"Gyahahahaha! Where do you think you're going, Hungry Ghost?"
"Damn it! He caught up so fast!"
A haggard figure darted through the shadowy alleyways, desperately trying to escape. But no matter which narrow passage he ducked into, that accursed man always found him immediately.
"Hyena, let me go! I have a lot of treasure hidden away. I'll give it all to you!" After fleeing for what felt like an eternity, Hungry Ghost finally realized escape was impossible.
In his despair, he found himself cornered in a dead end.
"Treasure? Treasure isn't worth as much as your head." Bellamy wasn't about to let a 5 million bounty get away. Even if he had to chase him for three days and three nights, he'd take Hungry Ghost's head.
"You bastard! I'll fight you to the death!"
Bang! Bang! Bang!
In the Four Blues, this rookie's paradise, where nobody knew Haki or the Rokushiki, the power of firearms was amplified to the extreme. Especially cannons.
Even Bellamy wouldn't dare take a cannon blast head-on, but he wouldn't give a mere flintlock pistol a second thought.
With a light tap of his toes, Bellamy vanished into thin air.
Hungry Ghost frantically drew the cutlass at his waist, swinging it wildly in a mad frenzy. He couldn't keep up with Bellamy's speed at all, relying on sheer luck to even attempt a fight.
This fighting style left him riddled with openings.
Within three breaths, Bellamy had found the perfect opportunity. As Hungry Ghost swung his blade with all his might, leaving himself unable to recover in time, Bellamy's arm rapidly transformed into a spring.
The next instant, the spring, compressed to its limit, exploded.
A Spring Snipe, like a cannonball, slammed into the center of Hungry Ghost's chest without holding back. The moment fist met chest, Hungry Ghost's body was sent flying as if struck by a cannon.
Thud!
A loud crash echoed as blood and gore splattered across the already filthy wall. Hungry Ghost's body had been blown apart by Bellamy's single punch.
The man's fragility was somewhat beyond Bellamy's expectations. This was a pirate with a 5 million bounty, so he'd deliberately used his full strength. That punch had held nothing back; it was the strongest he could deliver at his current level. It was just that his opponent seemed a little too weak, completely unable to test his true power.
"Still, this fight wasn't perfect."
Bellamy had actually been injured. In the chaos, Hungry Ghost, in his panic, hadn't been paying close attention. Of his three shots, one had actually hit, and Hungry Ghost's gun was far more powerful than Black Bull's.
Bellamy took off his shirt and dug a bullet out of his chest. The shot had hit, but the injury wasn't serious. The bullet was lodged in his muscle, not having damaged anything else.
But this injury gave Bellamy something to think about. What was the difference between the Spring-Spring Fruit, the Gum-Gum Fruit, the Boing-Boing Fruit, and the Paw-Paw Fruit?
The Gum-Gum Fruit was immune to bullets, the Boing-Boing Fruit seemingly never appeared. As for the Paw-Paw Fruit, Bellamy guessed that its power was proportional to the user's physical strength. The stronger your martial arts, the stronger the Paw-Paw Fruit's abilities.
So, compared to these similar Devil Fruits, what were the advantages and disadvantages of his Spring-Spring Fruit? Bellamy felt that understanding these strengths and weaknesses would greatly help him in further developing his Devil Fruit powers.
The Gum-Gum Fruit was resistant to blunt force but vulnerable to sharp objects; that was the nature of rubber. The Paw-Paw Fruit was hard to judge because Kuma was simply too strong; if someone else had it, things might be completely different. As for the Boing-Boing Fruit, it should be the superior version in the field of elasticity, but he'd never heard of that fruit before.
After pondering for a long time, Bellamy suddenly picked up the flintlock pistol from the ground and fired it point-blank at his own arm.
Bang!
At such close range, the bullet pierced directly into his arm. He could even feel his arm bone crack. But at the instant the bullet struck his bone, he felt it.
The characteristic of the Spring-Spring Fruit, the essence of being a Spring-Man, he'd found it!
Absolute Force Absorption!
After becoming a Spring-Man, conceptually, Bellamy was a human-shaped spring. Regardless of the form, he possessed all the properties of a spring. Including the fact that when subjected to external pressure, a spring would deform according to the magnitude of the pressure.
The instant the bullet hit his body, without him needing to react, his body automatically began to contract. Then, another characteristic of the spring came into play: Absolute Force Absorption.
The most primitive spring was, in fact, a bow. When a bow is drawn, it absorbs a large amount of force. The moment the string is released, this accumulated force explodes outwards. That is to say, if you can't break the bow, then no matter how much force you use, the bow will only deform. And the more it deforms, the stronger the explosive force when released.
Based on this characteristic, Bellamy had discovered the Spring-Spring Fruit's second ability. He called it: Absolute Force Absorption.
The process of a spring deforming is actually the material itself continuously absorbing external force. As a Spring-Man, he naturally possessed this trait. No matter what attack struck him, his body would immediately react instinctively, initiating elastic deformation.
During this deformation, the external force would be continuously absorbed by his body until it completely disappeared. And this absorbed force would be stored entirely within his flesh. Furthermore, he had complete control over this stored power.
This meant that if he couldn't be instantly blown apart, he would only become stronger with each battle.
That was the spring. The harder you pressed, the stronger it rebounded. It met strength with greater strength.