The other Executives of the Rocks Pirates jostled to speak with Fang Huo.
Stussy and Maron already knew Fang Huo still had a Paramecia-type Mushroom-Mushroom Fruit in hand.
But neither of them thought much of that Paramecia.
Everyone was dying to know—what had Fang Huo been doing these past six-odd months?
What kind of mighty Devil Fruit or treasure could keep him so obsessed?
He'd already spent far longer than the twenty-odd days it took to find the Gulp-Gulp Fruit back on Drum Island.
If Fang Huo let slip even a fruit he found mediocre, it would probably send Stussy and Maron skyrocketing.
Right now Fang Huo was the undisputed darling of the Rocks Pirates!
"Fang Huo! Since you finally called, I guess you got what you wanted?"
Rocks was indeed very curious about whatever had taken Fang Huo so long.
It had to be something even more important than the Gulp-Gulp Fruit's power!
"I just picked up an other-dimensional space, that's all."
Flying high and fast toward Jaya Island and Sky Island, Fang Huo curled his lips at the transponder snail.
"Only a spatial ability?"
"We dug up some intel on that Castle-Castle Fruit user."
"The space you snagged—it's bigger than that guy's castle, right?"
Hearing it was just an extra space, Rocks felt let down—and even a bit angry.
Fang Huo had wasted all that time for a mere support-type spatial power.
How much could that really boost anyone's combat strength?
"You'll find out soon enough!!"
Fang Huo smiled faintly; this wasn't a space-type fruit hogging one of his Soul Fire slots.
It was an extra pocket of time-space he'd gained!
"Tch, an extra dimension just means a bit more storage."
Rocks didn't value that kind of ability, and even Newgate's bunch figured Fang Huo had gotten the short end.
Once the Rocks Pirates captured that Castle-Castle Fruit user, they'd have spatial powers aplenty.
There was no need for Fang Huo to waste one of his Soul Fire slots.
"Enough! See you on Jaya!"
After a few extra words with Charlotte Linlin and Stussy, Fang Huo snapped the transponder snail shut and sped up.
Meanwhile, the gibecks sword anchored in a remote sea set sail straight for Jaya Island.
After nearly a year apart, they could finally reunite with Fang Huo.
One day later.
Fang Huo entered Jaya's waters and flew straight up to Sky Island.
With terrifying momentum he burst into Angel Island's holy land, Shandora—half of Jaya blasted into the sky centuries ago—the Golden City of Shandora.
Swaths of God's Soldiers fainted from his presence; even the God of the angels trembled at this Blue-Sea intruder.
He thought the stranger had come to steal his throne and holy land.
Instead, the Blue-Sea man began dismantling the golden shrine, pocketing every scrap the sky-dwellers treated as mere stone.
"If you want to live, gather every nugget on this island!"
"Consider it your protection fee and life ransom!"
After issuing that threat and order to the so-called Sky Island God, Fang Huo continued stuffing colossal golden pillars and edifices into the Lost World.
The scattered scraps he left for the sky-dwellers to collect.
In the Lost World, the apprentices were stunned as mountains of gold kept appearing.
But they quickly turned into greedy money-lovers, sorting the vast hoard for Fang Huo.
Fang Huo had no time for the feud between the angels and the Shandorians, yet when he flew up the giant beanstalk to seize the Golden Bell he still rang it once.
Whether the two peoples could bury their hatred was up to fate.
Fang Huo devoured the poneglyph embedded in the massive bell, fusing it into his body.
The huge Golden Bell itself went straight into the Lost World!
"Which way to Bika Island?"
After collecting the bell, Fang Huo returned to Shandora.
Learning the direction from the God's mouth, he prepared to head for Bika Island in search of the Logia Rumble-Rumble Fruit.
"When I get back, I want every speck of gold on this island waiting for me."
"Otherwise—people will die."
Fang Huo unleashed a brutal burst of Conqueror's Haki, and the terrified Sky Island God nodded frantically.
Hidden in the cloud village, the Shandorian Tribe heard the Golden Bell and wept.
Their ancestors' final wish had at last been fulfilled.
Still, they had to wrest their homeland back from the angels.
At the very least, the right to live there.
They could share the land with the angels.
If the angels refused—war would continue.
Down on Jaya, people faintly heard the bell but had no idea what it meant.
---High above, Fang Huo's grin widened as he flew toward Bika Island.
What a smooth, exhilarating plunder it had been.
If the Rocks Pirates ever learned Fang Huo had hogged all of Shandora's golden treasure...
Their eyes would shoot fire!
Their own first mate—so greedy he'd swallowed the entire hoard alone.
Fang Huo figured he could probably call himself the richest man alive right now.
Several days later.
Fang Huo set foot on Bika Island—an island in the sky far smaller than Drum Island.
Barely the size of a few villages!
"Tch, I could comb the whole place in less than a day!"
"Rumble-Rumble Fruit, you'd better have respawned here!"
Excited, Fang Huo released five Soul Fires and began sweeping the tiny Sky Island.
"He can really fly?"
"Why are his wings black?"
"Heretic! Kill him at once!"
The Angel Clan of Bika Island seemed ruled by monks.
Anyone wingless or with odd-colored wings was branded a heretic.
No wonder Eneru, bullied for years, would later obliterate his homeland after eating the Rumble-Rumble Fruit.
"Noisy."
One burst of Haoshoku knocked every islander out, and Fang Huo resumed his search.
In under half an hour he found the revered "God-Fruit"—the Rumble-Rumble Fruit—in a temple of those very monks.
He also spotted murals of the ancient moon-dwellers inside the shrine.
They treated the fruit as their ticket back to the moon!
A divine fruit of limitless energy!
But for some reason the moon folk who'd gone to the Blue Sea never returned.
"Ahahaha, destiny is mine!"
Laughing, Fang Huo watched a Soul Fire plunge into the Rumble-Rumble Fruit at his desire.
Crackling lightning echoed his wild laughter—his destructive power and speed were about to leap to a new realm!
His Observation Haki would also surge, and the gains would feed back into his Gravity Fruit...