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Chapter 120is out!!!! +40 advanced chapters monthly
"Alright, kid. If you're actively asking for a beating, then don't blame me for being heavy-handed. You'd better brace yourself!" Garp flashed a wicked, feral grin as he listened to Bai Shui's challenge.
"Enough talk, let's just start," Bai Shui replied, his tone tinged with clear impatience. "I couldn't fully test everything I've learned inside that weapon array!"
Why the sudden impatience? Because in his relentless pursuit of strength, he hadn't seen Aki in five months. Although she was still in a coma, her attending physician had recently indicated that she was showing signs of waking up. Bai Shui's mind was consumed with thoughts of her; he wanted nothing more than to rush back to her side. But until his six months of training were up, Garp absolutely refused to let him leave.
Since he was stuck here for one more month, his only option was to wring every last drop of combat experience he could out of this final stretch.
"Bring it on!"
Standing on a deserted island just off the coast of Foosha Village, Garp dramatically ripped off his pristine Marine Justice coat, tossing it aside as he dropped into a combat stance.
"Soru!"
Bai Shui didn't hold back. He vanished in a blur of speed, instantly reappearing directly behind Garp. His right hand extended, ripping through the air.
"Photon Cannon!"
Faced with the scorching, blindingly fast beam of energy, Garp let out a low, guttural shout. Bai Shui felt the very air grow heavy and oppressive as the Vice Admiral moved.
"Genkotsu Cannon!"
Boom!
The Photon Cannon that had once possessed enough force to blast Raen away was effortlessly countered. Garp's bare fist slammed into the beam, shattering the energy and deflecting the blast high into the sky. Yet, the sheer kinetic backlash of the collision caused the bedrock of the island to spiderweb into massive fissures, radiating outward from where Garp stood.
"Photon Kick!"
Admiral Kizaru had his light-speed kicks, and Bai Shui had his Photon Kick. The fundamental principle was the same: weaponizing sheer, overwhelming velocity to obliterate an opponent.
Bam!
But Garp seemed to possess precognition. He threw a space-shattering punch that collided head-on with Bai Shui's descending right leg.
"Ugh!" Bai Shui grunted. A mountain-crushing force cascaded up his leg, threatening to shatter his bones. The impact was so overwhelming that a thin trail of blood instantly leaked from the corner of his mouth.
"Rankyaku!"
Garp pressed his advantage, stepping into Bai Shui's guard and unleashing a vacuum blade from his leg.
Every hair on Bai Shui's body stood on end as lethal danger flared in his mind. Busoshoku: Koka!
Clang!
The crescent air blade slammed violently into his blackened, Haki-coated chest. Even with the defense, the kinetic force rattled his internal organs, causing more blood to spill from his lips.
"Genkotsu!"
But that wasn't the killing blow. Garp suddenly materialized behind him. The Vice Admiral's fist was a localized singularity of terror—coated in pitch-black Haki, with the sheer muscular density of Tekkai layered beneath it. It was the absolute pinnacle of concentrated destructive power.
"Photon Barrier!"
Bai Shui desperately activated Tekkai and simultaneously projected a glowing shield of light particles.
Crack!
Spurt!
That layered defense might have been an impenetrable fortress against anyone else in the East Blue, but against Monkey D. Garp, it was made of paper. Garp's fist annihilated the Photon Barrier in an instant, completely bypassed the defensive hardening of Bai Shui's Tekkai, and sent him rocketing away, coughing up blood.
Crash!
Bai Shui slammed into a rocky hillside, instantly obliterating it. Avalanches of boulders rained down, burying him beneath tons of rubble.
"Open!"
Gritting his blood-stained teeth, Bai Shui forcefully expanded his Photon Barrier, blasting the massive boulders off his body to free himself from the debris.
"Hah... hah..."
He dropped to one knee, his chest heaving as he gasped for air. In the span of just a few seconds, Garp had utterly demolished him.
"Genkotsu Meteor Swarm!"
But Garp wasn't done. Millstones-sized boulders, hurled with terrifying, cannon-like force, blotted out the sky as they plummeted toward Bai Shui.
