Nanohana.
The famous "City of Perfume" of the Kingdom of Arabasta.
The Straw Hat crew had finally arrived at their destination, and since none of them had bounties in this kingdom, they could walk the streets without worrying about Marines or bounty hunters.
Well, most of them could walk without worry.
Chopper, with his incredibly sensitive reindeer nose, was having the time of his life, and by that, he meant he was in absolute hell.
"Why... why do humans like this perfume stuff?" he gasped, covering his nose with his hooves as they walked through the marketplace.
What smelled pleasant to humans was pure torture for someone with his enhanced senses. To Chopper, it was simply too much of a good thing, the overwhelming floral scents were like being trapped in a torture chamber.
He'd honestly rather be stuck in an outhouse than deal with this.
Meanwhile, Nami and Alvida had zeroed in on a perfume stall like heat-seeking missiles.
"Oh, this one smells amazing! It's jasmine," Nami said, testing a small bottle on her wrist.
"I prefer this rose one. Nice and light, but still has character," Alvida replied, sampling another fragrance.
The merchant's eyes lit up like he'd just spotted a treasure chest. "Excellent taste! This is our top-selling product here in Nanohana. Just one spray lasts all day! And today only, it's 49,999 berries, less than 50,000 to take it home!"
"That's too expensive!" Nami's friendly expression instantly shifted to something that could freeze hell over.
"You have to consider the quality and effect—"
"We're not just two customers," Nami interrupted. "We've got four girls in our group. That's four times the potential sales. Shouldn't you show some appreciation for bulk buyers?"
"Well, in that case, maybe a small discount—"
"Sixty percent off. Look at us, don't we look like walking advertisements for your product? When people ask where we got this incredible scent, we'll send them straight to your shop. Think of the long-term profits."
The poor shopkeeper felt like he was being steamrolled by a very attractive bulldozer. Every argument he tried to make got shot down before he could finish a sentence.
"But I'll lose money at that price—"
"You'll make it back in volume and word-of-mouth advertising. Plus, happy customers always come back."
Ten minutes later, the defeated merchant handed over a large bottle of premium perfume for 10,000 berries, tears streaming down his face.
Alvida watched the entire negotiation and said, "Nami, we're not exactly broke. We could've afforded the full price."
"That's not the point," Nami grinned, pocketing the perfume. "Haggling is half the fun of shopping. Besides, why pay full price when you don't have to?"
Alvida could only give her a thumbs-up in respect. The girl was a master at work.
Over on the guys' side of the market, Luffy had discovered something far more dangerous than perfume, a specialty smoked meat stall.
"I want this one... and this one... actually, you know what? I'll take everything!"
The jerky shop owner looked like he was about to have an aneurysm. "These are Nanohana specialties! This single smoked lizard leg costs several thousand berries! Hey! What the hell are you doing?! You can't just start eating without paying!"
He grabbed a meat cleaver, ready to chase down this punk who was treating his stall like an all-you-can-eat buffet.
That's when Usopp appeared with a wallet, looking resigned to his fate as Luffy's personal treasurer.
The moment money changed hands, the shopkeeper's attitude did a complete 180.
"Eat as much as you like! Everything's fresh! Try the smoked sea king, it's our specialty!"
"Really?! You're awesome!" Luffy beamed, shoving another piece of jerky in his mouth.
"He's just being polite because I'm paying!" Usopp snapped at his captain. "You still have to pay for what you eat!"
"Huh? We have to pay? I thought he was treating us."
The shopkeeper's eye twitched, but seeing the steady stream of berries, he kept his mouth shut.
And so began Luffy's destruction of every food stall in the market, with Usopp trailing behind like a long-suffering parent, paying for the damage.
Meanwhile, Sanji had gone into full flirt mode the moment they'd entered the city.
"Nanohana is paradise!" he declared, hearts floating around his head. "Beautiful ladies in summer dresses everywhere I look!"
