Kapitel 41: The Palace

When the group finally arrived at the palace, they began to get busy eating and enjoying themselves.

Luffy could be seen sitting on the table while his arms were flying left and right trying to eat all the food available.

Mark could be seen enjoying a glass of red wine with Hancock sitting in front of him.

"So Luffy, why are you here?" Mark asked as he drank the wine. Of course, he knew why he was here but looking at Luffy eating made Mark lose his appetite. But he still decided to ask him questions which he shouldn't have done.

"A gigantct man whit setn mee here and alsoo sepratee mee from myy frieends," Luffy said with his mouth full of food.

Mark couldn't really understand him and he didn't really care but he was still disgusted with his way of eating the food, so he called forth his darkness power and devoured the available food using his darkness-darkness powers.

"Hey!!" Luffy yelled as he jumped up from his seat, ready to pounce on Mark.

"What? You wanna fight again?" Mark said with a smirk on his face.

"Bring some more food!" Hancock yelled towards the tribe members who served the food.

"Oh, I forgot to mention that I can help you remove that mark if you want," Mark said as he sipped on his wine. Mark obviously knew that his power had the ability to devour anything, that was the power of the darkness-darkness fruit. The most unique and frightening advantage of the fruit is that the user had the ability to nullify the powers of other Devil Fruits by simply touching the user and draining them of their abilities.

The tricky thing about this unique logia devil fruit was that it didn't actually have the ability to turn into a solid element, let's take Kizaru as an example, his devil fruit is also a logia and when someone shoots at him the bullet goes straight through him as he is a light-light man, but with the darkness-darkness fruit this isn't the case even though its classified as a logia, the user of the darkness-darkness fruit has to actively use his powers to suck/devour the bullet that's coming straight for him, so in other words the bullet won't just go through him but instead actually hit his physical body if he doesn't defend himself.

"What!!?" Hancock screamed out in surprise as she jumped up from her seat with a face full of disbelief. Of course, she should be surprised this wasn't just some random slave mark, this was the mark of the Celestial Dragons we are talking about. It is a known fact that the mark is unremovable even if you burn your skin, it would still come back.

"Well, yeah I kind of have the powers to do it," Mark said bored. What's up with this bouquet anyways, Mark thought there would be belly dancing or some extravagant entertainment, but there were none of that, only Luffy's face full of food.

Hancock tried to calm herself down but she couldn't, this secret had made her feel inferior for many years.

"Can you really remove it?" Hancock asked in a quiet and nervous voice.

"Yup, we can start whenever you're ready," Mark said as he looked at Hancock with a smile.

Hancock got his signal or at least she thought she did so she immediately took off her clothes in front of him.

"Cough cough.." Mark almost choked on his wine when he saw her actions.

Luffy looked over confused. Why was she taking off her clothes? he thought without an ounce of lust.

But Mark on the other hand almost turned into a stone, who are you kidding. Of course, he was attracted to Hancock, she was so beautiful that it was ridiculous. And she literally started to take off her clothes right in front of him, this totally shocked him.

"I'm ready," Hancock said as she stood completely naked in front of Mark.

"Cough cough, turn around then," Mark said as he walked over to Hancock and placed his hand on her back. The sentence sounded a bit weird to Mark but he still continued his actions.

"Well the woman isn't shy so why the hell would I be," Mark thought silently.

"Devour." He said slowly as the mark on Hancock's back started to fade away.

A couple of seconds later Mark took his hand away from Hancock and sat down on his chair again.

Hancock ran over to the mirror and looked at herself. The mark had completely vanished and this in return made Hancock so happy that she ran over to Mark and jumped into his embrace while crying her heart out.

Luffy could still be seen chewing on a fat meatloaf while looking at the situation in front of him in confusion and disregard.

Mark was surprised at Hancock's actions but he didn't really do or said anything as he just sat there while Hancock was crying a river.

After what seemed like an eternity Hancock finally got off from Mark's embrace and began to slowly put her clothes back on.

"So what's the plan now?" Asked Mark while he looked towards Hancock.

"We get married!" Hancock said as she looked back at him seriously.

"Cough cough... I was talking about the situation with Luffy." Mark almost choked on his own saliva, this is the second time today he almost got killed by choking to death.

"I need a ship to Impel down," Luffy said as he kept on eating.

"Well you can help him with that I guess," Mark said as he got off from his chair and walked hurriedly out of the palace and headed towards the south of the island.

Luffy still had a face full of confusion, but when he heard Mark mention that Hancock could help him, he immediately pestered her until she gave in. She wanted to run after Mark but Luffy didn't give her a chance at all.