Yami Yami No Mi is the Ancestor Fruit of all Devil Fruits in existence

I read another theory about Blackbeard’s Devil Fruit’s abilities and how constantly being exposed to sunlight weakens his Devil Fruit’s abilities (hence why he takes more damage and people can still make physical contact with him). On the other hand, his Devil Fruit’s true abilities come through in the pitch dark.

I think this may actually be the case, but I’m not sure there’s anything else in the manga that backs this up beyond what’s already been said about it. Assuming it is true however…

Then I don’t think we’ve seen the full power of the Darkness fruit. During Blackbeard’s fight with Ace, we see explicitly that when Blackbeard touches a devil fruit user, he can cancel out their abilities for a short period of time. Why? Unfortunately this was not canonically explained yet.

My theory is that he’s literally absorbing their devil fruit’s powers or spirits or whatever being the devil that’s inhabiting the devil fruit is (the manga explains the devil fruit powers coming from a devil but at the same time this is also only a myth surrounding the Devil Fruits). This could explain why he can cancel out a Devil Fruit user’s abilities when he makes physical contact with him. The darkness fruit is described as the power of darkness, of the void, something which can suck back in and spit out anything it brought in. Like the void, what if the darkness fruit is actually quite literally sucking in the spirits of the Devil Fruits? Then the reason why Devil Fruit users have their abilities canceled out is because they’re in the process of being absorbed by the darkness from the darkness fruit and are thus not completely inhabiting the Devil Fruit user’s body. In a way, the Devil Fruit is temporarily not completely integrated into the Devil Fruit user’s body when Blackbeard is literally sucking in the spirit behind the Devil Fruit’s ability. If Blackbeard fails to completely absorb the fruit’s spirit then the entire absorption process fails and nothing happens, the fruit’s spirit simply snaps back instantly into the other user’s body (like a rubber band when it’s stretched). Nothing happens.

This ties together with what Blackbeard did during the events of Marineford. Recall that he had his crew cape over the space between Blackbeard and Whitebeard and everyone outside was told to give them a bit of time before the big reveal happened. During that time, when Blackbeard was surrounded in pitch dark, his powers of darkness was amplified exponentially. I think all Blackbeard did was literally just placed his hand on Whitebeard and absorbed the devil fruit’s spirit as it was trying to escape to a nearby fruit. Or he simply touched the fruit once the spirit transferred into another fruit. And he needed enough time for him to be in contact physical contact with where the fruit’s spirit was residing in order to completely absorb the fruit and have it integrate into his own body too. My theory of absorption still holds regardless of whether he was absorbing through Whitebeard or through a fruit, it would still be the same mechanic.

The reason for why Blackbeard needed to be in the pitch dark is because he does not have complete, full control over his devil fruit so rather than skillfully make use of the darkness fruit’s absorption abilities, he had to amplify its innate powers and brute force absorb another devil fruit’s spirit instead.

So WHY is this possible for the darkness fruit? I think there may be a thematic statement being made about the darkness fruit. Darkness (i.e the void) is chaos, it is complete and total entropy. All creations, all abilities are born from the dark, from the chaos and then given existence, and all beings and creations return to chaos, the nothingness, once its lifetime has completed. Thematically, this would explain Blackbeard’s abilities to absorb and contain within himself multiple devil fruits. This would also explain why Blackbeard was able to absorb the entire town where he and Ace were fighting in and spit it out completely destroyed — the town was experiencing entropy very, very rapidly while it was stuck in the void itself.

In biological evolution (and this is going to be a gross oversimplification of the vast world of evolution obviously), everything has some predecessor as its genetic origin. Now in the real world, what original being that is, no one really knows. What does this have to do with my theory?

The Darkness Fruit is the Ancestor Fruit of all Devil Fruits in existence.

The darkness fruit controls nothingness and from nothingness — the void — comes all creations and beings (the other devil fruits). Hence, the darkness fruit was capable of serving as a base fruit for all other devil fruits to come into existence from. Life, matter, ideas, phenomena are all born from nothingness, from chaos. Hence, the devil fruits in all of their wild manifestations are all created from a void, a nothingness (much like ideas come from our imagination). And like evolution, the next group of beings are all distinctly unique from its ancestor, even if it may have traces of its origins found within it. And I think this may be another part of why Blackbeard can absorb multiple devil fruits — simply, the darkness fruit is sucking back in its creations.

It is undoing the unique existence of the devil fruits it’s absorbing and reintegrating it back into nothingness — in other words, the darkness fruit has the ability to completely destroy the fruit and erase it from existence or to retain its existence by summoning it back forth once it is absorbed. The darkness fruit is capable of this because of its ancestral ties with all existing devil fruits. Whether this represents life moving to nothingness via death or life moving backwards via conception is up to interpretation, but in either case it is a return to nothingness.

And like mentioned earlier, since the darkness fruit controls the void itself, it is capable of both absorbing devil fruits and using it for the current user of the darkness fruit or it can completely and totally obliterate a devil fruit’s ability out of existence entirely.

The darkness fruit is fearsome. If the general strokes of my theory is true, then in my opinion, the darkness fruit is definitely the uncontested most powerful fruit out of all devil fruits. This could mean that, according to this theory, Blackbeard has the capacity to very easily be the single last devil fruit user left in the world.

And this ties with Blackbeard’s dreams of becoming Pirate King. If Luffy’s notion of being Pirate King is Oda’s way of canonically telling us readers what that title really entails, then the darkness fruit is the perfect fruit for Blackbeard to become Pirate King. With the darkness fruit, Blackbeard has the capacity to literally do anything he wants because he would have the strength to destroy all other devil fruits and be the only one capable of wielding immense, unstoppable strength. The entire world would quite literally be his if he wished for it — every country, nation, life, would be at his mercy so long as he holds the darkness fruit. He could do what he wants, eat what he wants, go where he wants. No one would be able to stop him.

*Theory by RUbusinessdropout