Pirates: I Rely Only on Myself

Location: Newfoundland Archipelago, Northwestern Seas of the West Blue.

The Capone family's main base was situated on York Island within this archipelago.

After more than a month of covert purges, Apostle Bege had successfully cleansed the Capone family's core ranks, replacing them with elite members from the Noah family. Meanwhile, they selectively recruited promising young members from the Capone family's lower ranks, particularly those who showed potential for transformation.

To justify the removal of the Capone family's former leaders, Bege and Auf staged a series of mock attacks on each other, cleverly using these "attacks" to eliminate their mutual enemies.

Once the initial cleansing was complete, Bege handed over part of the administrative work to Noah's elite, while he joined Noah in conducting an important experiment.

In an underground cavern on York Island—

A notorious mobster, now lobotomized and in a blank, trance-like state, had his frontal lobe surgically removed. Noah then placed a neatly sliced Koi-Koi Fruit into his mouth.

Once the subject had swallowed the Devil Fruit, Bege quickly moved him into his inner Castle-Castle Space.

Inside this space, several assistants were already standing by. They escorted the subject into a room filled with fruit of the same type as the Koi-Koi Fruit.

Then, they slit the subject's throat.

As the subject died, the Koi-Koi Fruit's essence detached from his soul. However, within the castle's confines, this essence encountered a barrier that blocked its escape.

A unique spatial barrier separated the Castle Space from the outside world. Unless Bege opened the exit, the two spaces were completely isolated from each other.

The Koi Fruit's essence collided fruitlessly against the barrier, searching for a way out. After several minutes, it finally encountered one of the apples and infused it, transforming the apple into the Koi-Koi Fruit.

The assistants monitoring the room quickly identified the transformed apple and reported the success to Bege.

In the outer laboratory—

"Lord Noah, the experiment was a success."

"Success? Just as I expected," Noah said with a satisfied smile. He had already conducted extensive research and analysis into the resurrection mechanism of Devil Fruits.

In his memories from his past life, he recalled two known methods by which Devil Fruits could be made to reincarnate in fixed locations:

The first was Gravity Lock, as demonstrated by the Dark-Dark Fruit, while the second was Faith Lock, observed in Alabasta.

Beyond these, Noah hypothesized a third method based on the Dark-Dark Fruit's ability to fix the fruit's essence for resurrection: Spatial Lock.

If gravity could indeed bind a Devil Fruit's essence, then a pocket dimension should also be able to accomplish the same. Other fruits with the ability to create isolated spaces, after all, operated independently of the regular world.

As the fruit's essence could not escape strong gravitational pull, it logically would have even less chance of overcoming a spatial barrier, forcing it to re-manifest in a fruit within the pocket dimension.

But why had no one else discovered this method of "spatial rebirth" for Devil Fruits?

The answer was simple.

First, fruits with pocket dimensions were exceedingly rare. Known examples included the Dark-Dark Fruit, Door-Door Fruit, Castle-Castle Fruit, Swamp-Swamp Fruit, Mirror-Mirror Fruit, and Book-Book Fruit.

However, the Card-Card Fruit and Book-Book Fruit created static spaces; these couldn't be used to conduct kill-to-rebirth experiments.

This left only six fruits theoretically capable of triggering rebirth through killing.

But without the omniscient perspective of an "observer," the inhabitants of this world rarely pursued such theories, often relying more on chance than understanding.

In other words, only if a user of one of these six fruits happened to kill a Devil Fruit user within their own pocket dimension—while also storing a large quantity of fruit—could they potentially observe this phenomenon of rebirth.

Among these fruits, the Dark-Dark Fruit had the highest likelihood of discovery.

Why?

The Door-Door Fruit's dimension opened to a "reverse world" connected to the normal world, which meant its space wasn't portable. This lack of portability meant the Door-Door Fruit couldn't store supplies such as fruit, as it would be inaccessible if the user traveled to another location.

The same was true for the Mirror-Mirror Fruit.

As for the Swamp-Swamp Fruit, Castle-Castle Fruit, and Card-Card Fruit, they could theoretically enable this process, but capturing other Devil Fruit users was relatively unlikely for most users.

The Dark-Dark Fruit, however, had the unique ability to nullify other users' powers while drawing objects into its dark space. This greatly increased the odds of both users and fruit existing within the dark dimension simultaneously.

Noah theorized that the Dark-Dark Fruit's appeal for Marshall D. Teach might have stemmed from information left behind by a previous user, revealing that this Fruit could draw the essence of killed Devil Fruit users into its space, where it could later reincarnate within stored fruit.

However, Noah's findings showed that the power to force reincarnation wasn't limited to the Dark-Dark Fruit.

Originally, Noah had considered using the Swamp-Swamp Fruit to create an Apostle and test this theory. But he soon realized that the Castle-Castle Fruit was better suited to the experiment, leading to this successful trial.

As the reincarnated Koi-Koi Fruit was set before him, Noah's smile grew even wider.

He quickly retrieved several other prisoners from a sealed state:

The Parrot-Parrot Fruit user, Gulo.

The Turtle-Turtle Fruit user, Dick.

The Earthworm-Earthworm Fruit user, Austin.

The Nine-Tailed Fox Fruit user, Catarina Devon.

And, lastly, Diamante, who had been turned into a card-based Apostle.

These individuals had not been converted into Apostles but had instead been preserved in card seals, waiting for their use.

As for Diamante's inclusion in this retrieval, it was straightforward—his Vivre Card was still in the hands of the Donquixote family, and the value of his Ripple-Ripple Fruit was limited, so Noah decided to recycle his fruit.

He sent each of them into the Castle Space.

Before long—

Five freshly reincarnated Devil Fruits lay in front of him.

With these five additions, Noah's collection now boasted seventeen Devil Fruits:

The Paramecia fruits: Swallow-Swallow Fruit, Glue-Glue Fruit, Hobby-Hobby Fruit, Sound-Sound Fruit, and Ripple-Ripple Fruit.

The Zoan fruits, standard types: Koi-Koi Fruit, Rattlesnake-Rattlesnake Fruit, Red Fox-Fox Fruit, Crow-Crow Fruit, Sheep-Sheep Fruit, Red Spider-Spider Fruit, Mantis-Mantis Fruit, Parrot-Parrot Fruit, Turtle-Turtle Fruit, and Earthworm-Earthworm Fruit.

The Mythical Zoan types: Vampire-Vampire Fruit and Nine-Tailed Fox-Fox Fruit.

After considering the lineup, he picked up a Den Den Mushi and instructed Ari to bring over the six squad captains from the Distillery.

As the first batch of elite family members, these captains had not only proved their strength but also demonstrated loyalty and competence.

Each had played a significant role in establishing the family's intelligence networks across the Four Seas and the Grand Line. Instead of keeping these fruits in storage, Noah intended to reward his captains with them.

After all, potential was limited for many members of the family; even the elite captains would find it difficult to reach the level of a Marine Vice Admiral through martial arts, swordsmanship, or Haki alone.

This was where the power of a Devil Fruit could truly make a difference.