The following weeks in Shells Town settled into a grueling, three-part rhythm, each one a crucible shaping Travis in a different way.
The mornings belonged to the Marine. He was folded into the regular patrol rotation, assigned to the Marlin, a creaking, single-cannon cutter that monitored the fishing lanes and merchant approaches to the port. His partner was a grizzled, silent Seaman named Dorn, a man who communicated in grunts and whose only passion seemed to be a perfectly coiled rope. The work was mind-numbing: hours of staring at empty sea, checking permits, chasing off the occasional rowdy drunk from a fishing skiff. It was the epitome of the "peacekeeping" Captain Rourke wanted him seen doing—visible, procedural, and utterly mundane.
Travis used the time. He observed Dorn's seamless, efficient knots, the way he read the water and the wind not from charts but from a lifetime of instinct. He memorized the patrol patterns, the blind spots in the harbor's watch, the comings and goings of ships that weren't on the official logs. He was building a map, not just of the sea, but of the flow of power and information in Shells Town. He also practiced the subtle, physical conditioning of the kingly legacy—maintaining perfect, untiring posture at the rail, regulating his breathing to match the swell of the waves, turning idle time into a meditation on endurance.
The afternoons belonged to Hackett and Destruction. In a secluded, sandy corner of the training grounds, far from prying eyes, the Chief Petty Officer oversaw what he grimly called "containment drills."
It was brutal, pragmatic, and fueled by Hackett's deep-seated fear. He had Travis practice on designated "targets"—old barrels, blocks of salt-rotted wood, chunks of coral.
"Again!" Hackett would bark, arms crossed, standing at a safe distance. "Smaller! You're not trying to sink the island, you're trying to put a hole in a man! A clean hole!"
Control was agony. The destructive power was not a limb to be moved; it was a wild animal on a fraying leash. Travis learned that emotion fueled it—fear, anger, desperation made it surge uncontrollably. He had to master a state of cold, surgical focus. The Anchor of Resolve from Avalon's fragment was his bedrock, allowing him to find a center of calm amidst the internal storm.
He started with the point. The pea-sized sphere of negation. He practiced manifesting it on command, holding it stable, then making it vanish without a trace. The drain was immense, a sharp, mental exhaustion like running a sprint in his mind.
Then came direction. Making the sphere move from his palm to a target three feet away. The first dozen attempts either fizzled mid-air or veered wildly, once carving a deep, smooth gouge in the sandy ground that made Hackett go pale. Slowly, painfully, Travis learned to guide it with his will, a thread of intent connecting him to the tiny orb of annihilation.
Finally, intensity. Not all destruction was equal. A hole through a barrel was different from turning the barrel to dust. He learned to modulate the "depth" of the erasure. A surface scrape to sever a rope. A deeper cut to break a weapon. It was a delicate, terrifying art. A single lapse in concentration could mean not just failing, but erasing his own hand.
Hackett offered no encouragement, only criticism and warnings. "Too slow! A pirate won't let you meditate!" or "Feel that drain? That's your life you're burning. Run out in a fight, and you're a dead man." It was harsh, but it was real. Travis's respect for the man, buried under layers of resentment, grew a fraction. Hackett was a brute and a corrupt cog, but he understood the practicalities of violence, and he was, in his own way, trying to prevent a disaster.
The third part of the rhythm, the nights, belonged to Kingship and the Blade.
After lights out, when the dormitory was a chorus of snores, Travis would slip away to his secluded spot by the rear wall. There, under the stars, he communed with the other half of his soul: the legacy of Arthur Pendragon.
It wasn't active training. It was remembrance. He would sit in stillness, and the instincts would rise—not as practiced skills, but as knowing. He would suddenly understand the optimal angle for a downward parry, the footwork to pivot away from a spear thrust, the exact distribution of weight to deliver a shield bash that could stagger a giant. It was a vast, silent library of martial knowledge being downloaded into his flesh, awaiting the strength and practice to use it.
And he would gaze inward, at the sealed gates. Excalibur blazed with a silent, righteous light. Avalon's scabbard emanated a deep, soothing warmth. They were not just weapons; they were concepts made manifest. Excalibur was the unyielding cut of justice, the clarity of purpose that could part seas and shatter evil. Avalon was the unwavering defense of the righteous, the sanctuary that no harm could breach.
One such night, a week after his return, as he meditated on the concept of the sword, a new prompt from the Sign-In System appeared, not tied to a location, but to a state of being.
[Condition Met: Prolonged Contemplation of Sealed Legacy - 'The Blade'.]
[Special Sign-In Available: Conceptual Resonance.]
[Sign-In to claim reward? Y/N]
Intrigued, Travis selected Y.
There was no external sensation. The world did not change. But within the vault of his mind, before the glowing gates of Excalibur, a new image formed. It was not the legendary sword itself. It was a simpler, plainer blade—a long, straight, double-edged sword of unadorned steel, the kind a knight's squire might train with before being worthy of a named weapon. It hovered in the air, solid and real in the space of his consciousness.
[Sign-In Successful.]
[Reward: Conceptual Foundation Blade.]
[Effect: Grants intuitive understanding of fundamental swordsmanship principles. Enables the manifestation of a practice sword composed of stabilized Haki and residual legacy energy for training purposes. Duration and solidity are dependent on user's focus and spiritual stamina.]
