6 Arriving in Arabasta
Arabasta, a kingdom plagued by a pest - and I was about to become a pest exterminator. You may think I'm doing it out of the kindness of my heart.
That's not really the case.
There are two reasons why pommelling crocodile is on my bucket list;
One, who else but he would be the best punching bag to test out my 'purple flame' - which I decided to name [Blackout] - onto?
I mean he ticks all the boxes... Logia? *tick*, Not too strong? *tick*, An overall douchebag? *tick*
Perfect guinea pig, don't you think?
Second, defeating him would speed up the events which would lead me to meet my first crew member and '1st Mate'. (A/N: brownie points if you guess who that is)
Now back to rowing.
'All things considered, the sea in one piece sure is beautiful - if you ignore all the monsters hiding inside it' - taking a deep breath of the fresh ocean smell I look back at the giant cat-headed serpent staring back at me.
"Uhh...how'd you like the weather?" - scratching my head I awkwardly ask as my astral sense is triggered. (Spide... is that you?)
"RAWWW" - clearly not impressed by my attempt at striking up a conversation - the behemoth dashes towards my boat in an attempt at sinking it.
"HAAAH" - doing my best to not panic - I back-row which creates just enough distance for the sea king to not directly hit my boat.
"FUCK" - even still the shockwave is powerful enough to knock me off and almost capsize the boat.
'Damn - I'm glad I can swim in situations like these' - swimming back to the surface I try looking for the boat, but before I can have a good look the sea king rushes towards me.
"Astral Form - Serpent Slayer Sword"
I quickly manifested a meter-long odachi sword and braced for the impact.
Gripping the sword with both hands and pointing it towards the bastard's head, I let his own momentum impale the sword on him.
At the last second the bastard opens his maw, and from the original target on his head - I'm forced to change it to the inside of his maw.
"GULP"
After swallowing Adriel, the sea king thought for a second before turning towards his boat and rushing to swallow it as well.
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Hanging from the sword embedded in the bottom of the beast's jaw - Adriel reflected on his current situation and how he could get out of it.
'This bastard's skin is thick and making a bigger construct would use up too much astral power... the only thing I could do is increase the density of the sword or the sharpness of the blade...or both?'
As he was thinking he felt the serpent moving - signifying the approach of his impending doom.
'No. Increasing the density and sharpness of the whole blade would require too much astral power - I wouldn't be able to maintain it...WAIT'
'If I cant strengthen the whole blade, then just focus on the EDGE!'
Starting to focus on the edge of my blade - I started increasing its hardness trying to reach something similar to high-carbon steel.
Once the whole blade was hardened, I started increasing its sharpness - which was exponentially more difficult than increasing its hardness.
One was simply adding more astral power to the edge of the construct, while the other required me to actively shape the astral power.
With some difficulty, I managed to reach an acceptable result.
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POV: Sea King
Before the sea king could reach Adriel's temporary 'ship' - he felt a terrifying pain inside him - which made him trash around while letting out an ear-piercing shriek.
"RAIEEEE"
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Back to Adriel.
Admiring the newly improved odachi, a thought came into Adriel's mind.
'I feel like I could cut through metal with this blade' - leaving that experiment for later, he went back to focusing on his current problem.
"Alright. Time to Krato's this shit." - shifting his whole body weight onto the blade and pulling down as hard as he could, the action started creating momentum.
Resulting in a 10-meter-long cut on the underside of the sea king, before the trashing made Adriel lose his footing and almost fall deeper inside the sea king.
Fortunately, he managed to push himself up and out of its belly - turning around and stabbing the sword into the sea king again, this time making another 15-meter-long cut on its underbelly before the sea king collapsed, dragging Adriel with it.
Quickly dispelling the sword, Adriel started swimming towards the surface, but not before turning around to flip off the sinking sea king bastard.
'See you in hell fucker.' - getting that out of his system he reached the surface and swam towards his boat.
Rowing, covered in a mix of blood and seawater - Adriel could only reflect.
'Why am I so unlucky? I swear there exists a Luck Luck Devil Fruit, maybe I'll eat that.'
'Damn, I have to unlock my other abilities using only astral solidification sucks.'
After that unfortunate event, he continued sailing toward the direction his log pose pointed to, and aside from the random fish passing by the boat nothing of interest happened.
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"I'm never rowing again in my entire life." - after a gruelling journey having to row from Drum kingdom all the way to Arabasta, all Adriel could think of was a bed and a shower.
The Kingdom of Arabasta is one of the major places where Luffy had his first major loss - getting his ass handed to him and almost dying.
"It really does look just like the Sahara Desert, except with more people and a bitch trying to usurp the throne. (A/N: it was hinted that Ivankov changed Crocodile's gender)
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It really was quite sad sight to see, most people were as thin as sticks and even the children didn't have the strength to move around or play.
Just that itself made me stand out like a sore thumb - an 8'2 muscular youth walking around a kingdom where people didn't even have water to drink.
Thankfully, seems that people aren't stupid enough to create unnecessary trouble, especially for someone covered in dried blood and having a making a serious face.
I was very annoyed and tired - if someone approached me with bad intentions, right now - I definitely wouldn't have pulled my punches, and I don't want to have to kill for no reason.
Finding the closest Inn, I paid 1,000 berries and rented a room, after giving my clothes to get washed, I went to take my well-deserved shower.
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And by shower, I mean getting in a classic ofuro* tub that barely fits half my body. (A/N: *it's a type of traditional Japanese bathtub - see them a lot in movies or shows)
"Beggars can't be choosers I guess... Just you wait till I make the Grand Tesoro mine, I'll be taking baths in gold baby." - fantasized about my future endeavours before ending my bath and heading back to my room.
Taking out my gift pouch I gave it a quick look before thinking of my next move.
After paying for the boat and the inn I still had left 979,000 berries, in the grand scheme of things that was considered pocket change but at least I wouldn't have to worry about finances momentarily.
Now on how to defeat Crocodile and make my debut in the world of One Piece. Showing up to his casino and trying to fight him would be suicide, even though I'm confident my [Blackout] can nullify and protect me from most of his logia abilities like intangibility and sand attacks, I wouldn't be able to fight his entire forces alone, and I don't have any allies currently to help me.
Although the fight against the sea king helped me improve my control over my [Astral Formation], and slightly increased my astral power reserves. (Depleting my astral power reserve and replenishing it seems to slightly increase them every time)
Going all-out, currently I'd only last about 10 minutes before depleting my astral reserves.
So I currently stand at two choices;
I can either look for the rebel forces and try to convince them to storm Crocodile's place while I take care of him.
Or, take some time to train my abilities trying to increase my control and reserves, which could maybe unlock a new ability.
And my Talk-no-Jutsu isn't on Naruto's level - so training it is.
