"Mrooow—"
Bracing her small body on a spear taller than she was, the cat swung it from front to back in a smooth arc, executing a textbook Strong Jumping Advancing Slash.
The giant squid looming before her was nearly as tall as Krieg's old flagship. For once, the Insect Glaive's techniques—designed for hunting massive beasts—were fulfilling their true purpose.
Aerial combat was the Insect Glaive's bread and butter. As long as the final hit of the Strong Jumping Advancing Slash connected, its momentum could be chained into a Vaulting Dance—essentially a double jump. Against something this enormous, landing hits was trivial. In theory, as long as her stamina held and her Red Light and White Light buffs stayed active, she could keep dancing through the air indefinitely, looking for all the world like a frenzied little butterfly.
"Grooooh—"
Leaping to the top of the squid's head, Ymi spread her clawless fingers and raked at the stump of a severed tentacle. Her nails slid right off.
"Mm..."
She wrinkled her small brows. Gripping the tip of the spear, she drew it gently across the soft, pale skin of her palm. A thin line of blood welled up. She flicked the droplets onto the tentacle stump, then immediately shunted the wound's misfortune away through Love Train.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the New World, Red-Haired Shanks bolted upright mid-drink, drew his sword, and scanned every direction in bewilderment.
"What's wrong, Captain?"
"I could've sworn I just felt a phantom pain in my—"
...
"Mrooow—"
With one final, pitiful groan, the giant squid's body began to visibly shrivel. Frightening Monsters drained it without mercy—flesh, blood, and moisture alike—funneling the lot into the cat's belly. Whatever exceeded her appetite went toward replenishing her spiritual energy.
Sea Kings generally possessed high intelligence and some instinctive sense of danger. In all her days at sea, Ymi had never encountered one willing to pick a fight with her. This squid—large, but not a Sea King—was the first big monster she'd run into.
And even then, it wasn't entirely clear who'd started it. She'd been fishing. The rod had hooked something. The rods in this world were absurdly sturdy; a cat obviously couldn't reel in something that massive, but once the creature felt the hook, it had surfaced on its own to see what fool dared fish for it.
Absorbing prey through her Stand meant she couldn't taste anything, but it maximized nutrient extraction. Still, even after draining this entire squid—enough that her spiritual energy could now be projected outward—she had no idea what the stuff actually did. It couldn't be used for sensing things. It couldn't be used to hit people. What was the point?
Dog-Eyes Mihawk might look down on everyone, but he was generous when it counted. The small fishing boat stowed in his lower hold was sturdy enough to keep the rain off. Ymi couldn't push it into the water herself, and it wouldn't fit in her storage space, but she had a whole congregation of Humandrills to serve as manual labor.
As a thank-you for Mihawk's hospitality over the past couple of days, she'd made a point of catching two large black rats before she left, stewing them and leaving the pot on the stove. She hoped Dog-Eyes would find it while it was still warm.
She'd even learned about cooking wine from the copy of Sea King Cuisine Mihawk kept in the kitchen, and had specifically opened one of the bottles of red wine he hid under his bed for seasoning.
Dead rat = gross thing.
Cooked rat = food.
Rat soup seasoned with Mihawk's favorite red wine = Mihawk's favorite rat soup.
He was going to be so touched.
Ymi put away her fishing rod, plucked a wriggling, brightly-colored fish from the bait bucket, opened her small mouth, and bit right in.
(\^\_^\)
Saltwater fish really were tastier than freshwater ones—especially here, where the ocean currents formed natural layers of separation and pollution was virtually nonexistent.
Meanwhile, at Impel Down, Magellan had just emerged from the bathroom only to double over with a fresh wave of poisoning and rush straight back in.
The freshwater situation was trickier. Ymi couldn't tell which water was fresh—she only knew seawater was a no-go. But it didn't matter. As long as the cat offloaded the misfortune of thirst onto someone else, the problem solved itself.
She spread open the map and studied it carefully for a while.
Still couldn't make much sense of it. The open sea didn't offer many landmarks for reference. Whatever—just follow the Eternal Pose and keep sailing. The real headache was choosing between the two routes into the New World: one meant going through Sabaody Archipelago and then Fish-Man Island; the other meant petitioning the World Government for passage across the summit of the Red Line at Mary Geoise.
The first route's problems had already been discussed. The second boiled down to paying fees, abandoning the ship, procuring a new vessel on the other side—time-consuming all around.
Ymi didn't want to waste time. This main quest was already difficult enough. If some weakling Emperor got killed by somebody else before the cat could get to them, the quest would be impossible to complete.
Then again, her portal energy had already overflowed back in the previous world. Worst case, she could just teleport out.
Life at sea was already monotonous, and now without Dog-Eyes Mihawk around as the one semi-tolerable conversation partner, all she could do was rummage through the things he'd left on the boat.
Whether by accident or intention, the compartment under the bed was stuffed with books: a literacy primer for children under ten, a handbook of fairy tales from around the world, a Devil Fruit encyclopedia...
"Hm?"
Ymi pulled the Devil Fruit encyclopedia out and retrieved the Devil Fruit she'd obtained earlier from storage to cross-reference.
The encyclopedia was thick—about as wide as her fist—but the world's Devil Fruits were so varied and bizarre that even a book this size couldn't catalogue them all. She was lucky, though. She didn't even have to flip past ten pages before finding the entry.
Zoan-type: Cat-Cat Fruit. Upon consumption, the user gains the ability to transform into a cat.
Ymi: "..."
"Congratulations, Host. Achievement unlocked: [Human-Human Fruit, Commoner Model: Eat It and You Gain the Ability to Not Swim]. Reward: Gacha Pull +1."
This fruit was practically a de-evolution fruit. Big cats evolved from small cats—that was common sense.
Ymi put the Devil Fruit back in storage. She'd save it for later, bring it home, and feed it to that stray dog that had chased her all the way back to Grandma's.
"Pull."
"Animation has been automatically skipped for you."
The capsule cracked open, revealing a small card. Printed on it was a black mushroom that looked like it was in a very bad mood.
[Doom-shroom]: CNM—I'm blowing everything up!
Causes a massive, indiscriminate explosion. Seven-day cooldown. It sleeps during the day.
You want to use it again in seven days? That's assuming you survive the first blast!
...
Looked pretty good, actually. The cat wanted to try it.
Ymi pointed at the "CNM" on the item description. "What does this mean?"
"The system declines to answer this question."
Useless. Always getting in the way of a young cat's quest for knowledge.
Ymi pulled out the Spear of Longinus and drove it into the deck. She glanced left and right—nobody around. Making sure it was within arm's reach at all times, she released her sealed divinity, letting the normally limited range of her Luck aura blanket the entire ship. The golden barrier spread outward in tandem, rippling across the surrounding waters.
Then she scratched the card. Out popped a black mushroom bigger than her head.
What the cat didn't notice was that, perhaps drawn by the barrier's pull, a boat roughly the same size as hers was drifting closer.