335. Upgrading

The woods have been dried perfectly and they've shrunk a bit. Buggy takes out one of his swords, Pollux that has Press Press Fruit. His plan is to use Pollux to compress the woods and makes them as hard as steel, maybe even harder because they are very hard, to begin with.

Buggy has used Pollux & Castor a lot and improved their abilities. He still can't awaken them though as it is very difficult to awaken devil fruits that aren't his. It doesn't matter though because he isn't in a rush to achieve that.

Then using Pollux, Buggy compresses the woods by touching them with Pollux one by one. White light covers the woods as Buggy uses Pollux's power on them. Then they shrink considerably until they become just a third of their initial sizes.

"Oh, I didn't think they would shrink this much. Will these be enough?" asks Buggy while looking at the woods that become rather black.

"I think they're enough. These woods are still big even though they've become much smaller. We can always cut more trees if these aren't enough, after all," says Palu while inspecting the woods.

"Well, you're right. Now, let's test the hardness. Magnus, take one and put it outside the shed," says Buggy.

Magnus nods and takes a wood before putting it outside of the shed. Buggy then asks his crewmates to try punching the compressed wood. They get excited and start making bets on how deep they'll dent the wood.

The kids start first and obviously, they can't damage it at all even when they use their devil fruit abilities. Then the adults start taking turns, but only men participate, the women just don't get interested.

The crew members start punching the wood in turns and to their surprise, none of them can damage the wood too. They even use their weapons, but they can only scratch the wood at best. These guys can break or cut steel, yet they can't damage the wood.

"Isn't this wood become harder than Adam now?" asks Manba.

"Probably," says Deon.

"Then how if we compress Adam too?" asks Brook.

"I don't think that's a good idea. The Adam wood is the base structure of our ship. If we shrink it, then our ship will be far smaller. And we can't replace Adam too because that means we are changing our ship," says Ruff.

"Ruff is right, and even if our Lord can compress Adam without reducing the ship's size, we still won't do it anyway. If Adam gets compressed, the ship will be too stiff, and that's not good because it might break in some situations. Also, I want to apply the method that Wano's swordsmiths use to make a sword. They use softer steel inside the sword and the harder steel outside which makes their swords stronger," says Palu.

"So you will encase the base structures that are made of adam wood using these woods?" asks Enel.

"Correct, that will be better than replacing the adam wood," says Palu.

"Well, leave the ship upgrade to Palu & his team. We just need to focus on other things. Don't forget that we still have 6 months here, and we will fight giant beasts at that time to get stronger," says Cricket.

The Clowns have just remembered and then Buggy ads, "Ah, before we start that, we need to take out every stuff in the ship. Palu, make a place to store everything today, we will start taking out the stuff tomorrow."

After Buggy gave his order, Palu's team start to build a place to store the stuff on their ship. They will also build sheds for the crew's sleeping places later. When their ship is getting rebuilt, the crew will need places to sleep, after all.

While Palu's team work on those, the others are making a dock for Palu's team to work on the ship. They dig a wide area of the coast with Palu's instructions. His team can build the buildings on their own, so he can instruct the others.

Then the next day, the crew takes out everything on the ship and put the things in the storage that Palu's team made. It takes a full day to move everything. They could finish it faster, but they needed to sort the items too while moving them.

While the crew moves everything in the ship, they find something surprising. In their big refrigerator that Ruff made to store food ingredients, they find 2 strange fruits in the stack of fruit. There are 2 devil fruits in there, not just one, but two.

"What the hell?! Isn't this Magma Magma Fruit? We have searched for it intensely and haven't gotten any news. To think that it is on our ship all along, what a surprise. And this one is, uh, I don't know what it is, check the devilfruitpedia," says Buggy.

Dela checks it and finds it after a while, "That one is a Zoan Devil Fruit, Marsu Marsu Fruit, model: Kangaroo. The Marsu is from Marsupial, but they thought it was too long so they changed it into Marsu."

"Kangaroo? I understand that the Magma Magma Fruit was from Sakazuki, but what about the Kangaroo?" asks Buggy.

"Uh, actually there was a CP9 agent who has this devil fruit. I thought he just passed out, but it seems he was killed at that time," says Ruff.

"Oh, then that means these 2 devil fruits were from those 2 devil fruit users who get killed in that war. Hmm, it seems that theory is correct. Devil Fruits get reincarnated in the closest fruits that have high compatibility. If it originated from an apple, then it won't get reincarnated in a banana or other fruits. We are very lucky that we have 2 compatible fruits for these 2 devil fruits," says Buggy.

"But maybe there were other devil fruit users who were killed at that war and we didn't get their devil fruits," says Deon disappointedly.

"Don't be greedy, this one Magma Magma Fruit is worth more than a few normal devil fruits. We can always use our connections to find more fruits, but even if we use them, we might not get this Magma Magma Fruit, so don't complain," says Buggy.

Deon sighs and nods in understanding before asking about Buggy's plans with the fruits. Buggy will keep the Magma Magma Fruit for now. As for the Kangaroo fruit, he will give it to the one who found the 2 fruits.

The one who found them is a Fishman from Mantis's cooking team. But he doesn't want to eat the devil fruit because he won't be able to swim. So he gives it to his best friend, a man from Magnus's team who uses boxing as his main fighting style, so the Kangaroo fruit will be very good for him.

Well, that gets resolved fast, and then they continue to move the stuff. After everything in the ship gets moved, the crew pulls the ship into the dock that they made yesterday. The compressed woods also have been moved beside the dock. Buggy has chopped them into planks just like what Palu asked.

Then from now on, it's Palu's shipwright team's work. They will do their job to upgrade the ship while everyone else will do their own tasks. The next 6 months will be the time for Clown Pirates to reach another level.

When Palu's team starts working on the ship, the others are entering the forest to fight giant beasts and get stronger. A group is left behind to guard their storage & lodgings though. There might be creatures or even people who come and attack their place, after all.

The ones who enter the forest to fight giant beasts are going at it from morning till evening. Mantis's team has prepared a lot of food for them every morning, after all. They all bring food for lunch, so they don't need to go back & forth every noon.

Everyone adapts to the island's extreme weather changes fast. After 3 weeks since they arrived, no one needs to wear the suit that Ruff made, even the kids. They all now can handle the coldest or even the hottest temperature on this island.

3 months after they arrived on the island, their ship finally finished getting upgraded. It could be faster, but the new woods are very hard, so Palu's team has a hard time using them. They even need to use Armament Haki just to nail the planks, which makes their Armament Haki masteries improve a lot.

From the appearance, there is no change in the Black Pearl. It's because they really want it to look exactly the same. But this ship is far tougher than before. Normal cannonballs won't even put a scratch on this ship now.

After the ship is upgraded, the only thing left to do for them is training & get stronger. They spend the remaining time on this island while waiting for the Log Pose to set. Then 6 months & 12 days after they arrived on this island, their Log Pose finally points to the next island.

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