Refusing to yield, Bai Shui raised his right hand, firing a rapid barrage of concentrated energy beams to systematically blast the massive rocks into dust.
"Where are you looking, Bai Shui?!"
Garp's booming voice suddenly echoed from right behind him. The Vice Admiral's right index finger, pitch-black with Busoshoku Haki, thrust forward like a spear.
Bai Shui's pupils dilated in shock. He couldn't react in time. Garp's speed was simply too monstrous.
Thwack!
Struck by the Haki-infused Shigan, Bai Shui vomited another mouthful of blood and was launched backward once more, slamming so hard into the mountain face that the entire geological structure trembled and groaned.
"Bwahaha! That's not nearly enough, Bai Shui kid! Again!" Garp roared with laughter, his face flushed with the sheer thrill of battle.
"Photon Cannon!"
A searing, razor-sharp beam of light suddenly retaliated from the dust cloud, expanding rapidly in Garp's vision. The speed of the attack was so intense it barely left room for human reaction.
Boom!
Yet Garp merely threw another punch. Condensing all his monstrous physical strength into a single point, he shattered the energy blast on impact.
Suddenly, Garp's expression tightened. His right arm instantly blackened with Haki as he threw it up to guard his face. In a flash of light, Bai Shui materialized right in front of him, bringing down a devastating Photon Kick.
BOOM!
A deafening shockwave detonated in the air. The entire island shuddered violently under the stress. Gale-force winds ripped across the terrain, tearing up the ground and whipping the surrounding ocean into a ring of massive, churning waves.
As Garp cocked his fist back to counterattack, Bai Shui, as if reading his mind, instantly fired another Photon Cannon point-blank. Forced to abandon his strike, Garp barked out "Soru!" and vanished from the spot.
"Photon Stream!"
Seeing Garp disappear, a faint smirk tugged at the corner of Bai Shui's mouth. He aimed his left hand at an apparently empty patch of sky and pulled the trigger.
Swoosh!
The exact second Garp rematerialized in mid-air, he found himself staring down a dense, overwhelming barrage of glowing energy blasts.
Good kid, Garp praised inwardly. His eyes narrowed in focus. Seamlessly combining two Rokushiki techniques, Garp danced through the sky using Geppo, while simultaneously contorting his body with the paper-like fluidity of Kami-e.
The dense swarm of lasers wove entirely around him; not a single blast managed to singe his clothes.
"I'm not done yet!"
Like a rocket breaching the atmosphere, Bai Shui launched himself directly into Garp's face, his right hand glowing with blinding intensity.
"Tekkai!"
Realizing he was out of position to dodge, Garp barked the command, locking his muscles into an iron-like state and taking the energy blast dead on.
"Ngh!"
The sheer concussive force of the blast exceeded Garp's expectations. For a brief second, his defense wavered, and for the first time in the entire fight, he felt a genuine sting of pain.
"Photon Kick!"
Seizing that microscopic window of vulnerability, Bai Shui whipped his leg around. By the time Garp recovered his bearings, the kick had already connected.
Crash!
Like a meteor falling from orbit, Garp was swatted out of the sky and smashed violently into the ground. The entire island quaked, and a massive crater spiderwebbed across the earth.
"Bwahaha! Good! Good kid!"
Despite the devastating impact, Garp casually stood up from the epicenter of the crater, dusting himself off as if he had merely tripped. There wasn't a single scratch on him.
"Alright, let's call it a day, Bai Shui!" Garp yelled up to the hovering young man.
"Fine!" Bai Shui nodded, floating back down. It wasn't that he lacked the will to continue, but after fighting at maximum capacity all day, his stamina was running dry.
"Give it another month of this, and the next time you face a monster like Raen, you won't have to struggle nearly as much," Garp noted as they made their way back to Foosha Village.
Bai Shui chuckled. "Yeah. Another month of sparring with you, and Raen won't even be a warm-up."
Back in Foosha Village.
