"Right now, every day I temper my body with blazing flames, like smelting steel, refining myself until my body can endure more and more. Over and over, I'm reborn with tougher, denser skin and muscle."
"These days, I can feel it… I'm not at the end yet. The day the scorching fire can keep burning me and it feels as easy as breathing… that's when the Fire-Tempering Method will truly be complete."
"I don't know if, by then, I can surpass a Supreme Grade Blade. If I still can't… then I'll have to find another way to keep hammering my body into something even stronger."
"If I want to train my body beyond even a Supreme Grade Blade, I can't relax for a single day."
Tengetsu Ares had never slackened when it came to forging his physique. If anything, he poured most of his time into it.
But after his battle with Rocks, he realized something blunt and unforgiving.
His body still wasn't close to truly invincible.
And in the short term, there was no way his physique could leap forward enough to completely ignore the Yami Yami no Mi.
Three feet of ice never forms overnight. Water doesn't drill through stone in a single day.
"I need stronger, more varied ways to fight." Ares knew that if he wanted to defeat Rocks, he had to improve in every direction.
Truthfully, he did have plenty of combat methods.
With that "cheat" assisting him, he'd learned techniques from countless monsters.
Whitebeard. Shiki. Rayleigh. Zephyr. Garp. Sladar. Chinjao…
Almost everyone he crossed fists with, he stole something from.
But…
He still hadn't reached true mastery. More often than not, he relied on the sheer dominance of his physique using raw physical advantage to make every strike terrifying.
"Maybe I should fuse the strengths and characteristics of all these techniques… then combine them with my own specialties, and turn it into something that truly belongs to me."
"Only what suits me is the best."
He felt like he was grasping at something, but he couldn't quite put it into a neat explanation.
What Ares didn't know was that he'd stumbled onto a truth countless "learned men" on another world had already summarized:
Borrow the stones of other mountains to polish your own jade. Take the strengths of a hundred schools to fortify yourself.
But he wasn't a scholar.
So in plain terms, all it meant was
I need something that's mine.
"Besides that, I need to spend time developing my Devil Fruit ability. The Mythical Zoan: Azure Dragon form has insane potential, and I still haven't brought out everything the Azure Dragon fruit can do."
He'd noticed it for a while.
He'd had the fruit for over two years, yet most of his daily focus was still body training. He simply hadn't invested enough effort into developing the Azure Dragon fruit.
Now he'd decided he would.
"And then there's the three types of Haki too… Why does it feel like I have a mountain of things to train?" Ares laughed at himself. Looking at it like this, he realized there really was a lot he still needed to learn.
"I need to plan it properly. For example, when I temper my body, I can temper my Armament Haki at the same time… and even think about Devil Fruit development while I'm doing it."
"When I'm training combat techniques, I can also train Observation and Armament."
"I need to combine it all and waste not a single second."
Ares felt that training like this would maximize his efficiency.
If he could keep executing this plan…
He believed he only needed a year for his strength to undergo a massive leap.
He opened his eyes, switched off the lamp, and lay back on the bed.
Then another thought surfaced, and he murmured softly, "Right… that extra memory that appeared in my head before. It might help me a lot too."
"I don't know where it came from… but every time a new memory appears, I feel like my spirit becomes fuller, stronger."
"And that memory… it didn't feel complete. It was only a small piece of something much larger. If I could know the whole thing…"
With questions swirling in his mind, he sank into sleep.
Over the next few days, Ares carried out his training plan. Every day was packed to the brim.
Even though his division captain position had been revoked, no pirate with a functioning survival instinct would dare order the infamous Tengetsu Ares to do the petty errands rookies handled in the Rocks Pirates.
This time, Ares trained with unprecedented seriousness.
Once, in a drunken state, he'd trained Armament Haki backwards, forging a unique power of his own: Blood-Red Armament Haki.
Now, he started over from the beginning cultivating the proper Armament Haki.
True Armament Haki had multiple applications: hardening, emission, and coating.
Ares mastered all three quickly.
It barely took any time at all.
First, his baseline strength was already absurd. His control over his own energy and Haki far exceeded that of ordinary pirates.
Second, he had that "cheat," letting him absorb techniques from the countless enemies he'd fought before.
After fully mastering true Armament Haki, Ares understood Haki more deeply. And he gained new insight into Conqueror's coating as well Armament coating and Conqueror's coating shared similarities.
The difference was simply the source of the energy.
Ares sank into training.
…
On the island, inside a blacksmith's shop.
"Strange… Ares hasn't come these past few days," Shimotsuki Koshiro muttered, sitting on a stump and smoking his long pipe. "Before, he came every single day to learn weapon-forging techniques and what I've learned over the years."
"Maybe the chaos on the island a few days ago kept him busy."
Koshiro made a guess, then frowned slightly. "More and more pirates are gathering here. It looks like something big is about to happen. I left Wano to see the sights of the sea…"
"I've stayed on Hachinosu long enough. It's time to go."
The thought of leaving Hachinosu rose in his heart. He could sense a storm approaching, and he had no interest in being swept into it.
"Haa…" Koshiro exhaled a thick cloud of smoke. He tapped the pipe against the stone block, knocking off the ash.
Then he stood, went back to his room, and packed his things.
"I should say goodbye to Ares."
He'd spent a fair amount of time with Ares. During that period, Ares asked questions humbly, almost intoxicated by the craft of forging. Seeing him like that made Koshiro think of a certain daimyō from the past.
And Ares had treated him with genuine respect and care.
No matter what, before leaving, he should bid him farewell.
When Koshiro finally found Ares, Ares was still immersed in training his Armament Haki.
But unlike anyone else
He was using Armament Haki to punch his own body, again and again.
Boom
Boom
The dull impacts sounded like muffled thunder, nonstop.
Seeing that, Koshiro stared, slack-jawed, and blurted out, "So this is how he tempers his body?!"
He knew Ares' dream was to forge his body into something beyond even a Supreme Grade Blade.
He also knew Ares' training methods were insane.
But witnessing it with his own eyes
A fist coated in Armament Haki, strong enough to shatter a small mountain, slamming into Ares' own body
It still shook him.
Hearing about it was nothing.
Seeing it was a different kind of horror.
Ares acted as if he didn't feel pain at all. His fists fell like a storm of raindrops.
Koshiro's scalp went numb. He couldn't even make his feet move.
"What a lunatic…!"
"No wonder his dream is that outrageous."
"Monsters have monster dreams
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