The four attackers watched, their minds reeling.
Under their very eyes, in the span of a mere two months, Kai had transformed from a complete nobody into a terrifying powerhouse of martial arts and swordsmanship. And the most galling part? He had done it using the scraps of advice they and the other prisoners had tossed at him like scraps to a dog, mostly out of mockery.
His progress wasn't just fast. It was monstrous. A speed of growth so unnatural it inspired a primal fear.
'How long has it been?' they all thought.
Two months. From nothing, he had become a top-tier martial artist and a swordsman capable of cutting steel. And now, he had just awakened his Observation Haki?
It was too fast. It was impossibly fast.
But hidden deep beneath their fear was a faint, dangerous glimmer of excitement.
"Attack!" one of them yelled.
In the next instant, the four of them were on him again. This time, their assault was even more ferocious. Their attacks were a blur of motion, too fast and too coordinated for Kai to dodge completely with his newly awakened, unrefined Haki.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
SWISH! SWISH! SWISH!
The sounds of violent collisions echoed across the blood-soaked snowfield. Kai was fighting one against four, and each of his opponents was a powerful, seasoned warrior. Even with the advantage of Observation Haki, he was struggling to keep up. After all, he had only just taken his first step into that new realm of perception.
But even as he was pushed back, he kept his Haki active, using the constant pressure of the battle to sharpen his new sense. With his 100-times multiplier, he could feel his mastery growing with every punch he dodged, every kick he blocked. In the heat of combat, his Haki was becoming stronger.
He knew that Haki grows through accumulation and training. And the fastest way to grow is through life-or-death battle.
BAM!
A large fist and a smaller one collided with explosive force. For a moment, it seemed like an even match. But Kai was only two meters tall, while his opponent was a four-meter giant whose fist was larger than Kai's entire head. Yet, when it came to pure, raw strength, the giant was not his superior.
"HRAAAGH!" With a roar, Kai leveraged his strength, his arm muscles bulging as he threw the giant back.
The next moment, his Haki screamed a warning. A vicious whip kick was aimed at his back. He reacted instantly. Instead of just dodging, he used the giant he had just shoved, heaving the massive man into the path of the incoming attack.
Then, he spun around and met the kick with one of his own.
"BOOM!"
The impact of leg against leg was like a bomb going off. A powerful shockwave erupted from the point of contact, blasting a crater several meters wide in the surrounding snow.
With another surge of strength, Kai kicked his opponent's leg aside, sending him flying. He didn't let up, immediately launching a follow-up attack.
"[Tempest Kick]!"
A sharp blade of compressed air shot after the airborne prisoner. The man, however, simply twisted in the air and met the attack with a straight punch.
BOOM!!
As his fist connected with the vacuum slash, a thunderous roar echoed across the battlefield. But the most eye-catching thing wasn't the explosion. It was the fist itself. A deep, metallic black luster had spread from his forearm to his knuckles.
It was the gleam of hardened will.
It was Haki. Armament Haki.
After that final, intense exchange, the four attackers stopped. They backed away, making no further hostile moves. It was clear now that their goal was not to kill him.
But Kai knew that hadn't been the case at the start. In the beginning, their attacks had been vicious, their killing intent real. He could feel that they had been fighting with the genuine intention of taking his life.
It was only after he had demonstrated his overwhelming power, and as his Observation Haki grew stronger and more adept with every passing second of the fight, that they realized they could no longer pose a fatal threat to him.
And so, the farce-like battle came to an end.
"The name's Boulder," the first man grunted.
"Hague," said the second.
"I'm Eero. You're strong," rumbled the four-meter giant, the one Kai had matched in strength.
"And I'm Cose," said the last man, the one who had just shattered his Tempest Kick with a blackened fist.
All four of them wore the same black-and-white striped uniforms, marking them as prisoners of Impel Down.
Kai remained silent, his guard still up. He was under no illusions. These men had just tried to murder him. This sudden civility only meant one thing: he had passed their test.
'My strength…' he thought. In the two months since he arrived, he had lived through the equivalent of nearly twenty years of training. Though he had hit plateaus, his raw power had never stopped growing. In the world of One Piece, giants were naturally stronger than humans, with only a few rare exceptions. Yet he, a man of two meters, had gone toe-to-toe with the little giant Eero.
His wariness was broken by Cose, the Armament Haki user. He looked Kai dead in the eye, his expression completely serious.
"I will teach you Armament Haki," he said, his voice low and steady. "And in return… you will break us out of prison!"
"Prison break?" Kai's eyes narrowed. His face hardened, and his voice took on a shocked and scolding tone. "Who's trying to break out of prison? Are you people actually plotting a prison break?!"
"…"
The four men were stunned into absolute silence. They stared at Kai, their mouths slightly agape.
For a long moment, nobody moved. The only sound was the howling of the frozen wind.
'You have got to be kidding me,' the four of them thought in perfect, unspoken unison. 'This bastard…'
Anyone with a functioning brain could see what he was up to. His insane, non-stop training, that terrifying rate of progress, it all screamed that he was planning to escape. He had probably gotten himself sent to Level 5 on purpose, knowing there were no surveillance snails here.
They had all watched him. They had seen his clumsy, amateurish training methods when he first arrived. They had even been the ones to "mockingly" teach him the systematic foundations of martial arts and swordsmanship.
Countless prisoners had guessed that Kai was planning to break out sooner or later.
And now, after all that, he had the nerve to stand there with a look of righteous indignation on his face and accuse them of wanting to escape?
'What an absolute scumbag!'