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Chapter 5 - Laying low

I barely had any coins to my name at the moment with two thirds of them being spent just on contacting Whitebeard. The fifty now to save him as a contact and another fifty when I contact him again in three days. This means I only had a spare fifty for whatever I might need which is not nearly enough to feel secure. Once he comes through on his end with the gold I just need to sit pretty until I can find out where the Leaky cauldron is and swap gold for galleons in Gringotts. -

Once I have that wizarding world money I can start stocking up on items that may be of interest to Whitebeard and others. Wiggenweld being one of my top picks as an all purpose healing potion. It probably won't be enough to heal Whitebeards illness or long standing injuries but my hope is it may alleviate enough to prolong his life a bit longer. The one piece world was one of the few where I had to admit there were few things worth collecting for resale but the few that did exist were worth ridiculously high prices.-

The world was an odd mix of backwards and futuristic with technology being weirdly advanced yet quality of life sat around the same level as the colonization of America on Earth. Shipping relied on wind sails for the most part and most houses were made of rough stone or wood. The futuristic parts though were straight up Science fiction level stuff. Clones, mechanical monsters, artificial devil fruits and so much more. Speaking of devil fruits those are one of the things I wanted to a massive degree. They were a strange sort of thing unique to that world that gave superpowers more or less after being eaten in exchange for the ability to swim.-

They fall into three general categorizations, logia, paramecia and Zoan. Logia fruits allowed the eater to literally become and control an elemental force such as sand, rock, flames, magma or light. Logia's can only be countered by an opposing element or another unique aspect of that world known as Haki. Otherwise they are totally invulnerable to any and all attacks. Paramecia fruits are more niche powers such as strings, flowers, eating or all sorts of other strange things. They are the most common of all devil fruits and can't affect their surroundings directly like Logia fruits unless under a specific circumstance. -

Finally are the zoan fruits that while technically one category can be further divided into three sub groups, normal, ancient and mythical. All zoan fruits allow the transformation into an animal or animal hybrid form. Normal ones are normal animals like cats, dogs, lions, cheetahs, that sort of thing. Ancient zoan fruits turn the user into dinosaurs at will and are generally considered stronger than normal zoan fruits. Mythical zoan fruits are a bit special in that they allow the eater to become a mythical creature and gain all the powers that come with that.-

A phoenix fruit makes one nearly impossible to kill while allowing creation and usage of flames while a dragon fruit gives hard scales, fire breath and whatever other abilities the creature would normally have. Mythical zoan fruits are the rarest variety of devil fruit and also the most coveted as well. My hope was that I could eventually get Whitebeard to track down and hand over a devil fruit. I mentioned Haki earlier but I should also mention it is another thing I wanted but wasn't sure if i could really make a trade for it since it is a world specific power rather than one that was bound to a consumable such as the devil fruits.-

Haki was to put it bluntly willpower and soul used to manipulate the world. It too fell under three categories, conquerors, armament and observation. The first type was rare and only found in a minority of people. It was also the most powerful, kinda. See at first it just suppresses others will with your own and thus mostly harmless but at it's advanced stages it allowed one person to force entire islands to drop to their knees if they don't directly pass out. It also could cause destruction and weather changing when powerful enough. -

Armament is usable by anyone with enough training and basically allowed the user to coat themselves or objects with their willpower granting almost unbreakable durability unless either pushed over the limit or clashed with another's haki. Finally was observation haki that more or less pushes ones perceptive abilities to ridiculous levels. A master of this type of haki could predict the future to a degree or be nearly impossible to harm as they'd see you move in almost slow motion regardless of position.-

Anyways that was all stuff for the future as right now I had to figure out what to do for the next three days. I certainly couldn't just sit up in my room the whole time since I was going to get bored as hell quickly. At the same time however I was not going to try and play with the other children if earlier was any indication. I suppose all that was left was seeing if I could figure out where a library was if there was one nearby.-

Perhaps not the most impressive of plans but reading was as good a way to pass time as any. It also helped that depending on what I was reading it would also allow me to gain some potentially useful skills. Cooking, hunting, plant identification and basic engineering to list a few. The first three because they'd be useful when I chose to leave this place and the last because knowing how to make simple machines is a lot more useful than most people realize. Did I expect to pick up skills like that in a mere three days? Not a chance but it's a start and that's good enough.-

With a sigh I left my room and ignored the looks and whispers of the other children to approach one of the caretakers, an old woman who was reading a book.

"Is there a library nearby?" I asked with my best childish impression all while mentally cringing.

The old woman lowered her book to eye me for a second, gained a look of recognition and then sighed. "Four blocks that way, it's the red bricked building with a sign that looks like an open book out front." she said pointing past me.

"Thank you!" I said brightly with a fake smile.

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