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| Two weeks later… | (A/N: Now, this is what I call true inmersion, am I right?... yeah, sorry.)
…
Silence reigned in a dimly lit part of a forest, interrupted by nothing except the sound of wind howling through the leaves of the trees and the distant calls of birds.
-Crack!-
That silence was violently interrupted as a branch lying peacefully on the ground was stepped on and snapped in half by a blur that shot ahead. The birds in the vicinity leaving their hiding spots in a rush as soon as they caught sight of it.
The culprit moved swiftly and soon left the scene, continuing its rush through the forest. As it advanced unimpeded, dodging branches and trunks, the figure spoke between gasps.
"...I think I've already gotten accustomed to this level of pressure. Maybe I should start with the next level soon."
This culprit was none other than Dan, moving across the forest like a shadow, maneuvering through bushes, trees, and uneven terrain like it was his second home.
On his waist, his sword hung back and forth to the rhythm of his sprint inside its sheath. On both wrists he wore his Gravity Cuffs, knob turned to ×2.
Yet in spite of that, his speed didn't seem diminished at all. He was moving swiftly, light on his feet, almost as if completely unimpeded by the doubled gravity.
As his feet slammed violently against the ground, kicking up dirt with each step forward he took, he suddenly squinted, locking onto something ahead.
"Let's see..."
Then—all of a sudden—he shifted direction, his hand moving to his sword's handle.
As he reached a relatively thick tree, his hand drew an arc, unsheathing the blade in one swift and clean swing without breaking stride.
Only after he was several meters past his objective did he stop, drawing the sword slowly back into its sheath until—
-Click-
-Ckrkak!-
The sound of wood exploding echoed in his ears the moment the handguard met the sheath fully.
Calmly, he turned around to face what he had caused—before his brows furrowed, eyes full of dissatisfaction.
Instead of a clean cut that divided the tree in two, it was a rough one—several chunks of wood sent flying, no cleanliness to speak of.
Still. It was a deep cut. A bit more force and the tree would have been felled.
"What a pain."
Groaning, he grabbed the cuffs' knob and turned it to ×1 gravity. Then he drew his sword again, eyes sharpening.
"Let's see how this goes then."
-Bam!-
He slammed his foot into the earth—and his figure blurred once again, shooting ahead at incredible speed, noticeably more than before.
If before he had been at the level of an Olympic performer who also happened to specialize in running through forests, now he was damn near superhuman in terms of speed.
His figure leapt across the forest like a beast on a hunt, experienced and hungry, dashing without a single mistake toward its prey.
Then, once he neared it—
—Ka—chiiiiiiin!—
Once again, he stopped only several meters past his objective—another tree, this time a bit thicker than the last—and slowly drew his sword back in.
-Click-
Until the handguard met the sheath fully.
Then—
"..."
Nothing happened.
His eyebrow twitched. He turned to face the tree.
"Goddamn it, I made it too horizontal."
Clicking his tongue, he made his way over, lifted his foot—
—Thud!—
… and kicked the tree.
—BOOOOM!—
The tree fell apart, divided cleanly at the spot Dan had slashed, and hit the ground hard, earning him a satisfied huff.
He glanced at his sword, giving it a meaningful look. "A slash at that level might be capable of injuring Arlong... maybe."
It was a bit ambiguous. One of his underlings had blocked bullets with an arm fin, so who knew?
Regardless, even if it didn't, the fact that he could already produce this kind of explosive force after just two weeks of training said enough. If Arlong took too long to arrive, it'd end up being Dan who sought out the fight rather than dreading it.
"Hmm?"
Dan blinked, squinting, then reached out and touched the blade's edge, wincing at what he felt.
"Shit... it's chipped. Did I push it too far?"
The two trees just now had been only two of many. He had been using them as training dummies for a while, so it was no wonder the sword had eventually taken damage.
Sighing, he pulled out a wallet from the pouch on his belt and began counting the bills inside, slowly.
"One, three, five, seven, ten... yeah, this should be enough."
He put them back, heaving a long, disappointed sigh.
"Just the day after I got paid, this happens. Of course it does." He muttered, massaging his temple.
Still, if he wanted to fight Arlong in top condition with a properly sharp sword, he couldn't be stingy about it.
"To the blacksmith then... there was one close by, wasn't there? Lucky me."