A training blade. Not a weapon of power, but a tool of discipline. It was perfect.
Focusing, Travis extended his hand. He pulled not on the destructive grey energy, but on the golden, ordered ember of the kingly legacy and the faint, burgeoning sense of his own willpower—the nascent, unawakened Haki that every living being possessed. A shimmer of pale gold light coalesced in his grip, solidifying into the form of the plain, double-edged sword from his vision. It had no weight, yet it had perfect balance. It felt like an extension of his own intent.
He stood and took a basic guard stance. The legacy instincts flowed into him, aligning his posture, adjusting his grip. He executed a slow, perfect vertical cut. The air whispered as the conceptual blade passed through it. He transitioned into a lateral parry, then a thrust.
It was draining in a different way than the Destruction Fruit. This was a spiritual and mental tax, like holding a complex equation fully formed in his mind. After ten minutes of slow, deliberate forms, the blade flickered and dissolved into motes of golden light.
But he had done it. He had a sword. Not Excalibur, not yet. But a promise of it. A first step on the path of the knight to match the path of the destroyer.
The three rhythms—Marine, Destroyer, King—began to intertwine. The patience learned on patrol fed into the focus needed for destruction control. The willpower honed in wielding the conceptual blade strengthened his mind against the destructive power's chaos. The code of Equal Justice was the thread that bound them all, the reason for every grueling hour.
He saw its application in small ways. On patrol, when Dorn would have casually confiscated an entire catch from a fisherman with slightly outdated papers, Travis, invoking a technicality about a recent storm delaying the port master, suggested a warning and a stern order to renew them by week's end. Dorn had grunted, surprised, but acquiesced. The fisherman's look of shocked gratitude was a tiny, fleeting victory. Justice as fairness, not as revenue collection.
The ripples of Coffin Cove continued to spread. In the mess hall, he now occasionally caught recruits—not just Lin—watching him not with fear, but with a speculative glint. The story of the "black powder lucky shot" was wearing thin. His unnatural calm, the way Hackett now watched him with a wary, almost clinical interest, the sheer physical transformation as the dormant royal bloodline and his brutal training began to fill out his frame—it all painted a different picture.
One evening, as Travis sat alone polishing his newly issued (and very real) cutlass, a shadow fell over his table. It was Groff. He stood there, shifting his weight, his former swagger replaced by a tense uncertainty.
"Pendragon."
Travis looked up, his expression neutral. "Groff."
A long pause. Groff's eyes flicked to the cutlass in Travis's hands, then to his own. "Hackett's drills… that smoke you made on the dock. That wasn't black powder."
"No," Travis said simply. "It wasn't."
Groff swallowed. "What you did on that cliff… and in the sand. I've never seen anything like it. It wasn't… it wasn't right." He wasn't accusing. He was confessing a terror.
"It's a power," Travis said, setting the cutlass down. "Like a cannon or a sword. It is what the user makes it. On the cliff, I made it a shield. On the beach, I made it a wall." He met Groff's eyes. "I used it to complete the mission and bring the unit back. All of us who didn't desert."
The unspoken words hung between them: I could have left you. I didn't.
Groff's jaw worked. The cynicism that had been his armor was cracked, revealing the confused, capable Marine recruit beneath. He'd seen true power, and it had been wielded not for conquest, but for extraction. It broke his worldview.
"Why?" Groff finally asked, the question raw. "Why come back for us? You had the power. You could have just… left."
Travis picked up the cutlass again, examining its edge. "The mission was to neutralize the pirate threat and return. The unit was part of the mission. Leaving you would have been a failure. And," he added, his voice dropping, "it would have been unjust. You were under my command. Your failure would have been my failure. Your death, my responsibility."
It was the code, spoken plainly. Not as philosophy, but as operational logic.
Groff stared at him for another long moment, then gave a sharp, jerky nod. He didn't thank him. He didn't pledge loyalty. But he turned and walked away, his back straighter than before. The dynamic had shifted again. Groff was no longer a hostile. He was a witness, and perhaps, a potential asset.
As the date of Rear Admiral Stirling's inspection loomed, the entire base descended into a frenzy of frantic polishing and rehearsed drills. The air was thick with anxiety. Travis continued his rhythms, a island of intense, quiet preparation in the storm of panic.
He was being forged in three fires at once: the dull fire of duty, the wild fire of destruction, and the sacred fire of kingship. The boy who had polished chains was gone. In his place was a young man who could erase a stone, wield a sword of light, and quote regulation with unnerving calm.
He was not yet strong. But he was becoming dense. Every experience, every ounce of effort, was compressed into his core, building a foundation that could one day bear the weight of a Fleet Admiral's mantle—and the world he intended to reshape.
The inspection would be his next test. Not of power, but of perception. Could he pass for the normal, diligent Marine Captain Rourke needed him to be? Or would the destroyer and the king within him show through the cracks of the disguise?
Travis Pendragon looked at his reflection in the polished blade of his cutlass. The eyes that looked back were no longer those of a sick boy from another world, or a terrified recruit. They were the calm, assessing eyes of a player who had survived the opening moves and was now studying the mid-game board. The pieces were in motion. The game was his to play.