Chapter 359

359

Four days later,

While Anchor was training his munch munch powers, Luffy was training most of his crew in Observation Haki. As he previously had mentioned, up here, using Observation Haki or any kind of Haki was relatively easy. 

It almost took half the effort to use Haki here, and Luffy had a suspicion that that's the main reason why the Skypeople had a few mantra users here. And with that in mind, Luffy put everyone to the grind. 

He even forced Cricket and the Monkey Brothers (Masira, Shoujou) to join in on the exercises. And with so many people trying to learn Observation Haki, Luffy had put together a training ground of sorts. 

Well, he didn't need to do it. But Luffy wanted to! 

I mean, who wouldn't want to create a room full of booby traps similar to the dangerous training equipment straight out of Kung Fu panda?

And with so much empty space in the dungeon rooms, this was just meant to be. After clearing out one of the rooms, it just needed some specialized equipment. And with Anchor still getting used to his new powers, Luffy made the Smith build training equipment from the destroyed trees, rocks, and other stuff in Upper Yard. 

And while Luffy was doing that, Anchor even went a step further and cleared out the whole section of the destroyed forest into organized logs of wood. 

Anchor also deduced that with time, when he was better at using his powers, he could compress any kind of materials to make them much more dense.

That really helped with Luffy's plan of selling them in the future. 

With that cleared out, Sanji took the time to plant new trees of various kinds and sped up the growing process with his powers. With Usopp, Groot, and Aisa helping along with that. 

Though unlike Anchor, Sanji needed to use a lot of power to speed up things, so it would take time. But he was sure that in a month, with how things were going, the Upper Yard would be filled with trees like before. And this time, they would be much more organized. 

Because of Enel, Angel Island was heavily damaged and the Shandoran homes were practically destroyed. 

So, Sanji made the choice —mainly because of Luffy and Robin's suggestion— to migrate both people into Upper Yard, with their own separate sections. As Upper Yard was a soil-rich environment, this would also clear out the food shortage problem that Enel created when he destroyed the food stocks of both groups a couple of days ago. 

Sanji was practically the king here and with wood provided by Anchor and labor provided by some of the Straw Hats, building new homes for both groups were going just as planned. 

Having found a literal dungeon in Upper Yard, Luffy wanted to make it their own base. Even if the dungeon was shut down, there was a good chance that in the future, it would be operable. So having people monitor and look after Upper Yard was a good thing altogether. 

Especially since a lot of dangerous animals were still present. They were subdued mainly by Sparky, Gin and Coby, but he was sure some of the wild animals are bound to get ambitious after they left. 

And in a way, it would act as a good training tool for the people living here. So the warriors of Shandora and Angel Island could keep them in check and when in the future more people came, they could also migrate easily here. 

Even though Sanji was the king here, bringing in new people from outside wasn't something he would oppose. Mainly as the same people would either be the crew's extended family or friends. But that was for the future, for now, there was no need to take such drastic measures. 

Anyway, aside from the civilized development, the training room for the crew was done. It was more of an obstacle course, that went like a runner's track, that connected the beginning with the end. 

The room was also very big, easily big enough to fit eight soccer (or football) fields side by side, so a lot of equipment were needed to fill in the training room. 

The main area of the obstacle course was lopped with dangerous traps and weapons set in for the challengers, but inside the room were also some standard training equpiment that were made heavy and durable for the crew. 

Anyway, the obstacle course was set with three levels. 

The first level was easy. Well, at least for him and the fighters of the crew. 

Only half of the traps would be active, and most of them are non-lethal. So one would need to run through the obstacle course and reach the end point without getting hit. For those who are learning Observation Haki, they needed to finish the course with a blindfold on. 

It was tough, but it was needed. Observation Haki could be learned even for non-combat, and in the grandscheme of things, weaker members needed it more than the stronger ones that could take a few hits.

Luffy also made sure to make it like a game setting, and even made a scoring record of sorts to get the competitive blood running. There was also rewards and everything for it. So a lot of people were interested in it. 

Even some of the members outside the Straw Hats, such as Cricket and his group and a few of the Shandoran warriors, who were basically fellow adrenaline junkies. They might not be crewmates, but they helped with the building process and who knows, in the future some of them might join in. 

Anyway, Luffy would have liked to include the gravity tech found here, but Anchor wasn't that well versed in machine-making. The main problem was the power source, as a normal battery can't power it. Lightning (from either Sanji or Sabo) can power it, but it needed fine control or the gravity ball would break.

Anchor was good at machines, but not on the level where he could make or modify them to fit into the danger room.

But if anyone in the crew (Mainly Luffy) needed gravity training, he could eat a few of them and become a literal gravity man and place Luffy under it while he trained. It wasn't the perfect solution, but it was far better then anything. As even normal weight training, bench, squat, and deadlifts became hard to do. So the grind continued…

The second level was a bit harder, with seventy percent of the traps and weapons being activated, some of them being a bit on the dangerous side. And everyone taking the second level would not only be blindfolded, they would also have their ears plugged by trusty noise-canceling headphones. Luffy had found a pair of them in the dungeon's main control room and with Anchor's help, he was able to produce a few copies of them. 

With no sight or hearing, the game became much more complex. Still, some of them were doing quite well, mainly those that couldn't fully use Observation Haki well. This level was mainly for Observation Haki user to get better at their reaction time and hone their instincts. 

The third level had the all the obstacles activated, with added railguns and other sharp and lethal traps. Unless one had Observation Haki at a good level, they weren't allowed to use it. 

Gin had tried and good thing he was in his ancient zoan form, the man was literally thrown around from one trap to another like a rag doll. Even with his added weight and size, the traps did him dirty.

But that was kind of a given, since Usopp took the leading charge of controlling the guns and traps manually. And Usopp… he was an evil little bastard when given control of such things. 

Usopp, for this reason, only liked the training room a lot. Even more than Luffy, but mainly because he would mix up the patterns of the traps every few hours to throw off the challengers who were getting used to patterns and started relying on memory to get a higher score. 

Anyway, even though the third level was tough, with some of the members, the traps weren't too hard for them. Such as Luffy, Sabo, Sparky, Zoro, Kuina, and Sanji. 

Almost all of them were able to blitz the obstacle course. So Luffy added a need for everyone (taking the third level) to wear weighted armor that was not only bulky in size but was at least three tons. 

So, with the added weight, came the need for balance, so speed was heavily reduced. Even for him. But, Luffy loved that level. And he would have loved it even more if his brother didn't get the highest score.

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