"Idiot..." Zoro muttered, taking a swig from a bottle of local spirits he'd somehow acquired.
"What'd you say, moss-head?!"
"Don't forget why we're here, curly-brow. Spices, booze, and clothes for the desert."
Zoro examined his drink more carefully. "Hm, this stuff's got some kick to it."
"You wouldn't understand the finer things in life. No wonder women ignore you," Sanji lit up a cigarette and headed toward a spice merchant's stall.
"We're here. Just wait right there and try not to get—" He turned around. "Huh? Where did he go?"
The cook looked around, but Zoro had completely vanished.
"Forget it. That guy'll find his way back eventually... Oh! Beautiful lady spotted!"
Meanwhile, Zoro stood in the middle of a completely different street, also looking around in confusion.
"That damn cook... did he get lost? What a pain in the ass." He spotted a shop with aromatherapy oils in the window. "Close enough to spices, I guess. Might as well handle this myself."
And with that confident declaration, he walked straight into what was very obviously a massage parlor.
---
Back on the ship, Marcus had volunteered to stay behind and guard their ship. Originally, that job was supposed to go to Zoro, but he had his own reasons for wanting some alone time.
He needed to conduct some experiments without curious crewmates asking questions.
"This ingredient plus this one... mixed with that... still doesn't make any damn sense," he muttered, staring at the items arranged on his brewing stand.
During their journey, he hadn't been idle. He'd made a trip to the Nether, found a fortress, collected some nether wart, and built a proper brewing stand.
He'd even crafted an Eye of Ender out of curiosity.
When he'd tested it, the eye had floated upward as if seeking something... but just like a regular compass in the Grand Line, it started spinning randomly before cracking.
He wasn't surprised by the failure. After all, this wasn't the Minecraft world, this was One Piece. Of course there wouldn't be an End Portal here.
Still, it hadn't been a total loss. Instead of shattering into powder like in the game, the broken Eye of Ender had split into four equal fragments.
And these quarter-pieces had developed an unexpected ability: they could show him visions from the other three fragments. They could even float in midair, though they seemed to have a time limit.
He picked up one of the fragments, noting it had lost about twenty percent of its durability from his previous experiments. All four pieces shared the same durability pool.
If he only used them to check on the others, the power drain wasn't too bad, maybe 24 hours of continuous viewing. When not in use, they stayed dormant. But after ten days, they'd expire completely.
Luckily, he could spend EMC points to restore their durability, so it wasn't a permanent loss.
"Let's see what kind of trouble they're getting into," he said to himself.
Three new vision windows appeared before his eyes, and he immediately froze.
"Why is everything so... bouncy? And white? And why are they all different sizes?!"
Confused, he quickly pulled back from the visions. What the hell were his crewmates doing over there?
Nami's vision showing those kinds of... attributes... made sense, given her natural assets. But why was he seeing the same type of imagery from Sanji's and Luffy's fragments?
"Are they having some kind of party without me? What's going on over there?"
He shook his head to clear the bizarre thoughts and looked again, this time paying attention to the context rather than getting distracted.
Nami's fragment was showing exactly what he'd expect, she was shopping for perfume and clothes with Alvida.
Sanji's fragment revealed the cook doing what he did best: flirting with every attractive woman in sight. The "bouncy" images were just him being surrounded by the local ladies who found his foreign charm amusing.
But Luffy's fragment was the confusing one. Instead of showing Luffy, it was showing Zoro sitting in what looked like a fancy establishment, drinking while several young women in revealing outfits chattered nearby.
"Wait, what? Since when does he have this kind of hobby?" Marcus adjusted the viewing angle to get a better look.
Soon he could see the full picture: women dressed like dancers and hostesses were enthusiastically trying to sell expensive drinks at what appeared to be some kind of upscale bar or club.
He watched for another ten minutes before he finally understood what was happening.
"He got lost again. He probably mistook an aromatherapy shop for a spice and liquor store, and somehow ended up in a hostess bar."
