Return Of The Champion Part 3

Looking at the floating spear, Jack was amazed. The ability to control this weapon through the air had him thinking of all kinds of ways to utilize it in combat. Even though Jack has always specialized in unarmed combat that doesn't mean he doesn't acknowledge the usefulness of a weapon in a life and death situation.

In his old life he had always wanted to try his hand at kendo but unfortunately with his other pursuits he just never had the time. Now that in this life he had such a magnificent weapon at his disposal, the spear technique books in the library, and all the time he could want, Jack couldn't find any reason not to incorporate it into his fighting style.

Willing the spear into his hand, he could feel that the weight caused some resistance when controlling the water within it. It was nothing that he couldn't get used to with enough training though and he was eager to start. Taking the spear with him and grabbing the chest of devil fruit, he heads back to the library.

Putting the chest on the table with the various books that were of interest to him and setting the spear in the corner, Jack then goes to the lab to retrieve the fruit encyclopedia. Bringing that to the library as well Jack sits on a chair at the table and brings out the first devil fruit to look up.

(A/N: I decided to just use the English names for the devil fruit as the common language in this world sounds like English to the mc and it wouldn't make sense to have them in Japanese.. not trying to hate on the Japanese names or anything its just the English names work better in this story)

The first fruit that he pulled out looked like a group of three cherries attached at the stem only these were orange and had thin wavy lines covering it. Looking at its unique appearance, Jack opens the encyclopedia up to the first page and starts his search.

Almost as if someone was playing a prank on him he finally found the entry for the fruit on the third to last page. Jack spent over an hour looking through all three sections and the hundreds if not well into the thousands of entries in the damn book and finally found it in the last and largest paramecia section.

Looking at the name of the devil fruit in his hands the book calls it the Sound Sound Fruit. From what is written in the description it seemed to give the person the ability over sound waves. Remembering reading about the sonic weapons that the military was developing in his old world caused a shutter do go down his back when he imagines all that someone could do with this power.

Reading further it seemed that the user depending on mastery of their abilities could not only incapacitate people with sound they could even damage and destroy physical objects and people through frequency resonation even to the point of bypassing defense and injuring a person internally.

Extreme mastery of this fruit could potentially even allow one to develop sound hypnosis techniques but the entry said that was just a theory and had yet to be proven. Seeing all this Jack knew that in the right hands this fruit's powers could be devastating on the battlefield. Just the thought of being able to turn the enemy's men against them and the pure chaos that would bring caused a sadistic smile to creep up his face.

Putting the Sound Sound Fruit back in the chest, he takes out the next fruit which shape resembles that of a pyramid with a light red color with swirls all around it. Luckily he remembers seeing the picture of it a few pages before the first one and quickly flips back to the right page and finds the entry.

Reading what it was called, Jack knew that it would be oriented to close courters combat as with a name like the Muscle Muscle Fruit he would be surprised if it was anything else. Reading the description, he learned that this fruit was capable of allowing its user to freely manipulate the muscle fibers in their body.

Its abilities centered around growing or reducing their muscles at will and allowing the person to become a huge muscled hulk with superhuman strength. With mastery, they could even learn to make their muscles denser making them stronger without overly increasing there size. It says that the person could potentially even make their muscles so dense as to resemble steel, making them nearly impenetrable granting a strong defense to match its offense.

The next fruit that he brought out of the chest looked like a pink peach with white polka dots covering it and looking this one up took Jack a while as he did not remember seeing an entry for it. Going through the book he was finally able to spot it in the list, and after reading what this fruit was he could feel a shiver down his spine caused by the sheer sinister nature of its power.

It was called the Life Life Fruit and it granted the ability to control and manipulate the user's own lifeforce granting rapid regeneration, physical empowerment, and energy-based attacks. It also theorizes that this fruit will naturally awaken the user's Armament Haki without any training outside of mastering the fruit's abilities.

It could even allow it's user to imbue someone else with their life force to heal injures and extend that person's life span. Unfortunately, all of that comes at the cost of their own life span and could even end up killing its user if not careful.

None of that was what gave him the shivers though, as the entry went on to describe that by touching someone the user was able to absorb that person's life force. It literally steals the life right out of their bodies.

This caused the target to rapidly wither away to nothing but an aged corpse in a matter of seconds, with the speed of absorption depending on mastery. The stolen life force is then able to be stored in the user's body to supplement their own in the use of their abilities.

Jack was glad that this fruit was in his hands and not in the possession of an enemy. He wasn't sure if, even with all his power, he could protect himself from a proficient sneak attack with this fruit's life stealing ability. He will have to guard this well and only give it to one he trusts.

