Next Bonus, 100!!
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On the island of Little Garden, the spar between Jin and Issho raged on.
"Hell's Journey!"
Issho began to sheathe his blade, pressing the hilt down with deliberate force.
A low hum vibrated through the air, followed by the sickening crunch of reality itself.
The gravity in the clearing skyrocketed—tenfold, a hundredfold, a thousandfold.
Under the immense pressure, the ground shattered. Space itself seemed to warp and collapse, crushing everything within its grasp. Trees splintered into nothing more than fine dust.
But Issho didn't complete the motion.
His senses screamed—a powerful presence was upon him.
A blur of motion, silent as the grave. Jin was a phantom, leaving a trail of afterimages as he closed the distance. He wielded Shusui, unleashing a chillingly precise slash that seemed to cut the very air.
Issho, however, remained calm. His mastery of the battlefield didn't rely on sight, but on the power of his hearing—an instinct honed to a razor's edge, backed by a powerful Observation Haki that could pluck meteors from the cosmos.
He moved in the face of danger, sidestepping just enough for the blade to pass him by.
The terrible gravity formed a crushing field around him. An ordinary person would have been unable to move, each motion an agony.
But Jin was no ordinary man. Even under the weight of a thousand times normal gravity, he moved, swinging his blade with a force that defied physics, the razor-sharp edge slicing through the corner of Issho's cloak.
The ground split open, a long, deep scar left in its wake.
A flicker of light in his eyes—Conqueror's Haki. He followed up with an utterly unexpected kick.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
Issho's body shuddered from the impact. He was sent flying, crashing into the side of a mountain and disappearing in an avalanche of rock and dust.
"Hah..."
Jin landed, the crushing gravity vanishing from his body. A feeling of lightness washed over him, as if he'd just shed an immense weight.
He looked over at Issho, who was already rising from the rubble.
"Hey, Issho," Jin said, stretching his limbs. "Your Gravity-Gravity Fruit makes for some pretty excellent weight training."
The feeling of being crushed by gravity was suffocating.
But he loved it.
'After all the evolutions and training, my strength and potential have become so immense that normal training barely even counts as a warm-up anymore. But under this kind of pressure, a single swing of my sword requires hundreds, even thousands of times more effort. By constantly adapting to this high-gravity environment, I'll be faster and stronger in a real fight.'
The human body is like a machine. It needs constant training to stay at its peak. The moment you start slacking, even the best physique can decline dramatically in just a few years.
It's true for athletes, and it's true for the powerhouses of this world.
Charlotte Linlin is the perfect example. The difference between her in her prime and the obese old woman she became is stark. The only reason she could still call herself a Yonko was because her base stats were just that monstrous. And then there's Gecko Moria, who once dared to challenge Kaido, devolved into a fat, lazy shut-in. His physical decline was obvious.
'Now that I've reached the Yonko level myself, I can feel an invisible ceiling. It's incredibly difficult to get any stronger. Just maintaining this level of power is a challenge, because the intensity of my training can't keep up. It's hard to push my body to its absolute limit, and then break it.'
'Kaido's constant "suicide attempts"... he's probably doing the same thing I am. Looking for his limit, trying to break through.'
It's just that hard.
'It's like the 100-meter dash back on Earth. Once you're at the world-record level, breaking it by even a millisecond is a monumental achievement. But what if you were in a high-gravity environment? The Saiyans from Dragon Ball were so strong because their home planet had ten times Earth's gravity. And they had gravity training on top of that. If I could really do that...'
It wasn't just Jin. His commanders, his soldiers—they could all use "gravity training" to boost their combat power. People like Robin, with the enhancement from the demonic carrier and specialized training like this, could undergo a complete transformation in just a year or two.
In the original story, it had only taken Luffy a little over two years from the time he set out to sea to the time he defeated Kaido. And the time between his victory over Doflamingo and his rampage through Big Mom's territory—when he became a Yonko—was a little over a month at most. The leap in his strength was staggering. Doflamingo, reading the news in his prison cell, must have thought he was going crazy. He goes away for a bit, and the whole world changes.
Hearing Jin's words, Issho was taken aback for a moment. Using his gravity for weight training? Was he serious?
But then he thought about it. It was, in a way, another application of his fruit's power. And it would probably be very effective.
This was the difference in their thinking.
In Jin's eyes, many Devil Fruits, if applied to daily life and production, could change the world.
Like the Rumble-Rumble Fruit or the Flare-Flare Fruit.
The Rumble-Rumble Fruit was a no-brainer. The very source of electricity. With it, the world would never have to worry about a power shortage again. Many of the Winter Blossom Kingdom's technologies, like its aircraft, were already powered by electricity.
And the Flare-Flare Fruit? The source of fire. Another massive source of energy. At the very least, you could use it to power a boiler. The Sea Train would no longer need coal. It would run on one meal per hundred kilometers... A born Saint of the Boiler.
And there were many other fruits that seemed useless, like the Mushroom-Mushroom Fruit or the Copper-Copper Fruit, that could create an entire industry.
But in the world of One Piece, most people only thought about using them to fight.
What a waste.
As someone from a world of industrial leviathans, whenever Jin got his hands on a fruit, he was always thinking about how it could be used to empower industry, to benefit the group, not just the individual.
"So," Jin said, "another round?"
Issho rubbed the spot where he'd been kicked and shook his head. "No. That's enough."
Even though it was just a spar, Issho could feel the gap between them. Jin's attacks were devastating. And Issho wasn't a tank like Kaido; he was more of a glass cannon. His body couldn't take that kind of punishment.
"You need special training, Issho," Jin advised. "You haven't fought enough top-tier opponents. You need to be forged in the crucible of battle."
From what he remembered of the original story, Issho was strong, but when compared to the true top-tiers, he was just a little lacking. He couldn't cut through the Birdcage, and although he'd said he didn't want to fight Doflamingo directly, he had still let Law escape after capturing him. And his performance in commanding naval battles and in combat situations had shown a certain lack of experience. These were common weaknesses for self-taught masters.
"You're right," Issho said with a nod.
After fighting Jin, he realized that he had all this power, but he couldn't bring it to bear. Jin had completely shut him down. The fight had been incredibly frustrating for him. He felt like he hadn't even been able to use 60% of his full strength before it was over.
It wasn't that Issho was weak. He had been chosen in the World Military Draft. He was, by all accounts, a monster.
But his techniques were almost useless against Jin...
They were devastating against ordinary people, against commanders and captains. Because those were the kind of people Issho was used to fighting. His techniques were designed to deal with them. If he had fought a Yonko or an Admiral, he would have been famous long ago.
But the gap between a commander and a Yonko was vast. The difference in their defense, their attack power, everything—it was too much.
His techniques were just not as effective.
It was like Luffy's Gear Third and Fourth. They were fine against commanders and vice-commanders, but against Kaido? His Gear Fourth attacks had barely been enough to wake him up from his drunken stupor.
Issho had shown this in the original story as well. The overall impact of his skills was just not on the same level as Kuzan's or the other top-tiers. Pulling a meteor from the sky was impressive, sure, but it had still been cut by Zoro. The move was more flash than substance.
Different opponents, different levels of strength, require different techniques. Even Jin wouldn't fight Whitebeard and Big Mom the same way. He would adapt.
"Your Majesty," Issho said, "I would like to start as a common soldier, to familiarize myself with the kingdom's navy. As for the position of Lord Admiral... I will take it when I am worthy."
Even better...
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