7 Time skip

(Kuzan POV)

Time passed. After displaying my special abilities, I was given more attention from the instructors. I had to do more work, perform higher and push my body to the impossible extremes for normal people. I grew much stronger over the years I stayed in the Advanced Marine Academy. 

After one week of observing me, Head Instructor Zephyr took me under his wing. He trained me personally and that was the best possible outcome for me. He would try and combine both endurance training, and strength training. So I usually had to climb a mountain with heavy weights. I had to be faster every day than the last. 

It was harsh training but very fruitful. I could tell that Zephyr would never do something like this under normal circumstances, but considering my special powers, he could change that and press every last drop of potential out of me. Little did he know that I had unlimited of that. 

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After one year of doing nothing else except training physically and learning navigation, geography and some minor politics and the hierarchy it was time to advance. 

In my second year, I got to decide whether I wanted to learn a weapon or not. I accepted of course and decided to learn both swordsmanship and spearmanship. These two were useful for me, since using my Hie Hie no mi, I could create both of those weapons quickly and then use them to fight. 

It was a good thing that I had such an experienced teacher like Zephyr. As a former Admiral, he could tell me all about the world of pirates and Marines. He told me what to watch out for and about the dangers that the world held. I guess this is something that I would know had all of my abilities been unlocked from my Essence of the Nomad. 

I got to learn from Zephyr and every week, we would fight. It ended with him knocking me out at one point. He had to do that if he wanted to end the fight, because no matter what I would stand back up and continue to fight. 

Zephyr created a very simple but barbaric training program to take full advantage of my gift. My only weakness at this point was getting knocked out or a Seastone bullet. Now I haven't gotten hold of some Seastone just yet, otherwise, I would have built up my resistance to it already, but that will come in the future. 

So in order to deal with my 'weakness' of getting knocked out, Instructor Zephyr would pummel me and beat me just without knocking me out. It was a barbaric and maybe even cruel way of teaching but that's just what it was like. I understood that this was the best way for me to take advantage of my abilities and so I went along with it. 

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My third year was more of the same really but it was this year that I was introduced to the Navy Six Styles, as they were called. This was a set of six 'martial arts', also called Rokushiki. Rokushiki consists of six basic techniques and a secret seventh technique that only a true master of Rokushiki can achieve. Furthermore, most of the users usually display their own variations and derived techniques, allowing them to increase their versatility and originality. 

These six are Soru, Geppo, Tekkai, Shigan, Kami-e and Rankyaku.

Soru allows the users to move at extremely high speeds in order to avoid attacks, as well as to attack at higher speeds and with greater power. It was revealed that the principle of this move was to kick off the ground at least ten times in the blink of an eye.

Geppo allows users to push themselves off the air itself with superhumanly strong kicks, allowing them to travel through and remain in midair for an extended period of time.

Tekkai hardens the users' muscles to the level of iron, allowing them to withstand and effectively nullify any damage they might have taken from attacks.[2] Tekkai can also be used to enhance the user's attacks by the increased density one gets from using it. The strength of Tekkai can vary for users with different physical conditions, as a person with a higher level of muscular strength would be able to take stronger forces and enhance their attacks more significantly.

Shigan is a close-quarter combat technique, in which the user uses their finger to pierce the target's flesh, at a very high speed. The resulting wound is roughly the size of a bullet wound.[2] It is a very useful technique that can be carried out rapidly and accurately, which works well with Rokushiki users' impressive speed and agile techniques.

Kami-e allows users to relax their body and make it take on the characteristics of a piece of paper; this grants the user extraordinary flexibility that allows them to avoid any attacks. The body being in this paper-like state also allows the user to float on the wind, as well as the ability to bend and contort their body.

Rankyaku is a powerful projectile technique, in which the users start by kicking at very high speeds and strength, which results in a sharp compressed blade of wind or "Sickle Wind" that can slice through objects and greatly damage a human body. Depending on the strength and scale of the technique, it is potentially capable of slashing a whole building in half. At least that's what I was told. 

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Zephyr told me that I should start with two at most but considering my talent, I would soon be able to move on to more. My talent is something that I came to understand has changed over time. The more I learned, the more I practised, the more I trained the more my talent for different things seemed to increase. 