Taking out the second to last devil fruit from the case Jack noted its unique appearance as it gave the impression of a stone pear with small octangular shaped protrusions on its surface. What surprised Jack is that when he went to look for it in the encyclopedia instead of it being in the last section where the others were found which listed all the paramecia, this one was found in the first section.

It is named as the Lode Lode Fruit and was listed as a logia type. This fruit granted the ability to turn their body into particles of Lodestone which is a type of mineral that holds a natural magnetic charge and basically turning them into a giant human magnet.

With the ability to fully manipulate the lodestone that makes up their bodies with great control the user can greatly increase and decrease the strength of the magnetic fields that their body gives off. The use of this fruit has large potential and can be developed in many different ways at the discretion of its wielder and Jack had many thoughts running through his mind as to the possibilities.

The last Fruit Had an even odder look than the rest as this fruit looked like a golden apple with swirls of shining white. When Jack took it out of the chest he noticed a note beneath it. Picking up the note to see what it was about, he found that it seemed to be a tag for a gift.

It read, 'To My Cherished Love, This fruit is the genetic combination of the one used to make my fruit and the persimmons that you calm as your favorite, housed within is a truly miraculous spirit that I think will suit you well. May this symbolize the bond we share and give you the wings to reach your dreams. ~Joy'

'Apparently, the genius is named Joy based on the note, which is a bit odd for a guy's name but hey who am I to judge someone who revolutionized the whole world with his creations', inner monologued Jack.

Turning to the fruit encyclopedia Jack started going through it to find just what this fruit was. After a long time, he fueled his eyebrows in confusion as he couldn't find its entry. Thinking that he must have passed over it somehow, he goes back and looks through again. He still finds nothing resembling the fruit beside him and looking a third time just to be safe returns the same result.

Now coming to realize that this fruit must be special somehow whish isn't too hard to believe since It seemed that before his untimely death the ancient genius Joy prepared this fruit for his lover. With nothing to go off of he can only store it for the time being until he decides what to do with it.

With all the devil fruits identified, besides the one meant for genius Joy's lover, Jack could confidently say that the power's that these fruits gave would bring a great boost to the combat power to his future crew. With that out of the way he now turns his attention to the various combat manuals.

With nothing else but to go through them all and sort which ones will be useful to him, he sets a stack in front of himself and gets to work. With over sixty manuals for different martial arts, it takes a bit of time to go over them all. After getting through about twenty of them it starts getting hard for him to keep his eyes open so he stops and goes back to his room in the settlement leaving the rest for a new day.

Getting a good rest Jack wakes up ready to take on the day and heads back to finish going through the martial art manuals. Sitting down and getting to it he is able to finish going through them by the afternoon. Out of the sixty so manuals about 99% of them are mundane martial arts that could be found in his old world and as he already spent a lifetime mastering some of them.

Not seeing a need to study different arts that have no unique factor to them as that would only serve to dilute his current style with little gain. After excluding the majority of them, he was left with the spear technique manual to master his weapon of choice and six unique martial art techniques that had distinct and powerful features that Jack could utilize and merge into his fighting style.

The first was the three forms of Haki, as learning this will give an all-around boost to his offense, defense, and situational awareness. Conquerors Haki was all about manifesting your will into the world to affect physical objects and people, and from what he could tell Jack felt like he had a natural affinity for this.

To awaken Haki one has to learn to utilize their life force for Armament Haki and their spiritual power for Observation Haki. These energies naturally dwell within all living beings and the training allows the powers to interact with the physical world, either by coating the body in a protective layer of life force or by sensing the surroundings of the user through their spiritual power.

Next is the Hasshoken, which is a micro body control art that let's one harness the vibration created by the movement of their body, amplify it, then channel it into strikes. Doing so would create shockwaves that were so strong that it could destroy steel sheets and even bypass armor and directly injure en enemy's internal organs.

The third art, which Jack found particularly interesting, is called Electro. This fascinating technique allows one to manipulate their body's cells by increasing the process of turning ions into electricity. Channeling that electric charge through the nervous system and into the desired body part lets the practitioner produce electricity to add to their attacks, stunning or even incapacitating the opponent when struck.

The manual described how the training for this technique was created by studying a race called the Mink Tribe. Supposedly this race could naturally produce massive amounts of electricity from the moment they were born and developed this natural ability into a devastating offensive technique.

The next is another micro body control technique like the Hasshoken but taken to a whole different level. It is called Seimei Kikan and though it is not oriented to direct combat it does give the practitioner full control of their bodies at a microscopic level. Imagine being able to fully control the contraction of your muscles giving you the ability to continuously strengthen them and control their density to a certain point.

