to awaken.
There were even scholars who studied Devil Fruits who believed the initial state of Logia types could be considered awakening. Therefore, once a Logia ability user consumed the fruit, their strength would soar rapidly, because the moment they consumed the ability, it was almost equivalent to awakening.
There was substantial supporting evidence, such as the fact that Logia types could easily change the climate and characteristics of an island or even an area of sea on a large scale. These should all be classified as awakening powers or something similar.
In short, there were rumors that one or two hundred years ago, there had been Logia ability users who awakened, but now, no Logia ability user had awakened in at least a hundred years.
It was said that Kuzan had once asked Jaguar D. Saul about this matter privately. According to Saul's memory, he'd lived for more than a hundred years and had never seen any Logia ability user awaken.
Therefore, many experts and scholars generally believed it was impossible to awaken Logia abilities. Or rather, they were in a state of awakening from the beginning, and the deeper the development, the stronger the power of this awakening!
No wonder this theory was quite accepted by those with Logia abilities.
For example, Sakazuki, Borsalino, Kuzan and others all felt this was approximately correct, so no one was stubborn enough to insist on awakening. They were all constantly deepening their ability development. The more they developed, the stronger they became, and the less they cared about whether they could awaken or not.
Even without awakening, who in this world would dare say the two Admirals Sakazuki and Borsalino were weak?
Just kidding. Borsalino and Sakazuki were both top masters.
Even for Kuzan, people only dared question the laziness of his personality and behavior. Who dared say his strength wasn't top-tier?
Especially Gion, who obtained the power of the Rumble-Rumble Fruit. Even though she wasn't an Admiral but only an Admiral candidate, she was generally regarded by the outside world as one of the Marines' top masters, not inferior to Admirals at all!
Excluding the Logia ability users who were the most difficult to awaken and basically considered "unable" to awaken.
And excluding the Zoan ability users who were the easiest to awaken and generally considered the "simplest" to awaken.
Then Paramecia Devil Fruit users found themselves in a relatively awkward situation when it came to awakening.
Even in the academic research community of Devil Fruits, a large number of scholars believed the concept of the Paramecia system was too large and complex. In reality, it should be possible to further subdivide and classify many major systems no less significant than the "Zoan system" and "Logia system."
However, due to thousands of years of tradition, it was impossible to change, so nowadays, Devil Fruits were still divided into "three major types."
Putting these considerations aside, many scholars believed Paramecia Devil Fruits should be standardized and subdivided into general categories, special categories, and rule categories.
There was no need to say much about the general category. Devil Fruits like the Rubber-Rubber Fruit, Gold-Gold Fruit, String-String Fruit, Steel Fruit, etc., were relatively ordinary in terms of abilities and more focused on material types. They were subdivided by scholars into "Paramecia general category Devil Fruit abilities."
Simultaneously, this type of Paramecia Devil Fruit was also recognized by scholars as the Paramecia type that was easiest to awaken Devil Fruit abilities.
In fact, this was indeed the case.
Looking at Paramecia Devil Fruit users on the ocean throughout the ages, basically the awakened abilities were all material-based, meaning general categories.
As for special categories of Paramecia abilities, they could also be further divided. This was one of the reasons why scholars believed Paramecia abilities were too large and complex and should have been further classified.
Special Paramecia abilities could generally be divided into healing, ghost, and other miscellaneous strange abilities.
There was no need to explain the healing system. The abilities of the dwarf princess Mansherry, Trafalgar Law, and others could all be classified as healing.
As for the ghost type, for example, Brook's Revive-Revive Fruit, Perona's Hollow-Hollow Fruit, and even Charlotte Linlin's Soul-Soul Fruit, Hawkins's Straw-Straw ability, etc., could all be allocated to this category.
As for the rest of the miscellaneous series, there were many, such as Bartholomew Kuma's Paw-Paw Fruit, and later the Bomb-Bomb Fruit and Flower-Flower Fruit. In short, all kinds of weird ones.
These healing, ghost, and miscellaneous factions were collectively referred to as "special Paramecia Devil Fruits" by scholars.
