"Ten minutes? Captain, you're underestimating my tools way too much."
Jeno bared his teeth in a savage grin, jerking his heavy goggles down over his eyes. With a sharp pneumatic hiss, the mechanical jetpack bolted to his spine ignited, spewing dual columns of high-temperature azure flame. He launched himself from the bow of the *Eclipse*, dropping through the air like an artillery shell before slamming precisely into the packed snow directly before Wapol.
*Boom!*
A localized geyser of pulverized ice and dirt shot dozens of meters into the sky. Brushing the frost from his primary exoskeleton plates, Jeno stood up slowly, his unblinking mechanical eye locking onto the bloated king as if he were scanning a pile of raw titanium ore.
"So you're the piece of lard who turned a masterpiece of a fruit into a circus trick?"
Wapol felt a cold sweat erupt along his neck under that clinical gaze, but a quick glance at the hundreds of royal guards and his personal cadres restored a fraction of his bluster.
"Y-you arrogant bastard! I don't care what your bounty says, this is the Drum Kingdom!" Wapol pointed a fat, trembling finger, his massive iron jaw rattling as he screamed, "Dalton! Kuromarimo! Chess! Cut this freelancer down!"
"Your Majesty... this is madness." Dalton, the captain of the royal guard, gripped his sword hilt, his brow slick with sweat. Looking up at the massive black warship hovering over the valley like a floating fortress, he knew entering a fray against these people was nothing short of a mass funeral.
"What are you waiting for?! Fire!!" Wapol bellowed.
*Bang! Bang! Bang!*
Driven by the king's madness, the front rank of soldiers raised their flintlocks and unleashed a ragged volley through the wind and snow.
As the acrid grey smoke cleared, Jeno stood unchanged.
"Too thin. I've seen better ballistics from a children's toy." Jeno casually flicked several flattened lead balls from the surface of his heavy composite armor, a look of profound boredom crossing his face. Then, he raised his right forearm, his wrist gears clicking into place. "Let me show you what actual ordnance looks like."
The metal skin of his forearm split open along two precision seams, and a compact laser cannon, humming with a high-frequency blue glow, extended from the housing.
"Charging... Discharge."
A blinding lance of blue light cut through the blizzard, tearing into the royal formation with absolute kinetic force.
*Boom!*
A violent explosion bloomed in the drifts. Dozens of royal soldiers were thrown through the air, their flesh and weapons charred black before their screams could even clear their throats.
"What kind of demon is this?!" Kuromarimo and Chess collapsed into the snow, their legs refusing to support their weight.
"A laser array... integrated into the marrow?" Dalton's eyes widened, his mind struggling to comprehend the technology.
"Who... who are you?!" Wapol scrambled backward through the slush, finally realizing the tier of predator he had invited into his yard.
"Me? The Chief Mechanic of the Eclipse Pirates," Jeno said, his heavy steel boots crunching through the frost. "But in about thirty seconds, I'm the new owner of your asset."
"Stay away from me!" Wapol shrieked, his jaw splitting open to an impossible angle as he lunged toward a decorative iron monument by the path. "Munch-Munch... Big Eater!"
With a sequence of metallic tears, the iron structure was forced down his throat. His torso swelled and buckled in a sickening distortion, over a dozen crude iron gun-barrels tearing through his skin and coat.
"Die! Munch-Munch Cannon!"
*Bang! Bang! Bang!*
A volley of solid iron spheres whistled through the snow toward Jeno.
"Like I said... wasting a miracle on a pig."
Jeno didn't bother to parry. Activating the heavy hydraulic pistons in his legs, he drove his frame forward, his massive metal fist swinging in a blunt trajectory.
"Heavy Power Punch!"
*Clang!*
His iron knuckles met the incoming ordnance with a sequence of screeching, metallic shrieks. Under the raw force of the mechanic's blow, the solid iron cannonballs were flattened into thin metal discs, dropping uselessly into the snow.
"Impossible..." Wapol whimpered, his eyes glazed with absolute despair.
Before he could turn to flee, a massive mechanical hand clamped onto his throat, hoisting the three-hundred-pound king into the air like a common fowl.
