400. Unexpected
The Clown Pirates have another member now after Maverick joined. So Hatchan isn't the youngest anymore because there is someone younger than him now. Hatchan is 29 now while Maverick is 26. Buggy is the 3rd youngest in the crew at the age of 30 now.
Maverick is very curious about anything on the ship because almost everything is new for him who lived isolated on an uninhabited island since he was born. He keeps asking what's this what's that and the others answer all his questions because they all know his situation.
His curiosity is higher than children and he also acts immature most of the time. Maverick can be said to be a kid in an adult body. He is just tough physically because he lived in a jungle alone. But he didn't have anyone to interact with after his parents died a few years ago, so his mind hasn't grown that much.
The crew knows it is now their job to teach Maverick about the world. They've raised kids before, so they have experience with this. Besides, all the boys here are immature actually, so their brains' wavelengths are similar.
It's just that Maverick still has less knowledge than them. But that just means he needs to learn more and the crew will gladly teach him. Luckily, he can read because his parents taught him, so he can read books to learn by himself.
On their way to search the next island, they encounter yet another poor Seaking that comes out and tries to attack them. Buggy asks Maverick to try using their cannon to shoot the Seaking. They have taught Maverick to use the cannon, so he can operate it.
Buggy asks him to shoot the Seaking's left eye and Maverick hits it in one try. He has used the cannon once without targeting anything, yet he already understood its power, and the angle he needs to use to target the Seaking's left eye from this distance.
He then shoots Seaking's right eye after Buggy asked him. Then the Seaking's mouth while it screams in pain from the previous shot. Buggy keeps asking him to shoot some spots and he never misses even when the Seaking is squirming because of the pain.
Maverick has hunted animals since he was a kid and he can predict animals' movements by instinct. Although he only hunted land animals, his instinct is still better than most people. Also, he has much better eyesight than most people because of his 3-eyed tribe's traits and he can see what the Seaking will do from its small movements.
The continuous attacks kill the Seaking that couldn't escape because it is tied by one of their members who has Chain Chain Fruit. Clown Pirates now have a lot of Devil Fruit users. In fact, most of them are Devil Fruit users now.
Their devil fruits were either bought or found on the islands they've explored. They found a lot on the islands in New World that haven't been found by people. So the devil fruits in those places haven't been found for hundreds of years.
None of them knew what those devil fruits' abilities were. But they trusted their gut feelings and ate the fruits that seem to call them. The Clown Pirates believed that there are no useless devil fruits, after all. There are only useless users who can't make good use of their abilities.
Although some abilities are difficult to use and the users need to be very creative to make their 'useless' abilities great. But the Clown Pirates are never worried about that because their basic power is great. So even if they got 'useless' devil fruits, they would still be strong.
For them, devil fruits' abilities are just tools to increase their skills, not power. They only trust themselves, their own power is the greatest power. Although they also wanted devil fruits abilities because they look cool even with all the restrictions.
Besides, they all know a devil fruit that didn't look that great but became one of the best because of its user. Buggy's devil fruit won't be eaten by a lot of people, especially those with great power like them. But that 'weak' devil fruit became one of the scariest fruits in Buggy's hand, especially after awakening.
Devil fruit awakening, the key to every devil fruit ability's greatness. Even 'useless' devil fruits will become terrifying once they went through awakening. Buggy who could only chop himself can chop the world now because of his devil fruit awakening.
So the Clown Pirates were never worried about their choice of devil fruits. The only things that mattered to them were whether they would like their new abilities or not and if their abilities were compatible with their battle styles. Nothing else matters to them.
Luckily, most of them got devil fruits that have high compatibility with their skills. It's because most of them got Zoan which can be used for any battle style. The zoan devil fruits they got even made Buggy wonder if they got them because they destroyed Beasts Pirates.
But well, most of their devil fruits are different from the ones Beasts Pirates had. For Zoan, 35 people got the normal Zoan, 8 people got Ancient Zoan, and 2 people actually got Mythical Zoan. The rest got Paramecia devil fruits, so the Logia users are still just Enel and Jude, and along with Magnus, they have 3 Mythical Zoan now.
The Ancient Zoan they got were Direwolf, Mastodon, Stegosaurus, Velociraptor, Ground Sloth, Meganeura, Megaceros, and Glyptodont. As for the 2 new Mythical Zoan, they got Griffin and Cerberus. These Zoan devil fruits were found on the unexplored islands in New World, not bought.
A lot of their normal Zoan and Paramecia devil fruits were also found on the unexplored islands. In fact, they also found 2 unknown fruits on Maverick's island. Maverick said he knew those fruits' existence but never attempted to eat them because they look poisonous.
Buggy offered him to eat one of the fruits, but he refused because now he knows that he won't be able to swim if he eats it. One of Maverick's wishes in his list is to swim freely in the sea. He couldn't do it around his island because it was infested by giant Seakings.
Rather than the magical abilities of devil fruits, he prefers swimming freely in the sea and also dives deep in it. Buggy understands it and doesn't force Maverick because even he also wanted to have the ability to swim. There's nothing he can do now though because he already ate his devil fruit the moment he woke up in this world.
Anyway, the crew keeps exploring Calm Belt to find the islands there. They start finding islands more often after leaving Maverick's island. Those are just small islands, but they are unique, so the Clowns never get bored.
There is an island shaped like a standing O, an island of ice with a quite hot sea around it, floating plants that form a rather big island with animals living on it, and a giant tree growing from the seabed like the giant Mangroves on Sabaody. But this tree is much bigger because its top is as wide as an island already. Even a giant like Magnus can walk on its branches easily.
Calm Belt seems as crazy as New World just from the unique islands they find. This journey in Calm Belt is more interesting than they thought and they can't wait to find the next island. But what they find on the next island is not something they ever expected.
The next island is just a normal medium-sized island. It's just that this island is full of Marines and there are 5 Marine ships near it. Enel can even hear the voices of more than 2,000 people on the island and he says most of them are young teenagers.
"Hmm, this must be an island Marine HQ uses to train their cadets. We knew they have an island in Calm Belt to train their young cadets, but I never thought we would find it this fast. This will be interesting," says Buggy while grinning.
His crewmates also grin excitedly except for Hatchan who knows he is still weak and Maverick who doesn't know what happens. But it will be interesting because The Clown Pirates won't give up on exploring this island, so there will surely be a clash between them.
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