A/N: Chapters in advance in my Patreón–

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[11 Chapters In Advance]

Chapter 42

Title: 3 Hearts!

….

Amon cut the orange looking devil fruit into pieces and averted his attention from the octopus. He glanced at the unconscious man behind him, as he walked towards him.

It was a man of average stature, who was naked with only a white curtain covering his lower half. Before experimenting on the Octopus, Amon needs to be… sure of something.

“Maybe I should have gotten a woman, I prefer a naked woman rather than a grown-up man,” Amon shook his head. “But oh well, my fragile heart won’t be able to take the impact of killing a woman…” 

Amon snickered at his own words and then he walked towards a strange-looking computer with many colorful buttons on the keyboard.

“Time to wake him up…” Standing before the computer, Amon pressed the red button. *Beep!*

*Zzttk!* An electrical discharge went  through the unconscious man as his body jerked up!

“A-AAA-AAARGGH!” 

….

Ignoring the pleading of the man, Amon then placed 24 [Vision Dial: Motion Capture] dial all around the room, making a circle around the coffin.

Then he walked slowly and stood beside the glass coffin. It was kept above a table and was high enough for Amon to rest his chin on the glass. Currently, the man who regained his consciousness was inside the coffin and was looking at Amon with terrified eyes.

“F-Free me! Plea-MMMM!”

Before he could finish his words, Amon shoved a round mouth-sized pipe in his mouth through the small hole above the glass coffin. The pipe then reached his throat and windpipe. 

“Mmmmm!!!!” He was crying tears, but Amon didn’t show any reactions. Rather, he just took the piece of orange devil fruit and dropped it through the pipe. “MM-MMM!!–MM!!” 

Amon rested his chin in the coffin while looking at the man whose face turned blue from the terrible taste of the devil fruit. 

‘Waiting for the day I eat one…’

Soon, he noticed that the leg of the man was turning into a blanket… The orange devil fruit was the Blanket-Blanket fruit, which lets the user turn into a blanket.

Amon was testing the theory… that devil fruit occupies the eater’s heart. Previously he had researched the hearts of devil fruit users, however, the hearts were no different than normal human’s heart. Amon believes it’s because of the devil fruit reincarnation. Just as the person dies, the devil fruit leaves the body and the body returns to normal.

Unless he gets a heart cut by Op-Op no mi, or at least, the heart of Buggy the Clown, he won’t be able to test the hearts of living subjects, at least not with this level of equipment.

For that reason, he needs to use the rough way of testing, which he is doing now. He will make someone eat two devil fruits, and according to his previous tests, the body will explode in a second. 

In this time’s test, Amon has already placed motion-capture cameras to capture the clip of the explosion. After the clip was there, he would slow it down until he could see the starting point of the body’s explosion… if it’s around the heart, then he will at least get some headsets.

Amon didn’t waste any time, and dropped another piece of fruit through the pipe, albeit this time it’s an Apple looking devil fruit, the Needle-Needle fruit. 

*Slide*

As the piece was sliding through the pipe, Amon quickly ran to a corner, behind a shelf.

“AA–AAAA–AAAAAA! IT HUR–AAA!” 

*Boom!*

Soon, an explosion occurred, the explosion of a living human body.

Amon peaked from the shelf. The glass coffin was intact, however, the man inside it was not. In fact, there was no man inside of it. No head, no limbs, no eyes, and ears, in fact, not even bones. Only blood and even more BLOOD. 

The coffin was a blood pool now.

“So gross… I hate this.” Amon sighed. “But I have to do what I have to.”

…..

Amon then went to the bathroom to puke his disgust away. He came back to the room again, after doing tens of tests obviously.

A few minutes passed, and Amon was sitting in the computer chair with some Motion Dials connected to it. He still had the blood-pool coffin behind him. Currently, he didn’t have any particular reactions in his face, other than pure disgust. 

“Eww… this is the third time, yet I can’t get over it. Fuck.” Amon had a mask on his face as he said this. He covered his mouth to not puke. He turned on the room freshener as the disgusting scent soon was overcome with the beautiful scent of lemon.

Soon, he changed his mask with one filled with air freshener scent and started to work on the computer.

*Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap!*

He typed fast, as the screen showed the video he captured with the Motion Dials.

[“AA–AAAA–AAAAAA!” *Boom!*]

The video played at normal speed, as it showed how the body got dissolved in a second. He then started to decrease the speed to its utmost limit.

[“AA~AAAA~AAAAAA!” *Boom~!*]

It was slow, very slow as it showed how his veins got pronounced and his body got destroyed. Yet, this wasn’t enough.

