Looking at the corpse that still hadn't completely gone cold, Kurogane Ren began to wonder whether he should use another card.
He still had two Skill Extraction Cards left.
After thinking it over for a while, Ren decided to use both of them.
The cards were rare, sure, but as long as he stayed alive, there would always be chances to draw more in the future.
What he needed right now was simple—
to strengthen himself as much as possible.
So Ren took out another card and placed it on the corpse.
"Congratulations, Host. You have obtained Observation Haki (Beginner Level)."
Seeing the result, Ren was genuinely satisfied.
After all, in the world of One Piece, Observation Haki was already considered a high-end power.
Still, he immediately noticed something important.
This time, the skill came with a label—
Beginner Level.
Curious, he asked, "System, what does Beginner Level mean?"
The system replied, "The same skill can vary in strength, and Haki is naturally no exception. Although the Skill Extraction Card can extract skills, the skill level obtained cannot exceed the level of the original owner."
Ren asked again, "Then why didn't Iron Body have a level attached to it?"
"There is a difference between Iron Body and Haki," the system explained. "Once Iron Body is learned, its strength depends on the user's physical condition. Haki is different."
"Oh."
By the system's logic, when he extracted skills from others, the result wouldn't surpass the original owner.
Which was fair enough.
If an extracted skill could end up stronger than the person who originally had it, that would be way too ridiculous.
At that point, he could just find any random nobody who knew Haki, extract it, and instantly gain top-tier Haki himself.
That obviously wasn't possible.
Then Ren placed the final card on the corpse.
He knew perfectly well that you weren't supposed to keep shearing the same sheep forever—
but right now, there was only one sheep available.
"Congratulations, Host. You have obtained Shigan from the Navy's Six Powers."
When he saw the skill he had drawn, Ren felt a little disappointed.
It wasn't Geppo.
What he had wanted most was Geppo.
After all, Geppo let you move through the air.
As for Shigan, Ren felt that this technique had practically been designed specifically for World Government agents and CP operatives.
Because it was just too perfect for assassins.
Especially during covert kills.
Shigan had power comparable to a pistol bullet, but its biggest strength wasn't raw damage—
it was stealth.
No gunshot.
No noise.
That meant it wouldn't alarm too many people.
And honestly, in Ren's opinion, the Navy's Six Powers should really have been called the Agent's Six Powers instead.
Because those six techniques were ridiculously well-suited for assassination.
Shigan was basically a silent handgun.
Even without carrying a weapon, an assassin could still kill the target.
Geppo could be used to vault over walls.
Kami-e could be used to dodge attacks—or slip through the guards around a target.
Soru could be used to instantly close the distance, then just as quickly pull away after the kill.
A target might die without ever clearly seeing the assassin's face.
And then there was Rankyaku.
In Ren's eyes, that was a wide-range clearing technique.
If a target was heavily protected from the front, you could use Rankyaku to clear out the guards, use Soru or Kami-e to get close, then finish the target with Shigan and escape with Geppo.
As for Iron Body...
That was specifically for blocking bullets for Celestial Dragons.
The only reason it was called the Navy's Six Powers was because "Agent Six Powers" sounded too ugly.
Bad for the brand.
After using up the cards, Ren still hadn't gotten the skill he really wanted.
So his gaze slowly returned to the Devil Fruit.
He was still torn over whether to eat it.
In the One Piece world, Devil Fruits were divided into three categories—
Logia, Zoan, and Paramecia.
There was a saying that often got thrown around:
There are no useless powers, only useless users.
But in Ren's opinion, that statement wasn't entirely right.
It needed a major condition added to the front—
that the user had fully developed the ability.
Because from Ren's point of view, the starting line for different Devil Fruits was never equal.
Among the three categories, the highest starting point was without question the Logia type.
After all, Logia users were immune to almost all damage unless Haki was involved—
or unless your own ability happened to specifically counter theirs.
Otherwise, even if you trained your power all the way to awakening, without Haki, it would still be extremely difficult to hurt a Logia user.
And Logias didn't just have a natural advantage in defense.
Their offense was also absurd.
Because most Logia users basically fought with the force of natural disasters.
After that came Zoan.
Leaving aside the rare Mythical Zoans, the biggest advantage of a Zoan was obvious—
it massively enhanced the user's physical abilities.
Which left Paramecia as the most troublesome category in Ren's eyes.
Because Paramecia abilities could be almost anything.
And among those strange, unpredictable powers, some were terrifyingly strong while others were so useless they left you speechless.
Take a weaker one, for example—
Corazon's power, which created a zone of silence.
At its core, that ability just removed sound from an area.
But the problem was, in a fight, people could still see.
Even if the user was strong, that ability became extremely awkward against top-tier opponents, because powerful fighters had Observation Haki.
Even without sight, they could still sense everything clearly.
So in Ren's opinion, that power really was on the weak side.
Of course, it wasn't completely worthless.
At the very least, it would be excellent for interrogations.
You could probably drive someone insane with it.
On the other hand, the truly powerful Paramecia abilities looked almost like cheats.
For example—
Sugar's Hobby-Hobby Fruit.
That fruit had already shown at least three outrageous effects.
First, after the user ate it, they would forever remain in the same physical appearance they had at the moment they consumed the fruit.
What was that?
That was eternal youth.
How many people would go crazy for that ability alone?
A huge number of women, obviously—
but definitely plenty of men too.
Because who wouldn't want to remain forever young and beautiful?
Second, it could turn people it touched into toy puppets.
That part alone was already absurd, but not the most terrifying thing.
There were even more broken Paramecia abilities out there.
But the truly horrifying part of the Hobby-Hobby Fruit, in Ren's opinion, was the third effect.
It erased all memory of the transformed person from everyone else's mind.
What kind of ability was that?
That was basically rule-level power.
Just imagine turning a king into a toy.
How many people's memories would need to be altered for that?
At minimum, you'd be erasing traces of that king from the minds of tens of thousands of people.
Sure, the story had never clearly stated whether top-tier monsters would also be affected—
but even so, the ability was still monstrous enough.
Because wiping memories from people anywhere in the world, regardless of distance, was practically a law-of-reality type ability.
Some fantasy novels couldn't even pull off something that outrageous.
And more importantly, the way a Paramecia ability was used depended heavily on the imagination of the user.
Yes.
Imagination.
In Ren's view, Paramecia was the hardest category to fully understand.
Unlike Logia or Zoan powers, which were often obvious at first glance, Paramecia abilities could leave people thinking until their brains hurt without figuring out what the power really was.
Take Doflamingo, for example.
He used the String-String Fruit for offense, control, movement, healing, defense, and even clones.
With that many applications, if you weren't standing from a god's-eye perspective, how many people would have been able to guess his true ability the first time they saw him fight?
That was why Ren believed Paramecia was the most uncertain category of all.
But right now, the real question in front of him was simple.
Should he eat this Devil Fruit or not?
He didn't know what fruit it was.
He didn't even know which category it belonged to.
But after thinking about his current situation, Kurogane Ren finally clenched his teeth.
He decided to gamble.
He was going to eat the Devil Fruit.