Ronan immediately recognized the identity of the little girl standing before him.
Kuina… the genius swordswoman of Isshin Dojo in Shimotsuki Village, Koushirou's daughter…
Fragments of memory belonging to the transmigrator within him surfaced clearly at this moment. He remembered this girl: a prodigy in swordsmanship, who at only nine years old could defeat all her peers in the dojo. Yet, tragically, she was destined to perish at eleven due to an accident.
A life that should have withered a year from now was, at this very moment, standing right in front of him.
Ronan's feelings were subtle. As a soul from another world, he could sense that his very existence was gradually influencing more and more of the fates that had once been fixed.
The threads of cause and effect really are strange… Ronan mused inwardly.
He looked at Kuina and immediately noticed the look in her eyes. Ronan was no stranger to that gaze. It was a pure, untainted yearning for strength.
"Were you the one who wanted to see Teresa?" Ronan asked.
His voice cut through Kuina's turbulent thoughts.
"Yes!" Kuina nodded hard at once, her eyes filled with expectation.
"What do you need from her?"
Kuina answered with a hint of embarrassment, "I hope I can take Teresa-sama as my master and have her teach me swordsmanship!"
In Kuina's mind, making such a sudden request was indeed somewhat presumptuous. However, the desire in her heart to become stronger would not allow her to let go of any opportunity.
Ronan fell silent for a moment. He studied Kuina carefully. Her talent for swordsmanship was beyond question, and if she could receive Teresa's guidance, her future achievements might well be immeasurable.
"Teresa isn't in the kingdom right now," Ronan said slowly. He saw the flash of disappointment instantly darken Kuina's eyes, but he did not stop there. "She has her own missions."
Kuina's small face instantly turned pale. She bit her lower lip tightly, forcing back the tears of disappointment that were threatening to spill. After all the hardship it had taken to get here, was it really going to end like this…?
"However," Ronan's tone shifted, "you can stay in the royal palace."
Kuina's head snapped up, hope rekindling in her eyes.
"Teresa will be back by the end of this month," Ronan continued, watching her. "Before she returns, you can train and undergo basic drills with Beth and Alicia. Their strength is more than enough to instruct you."
He paused, then added, "Once she comes back, I'll personally bring up your wish to her."
This was not a direct promise, but it gave Kuina both a clear hope and a concrete reason to stay.
A surge of joy instantly flooded Kuina's heart! She had never expected the boy before her to agree so readily. On the way here, she had gone over countless possibilities in her mind, especially how she should respond if he refused; she had even prepared several backup arguments.
Yet she had not imagined that he would accept so straightforwardly. Kuina felt as though fortune itself had fallen from the sky and struck her on the head. Her voice became slightly excited because of it.
"Thank you, Ronan-denka!"
She knew that the door leading to her dream had now been opened a crack. The rest would be up to her and the sword in her hands, to push that door fully open by her own strength.
Time flew by; in the blink of an eye, two years had passed.
Deep within the royal palace of Lulusia, in a spacious training ground set aside specifically for cultivation, two figures were engaged in fierce combat.
One of them was Ronan, now eleven years old. Compared to two years ago, his figure had grown noticeably taller. He was currently fighting bare-handed, no weapon in his grip, both arms completely covered in a solid, deep-black sheen—Armament Haki that he now wielded with increasing mastery.
His opponent was Enel.
The Enel of this moment was a far cry from the man who had suffered a crushing defeat on Sky Island three years ago. Although a hint of arrogance still lingered between his brows, beneath that arrogance there now lay a much greater steadiness.
"Sixty Million Volts: Thunder Beast!"
Enel's hands clenched around empty air. A massive blue beast of thunder formed from lightning itself, surging forward with a destructive aura as it pounced toward Ronan! Stray arcs of electricity scorched the stone tiles underfoot, leaving charred cracks in their wake.
Faced with this terrifying attack, Ronan chose not to take it head-on. He pushed off the ground, his body drifting diagonally backward, while his blackened right fist slammed fiercely into the Thunder Beast's flank!
"Boom!!"
The Thunder Beast's body jolted under the impact of that punch. Though Ronan failed to completely disperse it, he used the force of the recoil to pull away and widen the distance with nimble ease.
Losing its target, the Thunder Beast crashed into the ground behind him, exploding into a brilliant cluster of lightning that blasted a gigantic crater into the training ground.
Enel was slightly surprised that Ronan could shake his Thunder Beast like that, but his reaction quickly hardened. His body instantly turned into pure lightning, elementalizing into a humanoid bolt and flashing to Ronan's side in an instant.
"Thirty Million Volts: Thunder Shigan!"
Ronan's Armament Haki coated his entire body. He crossed his arms before his chest in a guard, the black aura of his Haki growing even denser!
"Clang!!"
A tremendous force, tinged with numbing electricity, slammed into him. Ronan's feet skidded backward several steps across the ground before he finally managed to dissipate the impact. The painful numbness traveling up his arms left him feeling more than a little uncomfortable.
He exhaled lightly, beads of sweat beading at his temples. Their battle had already gone on for quite some time, and Ronan could feel the pressure mounting with every passing exchange.
His opponent was a Logia-type Devil Fruit user; lightning-based attacks possessed overwhelming destructive power, and Enel's speed had reached an absurd level. If not for the fact that Ronan's Observation Haki had also become highly polished, he would likely have been defeated long ago.
Even with Armament Haki allowing him to hit Enel's real body, Enel had spent the last few years relentlessly training both his Haki and his physical arts. Actually inflicting serious damage on him was extremely difficult.
"God's Judgment: Scatter Bloom!"
Enel had no intention of letting Ronan rest. He spread his arms wide as countless, denser, yet finer spears of lightning appeared, pouring down toward Ronan in a storm! This sort of wide-area attack was nearly impossible to evade completely!
Ronan's pupils contracted. He immediately pushed his Observation Haki to the limit, slipping through the tiny gaps between the barrage of lightning spears with near-impossible evasive maneuvers!
"Swish! Swish! Swish! Zzzt—!"
He managed to narrowly avoid most of the spears, but there were still a few that he simply could not dodge entirely. They slammed into his Haki-covered arms, shoulders, and back, bringing stabbing pain and waves of paralytic numbness.
Forced back again and again by the ferocious assault, Ronan's movements grew increasingly bedraggled, his breathing much heavier than before. The high-intensity use of both Observation Haki and Armament Haki was a tremendous drain on his stamina and spirit.
At last, after more than ten seconds of relentless lightning spears, the storm came to an end.
Ronan sucked in air in ragged gasps. Shaking his head, he finally said, "That's enough, that's enough, I surrender!"
Losing to Enel did not discourage him in the slightest. Over the past two years, he had lost count of how many times they had fought. He had never won even once. No matter how much stronger he became, Enel always seemed to grow even faster.
He knew very well that being able to battle Enel—empowered by the Rumble-Rumble Fruit and having grown vastly stronger—to this extent was already the limit of what he could achieve with his current combination of Haki and physical arts.
Enel, after all, had spent these years following at Teresa's side. The battles and tempering he had undergone were far more brutal, and his rate of improvement was astonishing. As for Enel's true full power, Ronan suspected that only Teresa might be capable of forcing it out of him.
(End of Chapter)
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