Sea Circle Calendar 1515, September 5.
"Shave—whoosh!"
On the rocky belt of the uninhabited island, the ground lay strewn with shattered crags.
Not far from a pile of rubble, an afterimage flickered again and again with a piercing rush of air.
Each second the figure appeared in a new spot, as if teleporting.
After a bout of flickering, the afterimage stopped before a massive boulder.
"Finger Pistol—pfft!"
Yami extended his index finger and thrust at the rock face.
The stone, hard as it was, yielded like tofu; his fingertip punched a neat hole.
Cracks spidered outward from the puncture.
"Tempest Kick: Barrage!"
With a casual toe-flick, Yami booted the huge rock into the air as if it were a football, then loosed several crescent slashes from his foot.
Front and back, the blades carved the boulder to fragments that crashed down toward him.
"Paper Arts."
As the debris fell, Yami's body flowed like ink on paper, slipping nimbly through the rain of stone.
"No doubt this is a superhuman body art. Raw power is secondary. Once I learned Rokushiki, I found I could command my strength with ease, no more fumbling with control."
He stretched lazily in place, murmuring with a trace of wonder.
Yami had learned Rokushiki.
Beyond the four moves he'd just displayed, he also had Moonwalk and Iron Body, though he hadn't shown them.
For the record, he'd mastered the whole style in one day.
Yesterday, his thousand-mile eye finally caught Rob Lucci beginning secret training.
Using the Glare-Glare Fruit's mind-reading, Yami smoothly took the Rokushiki training regimen straight from Lucci's head.
He then trained by that regimen.
To his surprise, his body could at once perform every form except Iron Body and Paper Arts.
The reason it still took a day to learn them all was that most of his time went into those two.
He knew it wasn't merely a quick mind. His physique was simply too strong.
Like when Luffy grasped Shave's principle and, with Second Gear, unleashed it at once.
Yami's physical aptitude far exceeded the entry bar for Rokushiki.
Add in stolen methods, experience, and insights from Lucci's own training, and mastering Rokushiki in a flash was only natural.
Rokushiki was just the beginning.
Only by evolving it into its derivative arts and attaining Life Return could one be called a true martial adept.
Unfortunately, though Yami had the concept of Life Return, he had no handle on how to cultivate it.
If Rokushiki is a method of applying the body,
then Life Return is the perfect union of will and flesh.
Once learned, one can pour consciousness into the body and freely control any part, hair to organs.
It is a martial secret art.
To master Life Return is to master oneself.
Once Yami grasped that single secret, he could draw out every ounce of the monster's body his golden finger had forged.
He wasn't anxious. In the end, Life Return is perfect bodily control.
Raise control to an extreme and the insight will come.
Rokushiki is the superhuman body art that hones that control fastest.
…
Another month passed.
East Blue, Loguetown.
One of the world's best-known islands and the East Blue's most famous place, called the Town of Beginnings and Ends because the Pirate King was born and died there.
After stealing Rokushiki from Lucci, Yami made straight for Loguetown.
Along the way he stopped at Long Ring Long Land to see whether Foxy was around.
He also went to Jaya, using the thousand-mile eye to watch the ten-thousand-meter skies where Enel ruled Angel Island and the God's Land, Upper Yard Apayado.
Yami did not go up to hunt Enel.
The Logia Rumble-Rumble Fruit is among the most invincible powers of all three classes.
But he shelved the idea to avoid startling the snake.
The fruit has a vile technique: electrical field teleportation.
With it, Enel ignores obstacles and appears anywhere within the field.
If he ran, none but Kizaru could catch him now.
Logia intangibility also makes Yami's rotating doors ineffective.
Dark Water from the Dark-Dark Fruit requires a touch to nullify Enel's power.
Yami wasn't absolutely certain of a clean hunt yet.
So he decided to seize a third strategic-class Devil Fruit first, then return for Enel.
Besides Long Ring Long Land and Jaya, Yami visited the Kingdom of Arabasta.
At this point in time, Crocodile likely hadn't met Robin, and the two hadn't begun their plot to usurp Arabasta.
Lastly, he made a trip to the Drum Kingdom to observe Wapol, eater of the Paramecia Munch-Munch Fruit.
The Munch-Munch Fruit is one of the highest-grade Paramecia.
The user can make anything eaten become part of their body and synthesize new things.
They can even eat other ability users to become a variant dual-fruit or multi-fruit user.
In a strong hand, such a fruit would surely forge another superpower on the seas.
Sadly, like the Slow-Slow Fruit and the Hobby-Hobby Fruit, the Munch-Munch Fruit was squandered.
Yami did not hunt Wapol.
With the Dark-Dark Fruit, he had no need for Munch-Munch.
In the future Wapol would use it to create a new metal, Wapometal.
On the strength of Wapometal, he would grow rich overnight, become one of the world's wealthiest, found a kingdom, and join the World Government.
Yami did not know how to manufacture Wapometal, so he planned to wait until Wapol could produce it, then seize the fruit and the memory together.