He kept slowing the clip down, as sometimes it reached its limit, Amon created a new file and again did the same.

Just like that, around 10 hours passed by.

…..

[“AA~~~~~~~AAAA~~~~~~~~AAAAAA~~~~~~~~!”]

The scream kept going on for minutes, as finally, the judgmental time came.

This is the time when Amon will learn if the explosion really starts from the heart or not… It was still hard to see things at that speed, however, Amon’s [Observation Haki] did the trick.

[*~B-B-B-O-O-O-O-O-M~*]

The clip was slow, but Amon’s world was slower. It’s as if the time had completely stopped, and Amon was seeing things absolutely clear. 

He noticed the starting point of the body’s explosion was its chest… However specifically, is it the rib-cage? Is it the lungs? Or is it the… heart? 

This time his Observation Haki wasn’t at fault, but rather, it was the technology that Amon had now, which wasn’t enough to pin that out.

…..

“For now, let’s assume it’s the heart… If so, then the octopus with three hearts should survive… Right?” Amon asked himself while looking towards the small glass container on another table, which contained the scared octopus.

«…*…»

Amon then ignored the bloody coffin and went towards the octopus instead. He could sense how scared the octopus was … Though he didn’t care. According to his calculations, even the THREE hearted octopus will die too, but even if it survives, he will kill it himself to extract the devil fruits.

“Oh,” Suddenly, Amon looked at a table inside the room. “The two devil fruit reincarnated already, good.” Looking at the orange-like devil fruit and apple-like devil fruit, Amon walked towards them and returned to the octopus.

Looking at the octopus with his emotionless eyes, Amon shook his head. Soon, he cut another piece of the orange devil fruit and decided to drop it inside the container. He was careful to not give the apple as the first fruit since it’s the Needle-Needle fruit. Potentially, it’s very dangerous, even an Octopus might kill him after eating that. 

He then slowly dropped the piece. 

*Drop*

….

The little octopus hurriedly took some steps back, as he felt danger from the incident just now. 

It wanted to escape from this container, however, it felt a glare on its back, as it looked up towards two red eyes looking at him with killing intent. 

Scared and without any choice, the octopus slowly crawled towards the piece of orange and started to eat it. It tasted sour, but it was only a small piece so the octopus gulped it in one go.

The Oct felt changes in his body but didn’t know what it was, though, soon it noticed one of its tentacles change into a strange substance it never saw before. 

It controlled that tentacle, which was now in the form of a blanket, towards his mouth to get a bite, however, it didn’t have any taste in it.

*Drop*

The next moment, he found another fruit in front of him. Thinking it will also give him some kind of strange power, that might help him run from the red-eyed human, he quickly crawled towards the piece of Apple.

*Nom Nom-!!*

The octopus felt strange… Very strange. He felt his body might explode, but… it didn’t.

He didn’t explode–!!!! *BOOM!*

Around .9 seconds later, the Oct also exploded.

…..

[A few minutes later]

“Well, that was quite a surprise. It didn’t explode instantly, it took .9 more seconds to explode than a human…” Amon said looking at the clip.

He sighed. “So is this a failure? Will I have to be satisfied with a single devil fruit?” Amon asked himself as he leaned back in his chair. For someone like Amon, he would never be satisfied with even the best Logia, Goro-Goro, or even the arguably best Paramecia, ***** no mi. He would love to have both of them and another one too…

However, he laughed while covering his face. “Actually, I won’t really call it a failure… I will say my ‘heart–devil-fruit’ theory is 101% accurate even after this failure.” This time, though it seemingly proved his theory as a fail, Amon was more than satisfied.

He got up while stretching. “I just need to go back to the Shandora Hall. Then I will test it… Black beard did it… Why can’t I?.” 

Amon then started to take out chemicals that turned the blood pool dry, as dry as the desert.

Devil fruits are overpowered. But 2 is always better than 1. Or rather, 3 is always better than 2. Yes, Amon has THREE devil fruits in his mind that he would eat. The Goro Goro no mi is just one of them.

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A/N: The ***** is a good fruit. I, as the author, approve of Amon ?.

Also, this chapter might seem useless as the result was the same, however, Amon got what he wanted. He has many sub-theories for the main theory, now this being a failure, he has other ways. He just has to prove that DF resides in… 

This chapter was proofread by Discord people, and edited by @Reticulum and @Ayyzelos.

P.S: This book will get a bonus chapter the day it reaches 1000+ power stone votes.