If someone asked what kind of person Kabuto Yakushi was—
most people would think of him as Orochimaru's heir, one of the masterminds behind the Fourth Great Ninja War, a true master of Edo Tensei, the ninja world's real dream-maker.
And all of that would be true.
But they would be forgetting one thing.
Before any of those titles, Kabuto had first been a spy.
A real spy.
Kabuto had been extraordinarily intelligent since childhood. Because the orphanage director had been coerced by Danzo, Kabuto had no choice but to join Root. Under Danzo's training, he became a ninja spy.
He gathered intelligence from other hidden villages—Kumogakure, Kirigakure, Sunagakure, Iwagakure, and more.
For him, disguising himself as someone else was routine.
After patiently observing Kalifa for a full day, Kabuto had completely mastered every one of her expressions and mannerisms.
Then he used the Transformation Technique and went to see Blueno.
And just as expected, Blueno never realized the person in front of him was a fake.
"The moment I entered the tavern Blueno was running," Kabuto said, "Lord Orochimaru set up the Four Red Yang Formation outside and enclosed the entire building."
"I ordered a drink from Blueno, and while he was mixing it, I used the Body Flicker Technique to get behind him and cut off his head with the Kusanagi sword."
"The look on his face right before he died was pure confusion. He couldn't even understand why Kalifa would kill him."
Hearing that, Rowan had to admit that the Transformation Technique really was absurdly useful.
In the ninja world, maybe it wasn't all that special.
There were plenty of ways there to see through it.
But in other worlds, it was practically a dimensionality attack.
Without chakra, almost no one could see through the Transformation Technique—not even a professionally trained CP9 agent. Blueno's death was proof enough.
Because he never saw through Kabuto's disguise, he had absolutely no guard up around him.
And in the end, while mixing a drink, he got his head cut off in a single stroke.
A really miserable way to die.
Rowan pointed at the Bomb-Bomb Fruit and asked, "What about this one, then? What's the story there? If I remember right, its user should've been someone from Baroque Works."
Probably Mr. 5.
Tsunade answered in her usual blunt way, "That one basically delivered itself to us. On our way back, we happened to run into the current user at sea."
"At the time, he was in the middle of fighting some pirates. His ship got damaged by cannon fire, so he jumped onto ours and tried to commandeer it by force. He even threatened us."
Rowan: "...Wow."
Yeah, that definitely counted as delivering himself to them.
Who the hell did he think he was, threatening Tsunade and the others? Getting killed was only natural.
"Alright, then."
Now that he understood the whole story, Rowan sighed softly and took the Door-Door Fruit from Tsunade's hand, then bit down hard on it.
A bizarre taste exploded in his mouth.
Rowan almost spat the flesh right back out. He had never eaten anything so disgusting in his life.
It was unbelievably awful—so awful it nearly made him gag.
Some people said Devil Fruits tasted like rotten stone, though Rowan had never eaten rotten stone himself. Even so, he was certain this was worse.
He didn't even dare chew. With a gulp, he forced the piece down whole.
Luckily, with Devil Fruits, only the first bite mattered. You didn't need to eat the whole thing.
So after swallowing that first bite, Rowan immediately threw the rest of the fruit aside.
There was no way he was taking a second bite.
"Is it really that bad?" Tsunade asked when she saw Rowan's facial features all trying to fly in different directions at once.
Rowan pointed at the remaining fruits and said, "You can try one yourself."
Tsunade looked at the Slow-Slow Fruit, the Castle-Castle Fruit, and the Bomb-Bomb Fruit, then instinctively shivered.
"Yeah, no thanks."
Just looking at Rowan's reaction was enough to kill any desire to experiment.
Orochimaru asked curiously, "Lord Rowan, how do you feel now?"
Everyone's eyes immediately turned to Rowan.
They all wanted to know what kind of change his cheat ability had undergone after eating the Door-Door Fruit.
Rowan's eyes flickered as he carefully sensed the changes inside himself.
Normally, when someone ate a Devil Fruit, they didn't really feel their body changing. They just naturally came to understand their ability.
But Rowan was different.
He could clearly feel that when the Devil Fruit entered his stomach, a certain power tried to transform his body.
But before that power could do anything, his body absorbed it instead.
And then, faintly, Rowan saw a door.
A vast, majestic door.
A golden gate that felt sacred and ancient.
But it also seemed as though it had been weathered by endless ages, or perhaps mercilessly bombarded by something at some point, leaving it worn and broken.
Cracks covered its surface, and blotches of old damage marked it everywhere.
It gave off the feeling that it was barely holding together and might collapse again at any moment.
The instant he saw that gate, Rowan understood—
this golden gate was the real reason he could travel between worlds.
The reason he had never seen it before was because it had once already collapsed.
The leftover fragments of its power had remained inside his body, giving him the ability to travel to other worlds.
And the reason he could now see the golden gate was because he had eaten the Door-Door Fruit.
After the Door-Door Fruit's power was absorbed by the golden gate, it managed to re-form.
But the Door-Door Fruit's power had only been enough for that much—for the gate to re-condense.
If the golden gate was ever to recover its former state, it would need to absorb powers of the same origin.
The Door-Door Fruit from One Piece counted as one.
The Gate of Truth from Fullmetal Alchemist counted too.
The gate from GATE—the one that linked Earth and another world—also counted.
Even Doraemon's Anywhere Door counted.
In short, any power or concept related to doors could be absorbed by this golden gate and used to repair it.
Beyond that, certain higher-grade energies could also repair it.
And what qualified as higher-grade energy?
The answer was simple:
divine power.
For example, the Shinigami from the Naruto world that Rowan had accidentally swallowed earlier—that counted as exactly that kind of higher-grade energy.
And the reason Rowan could now use the Shinigami's power was also because of the gate.
"What's going on? Why did you suddenly go quiet?"
Seeing that Rowan had fallen silent after eating the Devil Fruit, Tsunade patted him on the shoulder and asked with concern.
Rowan came back to himself and asked, "What did you say just now?"
Tsunade rolled her eyes. "I asked what's going on. Did your ability change or not?"
~~~
Patreon(.)com/Bleam
— Currently You can Read 70 Chapters Ahead of Others!