The user of this art can even manipulate their inner organs which would allow them to control the heart rate and thus blood flow throughout their body, the lungs to increase oxygen intake, their digestive system to boost the amount of nutrients they gain from food and greatly reduce waste, and even boost the functioning of their liver to filter out toxins making them nearly invulnerable to poison.

Seeing the vast applications of Seimei Kikan made Jack determined to master it. He even theorized that combing this technique with the Hasshoken and Electro would greatly boost their power and effectiveness making their use even more devastating in battle.

After those, jack came to a martial art called Fish-Man Karate which seemed to be particularly effective underwater though it can be utilized on land as well. Reading through the manual, this martial art seems to be similar to Hasshoken but this utilizes the water in the atmosphere to send shockwaves that are effective at midrange and can utilize the water inside living organisms to cause damage.

The last martial art manual consisted of seven individual techniques and it was these that Jack thought to be the most useful for bringing his overall combat to a new level. It is given the name of 'Six Styles: Rokushiki', which is odd as it has a total of seven techniques but apparently the last technique is a secret art that can only be used when one has mastered the other six.

Of the seven techniques, the first one is called Moonwalk. Using this, the practitioner is able to literally jump off the air itself allowing them to stay airborne for long periods of time and giving a third dimension to the user's combat abilities.

The second is called Iron Body Kempo and hardens the users' muscles to the level of iron. It is used in order to absorb and nullify damage taken from attacks even allowing the shock of impacts to be reflected back to the attacker. It seems similar to the effects of Armament Haki and grants a stout defense but with the physical body as the base instead of the user's life force.

Third of the six main techniques is the Finger Pistol. It is a close-quarter combat technique that utilizes an extended finger, which has been trained to be strong enough to pierce stone, that is pushed into a target at extremely high speed, leaving a wound similar to a bullet hole. If not wanting to be lethal this can still be effective in crippling parts of the opponent's body during a fight.

The Tempest Kick is the next technique to be listed. It is a powerful projectile technique, in which the user kicks at very high speeds and strength, sending out a sharp compressed air blade that can slice objects and greatly damage a human body. However, with enough training, it has been shown that almost any appendage swung at high velocities can be capable of utilizing this move.

The fifth technique is called Shave and allows near-instant acceleration to great speeds. It allows the user to move short distances faster than the average person can see in order to dodge and attack at extreme speeds and with greater power. The principle of this move was to kick off the ground at least ten times in the blink of an eye producing great momentum and propelling the user forward in a straight line to the destination.

The last of the Rokushiki is named the Paper Arts. This strange technique makes the user's body extraordinarily flexible, allowing them to bend their body like a piece of paper in order to avoid any attacks by moving the body with the force of the strike rendering it impotent.

The seventh was named Rokuogan but other then the name it had no description and only said that when one achieves full mastery over the first six techniques the Rokuogan will reveal itself. Jack didn't really know what to make of that and could only wait to see if he understands when he masters the other moves.

With these techniques in his arsenal, Jack felt that he could push himself to a whole new level. He also had a feeling that several of them could be combined or made to synergize with each other in a way that will boost their overall power. Hardly being able to resist starting his training immediately he instead goes to explore the upper floors which he has put off till now.

Going up the stairs to the second floor He found two big doors on either side of a long hallway. Opening up the left one first a warehouse full of construction material met his sight. Stacks of lumber and stone on large enough quantities to build a large castle.

Not seeing anything else of interest in there Jack turns to look in the other door. This one held within it a massive armory. Enough weapons to arm a small army were neatly stacked along the walls and in rows running the length of the warehouse. Swords, spears, and axes made up the majority of the weapons but there were also so different ones to be found too.

Seeing this Jack new that all of it would be useful in arming the rank and file of his crew and with the unique higher quality weapons in the vault below going to his commanders he now had enough to create a sizeable force. All that he was missing was a flagship and the crew to fill it, other than that his pirate adventures were off to a good start.

The rest of the upper floors were all bedrooms of different sizes and Jack picked out the largest one for himself and moved in. With all of the keep explored, he had to admit that this will make a good base of operations until he moves on the grand line.

From what Seagull told him, the underwater exit leads to the north blue so that is where he will begin to venture out and experience this new world once he has finished his next bit of training. Before he leaves here Jack wants at least a basic grasp of Haki as well as mastering as much of the other five martial arts he chose to learn as he can.

Two years... With the discovery of these new martial arts he wants to master, Two years is what he will give himself. Any longer than that and he doesn't think he would be able to stay in seclusion like this without going crazy.

