Promising Asset

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The sudden cry of "Mom" left Sunny frozen in place.

Not because she had been called Mom, but because Bailey had spoken in human words.

"A Devil Fruit user?"

That was Sunny's first reaction.

Once she judged that Bailey had most likely eaten a Devil Fruit, Sunny's expression tightened.

The thought that the Devil Fruit she dreamed of might have been eaten by a skunk made it even worse.

Corvin's reaction was not as strong as Sunny's, and he did not make a direct judgment.

An animal speaking human language did not automatically mean it had eaten a Devil Fruit.

Sol looked expressionlessly at Bailey, whose survival instinct had reached its limit. He slowly withdrew his hand and turned toward the two people standing at the bathroom door.

"Which one of you brought this little thing here?"

Sunny immediately raised a hand and pointed at Corvin.

Corvin had nothing to say.

Ten minutes later, everyone sat around the dining table.

Bailey, whose upper body was wrapped tight in chains, lay on the floor beside the table.

In front of him were two steaks and a handful of vegetables.

The oddly generous dinner gave his wounded heart a little comfort.

Sol stuffed a piece of chicken into his mouth, chewed a few times, swallowed, and glanced at Bailey gnawing on a steak.

"This little thing hid it pretty well."

As one of the goods from the auction, Bailey had been recognized by Sol immediately.

The reason Sol had almost crushed Bailey's head just now was that he had sensed a faint malice coming from him.

Sol was extremely sensitive to malice, and that reaction was almost reflexive.

If Bailey had not spoken human words at the edge of life and death, Sol definitely would not have stopped in time.

Fortunately, Sol was a veteran of physical combat. His hand moved fast, but he could also pull it back fast. Otherwise, Bailey would already be a headless corpse.

"Bailey didn't eat a Devil Fruit, but why can he talk?"

Sunny looked at Bailey in confusion.

Sol had already answered the question of whether Bailey had eaten a Devil Fruit using an extremely rare Seastone bullet.

But once that doubt was resolved, another one appeared.

Corvin held back the urge to comment and silently ate his meal.

With his current identity, he was not suited to explaining this sort of thing to Sunny.

Sol knew what was going on and explained.

"There is an isolated race in the Grand Line called the Mink Tribe. This little thing probably has some connection to the Minks, but the bloodline he inherited is obviously incomplete. You could even call it thin. That's why he turned out like this."

"The Mink Tribe? What kind of race is that?"

Sunny's expression stirred.

Beside the dining table, Bailey also slowed his chewing and tilted his ears toward Sol's explanation.

He had been different since birth, so he had left his group very early.

He had once been troubled by what made him special. To understand it, he had even risked contact with human society.

That was also why he had eventually been caught by humans.

Sol, however, was too lazy to explain in detail.

"Just think of the Minks as humans who ate Zoan-type Devil Fruits."

Nearby, Corvin nearly choked on that explanation.

But after thinking about it carefully, he felt it made a strange kind of sense.

Sunny nodded in sudden understanding, instantly piecing together her own image of the Minks.

Sol ate several more mouthfuls of meat, then sighed.

"Corvin, you picked up a treasure. Thin-blooded Minks like this little thing aren't common. I've only seen a few in my life. If the auction house had known what he really was, how could they have left him here to be sold?"

"Is it really that serious? He's just worth some money."

Corvin did not think Bailey deserved to be called a treasure.

If Sol was willing to trade Chidori for Bailey, Corvin would gladly admit he had been wrong.

"Whether he's a treasure depends on how you use him."

Sol took a long drink, and his gaze sharpened with interest.

"Decades ago, a rookie pirate rose quickly in the Grand Line. At his side was a small black hunting cat. Like this little thing, it was also a thin-blooded Mink."

"Its body was no different from an ordinary animal's, but it understood people and could speak."

"People who didn't know that black hunting cat only assumed it could talk because it had eaten a Devil Fruit. They weren't entirely wrong. The cat really had eaten a Devil Fruit."

"But it wasn't the Human-Human Fruit, and it wasn't a language-related fruit either. It was the Arms-Arms Fruit."

"Because of that hunting cat with the Arms-Arms Fruit, many famous old pirates back then fell into that rookie's hands through carelessness. I was still young and hot-blooded at the time, and he almost caught me too."

"The fact that I made it this far today is partly thanks to the lesson he taught me."

Speaking of old experiences in a faintly nostalgic tone, Sol raised his cup and drank several more mouthfuls.

Listening to Sol's story, Corvin immediately pictured a crafty bastard in his mind and could not help glancing at Bailey.

He knew there was technology capable of making weapons eat Zoan-type Devil Fruits, but he had not expected someone to make an animal eat the Arms-Arms Fruit.

Thinking it through, it was not impossible. The problem was that an animal was still an animal.

There were too many drawbacks.

But for a thin-blooded Mink like Bailey, eating a Devil Fruit was no different from a human eating one. And there were more functional Devil Fruits than the Arms-Arms Fruit.

Handled that way, Bailey had the potential to become a lower-end version of a double-ability fighter.

Whether it was worth investing a Devil Fruit in a pet was another matter.

Still, he was a promising asset.

As soon as Corvin thought of that, the way he looked at Bailey changed. He immediately picked up a chicken leg and placed it in front of Bailey.

Bailey went silent.

After listening to Sol, Sunny was also looking at Bailey.

But her thoughts were different from Corvin's.

She still held to her original idea.

"What a waste."

Sunny shook her head.

If it were her, how could she possibly let a pet eat a Devil Fruit?

Devil Fruits were not things you could find anywhere. Meeting even one in a lifetime was already rare enough.

That was the difference in perspective.

In the eyes of ordinary people, Devil Fruits were truly rare treasures.

But Corvin knew very well that in pirate crews like Doflamingo's or the Four Emperors', most officers had one. There were even a small number of people who wasted Devil Fruits casually.

As long as one's strength was great enough, what ordinary people saw as rare would eventually become ordinary goods.

"So selling Bailey would still be better."

Given Sunny's values, she could not possibly waste a Devil Fruit on Bailey. Naturally, her focus remained on exchanging him for money.

"Bailey called you Mom. Selling him wouldn't be right, would it?"

Although they did not have the Arms-Arms Fruit, Corvin had already begun to see Bailey as a promising asset and naturally had no intention of selling him.

The moment he finished speaking, a chicken bone flew at his face, accompanied by Sunny's ice-cold expression.

Bailey suddenly calling her Mom had left her baffled too.

How could she know that Bailey had called her that because she had given him a name?

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