After finding the legendary gourt paradise, Karl finally had a chance to satisfy his bottomless stomach.
He dove into the ran waterfall as if swimming and started gorging himself.
Slurping noodles, he grabbed the giant eggs and drumsticks beside the ran falls with both hands and kept stuffing them into his mouth.
Considerately, though food was everywhere, none of it was cold or scalding; everything was at peak deliciousness.
Both temperature and flavor were optimal.
In the original story, Usopp ate here for just a few days and puffed up like a ball.
But Karl’s constitution was unlike ordinary people’s; even as he ate many tis a normal person’s portion and swallowed noodles that could fill a room, his body didn’t balloon like others’.
Because his stomach was like a black hole: whatever he ate was imdiately converted into power and delivered to the trillions of cells in his body, making them burst with vitality and strengthening every part inside and out.
His skin looked springy to the touch yet was increasingly impervious to blades and bullets.
Every move Karl made mobilized the oceanic power within him; if he unleashed it, even a small mountain would shatter in an instant.
For most of the next half month, Karl ate and drank madly day and night.
If you quantified his body, you’d find the experience bar that had inched halfway over the years now accelerating rapidly toward its end.
At last, on the final day of Sea Circle Calendar 1516—
"Phew..."
A place once carpeted with delicacies had beco a barren stretch.
From the bottom of a spring drained of its drinks, a shirtless figure climbed up.
Golden hair matted with multicolored sauces, sharp features and a solid fra slick with juice and sweat...
But now his skin glowed with a redness like Luffy’s Second Gear, radiating terrifying heat that turned the juice and sweat on him to steam.
He exhaled a white plu. Karl’s erald eyes shone with a tinge of red as he rumbled, "So this is what being overstuffed feels like? The last ti I felt this was when I was nine."
"So I’ve finally hit the limit?"
Boom!
A long-lost fatigue surged up; Karl fell back, dropped into the drink spring again, and drifted into deep sleep.
Ti ticked by.
The foods Karl had devoured slowly grew back.
When the drinks refilled the crater and floated Karl to the surface, he finally opened his eyes.
It was a new year, the first pre-dawn of a new day.
Stars pricked the sky. Silvery moonlight spread over those infant-like foods.
"Has the evolution finished?"
He swam ashore and felt the changes in his body.
Crack—boom!
Without any visible motion, he suddenly vanished from where he stood.
The ground where he’d been standing sank in a ring. A terrible pressure wave drilled fractures into the earth, then streaked straight for hundreds of ters, upending everything along its path.
In the end the shockwave beca a gale, whipping Karl’s hair from behind.
Look closely and you’d see a trench more than twenty centiters deep behind him.
That trench was carved by the shockwave.
And the wave was the product of extre speed.
re bodily acceleration had produced a shock capable of tearing the ground.
It showed how far Karl’s speed had climbed.
"No sense of resistance at all. This feeling... it’s incredible!"
A casual sprint did this, yet his body felt no drag. Karl couldn’t be more satisfied with his second-evolved physique.
Then he wondered aloud, "So, what’s my second trait?"
With every evolution, his body gained a trait.
These traits were akin to Devil Fruit abilities.
From his first evolution, Karl gained the impervious iron-body trait.
Ordinary blades and bullets couldn’t pierce him.
Even powerful swordsn who hadn’t reached steel-cutting couldn’t harm him.
That trait made Karl invincible in the East Blue; before him, everyone was as fragile as clay and straw.
Now, with a second evolution, he was curious about the new trait.
His cheat was system-like, but it didn’t quantify his body.
So beyond realizing his stats had grown inhumanly stronger, he found nothing else yet.
"Looks like I’ll have to dig out the second trait."
He didn’t mind, shelving it for now.
Then Karl summoned the virtual panel he hadn’t opened in five years.
Only he could see it—a screen like the egg-smashing interface from so ga.
Unlike after the second smash, when all three eggs had gone dull and unusable.
Now three new eggs glead gold, with a virtual hamr beside them.
"First ti was the infinite-evolution physique, second ti that spear. Here’s hoping this ti is good too."
Expectation lit his face as he tapped the second golden egg.
The hamr floated up and smashed down on the second egg.
Crack—whoosh!
A tangible shattering rang out from the panel.
A rippling crack spread across the shell.
Dazzling gold flared from the fissure, flooding Karl’s sight.
When it faded, a card appeared before him, then turned to light and sank into his body.
Strange bits of information floated up in his mind.
After digesting them, an odd look crossed his face.
The third smash had yielded... a living thing!
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