Traveler in the Pirate World

The endless yellow sand floated like a golden ribbon onto the windows of the central tower. The scene inside this nearly 100-meter-high tower surprised and shocked Crocodile.

Unlike the towers I had seen before, this huge and majestic tower does not have any floors. The tall and sharp tower body is both the outer wall and the ceiling. Even when standing on it, one can inexplicably feel a sense of awe, solemnity and dignity in one's heart.

On the white wall, there are dense rune marks, outlining the starry sky. From afar, they seem to form countless majestic figures. If you stand in it and look around, you will feel so small, like an ant.

And in this magnificent tower, a huge spherical blood-red crystal is suspended in the sky, like the bright moon in the night sky, a moon with a strange, uneasy blood color.

Through the translucent crystal outer wall, Crocodile vaguely saw something swimming in it. He did not notice that his eyes turned red at this moment, and the blood spread to the whites of his eyes. His breathing gradually became rapid. A madness was born in the depths of his heart for no reason, resentment, rage, jealousy... Weird and inexplicable, but he was unaware of it.

He had never thought that there would be such an existence in the world. He could not perceive anything after just one glance. Crocodile's mind was blank at this moment. He didn't know what he saw, nor did he remember what he saw. It was something completely beyond his cognition and understanding, and beyond his own endurance limit.

In his blood-stained eyes, a large number of scarlet threads spread to his entire brain. Endless yellow sand surged around his body, turning into a huge blade that slashed out from his raised arm, but was instantly shattered by a purple thunder in the next moment.

A figure wrapped in lightning appeared in front of Crocodile in the blink of an eye, with her dark blue robe fluttering like a pair of huge wings. A tiny flash of lightning burst out from the woman's raised fingertips and instantly sank into Crocodile's brows, awakening him from his invaded consciousness and mercilessly knocking him off the high tower.

Feeling the whistling wind around him and the feeling of weightlessness brought by his falling body made Crocodile realize that he was falling. The moment he wanted to use his ability, he was horrified to find that he had very little strength left.

What made him even more confused was that during the time he lost consciousness, his body once again overloaded its own fruit ability. The feeling of overdrawing his lifespan was so familiar and uncomfortable.

Natural Devil Fruits represent the power of nature. There is an unimaginable gap between awakened and unawakened users, and this gap is not only reflected in whether it is possible to permanently change the characteristics of a certain environment, or the range of the fruit's influence.

What really causes a qualitative change between the two is the control over natural creations. Those with unawakened abilities can only change and control the state and movement trajectory of the creations they directly touch. Once they let go, the form of natural creations will not change, but they will not be able to intervene further.

Those who have awakened the Natural Devil Fruit have the ability to precisely control their own creations over a wide range. Within the range of their ability, all natural creations belonging to them will be controlled by them. Fighting against them is no different from fighting against a small world.

Of course, this characteristic looks similar to the awakening of a superhuman creation-type devil fruit, but its range of abilities is completely different. Moreover, combined with the characteristics of natural elementalization, the power of the awakening level of a natural devil fruit ability user will become extremely difficult to deal with.

Although Crocodile has not reached the power of the awakened Devil Fruit, due to his development and understanding of the Sand-Sand Fruit, he can achieve a certain degree of overload usage, but the price is to overdraw his own lifespan and potential.

Luffy was much more difficult to deal with than in their previous brief encounter. His almost immortal recovery ability and his excessive belief in fate gave Crocodile a headache. Since there was no way to kill him with one blow, Crocodile didn't want to meet him at all.

Perhaps because of the psychological trauma, Crocodile felt that even if he had the power or weapons to kill the opponent with one blow, he might not be able to kill the opponent.

This is why he had no choice but to control the opponent and get rid of the opponent's entanglement. As for taking the opportunity to kill Luffy? Don't be kidding, Crocodile has no means to kill the monster that can't be killed even if the heart is pierced or the blood is drained out of the body.

In fact, Lily didn't expect that Luffy unconsciously controlled the power of Avalon Kai in the life-and-death trials. Every time he was injured, he would instinctively use Life Return to absorb the power of Avalon to recover from his injuries.

This absorption has similar characteristics to the absorption of energy from food to make up for its own losses.

This makes Luffy, who already has terrifying recovery abilities due to the Nika Fruit, have almost immortal recovery abilities. Even ordinary injuries will be healed the moment they are inflicted.

But the loss suffered by Crocodile now was not caused by overusing his ability, but by being forced to activate his ability.

At the moment his body was about to fall to the ground, Crocodile turned into a piece of yellow sand and floated down. In an instant, he rushed into a tower on the side. After confirming that there was no one around, he collapsed on the ground and let out a long breath.

"What exactly happened..." As Crocodile said this, his eyes suddenly changed. He couldn't help but cover his mouth and frantically groped his body.

After discovering the abnormality of his body, Crocodile's tense nerves broke in an instant, and he couldn't help but yelling, "What a joke, I'm back to normal?" The voice was crisp and powerful, but obviously not what a man should say.

Ivankov's fruit ability inexplicably failed, and Crocodile returned to his original appearance. The wide cloak made her body look particularly petite, and her bronze skin was full of wild and healthy beauty. Under her short black hair was a heroic female face. The scar across her face made her look a little fierce, but much gentler than her male appearance.

In order to break through the situation that women's physical fitness is weaker than men after adulthood, Crocodile made a deal with Ivankov and completely transformed himself into a man both physically and mentally.

Although no items were actually used and Ivankov was very happy to do this, in order to prevent such private matters from being known by others, the real purpose of Crocodile's transaction with Ivankov was to keep it secret from the other party.

However, now, without him even knowing what was happening, the ability of the hormone fruit on his body had lost its effect, which undoubtedly made Crocodile almost collapse. The dull expression, as if he had been played with, seemed to be frozen on his face and could not be removed for a while.