The roots constricted Mad Ox fully whose eyes started to bulge, every bone in his body crumbled to pieces, and his orifices began to bleed.

Mad Ox keeps groaning in pain and gasping for breath as Pate leans his ear towards him and nods like he understands his appeal "What? I know, the devil fruit is kinda wasted on you. you haven't even touched the edge of my clothes!"

Pate looked down at the now wretched face of suffocating Mad Ox, teasing the mad pirate "To all of the pirates here, the negative thoughts around you are so thick that it stinks, making me want to puke. So I'll make you suffer for much longer, please keep struggling!"

Swish!~

Devil Monk jumped forward as he used the roots attacking him to propel himself towards the half-materialized Pate in a trunk of a tree that constricting Mad Ox to death and swung his staff with all his weight "Hundred Times Blasting Weight!"

Successfully hitting Pate, Devil Monk wanted to follow up with a series of attack patterns but to his expectations of sending him to fly like earlier, just shattered splinters of wood spread in the impact of his attack "Is it Logia!?"

As Devil Monk was in the air thinking about how he could deal with the kid, a few roots rose in the ground around his position and attacked him.

He blocked some of them but he was whipped hard in his back and smashed to the ground, coughing with blood he used his staff to support himself up and looked at one of the roots that slowly morphed into a figure of the kid "Hey, we were having an intimate time and you are interfering too much!"

"Kid, what is your motive?" Devil Monk knows that he will die today because the kid in front of him is too unpredictable, changing up to three fighting methods and it becomes much stronger than the other one.

Pate looked at the monk who struck his face with his blunt staff two times, he couldn't help but smile "Nothing, I just want to at least lessen the chaos that will ensue in the upcoming days."

"You cannot stop the chaos, kid. You are too naive even if you are much stronger than us it would not mean a thing." Devil Monk smiled with blood seeping out of his mouth that made it gruesomely, he threw the staff on the ground and stretched his arms wide.

"Is that so?" Pate asked while dozens of vines grew on the ground of Devil Monk and coiled at his feet until it reached his legs.

"In this surging era, pirates will claim this world as they will kill, pillage, sail, fight and create havoc to compete for the possession of One Piece! the hegemony will continue and you, a naive kid - could only look at it feeling helpless!" Devil Monk shouted with smiles, letting the root vines wrap him wholly and only left his whole face, peeking at Pate who looked at him calmly.

"It's decided then, I'll let you see what the future will become as I'll sail through the surging era you are talking about." this is the only questionable line that creeps into the mind of Devil Monk as he loses his consciousness.

Pate walked in front of Devil Monk and on his hand, an ethereal aura of divine will emit "Snatching Will!" with two fingers that pointed out, he connects it to the forehead of Devil Monk as he grasps the lingering will inside of it and pulls it out.

Successfully getting what he wanted and storing it with his Will's Storage Runes after that he looked at the Red Devil Marga who ultimately succumbed to the few root vines after she was left with her own and suffered the same fate of dying slowly as the roots constrict her to mush.

"Now, why aren't you leaving? you have watched the whole ordeal, still not satisfied?" Pate said while a glittering speck of lights lingered around him as the strange runes in his forehead receded, and the few leaves that grew in the side of his ears fell out of the ground.

"Huh? W-what do you mean?" Raffa was confused because he thought that he would definitely be the next one to die but it sounded like this kid was shooing him away.

"What do you think I mean? Go, I'm not a psychopath who would slaughter a mass of people without reason." Pate ignored the man and walked out of the area, PB landed on his shoulder "I'm quite intrigued by the last mode you used earlier, it's quite overpowering."

Raffa saw the tree that squeezed Mad Ox to death bear a strange fruit, unique to the so-called devil fruits. He knows about their appearances because he ate one and gain a unique power that become a lifesaving grace towards his journey "H-hey the tree produced the devil fruit of Mad Ox!"

"Well, that is my whole understanding about the Rules of Forest and I establish it as a foundation to become one with it. It's not as powerful as it seems, many areas needed to be patched up and need to be tended, completing this grand mode of modifications would take a lot of time." Pate uses his power to communicate using his will to explain it to PB, ignoring Raffa and his man who followed behind him.

"Ahhh, but to be able to have the means to be immortal is kinda amazing." PB said while he remembered the hair-raising scene when Pate was hacked into dozens of pieces but it turns out all of it was nothing as Pate became a tree himself and wrapped the massive hybrid Max Ox.

"Nah, the damage that was taken by that time was shifted to another tree somewhere in this forest. So if they want to kill me then they have to destroy the whole forest first." Pate laid this kind of pattern like transferring the damage taken of Basil Hawkins, one of the worst generations.

"A-are you not going to take the Devil Fruit?" Raffa shouted behind Pate.