Opening the wooden box, a dark green oval devil fruit was lying quietly on top of the milky white velvet cushion.

It was the swamp fruit that he had bought at auction when he was in the Chambord Islands.

Out of nostalgia for Uncle Tado and even the entire Tado Pirates, in the past few months, Xia Nuo has not rashly assigned it to his crew members, but has always kept it by his side, occasionally taking it out to see, reminiscing about the years when he first left Orange Town.

For him, this is a rare manifestation of the defeat of reason by sensibility.

And now, three or four months after entering the new world, Xia Nuo finally feels that it is almost time for him to let this fruit play its due role.

Merely...... To whom?

"Hmm......"

Looking at the swamp fruit in his hand, Xia Nuo's brows furrowed slightly, which was also a question he had been entangled in his heart when he first got this fruit.

After all, everyone in this world knows how high the value of the natural Devil Fruit is, compared to the good and fast knife that each cadre of the Wind Pirates has in their hands today, if this fruit is not properly distributed, it will not only waste an opportunity to cultivate top combat power, but also may cause some disputes within the Wind Pirates.

Thinking about this question, his gaze inadvertently swept to another box in the drawer, and suddenly became more and more entangled, and his brow furrowed even deeper.

In addition, the box placed in the drawer is an iron box, with a simple appearance and a hard material, which he obtained when he killed the "Ghost Knife Hunter" Tikala in the Principality of Sambia a long time ago.

At that time, Xia Nuo was in a hurry to participate in the head-to-head battle with the church, so he did not open it on the spot, and later returned to the ship, and spent a lot of time carefully priing it open, only to be a little disappointed, there was no valuable treasure inside, just a small white piece of paper.

There were no patterned letters on the paper, and it felt the same material as the life card, but when Xano observed it in a stationary environment, the piece of paper remained motionless without any signs of jumping.

This is obviously a bit unconvincing with the characteristics of the life card - as a magical paper that represents the life force of the owner, it stands to reason that the torn pieces will attract each other to the rest of the pieces, and if the owner dies, the life card will automatically burn out, and there is no such special situation as it is in front of you.

This matter once made Xia no quite entangled, he discussed with the knowledgeable Ivy, but still couldn't come to any reliable conclusions, and finally had to put it back in the iron box for preservation, which can be regarded as a small thought, in case one day in the future, this life card fragment moves again, can find its owner to reveal this answer?

Turning his gaze back to the wooden box, Xia Nuo muttered for a long time, and decided to hold an open and honest competition for all the crew members who wanted to become Devil Fruit abilities, and the swamp fruit would belong to the final winner.

This is the most appropriate solution he can come up with so far.

That night, after a small banquet in the dining room to celebrate Daniel as the third swordsman on board, Xia Nuo announced the decision in front of all the crew members.

As expected, this decision made the atmosphere on the entire Hurricane boil, and most of the crew did not expect this rare opportunity to fall on their heads, and cheered one after another, and enthusiastically signed up.

In the end, except for Kiddaz, who is already a Devil Fruit ability, and Daniel Ross, a swordsman who is ready to learn Xano's focus on kendo, a total of thirty people have signed up, which is almost equivalent to seven percent of the entire Wind Pirates.

If you want to hold a competition of this scale, the area on the deck of the Hurricane is naturally not enough, but now that Dabai has the ability to build thousands of square meters of offshore rock platforms in the nearby sea at any time, the problem of the site will naturally be solved.

The rules of the contest are relatively simple, with only two components in total. The first part is the hard-to-face combat ability, without using any weapons, the group fights in pairs, and is defeated if you can't get up for more than five seconds when you are knocked to the ground, and finally according to the ranking, they get the corresponding points.

The second part is simply a test of physical willpower, Xia Nuo carved out a track on the edge of the offshore platform, and all the crew members participating in the race had to participate in sprints and long-distance runs.

The former limits the starting and ending points, the distance is 2 kilometers, and the shorter the time, the higher the points, while the latter does not compete in speed, but simply competes who can run more distance under the premise of carrying 30 kilograms.

This can be regarded as a compensation option given in consideration of the current lack of actual combat effectiveness of some crews, and after the rules were issued, the crew had no opinion on this, but instead stimulated the desire for victory, and began to practice secretly and hard one by one.

