"Ross Town isn't that big," Spando snarled as they headed back toward their base. "No way I can't dig that little bastard out."
Ross Town sat on the western edge of the Kingdom of Prodence—a backwater border town. Even counting outsiders, the permanent population barely topped a hundred thousand. In the grand scheme of the kingdom, it was nothing.
But even a place this small still had rival pirate crews, and even a few underworld outfits.
A pirate with a 4.6 million Beli bounty could play king here. Call them "pirates" if you wanted—most of the time they were just roaming nearby waters, occasionally raiding villages and bullying whoever couldn't fight back.
Even so, the Big Blade Pirates lived comfortably.
And then this time, they'd stepped into a puddle and soaked their shoes—only to realize it wasn't water, it was shit.
A kid had stolen their treasure.
One hundred million.
Plus the men they'd lost getting it.
Spando felt like he'd walked out without checking his horoscope and doom itself had decided to kick him in the teeth.
It had been a long time since anyone dared challenge his authority around these waters. This time, Spando swore he'd make that brat taste what hell really meant—cold, merciless, and without a shred of humanity.
He only hoped the kid hadn't eaten the Devil Fruit yet.
If he had… then the best way to recoup losses was to sell the brat to a slave broker.
He just wasn't sure what a Devil Fruit user was worth.
Truth was, despite being a "veteran," Spando had never actually met one. He'd only heard stories.
Damn it.
The more he thought about it, the angrier he got—so angry his chest hurt.
If he didn't catch that kid, he'd never sleep right again. He'd stew until he blew a vessel in his brain.
That animal.
All the way back, Hermes didn't make a move.
He planned to strike at night—cut the head first. If he kept picking off the small fry, sooner or later they'd catch on. And once Spando got truly cautious, a "normal difficulty" situation could instantly become a nightmare run.
And setting aside the Mini-Mini Fruit… a pirate with a 4.6 million bounty could crush Hermes in a straight fight.
Back at the base, Spando sent all his men out to gather information.
Hermes stayed at five millimeters, hidden inside the base itself, silently watching Spando.
But even as the sun dipped toward the horizon, Spando never showed signs of napping.
Night fell.
The pirates returned one by one.
No surprise—none of them brought back anything useful.
Spando exploded.
He hacked the slum residents they'd dragged in to death right there, cutting them apart in a blind rage.
"Keep searching!" he roared after venting, still burning inside.
Once everyone left again, Spando started drinking to drown the pain.
One hundred million.
The more he drank, the more it hurt. The more it hurt, the more he hated Hermes.
If that brat were in front of him, he'd tear him apart—hang him up and slice him into a thousand pieces.
Hermes stood by the leg of a table, small as a speck, watching Spando pour bowl after bowl down his throat.
Honestly?
It was a gift from the heavens.
The man was basically stretching out his neck and begging to be cut—no effort required.
Not taking advantage of that would've been rude.
An hour later, Spando was properly drunk.
Hermes strolled up without even bothering to hide his confidence. He climbed up Spando's leg by grabbing onto body hair, timed it perfectly—
And dropped straight into the bowl of liquor.
Spando lifted it and swallowed him down with the drink.
Hermes needed Spando's head.
And he needed it intact.
THUMP—THUMP—THUMP—
A powerful heartbeat echoed around him, wild and heavy—
Then, in the next instant, it stopped.
Hermes expanded to his full size.
Spando's body burst like an overfilled sack.
Blood, shredded flesh, and chunks of organs splattered across the room. A damaged head rolled to the corner of the table, still flushed with drunken redness, eyes wide and lifeless.
Standing in the spray, soaked head to toe, Hermes felt… oddly bored.
Too easy.
No challenge at all.
A 4.6 million bounty—dead without a struggle.
No sense of accomplishment.
That was the difference between having a Devil Fruit… and not having one.
"This method of killing is pretty damn ugly."
He looked around at the slaughtered mess. His own body was coated in blood, bits of meat and organs clinging to him. It was disgusting.
And yet—he didn't feel like vomiting.
He was calm.
If he'd seen something like this right after transmigrating, he'd have nightmares for a week.
He found something to pack Spando's head into, then looted the base for cash.
