Seaside System - Chapter 3.1

A month passed in almost a blur.

The mornings began with intense training for his body. He ran until his legs shook and his lungs cried. Then he moved on to lifting boulders as weights until his arms cried just the same. Then he did the same with his legs, balancing and lifting the boulders with his feet.

…Until they also cried.

Then he had breakfast.

Then he made his way through the base asking anyone who would to spar with him.

He got his ass kicked.

A lot.

Especially if any of the higher ranked marines wanted to scrap when there was no pirates around.

Once he pulled his bruised self out of the heap he was left in, he dragged his sorry behind into the forest to punch trees into mercy until his knuckles cried.

And then blindfolded himself with his thingamajig marine scarf by tying it around his eyes and set his Haki Pendulum into motion and stepped between the thick swinging logs.

And got smacked around constantly by them until his entire body, mainly his torso and head, cried for mercy.

And that summed up his day prior to lunch.

After which, he would repeat it.

All over again.

Alongside training Soru of the Rokushiki. After which, he would drag his tired, beaten and bloody body back to bed to rest and repeat the very next day once again.

Really, it was just a month of his entire body screaming, begging, pleading and crying like a little girl for mercy.

It was probably only because of how superior his new body was, that he hadn't just keeled over and died out of pure exhaustion.

Or pain.

At the very least, he had some results to show for it.

"Hey, you blocked it!" Commodore Yarisugu grinned at him as he pushed down with one hand, large sword in grip.

Kaden, blade in and and both hands grasping his cutlass grit his teeth, arms shaking as he held the huge mans strike back with all his strength.

It wasn't meant to be condescending he was sure, because generally, Yarisugu was only a prick and cruel to pirates.

But…it still felt like it.

With a growl, Kaden pulled his hands down, grinding his cutlass' blade down the mans much larger one and went down with it.

The sheer force behind the mans continued swing as he did, allowed Kaden to propel himself forward with it and kick out, launching a stomp at the much larger mans kneecap.

Which did absolutely nothing.

The man didn't even grunt, his leg only vibrating lightly from the impact at the same time his huge sword slammed into the ground just behind Kaden.

Yarisugu's grin widened, one of his huge meaty hands darting down with a speed that belied his size and gripped Kaden atop the head and bodily picked him up.

And slammed him bodily into the ground hard enough to knock the wind out of him and drop his sword.

The ground indented under his back from the force of it even as spittle shot up from his mouth.

Hacking a silent cough, Kaden rolled back just as the huge Commodore tried to stomp down on him.

As he rose back up onto his feet he pushing off, kicking against it rapidly and shooting forward far faster than he usually did.

Only for an arm to slam into his throat and clothesline him. He flipped around the arm and slammed face first into the ground, stunned.

And he did not move.

"U…uh….uuuu…" A feeble, almost whimpering groan escaped him as he tried to regain his breathing.

"Good try, but not quite kid." the queerly dressed Commodore laughed and walked off.

As was custom around here.

Honestly, the place was full of cunts. And he didn't even recognise any of them besides the Commodore, none of the kinder ones that popped up when Smoker and Tashigi transferred to G5.

Most likely because they only ended up there after the War Of The Best.

Rolling himself over, Kaden flopped onto his back and stared up at the as always, dark and rumbling cloudy sky above.

…He'd lasted a whole two minutes against the Commodore this time. Three weeks ago, he hadn't even lasted thirty seconds

"Pr-pro…progress…yay." he coughed out, laughing tiredly.

At himself.

It took him a good few minutes to get his breath back under control and then find it in him to pull himself up to his feet, propping his body up with his sword all the way like a walking stick.

He stood there on shaky legs, balancing his body on the blade, before taking a deep shuddering breath and pushing himself up fully with a groan and sheathing it at his waste.

"….Yeah, not fun." he winced.

He'd found though…that, the more people he trained against and the stronger, the more his skill seemed to increase.

…Or at the very least, managed to last long enough for it to be considered a spar.

'I fucking hate this place.' he groaned inwardly as he began hobbling away from the training area where multiple marines around him were going at it.

In the past month, he'd pushed himself to the absolute limit and then more. Trained in ways that vastly overshot the scope of training the previous Kaden had went through.

Yet…the gains he'd gotten according to his status screen, were minimal.

