NOVEL NEXT Chapter 11: Chapter 11
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East Blue - Archipelago Américas
América Island - Temple Ruins
"What? Who—" Luffy was absolutely stunned that a Poneglyph, which must be over 800 years old, was speaking his name.
"Who are you, and how do you know my name? And I'll warn you, if you're some kind of crazy stalker, I'm calling the cops."
{Huehuehue, I don't think the Marines will help you with this one. Anyway, my name is Monkey D. Sun, but everyone calls me Joy Boy.}
"Wait, wait, you're telling me you're Joy Boy? And on top of that, you dropped the bomb, saying you're my relative? What the hell is going on?"
{Well, it is what it is. Anyway, about the fruit you found in this temple, take good care of it. It will prove to be a powerful ally and friend on the journey ahead, just as it was in mine.}
Recognizing the seriousness, Luffy replied, "Of course, I already planned to give it to Merry as soon as his Klabautermann appeared."
{Good to hear. By the way, I just wanted to comment that this whole thing of having the memories of a soul from another world where our world is considered fiction is pretty crazy.}
"Isn't it? But I'm still pissed that they made me asexual when in reality I'm not—I just have my priorities straight. That doesn't mean I can't fall in love."
{Is eating one of those priorities?}
"Hmm, maybe, maybe not. Why do you ask? Do you have any meat? Because if you do, I want some," Luffy said, already starting to salivate.
{You're a funny kid. If you lived in my time, I would've invited you to join my crew.}
"Only if I were the captain."
{In your dreams, kid.}
"You're cool, old man, but did you really make a Poneglyph just to ask me to take care of the fruit and have some small talk? Aren't you going to tell me anything relevant or important, like who this Im guy is? What happened in the Void Century? What does the 'D.' in people's names mean? Stuff like that?"
{Nah, I'm good. Where's the fun if I spoil all that stuff for you? But if you want me to tell you something important, then listen up, Haki doesn't stop at its advanced forms; there's more beyond. That guy Kaido already said or will say, I don't know, but anyway, Devil Fruits are cool and all, but only Haki surpasses everything. I think that's all I have to say. Well, see you soon, kid. It was nice chatting with you.}
And so, Luffy spent some time staring at the Poneglyph, reflecting on what had just happened.
Eventually, he returned to his training routine, and time passed as he kept evolving and getting stronger all the time.
=Scene Break=
It had been a year since he started training on this island. In the last six months since the conversation with Joy Boy, Luffy had been perfecting what he already had without trying new things. He could now maintain his Gear Second and Third for as long as he wanted, with no side effects from Third Gear like before.
His progress with Rokushiki techniques had finally reached a stage where he was satisfied. His Soru had advanced to a level where he could be compared to speedsters like the Flash or Quicksilver, and even with such speed, he could still orient himself and follow his own movements.
His Geppo had reached a point where he could use it to appear as if he was walking or running smoothly in the air rather than kicking it.
His Shigan had become more potent; so far, he hadn't found anything he couldn't pierce with his fingers. Of course, he hadn't tried to pierce his own body protected by Haki because he wasn't a masochist, nor did he attempt to pierce the Poneglyph, knowing those blocks were indestructible. Besides Haki and the Poneglyph, he could pierce everything he tested. It might not seem like much, but his true evolution with Shigan lay in his air bullets, which now, with a single shot, produced an air pressure beam capable of devastating a large swath of forest.
Last but not least was his Rankyaku, which he could now produce with any part of his body, creating an air blade capable of cutting off the top of a mountain, just like Zoro did in the original.
Now, onto what really matters, during these six months, Luffy took Joy Boy's words very seriously. Nearly all his time was spent training his body and Haki; it might have seemed like impressive progress with his other abilities, but the reality was that he didn't dedicate much time to training them.
With his Seastone bracelet, his physical strength evolved at an extremely faster rate than the original achieved in his two-year time skip training. So, with one year of training, Luffy was at the same physical strength level as the original post-time skip.
He also felt he was very close to being able to use the advanced forms of his three Haki types.
Additionally, the animals on the island had long since ceased to pose a threat, making it a bit harder to train his Haki at this point.
=Scene Break=
His second year consisted of continuing to train his body and Haki, but this time, he also spent a good amount of time developing his Gear Fourth.
Before we talk about his new Gear, we need to discuss his physical evolution and Haki.
When the weights he was using no longer affected his physical training, he started using chunks of mountains that he cut down using Rankyaku. By the end of this second year, he easily had about 600,000 tons of force in his base form.
Despite the increased difficulty in training his Haki, he finally reached the advanced versions of all three types of Haki. Now, it was just a matter of continuing to train them to reach even greater heights. After all, it's easy to deduce that Joy Boy predicted he would lose and thus had the Poneglyphs made, planning this whole One Piece thing, even foreseeing that Joy Boy would return, in this case, someone who ate the same fruit he did. This opens the precedent that with Observation Haki, he could see some 800 years into the future and planned everything else based on what he saw to make it happen the way he wanted.
