As the strongest subordinate Blake had managed to find in the short term, Aramaki was the one he intended to entrust with the task of searching for Devil Fruits.
The Flame-Flame Fruit that not even a dog would want, the Rumble-Rumble Fruit on the sky islands, the Mythical Zoan Vampire form in Sleepy Town, the Mythical Zoan Pink Dragon form on Punk Hazard, the Op-Op Fruit in the North Blue...
Blake had no intention of letting any Devil Fruit with a known location or a clear lead slip through his fingers.
This search for the Paramecia-type Hollow-Hollow Fruit was simply a small test for Aramaki.
Just as Blake was considering what other Devil Fruits might be easy to snatch first, Stella's voice came from nearby.
"Your Highness, that little girl has already woken up."
Blake stood up and went into the cabin with Stella.
Perona was sitting on the bed, her eyes still a little unfocused. The moment she saw Blake, she visibly shrank back.
Blake looked her up and down, nodded in satisfaction, and said with a rather wicked smile,
"Congratulations. Starting today, you're my little slave."
"Waaah!!! I don't want to be a little slave!"
Blake had never thought of himself as someone with a bad personality, but whenever he looked at Perona, he could not resist wanting to bully her a little.
Maybe it was because the current Perona felt like the kind of little girl who would cry for a long time if you punched her once. Or maybe it was because her image from the original story was simply too deeply ingrained in his mind.
"Hahahaha..."
Seeing Perona burst into tears again, Blake laughed out loud.
"Not bad, not bad. At least this time you didn't faint from fright. So tell me, why were you on that ship?"
Perona's crying gradually subsided. She cautiously glanced at Blake, then at Stella behind him, and finally began to explain in a soft voice what had happened to her.
There was nothing especially unusual about it. Her hometown had been attacked by pirates, and after several twists and turns, Perona had hidden herself aboard the merchant ship.
Because she had snuck onto the vessel, she could not let the crew discover her, so she hid in the storage room. By chance, she found a hidden compartment there and crawled inside.
After hearing her story, Blake smiled and pinched her little cheek.
"So, in other words, you have nowhere to go now, right? Then stay on my ship."
He doesn't seem that awful after all, Perona thought, relaxing a little when she saw Blake's smile.
So she asked,
"Then... am I still a little slave?"
"Of course!"
Seeing Perona look as if she were about to cry again, Blake laughed and left the room.
Stella shook her head helplessly and stepped forward to comfort Perona.
Although Stella had never taken care of a child before, her warm, optimistic smile had a way of soothing people, and it did not take long for Perona to stop crying.
She waved her little fist resentfully in the direction Blake had gone and thought to herself,
I'm definitely going to escape from that big bad guy!
Meanwhile, after finding nothing on the merchant ship, Aramaki had already boarded Thriller Bark.
The moment he saw the scene on board, he frowned.
Dark green slime seeped out from between the floorboards. Dried-up corpses hung from the masts, swaying in the sea breeze like puppets on strings.
The ship had been deliberately designed to block out the light. Under the dim lamps inside, even your own shadow twisted into strange shapes against the wall—sometimes with an extra arm, sometimes missing an eye.
In the silent cabin, the only sound was the slow, rhythmic scraping of chains dragging across the floor.
"Cheap tricks."
Aramaki snorted coldly. Thick trees extended from his body in an instant, smashing through the cabin.
Two enormous wooden spikes, each thick enough for two men to wrap their arms around, shot forward like spears toward Moria.
Moria, who had been toying with the small pirate he had just captured, only realized what was happening at that moment and hurriedly dodged.
The current Moria was not yet the obese shut-in he would later become. An attack like that, meant only as a probe, naturally could not do anything to him.
He had just raised his head in shock and fury when Aramaki was already standing right in front of him.
At three meters tall, Aramaki looked like a child standing before the nearly seven-meter-tall Moria.
But their auras were the exact opposite of what their height suggested.
Aramaki let out a light chuckle.
"So you're Moria? Looks like the trash on the seas really is worthless. A guy like you can actually be called a great pirate?"
"You bastard! Some nobody who came out of nowhere has no right to judge me!!!"
Moria's emotions had already been unstable for quite some time. Aramaki's words only enraged him further. After spitting out that threat, he attacked immediately.
"Shadow Horn!"
Moria's attack struck the place where Aramaki had been standing, but Aramaki had already vanished.
"Where are you looking?"
Two voices sounded at the same time.
Moria whirled around in horror, only to see Aramaki already above him, one hand pressed down on that onion-shaped head of his.
When Garp used this move, even Kuzan could barely react in time—let alone Moria.
Aramaki slammed Moria's head straight into the ground, smashing a deep crater into the floor.
"Trash like you ought to find some forgotten corner and wait quietly for death."
Stepping on Moria's body, Aramaki kicked at his still-dizzy onion head.
"Where did you stash the Devil Fruits you collected?"
"You bastard... who exactly are you? A monster like you shouldn't be completely unknown on the seas!"
Moria felt utterly humiliated. He had been taken down before he could even bring half his strength into play.
Aramaki's thick brows drew together at the question, and he kicked Moria in the head again.
"I'm the one asking the questions. Where are the Devil Fruits you collected?"
That kick left Moria dazed for quite a while. When he finally came back to his senses, he started shouting angrily again, which left Aramaki rather helpless.
That was the very reason Blake had never seriously considered recruiting these great pirates.
A lot of them were like people who simply could not understand plain speech. They were always willing to throw their lives away for all kinds of strange reasons.
And what they cared about most were usually vague, intangible things that Blake had no way of giving them.
What they cared about least was their own life, which meant they could not even be properly threatened.
With no other choice, Aramaki had to use the Great Memory Recovery Technique on Moria.
After a round of rough handling, he finally found two Devil Fruits hidden in a secret cabin. Without the slightest hesitation, he turned and left, leaving behind a battered and bruised Moria.
After teasing Perona for a while, Blake was in an excellent mood. When he stepped out of the cabin, he saw Aramaki flying back from the distance with Geppo, landing on the deck with two boxes in his hands.
"Your Highness, I discovered two Devil Fruits on Moria's island ship."
As he spoke, he handed the two boxes over to Blake and opened them one by one.
Blake looked inside and found two Devil Fruits that seemed very familiar.
The Hollow-Hollow Fruit.
The Clear-Clear Fruit.
They were precisely the Devil Fruits that had belonged to Perona and Absalom in the original story.