Compared to Bai Shui's fulfilling, high-intensity days, Luffy was living through a waking nightmare. Garp's "training regimen" had instilled such a deep, profound psychological trauma in the rubber boy that just the sight of his grandfather made him involuntarily shudder.
To make matters worse, Garp was staying for a whole month. For Luffy, who was already at his breaking point, this was a sentence worse than death.
Every day, after finishing his hellish sparring sessions with Bai Shui, Garp always made sure to carve out time to "train" Luffy.
But his methods of training Luffy were so unhinged they were practically guaranteed to leave the boy with lifelong psychological scars. Because of this, Garp's visits were always Luffy's worst nightmare—but this particular nightmare was dragging on for an agonizingly long time.
"Yo, Bai Shui! You're back!"
As they walked through the village, the locals greeted Bai Shui with warm, familiar smiles.
"Yeah, just got back!" Bai Shui replied, nodding to each of them.
"Come on, let's go grab a drink at Makino's!" Garp laughed boisterously, leading the way toward the village's favorite establishment.
Partys Bar, located right at the edge of the village.
It was the sole tavern in Foosha Village, and a place where absolutely no one—no matter how infamous they were in the East Blue—dared to cause trouble.
Why? Because this humble little bar was under the unspoken protection of Red-Haired Shanks, one of the Four Emperors of the Sea. Furthermore, it was a well-known secret among the locals that Makino was Shanks' lover. While no one ever spoke of it openly, the sheer, radiant joy that lit up Makino's face whenever the Red Hair Pirates docked was impossible to misinterpret.
Naturally, the patrons weren't just villagers; the bar occasionally saw traveling merchants, wandering swordsmen, and bounty hunters. But no one dared break the peace. Everyone knew there were currently two absolute monsters residing on the island. Garp went without saying—he was a living legend no sane pirate would ever cross.
But Bai Shui had also carved out quite a reputation for himself across the East Blue. His recent crusade, single-handedly orchestrating the defense of the Green Apple Kingdom and wiping out the invading pirate fleets, was still fresh in everyone's memory. Following that incident, with the sole exceptions of the Arlong Pirates and the Buggy Pirates—who had been smart enough to flee and lay low—nearly every other pirate crew of note had been systematically hunted down and captured.
The citizens of the East Blue cheered his name. As a result, the seas were unprecedentedly quiet these days. Even if a few pirate ships were still sailing, they didn't dare fly their flags too proudly.
When Bai Shui and Garp pushed through the swinging doors, the ambient chatter of the tavern noticeably lowered in volume.
"Bai Shui, Vice Admiral Garp! Welcome back. What can I get you?" Makino greeted them with her usual gentle, welcoming smile.
"The usual. One beer, one orange juice!" Bai Shui ordered smoothly before Garp could even open his mouth.
"Coming right up!" Makino smiled, turning to grab two glasses and filling them from their respective taps.
Grabbing a drink here every day had become something of a ritual for Garp. As an older man, he appreciated the lively, warm atmosphere of the tavern.
"You really are a freak, kid. You're twenty years old, so why do you insist on drinking orange juice instead of booze?" Garp asked, taking a massive, satisfying gulp from his mug.
"Just not used to the taste," Bai Shui answered plainly, taking a sip of his juice.
The truth was, the beer in this world tasted completely different from what Bai Shui remembered in his past life. To him, this era's ale tasted like it had been watered down to the point of being entirely flavorless. It was practically like drinking tap water. Given the choice, the orange juice was infinitely better.
More importantly, Aki had once mentioned she disliked the smell of alcohol on him. Since then, Bai Shui had lost all interest in drinking.
"Sigh. A freak is a freak. Even your habits are entirely backward." Garp shook his head in exasperation and took another deep swig of his beer.
Meanwhile, fragments of conversation from a nearby table drifted over to them.
"Hey, did you hear?"
"A new rookie crew popped up in the East Blue. They're calling themselves the Spade Pirates!"
"What? Who are they?"
"Right? I've never heard the name before!"
"Rumor has it their captain is just a seventeen-year-old kid. Goes by the name... Portgas D. Ace, I think?"