The little guy who was like a happy wisp a few seconds before, changed his tone and expression after a look in the crack of my palm. His words could not be defined as furtive, far from it, there was a sense of fear.

I was asking a lot of questions about this fruit and it seemed I finally had my answer.

"Do you care to explain your words?" I interrogated the fire spirit.

“That thing you’re holding has nothing to do with the spiritual world. In fact, even with my spiritual wisdom, it’s impossible for me to peer into its nature and composition...”

“Then what makes you so anxious?” I could not figure out the reason for his worries.

“That’s exactly why I’m anxious. Do you even understand what spiritual wisdom is about? Any lifeform or object obeys a certain set of rules; rules which allow for them to be classified into different groups, according to their spiritual imprints, degree of energy, type of aura, etc…” He took a pause to see if I was following his train of thought.

“I see, so what are you trying to say?” I wasn’t patient enough to listen to the rest of his exposé.

“This thing you’re holding does not have any spiritual imprint. It’s basically a spiritual outlaw.” Firey finally came to the point.

“.....” I remained silent trying to grasp all these concepts in one-go. I was not familiar with the world of spirits.

Spirit of Fire looked at me curiously, it took him a while to figure out that I was not versed on the subject. He asked Hao why I was being so quiet, whom explained after making fun of him as usual. Far from getting exasperated and balking at the task, the fire wisp went into a detailed spiritual tutorial, which lasted for about 40 minutes.

He answered most of my questions, and enlightened me not only on the concepts he had mentioned before, but also on others that I thought were good to know. As an occultist it was important for me to have a conceptual understanding of the spiritual world.

As it turned out, every existing creature or object, possessed an imprint referred as “Spiritual imprint”. This peculiar imprint made possible for people such as Hao and I, occultists, to be able to track down an object’s birth process, ancestry, spiritual memory, and abilities, etc.

Without this particular imprint, it was impossible to control and establish a link, with the specific object or creature on a spiritual plane. Even if the specific object or creature has its own soul, it would be impossible for one to track it down and communicate with it. In other words, this was why these peculiar individuals, were called outlaws, and not because they were lawless.

According to the two of them, this devil fruit could not be studied by us. Eating it was fine, but messing around with it and trying to experiment on it was too dangerous right now. Hao said that altering and unlocking spiritual imprints was possible, but it went through as specific technique called “Awakening”,that was specific to this world and its energy. I couldn’t help but remember the “Awakening” box I previously witnessed on Lewis when he was the still the devil fruit holder…

The system did not deem the information I received as falsified or fake. When I asked him if the method he had in store was the same, he only said to work on my spiritual Haki. Eventually I would figure out the truth…

I was a little disappointed not to have been able to solve this mystery immediately, but the future held for us a lot more surprises than I had envisaged at that time. I put the fruit in my pockets and turned back to the cabin with Hao and Firey. It was high time for us to go to bed; the days before us were going to be terribly agitated.

**************************************

Meanwhile, Lena had finally returned to the fold. Unlike the first trip she did not go to the cave, but she took a path to a huge boat floating a Jolly Roger shaped wooden sword. The boat looked much like a miniature city with all kinds of utilities. A bar, small trees and an artificial fountain were even installed on the little but rocky main square that linked to the main cabins.

Lena had a picturesque appearance; she had blood dripping from her mouth and her dress was torn badly in some places. She limped a little and caught the attention of the crew members. Some of them wanted to rush to alert their captain, but they were convinced otherwise with very little persuasion. The woman was a calamity after all and no one wanted to tell the captain that his wife had just returned to shreds, unless one wished to be gutted.

“I have a few hours to go over my story before the big bad wolves come back from their hunting session…” Lena collapsed on her bed as she murmured this. She thought back on the kid’s actions and smiled.

“I need to make this work at all costs. This little demon is far too precious for me to shrink back on the plan now. Let’s hope I did not misjudge Brent’s character.” She said resolutely.