Name: Kaden D. Freeman
Strength: 57/500
Endurance: 56/500
Durability: 54/500
Agility: 55.5/500
Hand To Hand Combat: 86/1000
Swordsmanship: 70/1000
Gunmanship: 26/1000
Rokushiki: (0/7)

Haki:
Colour Of Armament: 47/1000
Colour Of Observation: 50/1000
Colour Of The Conqueror: -/1000

Devils Fruit: -

His physical stats had only increased by a few points each. Which, was a pitiful amount for just how much and hard he'd trained

…If they were linear at least.

He'd noticed when he started sparring as well with the stronger marines, that the numerical value of his skills had shotten up rapidly initially, before slowing down a lot.

His hand to hand combat for instance, had reached eighty, a week and a half ago. The progress had slowed down a lot.

But he was training just as hard, if not harder and even getting more time sparring in because he was lasting longer. And even managing to train longer the more used to training he got.

'Well at the very least, I know I'm making some progress with haki.' he mused, eyeing the screen as he hobbled on his way.

It was dreadfully slow rising, but each single point increase he saw, drove him on. It didn't help him in anyway beyond telling him, he was on the right path and just had to keep going.

Though considering the progress he'd made so far….

It would take over a year before he reached the one thousand mark.

And so far, all he'd been able to do between the two was dodge a few times between the swinging tree logs.

Beyond that he didn't know why his armament had risen though.

Kaden sighed and then continued on.

Though instead of heading back inside the base, the blonde, bloody and beaten petty officer continued his hobble…towards the back port.

Where they kept the mass of battleships G5 went through because they were absolutely shit at taking care of their equipment. Basically, it was a ship graveyard.

While everyone was busy, he figured he'd go for a little….swim. And maybe take a little peak down below the water and have a looksie at what was going on.

Specifically, at what was underneath the battle ships stationed at said port.

…And maybe scrape off a little shiny green sea stone while he was there.

________________

Just over an hour later, Kaden burst up out of the roiling sea of the New World, naked as the day the teen marine was born.

He floated in the water for a moment between two massive and heavily damaged battle ships, a large soaked sack held over his shoulder, before swimming back to shore.

Usually, ships like this would be brought onto land and left there until they were slotted to be taken apart and their pieces used for the creation of something new.

G5 were just too lazy though and had simply anchored them in the water, leading them to getting even more messed up by the crazy weather patterns of the New World ocean.

'Their laziness is my gain I guess.' Kaden snorted tiredly. He didn't even have the energy to laugh over it, or the fact he just filled a sack up to the brim with expensive sea stone that would probably go for a pretty hefty amount on the black market.

Once he made it back to the shore, he collapsed on his backside just right next to where he'd dropped his marine uniform, dropping the large sack he was carrying, taller even than he was and stared up at the cloudy, rumbling sky.

"…I fucking hate this place." Kaden groused with a sigh, running a hand through his damp blonde hair.

The novelty of being in the One Piece world and having a body so strong that he could snap a world class body builder from his own world easily with, had quickly worn off.

Within the first week of being there.

If he was in say the East Blue, he'd probably be enjoying himself a whole lot more.

As it was though, he was stationed in the New World, and near every few days he was called to action to take on pirate crews. Just the other day, he was almost squashed to death by a literal half giant pirate captain with a bounty of sixty million and would have been dead right then and there, if not for Commodore Yarisugu zipping in and cutting the half giants arm clean off.

….Said half giants corpse was still strung up outside the front of the G5 marine base like some kind of macabre trophy or flag.

Once more Kaden repeated: "I fucking hate this place." he sighed again. The pay was shit, the living conditions were crap, the weather was trash, he was surrounded by absolute freaks like Commodore Yarisugu and Vergo on the daily, and to top it all off-

The place was a complete and utter sausage fest. The closest he'd gotten to any girls in the month he'd been here, had been a few quite attractive pirate girls.

Who were pretty brutally chopped up by the freaking G5 marine mutts.

And he wasn't anywhere close to leaving this place either. He needed at least Soru and Geppou down before that, preferably more. Yet, he hadn't even gotten Soru down yet.

'Coby went from that tubby little runt not even as strong as an average grown man, to being able to use both Soru and Tekkai within forty days.' Kaden clicked his tongue in annoyance.

At the very least he knew he had a way better starting point than Coby did starting off. And physical ability mattered the most when it came to the Rokushiki, less the skill.

And to use the Rokushiki, one had to cross at least the threshold of super human ability in this world, which was counted at five hundred doriki.

An average fully trained marine soldier had a doriki of ten. Going by that, the average grown man probably had a doriki of around five at most. And Coby would have been way lower, probably at like two or three at most.