Looking at the increasingly annoyed expressions on the women's faces as Zoro continued to nurse a single drink while completely ignoring their sales pitches, Marcus couldn't help but chuckle.
He withdrew his attention from the Eye of Ender fragments and returned to his brewing stand.
But now he felt conflicted. The brewing mechanics hadn't been nerfed in this world, quite the opposite. They'd been massively buffed to the point where he felt overwhelmed.
The fundamentals of brewing hadn't changed much from the original game mechanics. You still needed nether wart to brew awkward potions, then add gunpowder to turn them into awkward splash potions, the basic framework remained intact.
At first, when he realized this, he'd actually been disappointed. After all, Sanji's enhanced cooking was already producing some incredible buff effects, making traditional potions seem redundant by comparison.
Sanji's current culinary arsenal was pretty impressive. He could create dishes that provided vitality boosts, health regeneration, increased saturation, strength enhancement, and even jump boost and speed effects, all lasting around three hours each. Looking at traditional potion brewing after experiencing that...
Well, without redstone to extend duration, the brewed potions were both short-lived and relatively weak.
Take strength potions, for example. At best, you could get Strength I. Even with glowstone dust for amplification, you'd only reach Strength II, lasting a measly minute and thirty seconds.
Meanwhile, Sanji's cooking was already delivering Strength III effects that lasted for three hours straight. The buff potency spoke for itself.
But then he started experimenting with non-vanilla ingredients, and subtle changes began to appear that caught his attention.
Take turmeric, for instance, something people valued for its invigorating effect when eaten raw. After converting it through his Minecraft abilities and adding it to a Regeneration Potion brewed with ghast tears, he got some interesting results.
The potion became Regeneration IV plus Vitality II, with a duration of two minutes.
And when he added glowstone dust to amplify the effect? The results actually doubled, creating Regeneration VIII and Vitality IV.
But not every herb addition guaranteed positive results, and there seemed to be limits on how many times you could enhance a single brew.
Through extensive trial and error, he had figured out the basic rules:
Each brewing stage could accept one additional herb, but the timing and compatibility mattered. For example, after the nether wart stage, you could add one herb, but it had to be something like a catalyst ingredient that wouldn't conflict with the attributes of the following stage.
To put it simply: if you were brewing a healing potion, you could add something like dried dates during the base stage to boost vitality. Then, when you used glistering melon to create the actual healing potion, the effect would jump directly to Healing IV. At that point, adding turmeric or hawthorn berries, ingredients with complementary properties, would grant special buff effects like Vitality I. After that, adding glowstone dust would double everything.
The result? Healing VIII and Vitality II in a single potion.
But here's where it got tricky, you could still add more herbs even after the glowstone amplification, but the ingredient selection became extremely critical.
One wrong choice could weaken the entire brew, or conversely, create another doubling effect that might push the potion beyond safe parameters.
Basically, post-glowstone enhancement was still possible, but without some serious medical knowledge, continuing the process was nearly impossible to do safely.
Still, there were ways to keep pushing the boundaries. For instance, adding gunpowder to turn it into a splash potion opened up another opportunity to add herbs during that conversion stage.
So theoretically, any vanilla potion effect could accommodate up to four added herbs throughout the brewing process.
If dragon's breath were available, that would probably allow for a fifth enhancement stage. But without access to the End Portal, dragon's breath was completely out of reach.
Even if he could get it, he probably couldn't handle brewing at that level anyway.
He looked at the collection of experimental potions he'd created, focusing on his most extreme creation:
[Strength XIV - Bloodburst III
Effects:
Strength effect increased by 420%, duration 60 seconds. (Each Strength level = +30% base effect)
Secondary Effect: Strength can be doubled, but afterward the body begins massive hemorrhaging.
Duration: 300 seconds.]