Within these two years while he is not working on his martial arts or mastering his spear play he will continue his physical body training. With the help of the gym he discovered and all the weights inside his results will greatly increase.

Another thing he will be focusing on is furthering his mastery over his water manipulation. Since before he leaves he wants to figure out turning water to ice than back again. From his days in school, he knows that temperature is nothing but the speed the atoms of matter are moving. Slow equals cold and fast equals hot.

Knowing this though hasn't helped him much though as so far he needs to focus on individual molecules to be able to affect water on such a micro scale. Trying to affect the temperature in large quantities of water is much too overwhelming to the current him.

With the discovery of Observation Haki though, he now has a ray of hope. Jack thinks that it will be the key to large scale temperature manipulation in water as it will allow him to sense all the water at once without overloading his mind as it is instead dependant on the strength of his spirit.

So with his goals set and his time limit in place, Jack gets to work. He Decides to rest in the water when not training since Jack is unable to drown and he noticed that he regains his stamina a lot quicker when underwater. Doing this will allow him to make the most of his time and sets a schedule with twenty hours of training and four hours of rest per day.

Starting with Seimei Kikan as the body control this will give him will help boost the rate of training for the rest of it. It takes about five months to get a basic mastery of the technique before he moves on to Haki training as he wants to get as much mastery at this as he can.

Using the experience of his water sense to guide his way Jack quickly starts becoming capable of basic Observation Haki in only a few weeks. Armament Haki is another issue altogether though as he finds getting the hang of this to be particularly challenging but is not discouraged and sets aside some time every day to continue training it.

Now starting on Hasshoken and Fish-man Karate he finds that with the body control of Seimei Kikan learning these two comes quite naturally. Able to master both of them to a relatively high degree with about 6 months of hard training, Jack moves on to the next thing on the list. After that, he tackled Electro and found it to be pretty challenging as well. With the combination of Seimei Kikan and Observation Haki though he was able to make steady progress day by day.

With nearly a year now gone by since he started his intensive training, his mastery in the spear as taken great strides and his martial arts are progressing smoothly. His progress in Haki has also come a long way with his Conquerors and Observation in particular advancing constantly.

Another thing that has been progressing with no end in sight is his physical growth. When he started the training he was six foot eight inches tall and now with a year gone by he has broken past seven and a half.

With his newfound control over his body Jack was able to make sure that although he was muscular, it was not to the extent that he became some bulging, hulkish, mass of muscles. That wouldn't be attractive at all and he was able to make sure that his muscles remained in perfect proportion to his frame.

Honestly, he looks like he is some greek adonis craved by the hands of a master. If it wasn't for the lingering childish look to his face and his voice that was oddly high pitched relative to his body size people would never be able to guess that he is only a bit past eleven years old. (physically at least)

His water manipulation has also been coming along nicely with the amount of water he that he is able to control the temperature of increasing daily. Jack theorizes that at his peak he will be able to freely control, down to a molecular level, all the water that is within the range of his Observation Haki. Once he reaches that level he is not sure if there will be anyone in the world that would be able to go toe to toe with him.

Continuing his training for the final year before he eventually leaves this place and ventures out, Jack focuses the majority of his time on Rokushiki and mastering all the techniques that it encompasses. Starting with Shave as that seems to be the foundation of this martial art and then moving on to the others, he divides his time each day between the six of them.

Another year passes by with Jack pushing himself beyond his limit again and again. He is focused and determined to get everything out of the time he has spent here as he possibly can. When the time comes and with him reaching twelve and a half years old he is content with the progress he has made.

All the martial arts he wanted to learn has been mastered to a decent level and he can continue to polish them as he travels. His Observation and Conquerors Haki have been developed to a relatively impressive degree for his age and the time spent on them.

His Armament is only at a basic level but that will continue to improve with time. With his weapon training, even though he hasn't faced anyone with it yet Jack feels that he would be able to hold his own with his spear arts and is excited to try them against a real opponent.

With all this, he feels that he is finally ready to leave this place that has been his home for what feels like an eternity. Gathering all that he wants to take with him and packing it into Seagull's old pack, Jack walks to the edge of the water with his spear in hand.

Growing a couple of feet as he transforms into his hybrid form, he is always surprised by how the clothes he wears are also affected and grows with him. A new surprise though, is that the spear in his hand also grows to match is transformed stature like it doesnt want to be left behind by him outgrowing it.

With one last look back which brings a fond smile to his face from all the memories he has made here, Jack turns away and jumps into the water...

...And so begins this new, wondrous life and all the adventures it will hold.