My talent is by no means high right now, but it didn't start as anything special to begin with. I was actually quite bad. My special abilities were what gave me the edge. But now, my talents seem to increase as well. I can only guess that the Essence of the Blank is to blame for this. 

But in any sense, I'll take that. I don't care if I have to put more work in, since I never sleep anyway. So my day consisted of doing physical training with heavy weights and attending swordsmanship as well as spearmanship lessons. My training got more and more independent. I had a sparring session with Instructor Zephyr every week, where he completely whipped my ass up and down the field but other than that, I was more or less free to train on my own. 

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My fourth year was pretty much self-training and learning. I had completed all of the tests necessary to become an Ensign. Now that I could decide what to train on my own and only had to go through the sparring with Instructor Zephyr, I also had some time to train and improve my devil fruit. 

Since I didn't have that much time during the night to train my devil fruit, because it wasn't allowed to do that here, I didn't have that much progress. But I changed that in my fourth year. I came up with a harsh training programme. I tried to come up with different ways to use my power over ice. 

But my main area of improvement over this year was the coldness of my ice. I had no limit to my potential. I could achieve anything if I had enough time to train. So I thought that I could make my ice colder and colder. I tried to freeze the sea of the island. 

Every day I tried to freeze more and to freeze it faster. Every day I would push myself more and more. I managed to do that every day and if I didn't I wouldn't stop until I did. And only then would I move on to other things to train. 

My 'Ice Block: Partisan' increased in number. I was able to create unlimited spears using ice theoretically but my goal was not just quantity but quality and especially speed. I wanted to have the spears form in an instant and then have them shoot towards where I wanted them. And for that, I needed to train more and more. 

Over this year, I managed to increase the number of spears to a whopping 27 from the original 4. As for the temperature of my ice. I managed to decrease it to -172°C. That wasn't that bad but it wasn't very impressive either. Considering absolute zero was at -275.15°C or 0°K, I still had a long way to go. I noticed that making my ice colder was getting harder and harder. 

It didn't matter, I would continue to train and make it colder. My goal was to reach a level where I could flash freeze or freeze anything specific with a thought and reach absolute zero. But that was still far away. I had time thankfully. 

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My fifth year was more of the same. I trained my swordsmanship, my spearmanship, Rokushiki and also my devil fruit. Overall it wasn't anything special. I managed to get the basics down in all Rokushiki. I started with Soru and Tekkai. Those were the first two I learned and after two months I reached a satisfactory level and was allowed to learn another one. 

So now I managed to learn all of them and both Soru and Tekkai were at the high intermediate level. I didn't really spend a lot of time learning Rokushiki. I can see the value they have in a fight, but I see my devil fruit and Haki as the most important. 

That brings me to the last topic of my training. Haki. Instructor Zephyr told me that I should wait to train my Haki and first build up my strength. He told me that stamina was important for Haki, but without sufficient strength, I wouldn't be able to fully use Busoshoku Haki to its fullest. 

That didn't stop me from using them from time to time. I wasn't training them but using them from time to time was something I still did. 

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This changed in my sixth year. I had reached satisfactory levels in my swordsmanship and spearmanship. I was at the level of the instructor who taught both of these martial arts and couldn't advance in them anyway. I would still practice using ice clones but it wasn't a priority. Rokushiki got a full five hours of training per day. 

My Hie Hie no mi got a full 10 hours of training. Next to that, I used three hours per day for eating and another hour for relaxation. For the rest of the day, I would do different things like reading, fighting sea kings or sparring. 

So my devil fruit got the second longest training time of the day. I say second longest because Haki was the thing I practised the most. I coated myself in Busoshoku Haki and had my Kenbunshoku Haki activated at all times. This was hard on my brain in the first few weeks. I was almost constantly bleeding and passing out during the day. 

But I didn't care about that. Not even when the doctors and the instructors told me to stop doing that, did I stop. I was immortal and I would abuse that power. So I continued doing that every day. And over time, I could also train other things besides that. I was growing into a beast of a man and I was waiting for the day that I would be let loose on the pirates. 

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The sixth year something interesting happened. I never interacted with my fellow recruits, since I was always training and doing something to increase my power. So it was special when I heard about two new recruits who had joined the Marines, who apparently were in possession of powerful logia fruits. They were considered monsters already and for them to get to the advanced Academy was only to learn Rokushiki and some other things that future Marines needed. 

I was interested since these two were hyped, so I approached them.