"Alright then. I accept your surrender."
Rowan figured the two of them had decent strength. If they were paired with good Devil Fruits, they might one day become top-tier fighters just below the Admirals.
For the purpose of overthrowing the World Government, they counted as two pretty good additions.
And since neither of them had slaughtered civilians, they were worth taking in.
So Rowan brought all of them back to Wano.
He even had Hashirama and Issho take turns sparring with them, just so they wouldn't keep thinking the Blackbeard Pirates had only lost because they were ambushed.
And to be fair, both Jesus Burgess and Lafitte really had thought that.
They believed that if Rowan's side had fought them head-on, they might still have lost, but there was no way they would have lost that badly.
But after the two of them had a very direct man-to-man exchange with Hashirama and Issho, their eyes became a lot clearer.
They really couldn't win.
Those two were monsters. Either one of them could easily wipe out the current Blackbeard Pirates by themselves.
They genuinely couldn't understand why a lineup like that had even bothered to move against the Blackbeard Pirates in the first place.
Hearing Lafitte and Burgess's confusion, Rowan said calmly, "The important part was never the Blackbeard Pirates. It was Blackbeard Teach himself."
"The captain—no, Blackbeard? Is there something special about him?" Van Augur couldn't help asking.
That's right, it was Van Augur.
He had surrendered too.
Not long ago, when he woke up from unconsciousness, he had immediately seen Hashirama and Issho absolutely crushing Lafitte and Burgess, and the sight had left him dumbfounded.
After learning that the other two had surrendered, Van Augur didn't hesitate at all to follow their example.
Same as before—the Blackbeard Pirates had only just been formed. They hadn't gone through countless adventures together yet, and they weren't united at heart.
There was no way he was going to throw his life away for a captain he'd only known for a short while.
Now that he heard Rowan's group had deployed so many top-tier fighters just for Blackbeard, his curiosity was stronger than ever.
What exactly was so special about Blackbeard?
Rowan didn't hide it.
"Blackbeard Teach's body is different from a normal person's. He can eat two Devil Fruits, so we want to study his body structure and figure out what exactly makes him special."
"Two Devil Fruits?"
That answer made Van Augur, Lafitte, and Jesus Burgess all look at one another.
The iron rule of the sea was that one person could only eat one Devil Fruit. In eight hundred years, no one had ever heard of anybody successfully eating a second one.
And now Blackbeard could do it?
That was absurd.
No wonder this group had gone after him. They were after that secret, weren't they?
"Can you really figure it out?" Lafitte asked. If it were possible, then he wanted to eat two Devil Fruits too.
Van Augur and Burgess felt the same. What kind of person wouldn't want to eat a second Devil Fruit?
"Of course."
Rowan had already handed Blackbeard over to Tobirama and Orochimaru.
With their level of research into the human body, plus Vegapunk's help, cracking Blackbeard's secret was no problem at all.
And that was exactly what happened.
On the third day after Blackbeard was captured, Vegapunk, Tsunade, Tobirama, Orochimaru, and Kabuto had thoroughly studied him inside and out.
They understood Blackbeard's body better than Blackbeard himself.
From his body structure to his cells, from his internal organs to his lineage factor, nothing escaped their eyes.
And the secret of why Blackbeard could eat two Devil Fruits was exposed.
Using Blackbeard's lineage factor, they created a special injection designed to alter a person's constitution. Once that injection was introduced into the body, anyone could eat two Devil Fruits.
Even so, Tobirama and Vegapunk still weren't satisfied.
Because they didn't just want to eat two Devil Fruits.
They wanted to eat three.
Or even four.
But to achieve that, they needed more data.
So they asked for Kaido's blood and King the Wildfire's blood. One of them was an Oni, the other a Lunarian—both incredibly rare races.
The Oni race possessed extraordinary physical power by nature.
As for the Lunarians, members of that race could generate flames from their bodies. Those flames had offensive properties, and when the flames disappeared, their speed rose dramatically, though their defense dropped in exchange.
They could survive in almost any natural environment.
Even the World Government coveted that race. King had once been one of its experimental subjects, before Kaido rescued him and brought him into the Beast Pirates as one of the three Calamities.
With those two lineage factors in hand, Vegapunk and the others' research advanced by leaps and bounds.
But it still wasn't enough.
They needed more body data to perfect the research.
The first thing that came to Rowan's mind was the Big Mom Pirates, because that crew was basically a natural data archive.
And that was all thanks to one thing: Charlotte Linlin's hobbies.
Her dream was to create a nation where every race and every kind of being in the world could live together equally, without hierarchy.