Now, moving on to how Luffy developed his Gear Fourth, during this time, as he trained, ideas on how to improve this transformation occasionally came to mind, so he tried to apply them.
First, instead of just inflating and then compressing his muscular structure, this time, he decided to inflate and then compress both his muscular and skeletal structure while simultaneously speeding up his blood flow. In other words, he was trying to fuse the original Gear Second, Third, and Fourth to form a new Gear Fourth.
Despite the extreme difficulty, he managed to develop it. This new Gear Fourth, thanks to inflating and then compressing his muscular and skeletal structure while speeding up his blood flow along with his Armament Haki, made him as resilient and durable as the original's Tankman form, as strong and potent as Boundman, and as fast and agile as Snakeman. All this combined made this form many times stronger than the original Gear Fourth.
In this form, he had the same physical appearance as the original Luffy in his Snakeman form but with the Armament Haki pattern of Boundman.
Although this form integrated all three original forms into one and could be called simply Gear Fourth, he nicknamed this form "Rocketman."
This form was so much more powerful than the original version that all his attacks in this form generated fire from friction with the air, just like his Red Hawk attack, hence the nickname Rocketman.
=Scene Break=
Now we come to his third and final year of training on this island. Having no idea how to awaken his fruit through training alone, he decided to focus this year on developing new attacks and abilities he had in mind while continuing to train his Haki.
By the end of this year of training, his Haki was already extremely strong, to the point where he felt he was close to reaching a higher level with his Haki.
Now that he could use the advanced forms of all three Haki, Luffy put into practice an attack idea he had been thinking about for a while.
After testing it for some time and realizing it was possible, here we are, on the edge of a cliff with Luffy looking at the horizon, concentrating.
He then slightly bends his legs, spreading them apart, and brings his hands together horizontally. Between the palms of his hands, a black-reddish sphere of energy begins to form, with Conqueror's Haki lightning bolts shooting out and hitting the environment. With his arms trembling, trying to contain the sphere of destruction in his hands, a very excited Luffy couldn't resist the temptation and shouted aloud.
"KAME... HA... ME... HAAAAAAAAAAAAA!", He then extended his hands forward, pointing them toward the horizon, releasing a thick black-reddish energy beam that could only be described as a beam of annihilation because everything it touched along the way was disintegrated.
Now, for the explanation of how Luffy recreated a technique based on another fictional work, he essentially used the advanced forms of Armament and Conqueror's Haki together, applying the concept of Shigan and Rankyaku to give it cohesion, creating an energy attack. This would allow him to recreate other energy attacks from fictional works, like Naruto's Rasengan, for example.
He then perfected some versions of this technique during his final year of training.
At the same time, while developing this, he couldn't get a Dragon Ball technique out of his mind, so he decided to test if it was possible to recreate it in his world.
So, when he wasn't developing this energy attack, Luffy meditated, trying to enter a strange state of complete relaxation of body and mind while also being tense and ready for anything.
Yes, in his way, he was trying to recreate the Ultra Instinct technique from Dragon Ball.
Only after six months of trying to enter this state, around the time he unleashed that Kamehameha, Luffy suddenly appeared to fall asleep while meditating. After a while, he woke up in the middle of a colossal crater in the forest, with the area around him completely devastated. He then realized he had probably succeeded. However, in this state, he became unconscious, turning into a practically wild animal acting on pure instinct. Probably something attacked him while he was in this state, which caused him to start widespread destruction in the area.
Realizing it was dangerous for him to enter this state on the island, Luffy decided to continue his last six months of training on an uninhabited island in the same archipelago, hoping that with training, he could enter this state and remain conscious.
Due to the potential destruction he could cause in this state, the food resources on the island he was on were gradually being destroyed. For this reason, he returned periodically to América Island to restock his supplies.
He dubbed this form, which he believed to be incomplete, "Ultra Instinct – Phase 1"
But no matter how much he trained or how many times he entered this form, he still couldn't stay conscious during the transformation. So, despite feeling that he was very close to entering the second phase, three years had passed, and it was time to return home and start his journey, even though there were still three months left until his birthday.
Then, on the beach where a small boat was docked, we see a young man measuring about 1.95 meters tall preparing the ship to set sail. His body was muscular and extremely defined but not bulky like a bodybuilder. He wore denim shorts, flip-flops, and a white Hawaiian shirt with red flowers printed on it, open at the front, revealing his muscles.
This was Luffy, of course, and after preparing everything, he turned to the Sea King Chico, who was already tied to the boat, and said, "It's time to go home, buddy."
They then set off on their way back to Dawn Island.
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(AN: 2,067 Words)
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