[Whitebeard: "Maybe it's my imagination, but my appetite really is better than before. I ate twenty more bowls of rice."]
[I Am Not Crooked-Path: "Get lost, old man, scram right now!"]
[I Am Not Crooked-Path: "I only eat ten bowls in one sitting. You ate twenty more, which means you ate two of me!"]
[Whitebeard: "Hohohohoho, next time I'll try to eat three of you."]
Shiratori Riku patted his stomach.
"You're hopeless. How are you eating less than a half-dead old man? Eat more from now on, got it?"
Muttering to his belly, he then seriously considered what Whitebeard had said.
The old man's feeling did not seem like an illusion. It meant Riku's edited Inner-Elixir Health Arts had reacted differently in that body.
"Hm, it's because his physique is too strong, so he absorbs energy too fast."
"Natural stat monster. Damn, I'm jealous."
After a little thought, he saw the issue. The Inner-Elixir Health Arts, at root, absorb energy to nourish the body.
Whitebeard's illness came mainly from his body failing. Injuries from his youth could no longer be suppressed with age.
But the health arts slowly nourished him by increasing energy intake and balancing bodily problems. That happened to help Whitebeard.
While Riku was thinking, Whitebeard finally figured out how to upload files.
"Hm, so that's how. I can even upload Devil Fruit abilities? Interesting. This, this, and this too. Let's try them all."
Whitebeard uploaded everything he knew, including how to use the Quake-Quake Fruit.
[Group member 'Whitebeard' uploaded files]
"What did the old man upload?"
Hearing the group prompt, Riku opened it to find a folder with many files inside.
[Three-Color Haki Materials], [Quake-Quake Fruit Materials], [Combat Experience Notes].
Riku downloaded everything at once. A torrent of knowledge surged into his mind, and in a blink he absorbed it.
"Strange. Why is the Three-Color Haki explained in such detail? This doesn't feel like something Whitebeard would write."
The knowledge broke Haki down clearly into Armament, Observation, and Conqueror's.
It also described training methods, ways to improve, stages of mastery, and usage tips.
It was detailed beyond detailed.
He wondered if Whitebeard could really produce something like this. He even suspected parts that Whitebeard himself might not understand.
Holding that doubt, Riku found the Inner-Elixir Health Arts he had uploaded earlier and downloaded them again.
After he absorbed the content, his eyes went wide.
"No way. It actually auto-refined the material. The version I edited got reorganized, and some little gaps were patched."
Riku discovered his upload had been sorted and supplemented with small missing details.
"If so, can I just upload my hypotheses and let the chat group compile them into a complete art?"
"I'm a genius. Let's do it."
He wove his various theories together and uploaded them. After a while, he downloaded the result.
"Hm. It helped reorganize, but nothing was perfected."
His upload had been tidied, but not completed. It was still a set of hypotheses.
"Looks like the perfection feature has limits. At the very least, it can't turn ideas into a finished art."
Riku shook his head, a bit disappointed. So much for freeloading off the chat group. Too bad, failure.
"Even if I can't get a free art, the file system still helps me a lot."
"All right, Three-Color Haki, Quake-Quake Fruit. If I do this, then this, then this, will it work?"
Riku began studying Haki and the Quake-Quake Fruit, trying to graft them into his own system.
Whenever a concept seemed ready, he uploaded it. The files auto-organized and filled in minor details he had missed.
He downloaded, refined, and uploaded again. He kept testing, and by the end of it he had not slept all night.
At first light the next day.
"Master, Master, stop sleeping. Get up and look at my new research. This time you can't call me crooked-path!"
Riku rushed to the door and started pounding on it. This time, his new art had to be solid.