The number of awakened Paramecia Devil Fruit users of this type was already drastically lower than material or general Paramecia Devil Fruit users.
For example, Charlotte Linlin—she was one of the world's top powerhouses, but her Soul-Soul Fruit ability hadn't awakened.
But relying on the various and varied abilities, the strength that could be exerted was also extremely powerful. Bartholomew Kuma also had no awakened ability, but who dared say he and Charlotte Linlin were weak?
Therefore, whether or not one's ability was awakened had little relation to personal strength. It could only be said that those who were awakened would indeed become stronger, but those who weren't awakened could still stand at the pinnacle.
Then looking at the rule-based Devil Fruit users within the Paramecia system.
One would find that compared to special Paramecia Devil Fruit users, rule-based Devil Fruit users almost never demonstrated Devil Fruit ability awakening.
As for rule-based abilities, for example, the former pirate overlord Shiki—his Float-Float Fruit ability could be completely categorized as rule-based.
The world's strongest man today, Whitebeard, whose Tremor-Tremor Fruit was also a rule-based ability.
In the future, there would be the Press-Press Fruit, Kilo-Kilo Fruit, Ton-Ton Fruit, etc., which could actually be regarded as rule-based abilities. These abilities had already touched the power of fundamental rules.
The same was true for Finn's Press-Press Fruit.
There was almost no possibility of awakening these rule-based Devil Fruit abilities. And the more powerful the rule-based ability, the less likely it was to awaken. Finn's Press-Press Fruit was a perfect example.
If we ignored individual strength and only looked at the power of the rules themselves, there was no doubt the Press-Press Fruit was far superior to the Tremor-Tremor Fruit.
Therefore, from this perspective, the difficulty of awakening the Press-Press Fruit was far greater than that of the Tremor-Tremor Fruit.
But even without awakening, who dared say the power of rule-based systems was weak?
On the contrary, whether it was Shiki, Whitebeard, or even Finn, they were all people standing at the top of the world, and their rule-based abilities were incredibly powerful.
Even without awakening, just deep development, or even just rough development, could make one become extremely powerful.
Therefore, there was general consensus among scholars and even top masters.
That was, the more complex the ability and the closer it was to the rule system, the more unlikely it was to awaken.
The representatives were Charlotte Linlin and Whitebeard. Charlotte Linlin represented the complex style, while Whitebeard represented the rule-based style.
They were indeed extremely powerful, but most masters and scholars believed their abilities couldn't be awakened.
Finn, who had systematically studied this knowledge in the Marines, also thought so.
Charlotte Linlin lived up to everyone's expectations—her abilities were incredibly powerful and impressive, but she hadn't awakened.
But now, Whitebeard, a Paramecia rule-based ability user, had awakened the powerful force of the Tremor-Tremor Fruit. Wasn't this outrageous?
That's why Kaido and Charlotte Linlin were so surprised, shocked, and horrified.
Because this was something recognized as "impossible," but it had been accomplished by Whitebeard. And he happened to be the world's strongest, and now he'd awakened his ability. What was the point of fighting anymore?
In fact, it was a coincidence that Whitebeard had developed his abilities to this level. In the original timeline, this didn't exist at all. He never developed the Tremor-Tremor Fruit to the point of awakening until his death.
This time, due to pressure from Finn, Newgate had developed his abilities to this degree. Back then, Finn had brought Kaido down from the sky, then used his "Void Slash" to cut through everything in his path. Even Newgate, the strongest, couldn't stop that blow. Charlotte Linlin had almost been killed by that strike due to a careless mistake. It could be said to be awe-inspiring.
Although Newgate hadn't reacted much on the surface and was just surprised, he'd gone back and racked his brains day and night on how to counter Finn's move "Void Slash."
And then, they had the current situation.
People were forced to evolve. Finn's butterfly wings had successfully made Newgate stronger...
But Newgate knew in his heart that this wasn't true awakening of his abilities...
But at this moment, he wouldn't explain anything. Just think of me as awakened! I'm going to beat you up!