"The factory is under new management," Jeno said coldly. The hydraulics in his fingers surged with a sharp whine.
*Crack.*
The blunt sound of a snapping cervical column echoed through the clearing. Wapol's jaw remained frozen in a wide expression of terror, the light in his pupils turning dark in an instant.
"The King... is dead?" Dalton and the surviving guards stood frozen. The tyrant who had held the island in an iron grip for years hadn't even managed to force a second exchange from this mechanic.
*Pneumatic hiss—*
Ace descended through the wind and snow, his boots settling lightly near Wapol's corpse as his dark red windbreaker settled around his frame. The temperature around his body seemed to drop, forcing the remaining soldiers to lower their rifles in a silent gesture of submission.
"Clean work, Jeno." Ace reached into his pocket, pulling out a common red apple. "Now... let's show them how the rules of this sea are rewritten."
Ace knelt beside the body, his right palm erupting with a thick, suffocating black smoke that seemed to drink the light around it.
"Dark-Dark Fruit: Deprivation."
Under the paralyzed gazes of the guards, the black mist slithered down Ace's arm, boring straight into Wapol's chest cavity like a living entity. Within seconds, a bizarre, pale energy profile was dragged from the dead man's heart—a mass of raw Devil Essence that vibrated with a faint, unnatural resonance.
"To the heel!" Ace held the apple in his left hand, his right hand snapping back with a sharp tug.
Under the absolute gravity of the Yami Yami no Mi, the wandering essence was forcibly pulled into the ordinary apple. To the naked eye, the smooth red skin began to warp. Pale purple arabesque spirals burst across the surface like creeping vines, the fruit reconfiguring into an oval mass with sharp, ridge-like patterns.
In ten seconds, a pristine **Munch-Munch Fruit** rested in Ace's hand.
*Gulp.*
Dalton and the remaining guards stared at Ace as if looking at a deity of death. Killing a fruit user was standard; extracting the essence and re-forging the fruit on command was a technique that threatened to tear the structure of the world apart.
"Yours," Ace said, tossing the purple fruit to Jeno. "Let's see if those designs of yours hold water."
Jeno caught the asset, his eyes bloodshot with pure, unadulterated fixation. Without pausing to clear the frost, he bit deep into the skin, tearing through the pulp.
"Ugh... tastes like old oil and decay!" Jeno choked, but he forced the mass down his throat until the ingestion was complete.
A few seconds passed in silence.
"How does the core feel?" Ace asked.
Jeno didn't give a verbal answer. He closed his eyes, his cybernetic systems whirring as they integrated with the new biological code. Then, his eyes snapped open, his lips splitting into a wild, ecstatic smile.
He strode over to Wapol's abandoned luxury sled, his mouth widening to an unnatural, mechanical degree. Like an industrial crusher, his jaw opened and closed, consuming the heavy tin structure and its iron rivets in three massive bites. Then, he unbolted his own outer exoskeleton plates and shoved them down his throat as well.
"Fusing..." Jeno growled.
A sequence of heavy, rhythmic thuds echoed from his torso, sounding exactly like a steam hammer forging iron in a deep foundry. He raised his right arm.
With a sharp mechanical click, the skin and muscle along his forearm receded, replaced by a pristine, dark-blue alloy warblade with a built-in gear train that whirred with high-frequency speed. The molecular density of the metal far exceeded the scrap he had just ingested.
"Perfect!" Jeno laughed, his arm transforming back into flesh at a single thought. "Captain! The internal stomach furnace operates in real-time based on my engineering files! Give me enough raw elements, and I won't just be forging blades—I can skin myself in an entire layer of autonomous nano-armor!"
"Then find some old wrecks and start refining," Ace said with a satisfied nod. "Get yourself up to spec."
With the mechanic's power secured, Ace turned his attention to Dalton, who was still frozen in place.
"You're the guard captain here, Dalton?" Ace asked flatly.
"Y-yes, Lord Ace," Dalton stammered, his spine rigid as he faced the man who could manufacture miracles from corpses.
"Lead the way," Ace said, his trench coat settling around him against the wind. "I want to see the old witch who's been living on the peaks, and a certain reindeer."
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