In other words, this potion could instantly boost strength by 8.4 times for one minute, but the cost was severe internal bleeding afterward. It sounded brutal, but for someone like Marcus who had access to milk to cleanse negative effects...
Sixty seconds of 8.4x strength boost was incredibly powerful, even with the deadly aftermath.
This was his greatest brewing achievement so far, though it came with serious drawbacks.
The main problem? It was a splash potion by necessity. One careless throw and he could accidentally dose his teammates with a death sentence. Of course, it could also be thrown directly at enemies, assuming they survived the initial sixty-second power surge, they'd still bleed out and die from the aftereffects.
It was a potion with very clear pros and cons, designed for desperate situations.
Why didn't he just let Chopper handle the brewing? Simple, Chopper couldn't operate the brewing stand properly. The reindeer could manage basic tasks like placing water bottles, but the delicate process of adding herbs and timing the combinations was beyond his hooves' capabilities.
So Chopper was limited to providing medical knowledge and preparing base ingredients, while Marcus handled the Minecraft-ification process and actual brewing.
He pulled out his notebook and flipped through pages of dense experimental data, recording combinations and their effects. Finally, he turned to his most recent experiment and wrote:
[Latest Combination Results:
Primary Effect: Swiftness IV
Secondary Effect: Virility II
Duration: 300 seconds.]
"What the hell is with all these virility effects?" he muttered as he noted the formula and closed the notebook.
He stared at the potion in frustration. "Hawthorn berries work fine in other recipes, they usually increase duration or potency. But here they all turn into some kind of aphrodisiac effect. Is there some weird chemical reaction between sugar and hawthorn berries that I'm missing?"
To be honest, Marcus and Chopper had spent the most time developing speed-enhancement potions. The reason was simple: He desperately wanted to achieve a Haste effect for mining operations.
No matter how they experimented, though, they kept ending up with virility boosts or other weird side effects instead of the mining speed enhancement he was after.
He wanted the Haste effect for a very specific reason, he was planning a massive overhaul of the Nether dimension. But the scale of excavation he needed would be enormous.
He'd done the research. The spawn patterns were similar to the game, but the number of monsters would be in the millions. Even though the spawn mechanics resembled the original game, the sheer quantity effectively expanded the danger zone.
By his calculations, he'd need to excavate a clear zone roughly fifty kilometers by fifty kilometers, about 5.95 million basketball courts, roughly three times the size of New York City proper. Even with Vein Mining, that was a massive undertaking.
That's why he wanted the Haste effect. At his current mining speed, going full power meant each pickaxe strike needed to be instantaneous, the moment his tool touched Nether rock, it had to vanish completely.
"Maybe I really will have to do this the slow way," he sighed.
"Whatever. I'll keep experimenting for now."
He resumed his brewing experiments, but before he could make much progress, he heard voices approaching the ship.
Nami's group was the first to return, loaded down with packages and bundles.
"Whoa, didn't you leave the clothing shopping to Sanji? Why'd you buy so much stuff?" Marcus asked, looking at the heap of purchases piled on Chopper's back.
Nami beamed triumphantly. "I got all these clothes at ten percent of the original price. Why not buy more? The islands ahead might have even more extreme weather, we need backup outfits to handle whatever comes our way."
Marcus nodded. Clothing was definitely an issue; he'd been rotating through the same five outfits since they'd started their journey. But when he opened the parcels to see what was inside, he was left speechless.
"So... these are all girls' clothes?"
"Don't worry, we got stuff for you guys too," Chopper said helpfully, handing him a small bundle. "This package is yours."
Marcus examined his haul: one summer outfit, one autumn outfit, and two winter outfits. Four sets total.
Then he looked at the girls' packages, each easily twice the size of his own. He gulped. Well, as long as there was enough to go around...
"The other packages are for Luffy and the rest of the crew. Just set them aside, we'll distribute everything when they get back," Nami said.
Marcus silently carried the men's clothing packages to the crew quarters, placing each bundle on its owner's bed.