So...... Over the next few days, a series of bizarre scenes began to appear on the Tempest, some of them wandered around with barrels when they had nothing to do, some of them used to run and bring a gust of wind when they walked, and some of them got up at four o'clock in the morning to strike iron for their dreams...... Oh no, it's up and practicing the sprint starting position.

Even Fuji Tiger faintly felt that something was wrong, why did a few young men who played board games with him run around the room after rolling the dice once? Is this the ultimate meaning of running a group, or is it that this is an implicit way of metaphysics, which is conducive to throwing higher points?

In order to test his conjecture, every time it was his turn to roll the dice, Fujitora also began to learn to trot around the room with his legs open, and the result was really not to mention, the luck that had not been very good was really much better, which made him grin and blossom......

Five days passed in a blink of an eye, and it was the pre-announced race day, when the Hurricane anchored and stopped next to the offshore platform, and everyone on board came to the platform, either participating in the competition or watching the race, which was quite lively like a sports meeting.

The first is the actual part, under the organization of Xia Nuo, the cadres who did not participate in the competition have been mobilized to act as referees on the field, so that there can be up to four groups of games at the same time, and the neat competition system makes the winner after a morning, and it is quickly decided - Kira, as the only cadre who participated, won the first place.

Throughout the preliminary round of the group to the final, Kira's duel barely lasted more than five minutes, there is no doubt that this is the difference in hard power, even if the point is stopped without using weapons, ordinary crew members can rarely hold out for too long in his hands.

However, in the afternoon running competition, Kira's suppressive power was not so absolute, and even in the first sprint, he was pulled away by the first place by more than ten meters, even if he accelerated to catch up with a lot in the end, he still regretted defeat in the end, and only won the fifth place.

This surprised Xia Nuo, he originally thought that Kira was known for his agility, and no one in the crew should be able to compare with him, but he didn't expect that it would be such a result when he really tried.

This is naturally a good thing, which means that although the combat effectiveness of the Wind Pirates is not very prominent, there are many ordinary crew members who have a skill, and they may not be able to play the role of a cadre level if they are trained and trained in a targeted manner in the future.

Kira was a little frustrated after losing the sprint, but his mentality adjusted in time, and he regained his fighting spirit before the start of the long run, carrying the 30-kilogram boulder on his back without saying a word, and did not rush to fight for the lead position.

After all, in this project, which only values time compared to the total distance, perseverance and adjustment ability are the most important.

What made Xia Nuo happy was that after so many ups and downs, many crew members did not let him down, showed great resilience and willpower in this project, gritted his teeth and fought until the last moment, until he was exhausted and fell to the ground before he had to give up.

The final victory was won by Kira, this stubborn little ghost, who insisted from noon to dusk, ran more than seventy kilometers with a boulder on his back, and the shoes under his feet were rotten, but he kicked them away directly, and then endured the pain of the friction of the soles of his feet as if nothing happened, and survived until the last moment of exhaustion.

In fact, when he ran more than sixty kilometers, he was already the final winner, and the rest of the crew had already been defeated and withdrawn, but by this time, the reward of the swamp fruit had become a trivial matter, but the crew members faced their hearts, wanted to prove themselves, and the character of persevering to the end was stimulated, which was even more valuable.

This is an indispensable stepping stone on the road to the strongest, and it was an unexpected surprise for Xia not to have it many years ago when he was in the East China Sea many years ago, and to see this side of many crew members in a race today.

In the sunset, the competition ended perfectly, and after the final statistics on both sides, Kira won the final first place, and when he solemnly received the swamp fruit from Xia Nuo's hand, the onlookers burst into warm applause - for the winner of the competition under this kind of rule, they will not have any jealousy and envy, some are just taken for granted, and a faint trace of respect.

It's just that...... This seemingly solemn and mission-oriented scene was quickly destroyed, and the reason was very simple, after Kira took a bite of the devil fruit, the whole person froze, and his face was full of expressions like eating Xiang, and after he forcibly swallowed the remaining fruit, he was even more disgusted and couldn't hold back, rushed to the side of the railing and vomited wildly.

"Vomit ......"

This scene caused everyone to laugh, and Xia Nuo reacted at this time, looked at Kira who vomited to the point of collapse, turned his face and coughed dryly.

It's all because I didn't have experience before, and I forgot to get vaccinated.

But to be reasonable, the Devil Fruit only needs to take a small bite, and it can swallow all the flavors, and the perseverance of Kira's little ghost is really not covered......

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