After that, Hermes walked out openly, like he owned the place.
As for the rest of the Big Blade Pirates—if they didn't run into him, fine. If they did, he'd deal with them on the side.
Some of them had bounties too—one or two million, a few hundred thousand.
Hermes had studied the "value" of pirates thoroughly.
Three days later
Using the Beli he took from Spando, Hermes joined a merchant caravan leaving Ross Town for the capital.
On the way, they'd pass an eastern Marine branch, and that was where he planned to cash in Spando's head.
After thinking it through, Hermes decided he'd start out as a bounty hunter.
It wasn't just convenient. He wanted real experience—real fights.
And most importantly…
It paid fast.
Becoming a pirate was the first option he threw out. Yeah, it sounded cool, and it was the trend of the era—but he was still basically in the tutorial zone. He needed raw accumulation first.
As for joining the Marines…
Getting rejected before left a bad taste in his mouth.
He'd also considered the Revolutionary Army, or the underworld, but in the end, bounty hunting fit best.
And anyway, nothing was permanent. If he woke up one day feeling like it, he could go pirate or Marine on a whim.
Hermes wasn't the kind of man who lived by rules.
He respected his own desires.
From the moment he transmigrated, he decided one thing:
He would be the freest, boldest bastard alive—bound by nothing.
Do what he wants.
Eat his fill.
Grow bigger, grow stronger.
That was the goal.
He wanted to be a Homelander—the kind of top dog who does whatever he pleases.
On the wagon ride, a box containing a human head sat beside him. The scenery along the road was beautiful—breeze carrying faint floral scent, the winding path stretching endlessly forward.
Staring at that road, Hermes suddenly had an idea.
"Shrinking the earth beneath your feet"…
There was an old saying in his previous world—"covering a thousand miles in a single step."
With the Mini-Mini Fruit, maybe… just maybe… he could achieve something similar at a deeper level.
If—after awakening—he could shrink a region of land by hundreds or thousands of meters, then restore it instantly… one step could cross an impossible distance.
Or—
Shrink an entire mountain, throw it like a pebble, and let it return to full size mid-flight… or even expand beyond its original scale.
That would be a natural disaster.
He could shrink a pistol, then enlarge it—turning a bullet into something closer to a shell.
It even gave him the vibe of the Munch-Munch Fruit (a.k.a. the multiplying fruit). That one was about "increasing"—but if Hermes had eaten it, he would've immediately thought about the opposite too.
Halving an enemy's speed.
Halving their attack power.
But in canon, that "World Destroyer" idiot never developed anything like that.
Not surprising.
That was how this world worked—some people developed their powers until they were godlike, like Bartholomew Kuma. Others stayed trash forever.
He could also shrink and enlarge bombs.
That would be obscene.
A walking hormone factory.
Absolutely ridiculous.
And then there was the "concept" direction:
Shrink wounds. Enlarge wounds.
Shrink an enemy's attack. Enlarge his own.
Shrink limbs. Enlarge heads…
If you're going to develop a Devil Fruit—
You develop it boldly.
Of course, right now he could only change his own size.
Long road ahead.
So he'd need other power too.
Haki, for one.
Conqueror's Haki was whatever—if he had it, fine. If not, not today.
But Armament and Observation were mandatory.
And he'd have to train them like his life depended on it—because any strong Observation user could hard-counter him.
Then there was Rokushiki—the Six Powers.
If he could learn them, learn all of them, maybe even reach Life Return…
But that was hard. Rokushiki was Marine special-ops martial arts.
The seas might have similar techniques elsewhere, but relying on self-taught guesses was a joke.
He needed at least one or two forms.
Because with the Mini-Mini Fruit's shrinking, he wouldn't even need to expand to kill someone from the inside.
He could slip into their body and destroy them internally with precision.
And beyond that—
Swordsmanship.
With the Mini-Mini Fruit, even a normal slash might become a magnified disaster if he found the right method.
The future looked bright.
The road was wide open.
He was about to take off.
This Devil Fruit?
Hermes had never been more satisfied.
A truly good Devil Fruit could raise your ceiling infinitely.
A bad one… you could see the end of the road at a glance.