And so, with a very unhappy expression, he began making his way through the forest—walking this time.
...
°
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| Minutes later... |
...
Dan walked past the villagers clearly acting as guards at the entrance, glancing around with a hint of curiosity.
This was the nearest town he knew of in the area, well north of Cocoyashi. He'd been told there was a blacksmith here, but he hadn't had any real reason to come until now.
He had needed a new scabbard that actually fit his sword at some point, but he'd gotten that sorted at another smithy during one of the selling trips with Bell-mère. This one he hadn't visited yet, so he was at least curious whether it had anything new or useful on offer.
—Not that he could buy anything beyond the repair job, of course. What he was carrying could only pay that much, and he hadn't had the patience to go back to his boat for the rest of his stash before coming here.
As to where that stash had come from? Well, his plan of paying night visits to every village's top dog hadn't only been about getting bullets.
At some point, he realized he could at least use the hack that had been sitting idle since the moment he'd first opened the system.
TreasureFinder.
When active, it highlighted valuables in the surrounding area like they were glowing gold—even through walls and furniture. Literal x-ray vision tuned exclusively to anything worth money.
Across the various sheriffs' houses he'd visited, he had quietly accumulated quite the interesting haul. Nothing he felt genuinely bad about taking—extra cash that looked like it was just sitting there, the occasional expensive-looking bottle of wine, some jewelry. Nothing that would ruin anyone's livelihood.
The stash back at his boat had grown into something respectable.
'Though I should probably add a proper lock to that compartment. Anyone could walk on and find it.' He thought with a pensive look, scratching his chin.
Then, he let out a shrug.
'Luckily the boat looks like it's about to fall apart, so maybe that's why nobody's bothered searching it.'
Snorting at the irony of that, he heard the telling ring of a hammer striking iron somewhere nearby and soon caught sight of the blacksmith's shop he was after.
He stepped inside and looked around at what was on display. Swords, smaller blades like daggers or general-purpose knives, alongside tools and the usual construction hardware. Nails, hinges, door brackets, and the like.
Nothing caught his eye. Unless he had Zoro's particular luck and happened to stumble across a renowned blade the way he had in Logue Town, his only interest today was the repair job.
Shrugging, he made his way further inside toward the ringing.
A man in his forties sat at the forge, hammering a piece of metal into shape. As Dan approached, he turned slightly—squinting at the sight of him.
"A kid?"
His eyes quickly shifted to the sword at Dan's side, and the skepticism gave way to something more interested.
Dan used the opening to get straight to the point.
"My sword got chipped. Can you fix it?" He asked, holding it out along with the scabbard.
The blacksmith took it, looking at him weirdly. "Your sword? Kid, where the hell did you even get a sword fr—"
His voice cut off as he drew the blade from the sheath, eyes widening briefly.
"This... kid, where the hell did you get this from?" He ran a thumb carefully along the flat of the blade, brow furrowing. "And how did it even end up chipped like this?"
Dan raised an eyebrow, looking between the man and the sword with a trace of worry. "Something wrong with it?"
He hadn't done something like render it impossible to reforge, had he? He had vague memories of that being a concept—a blade pushed past a certain kind of damage that no forge could undo. Whether it applied here he had no idea, but given the punishment he had put the sword through across the past two weeks, it was a possibility.
The blacksmith hesitated for a moment. Then he held the blade against the firelight, and it took on an almost mystical quality in the glow.
"This blade's quality is well beyond anything you'd find around these islands. It doesn't quite reach the level of a skillfully graded blade, but it's close—really close. What's more, I can see real artistry in parts of the construction, an extraordinary level of skill and delicacy… and yet alongside it, glaring flaws that no master should be capable of committing. Such a contradictory piece... My guess is it was made by an old master. Someone whose eye and instinct never left him, but whose hands couldn't fully keep up anymore."
As the blacksmith seemed to get drawn into the story the blade was telling, Dan quietly worked it out for himself.
'Since this was Koushirou's sword... I suppose Kuina's grandfather made it. He died not long before I came into my other set of memories, so I never got to know him. I do have some impression of him from the show, though.'
He had been a master blacksmith—the man responsible for the Wado Ichimonji and Enma, both of which were considered genuine masterpieces.
