Arceus's Pirate Journey

Chapter 848: Chapter 847: The Queen Scam

The upper half of his body didn’t change at all, but a fluffy tail sprouted from his butt, black with some white mixed in, and his lower limbs turned into beast-like structure.

By Caesar’s own standards, this fruit was a success, even counted as a pretty good result.

The stuff he makes is random mutation by default—if an animal head hadn’t grown out of the guy’s ass, or his own head hadn’t swapped with some beast’s butt, that already meant things went quite well.

”Chief Spandam, this... this is...”

Although the change in his lower body did give a certain boost to his physique, he soon discovered he couldn’t turn back.

”Oh, that’s about right. There’s an extremely small chance of getting a perfect ability, a very high chance of failure and becoming a powerless idiot who just laughs, and a small chance of getting an imperfect power. The way you look now is actually fine.”

Listening to Spandam, Nero suddenly felt a stream of air rampaging inside his body, quickly driving him to the brink of Bide.

Pff!

With a loud bang, a massive amount of yellow gas filled the whole room. A wave of stench rushed straight into Spandam’s nose, the acrid fumes shooting right up to his skull, knocking him out on the spot.

That ”air” wasn’t him being angry; it was the ability bestowed by this fruit. Nero had now turned into an incomplete skunk-man.

The huge noise attracted the others, but the stench kept everyone at bay. Only after the yellow smoke dispersed did someone drag Spandam out.

As for Nero, this kind of ability left him too embarrassed to show his face, so he had already hopped out the window and legged it.

When Spandam woke up, a piece of bad news reached his ears: somehow, every clerk in the department now knew that Spandam had been knocked out by a fart.

Among all the CP9 chiefs in history, Spandam was definitely the most useless one, both in competence and in strength. It wasn’t his first time being a disgrace, but this incident still made him feel humiliated.

”Who was it! Which bastard blabbed?!”

”Sorry, that was me, I let it slip by accident, chababa.”

A round man explained from the side—literally round; both his head and his body were like that, you could barely even find his neck, and there was an exaggerated zipper sewn across his mouth.

This was one of CP9’s members—Fukurou the Silent, a man whose sense of secrecy was on par with Sentomaru’s. No matter what secret landed with him, there was zero chance of it staying secret.

Even a zipper on his mouth couldn’t stop his urge to spill the beans. He’d often blurt things out while just walking down the street, which is why he never got assigned to any undercover missions.

The spread of the story about Spandam’s fainting spell was directly tied to him.

”Fukurou... you bastard!”

”Can’t be helped, I slipped up. Besides, Chief, you’ve got issues too. Who told your Doriki to be only 9? You’re way too weak, chababa.”

A Navy Soldier with a weapon has a Doriki of 10—that’s the most basic rank-and-file, no special training. Spandam’s 9 Doriki successfully dragged down the World Government’s lower limit of strength.

”Shut up! Zip that damn zipper of yours!”

”Yoyoii, my deepest apologies, Chief. This is all my failure. I’ll commit seppuku to atone...”

A man with long pink hair, dressed like a kabuki actor, pulled out a blade and thrust it toward his own belly, but right before the blade touched his abdomen, he used Tekkai.

”Yoyoii, what a shame, I didn’t die...”

Lion of Kumadori, another CP9 member, whose hobby is to randomly commit seppuku to apologize and then use Tekkai mid-stab—one of the eccentrics under Spandam’s command.

”You two, enough! Chief, what did you actually call us here for?”

Jabra put a stop to the circus. Among the CP9 members present, his personality was considered relatively normal.

Rob Lucci and the others were currently on an undercover mission in Water Seven, so only the three of them were still here.

Spandam, though still fuming, pulled out another fruit.

”Chief, this thing... it can’t be the same as the one Nero ate, right?”

”Of course not. This one cost me a hundred million Belly. Way pricier than his.”

This fruit wasn’t one of Caesar’s half-finished ones, but one of the completed products that Queen had patched up.

As a veteran scapegoat artist, Queen knew exactly how to shift blame onto himself.

All the Hundred Beasts members were perfect ability users, while everyone outside was walking disasters with weird half-finished powers. Even an idiot could tell these things had been reworked. To change that perception, he did some special deals.

He took a few fruits that Arceus had already completed and handed them back to Doflamingo, having him resell them at a high price. Caesar had no idea about any of this—only Queen, Doflamingo, and some of the Hundred Beasts higher-ups knew.

After this operation, the success rate of abilities became a probability issue. The Hundred Beasts bought a lot and had special screening methods, so they ended up with more successes.

They couldn’t wash their hands completely clean, but they could always dump part of the blame on Caesar.

After so many years, it was rare to see someone volunteering to share the blame, and there was no way Queen was going to waste that.

As for where those fruits ended up, Arceus didn’t care what people did with this junk. He’d never thought much of them anyway. At this point, the greatest value of these Artificial Fruits, in his eyes, was that they reignited the overtime craze inside the Hundred Beasts.

A bunch of former ”quiet quitters” of the grind suddenly got back to being workaholic overachievers.

And Queen used this method to offset the payments he was supposed to make—and even made a bit of side money for himself.

Doflamingo, leveraging these few special fruits, also opened up a much broader market.

Either you pay up for the expensive ones, or you gamble on luck. For those who lacked funds but wanted a fruit, this was a very special opportunity.

In a sense, neither the Hundred Beasts nor Doflamingo lost out, and this whole affair became known as the ”Queen Scam,” also called Queen’s Little Blame-Shifting Technique.

He’d given Nero that fruit purely for experimental purposes, and since Nero wasn’t a full member, messing around a bit was fine. But Jabra and the others were different—they couldn’t just be used as test subjects.

”Jabra, you’re already an ability user, so Fukurou, Kumadori, which one of you wants this fruit?”

If you want to be a middleman, reputation is everything. Doflamingo, as an intermediary walking the line between light and dark, did have that much credibility. Since he sold this at a high price, Spandam figured it couldn’t be fake.

”Chief, you’re really not giving me this fruit just to get back at me, right? Chababa.”

After some discussion, Kumadori gave up the fruit, and it was decided that Fukurou would eat it.

But looking at Spandam’s smile, Fukurou felt anything but reassured inside.