Which meant in forty days, Coby had basically speed run his way to five hundred doriki from basically nothing, and was probably higher actually considering he had two of the six powers down pat at that point, which he could only train in properly once he'd hit that five hundred threshold.

Which probably meant…Coby got two of the six powers down in maybe like a week or two at most.

Was that just because he was being trained by Garp, or-

'Am I just that freaking inferior to Coby talent wise?' Kaden grimaced at the thought.

Thinking on Coby though….

Kaden's eyes glanced to the battleships floating in the port bay and eyed them speculatively. 'Garp trains every day by punching battleships. He even trained Aokiji that way and Coby copied him.' he mused.

Of course that wasn't even an option for him, because he was not capable of pulling those damn ships onto land himself, he lacked the strength. And he wasn't too keen on the idea of asking anyone else at the G5 base for help.

Quite frankly, he couldn't stand the people here.

They were absolute sick freaks, they honestly weren't that much better than pirates really. Which honestly made sense considering their leader was a fucking undercover pirate himself for one of the most ruthless and degenerate pirates there was.

Kaden found his teeth grinding as he thought of that sick fuck Doflamingo, which inevitably led to him thinking about Wano and Kaido, and all those poor people like cute little Tama starving right now.

And it grated all the more that he was absolutely powerless to do absolutely anything at all about shit like that.

Even if he was fucking strong enough to do something about it, he literally would not be allowed to. Doflamingo was protected by his status as a Shichibukai and the fact he was a former Celestial Dragon with tons of dirt on them, and the marines refused to face off against any of the Yonkou, because they were too chicken shit.

The second he tried to do anything about monsters like them, he'd be cast out of the marines and branded a pirate himself.

So much for being a fucking marine that stood for justice and protected the innocent, huh?

Kaden shook his head, putting it out of mind for the moment, it wouldn't do to dwell on stuff like that right now. He could worry about it when he wasn't a no name weakling piece of trash.

This was a world where might made right, and he currently lacked might.

'I suppose I could steer one of the ships onto land myself once I got Soru down.' He mused, taking his thoughts back to where they started.

He wondered idly, if Vergo could measure doriki?

He'd really rather not deal with him unless absolutely necessary, but as it was, getting a measure of his doriki, was one of the few ways he could see where he stood in the world currently.

__________________

He found Vergo where he usually was when he wasn't out 'hunting pirates', which was probably more of an excuse for him to meet with Doflamingo and others of his crew.

Sitting in his office, an empty plate of food in front of him and a piece of a steak stuck to his cheek.

Vergo stared at him blankly, not at all asking why he was there. Honestly, the guy was a weirdo.

"Can you measure doriki?" Kaden asked bluntly, getting right to the point.

"Mmm, yes." Vergo nodded.

And said nothing more.

Kind of annoying really, but Kaden wasn't too annoyed, in fact he was rather pleasantly surprised.

It was far easier to find someone who could measure his doriki than he thought it would be.

"Can you measure mine?" Kaden asked, "Right now?" he added, just to make sure he wasn't left hanging with a simple yes and the man just sitting there blankly.

"I suppose," Vergo nodded, "Make it quick though, I'm busy playing golf with my brother right now, you see."

Vergo in fact, did not have a brother. And since he was sitting behind his freaking desk, he clearly wasn't playing golf either.

"I'll be quick." Kaden replied, instead of calling him a retard like he wanted to.

"Okay," Vergo nodded and stood up, walking around his desk to stand in front of the blonde teen and held one hand up, palm facing Kaden, "Punch my palm." he instructed simply.

Quick as a flash, Kaden did as bid and struck out with a rapid blurring punch with all his strength.

It slapped meatily into Vergo's palm, which barely budged. And then his palm glowed with a soft green light.

"570." Vergo said a moment later after the soft green light faded away

Kaden's eyes widened.

…That was actually way higher than he expected.

But beyond that, something else occurred to him. It was specifically ten times the number of his strength stat.

'Which means, my doriki is specifically ten times that of my strength stat on this stupid screen thing.' Kaden realised happily.

Before that sudden joy was doused with realisation.

The max number his strength stat could go to on the screen, was five hundred. Did that mean…his strength was capped at five thousand doriki?

Only a thousand higher than pre time skip Lucci?

"Well….that sucks." Kaden spoke aloud, shoulders slumping in defeat.

"Yes quite middling," Vergo agreed, "You should really train more."

…Fuck this guy.