This sword clearly fell short of those, just as the blacksmith was saying—a piece that showed the master's vision and none of his former precision, the result of a body that could no longer match the skill of the mind behind it.
But it was still a damn good blade. Better than anything Dan had realized he was carrying.
'Wait—did I just take Koushirou's last memento from his father?'
He paused at that, feeling a fresh pang of guilt.
He excused it by deciding that the sword's creator would probably be satisfied knowing it was being used against someone like Arlong.
'And if it's this quality... would a normal blade have snapped weeks ago?'
He almost laughed at the thought. Two weeks of daily tree-splitting under doubled gravity, and a standard sword would have shattered on the first day. The fact that this one had only just chipped said quite a lot about it.
'I suppose it's a stroke of luck that Koushirou cut my old sword, then.'
The stranger twist of fortune he'd initially chalked up as bad luck had, apparently, been the opposite.
And having a superior blade wouldn't hurt against Arlong either. A normal sword would probably snap on the first exchange.
"So how did it chip like this, kid? Even at this quality, it shouldn't damage this way without something serious behind it. Did a bomb go off at the edge or something?"
"Eh... something like that." Dan answered, looking away.
The blacksmith gave him a dry look, then turned his attention back to the blade.
After a few more seconds of examination, he set it down and fixed Dan with a serious expression.
"Alright. I can fix it, but it won't be quick. This quality of steel is hard to work with—you're looking at five days."
Dan considered it.
He could train without the sword in the meantime, so the timeline wasn't a real problem. The only thing was Arlong—but if the fishman showed up in the next five days, that would be a uniquely terrible stroke of luck even by Dan's standards.
'That'd be funny. In the worst possible way.'
He gave the blacksmith a nod. "Alright. Five days."
"Half upfront." The man said flatly, extending a hand. "That's how it works with work like this, especially for something I haven't seen before. The rest when you pick it up."
Dan counted out half his bills without argument and handed them over.
After that, with the sword left in the blacksmith's care, he walked back out into the street, glancing at his now-empty waist with a thoughtful look.
"Guess I should focus on the next part of my training then."
He turned forward, smiling.
Then he opened his system screen.
═════════•°• ⚠ •°•═════════
Current Infamy Tier: Starter
▸[Current Bounty: 0 / 500K]
▸[NP: 212]
Equipped Passive Hacks [1/1]
▸ SpeedyGains
Equipped Active Hacks [1/1]
▸ Tireless
Equipped Script
▸ None
═════════•°• ⚠ •°•═════════
Of course, during these past two weeks he hadn't only trained. He had also been farming NP.
Now, 200 NP in two weeks might sound pitiful—and to be fair, he had actually earned closer to 300 in that time. The difference was that 80 of it had already gone toward a Bottle of Hyper Glue and a Bugged Smoke Pellet, both part of the plan for Arlong. He hadn't had a chance to test either item since they were single-use, and wasting that kind of NP would genuinely hurt him—both in the wallet and in the soul.
That left him at the 212, which he had finished accumulating yesterday night.
And now that he had free time from sword training and enough NP for the biggest purchase on his list so far, the one he'd been building toward for months.
Grinning, he opened the shop and went straight for it.
═══════•°• ⚠ •°•═══════
≡[Active Hack: Sugar Rush] [BOUGHT!]
▸ If your body and mind can't keep up with your opponent, maybe it's time to kick things into fifth gear. This hack will do exactly that—putting you in a hyperfocused, adrenaline-filled state where your reaction time sharpens, your reflexes and creative thinking are pushed to their limit, and time begins moving just a little slower around you.
Warning: The effect lasts only 5 minutes and has a cooldown of 3 hours after activation.
═══════•°• ⚠ •°•═══════
Dan smirked at the screen.
He now had another hack in his arsenal.
And he couldn't wait to try it out.
...
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-To Be Continued...-
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(A/N: Imma be honest, powerscaling in this is going to be even more of a pain than in the My Hero Academia ff.
I'll try to guide myself roughly by using the Doriki stuff from Water Seven, which while it might have been discarded in the long run by Oda, it might still prove useful to at least have some kind of measure to what Dan has to attain, or how he will compare to others, beyond his hacks.
Anyway, here's a rough estimate of what Dan is dealing with:
Current Dan - 55 Doriki.
Arlong - 480 Doriki.
You may agree or disagree. I appreciate opinions on this matter.)