Because of that dream, Charlotte Linlin spent her life either giving birth or on the way to giving birth.
Now in her sixties, she had thirty-nine daughters and forty-six sons.
And forty-three husbands.
Though most of those forty-three husbands were basically just breeding tools, discarded by Linlin once she was done with them.
The interesting part was that those forty-three husbands were almost all from different races.
There were Longarm Tribe members, Longleg Tribe members, Snake-Neck Tribe members, Three-Eye Tribe members, and more.
If they could take down the Big Mom Pirates, they would have more than enough data to support Vegapunk's and Tobirama's research.
And they had indeed already been considering absorbing the Big Mom Pirates earlier.
After all, Charlotte Linlin was one of the Four Emperors and unquestionably one of the world's highest-level powers.
But they had gotten busy with other matters and hadn't had time to make a move against the Big Mom Pirates.
Who would have thought that this latest research would end up requiring the Big Mom Pirates after all?
It seemed like even fate itself was urging them to move.
Rowan discussed it with Nico Robin, and Robin agreed that the time had come.
So Rowan immediately gathered Hashirama, Issho, Ryuma, Tobirama, Kaido, Tsunade, Orochimaru, and the others, and set off for the Big Mom Pirates.
Totto Land.
Whole Cake Island.
The moment Kaido stepped onto the island through an air door, he released his Conqueror's Haki without the slightest hesitation.
Boom!
A terrifying wave of Haki swept out like a mountain collapse and a tidal wave, shaking all of Whole Cake Island.
Charlotte Linlin had been eating when she felt that familiar Haki, and she immediately let out a furious roar.
"Kaido!!!"
Her meal interrupted, Linlin flew into a rage, smashed straight through a wall, and charged toward Kaido's location.
The moment she saw his huge figure, she raised Napoleon in saber form without hesitation and brought it crashing down at his head.
Kaido laughed loudly, his kanabo wrapped in Conqueror's Haki as he smashed it upward without mercy.
Boom!
The two weapons collided without even touching, black-red lightning exploding between them. A terrifying shockwave burst outward at once, forming ring after ring of pressure that spread in all directions with the force of a landslide and tidal wave.
The sky above Whole Cake Island split clean in two, a truly shocking sight.
In an instant, most of the island descended into chaos, with people having no idea what was happening.
"It's Kaido!"
"One of the Four Emperors, Kaido, is here!"
"Kaido and Mama are fighting!"
The higher-ranking family members realized what was going on and rushed toward the battlefield at top speed, especially Katakuri.
Along the way, he ran into several familiar siblings.
Charlotte Cracker, one of the Sweet Commanders.
Charlotte Smoothie.
And then Charlotte Daifuku and Charlotte Perospero, all rushing in the same direction.
Not long after, they finally arrived at the scene and saw Kaido facing off against their mother.
"Mamamama—long time no see, Kaido."
Charlotte Linlin lowered her weapon when her opening strike failed to send Kaido flying, and burst out laughing.
"So that little brat from back then really did grow up."
Kaido let out a cold snort. What annoyed him most was that tone she always used, the one that said he was still just a child compared to her.
But there was nothing he could do about it. Back then, he really had owed Charlotte Linlin a huge favor, one he still hadn't repaid to this day, so he couldn't exactly talk back too much.
But today, he felt he finally could settle it.
"Linlin, I came this time to repay that debt."
"Oh?" Linlin put away her weapon and asked curiously, "And how exactly are you planning to repay it?"
Back when Kaido had been weak, she had given him the Fish-Fish Fruit, Mythical Zoan, Model: Azure Dragon.
Without that fruit, Kaido might never have become what he was today.
As time passed, both of them had grown into Four Emperors.
That debt had become more and more valuable, and more and more difficult to repay.
That was why Kaido had still not settled it until now.
Kaido laughed loudly.
"Today, I'm going to beg for your life, Linlin. I'll save it for you."
The moment Linlin heard that, her face darkened.
"Kaido, what exactly do you mean by that?"
Kaido pointed at Rowan.
"Let me introduce you. Linlin, this is Rowan. I'm running with him now. You understand what I'm saying, right, Linlin?"
Linlin's heart skipped.
Back when the Rocks Pirates had fallen apart, she had once invited Kaido to join her crew, only for him to reject her without hesitation.
Because Kaido had never wanted to stand beneath someone else.
Now he had become one of the Four Emperors, prouder and more arrogant than ever before, and yet he had acknowledged someone as his superior.
That was not normal at all.
~~~
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