[AN: Yesterday I modified the auxiliary chapter, but what I didn't expect that while doing that all the previous comments were ther including the photos but they suddenly disappeared. I can still see the number of comments but I cannot see any of the comments, so I uploaded the photos again in case you guys want to see.š«”]
The Tidereaver sliced through the cerulean expanse, like a sleek predator homing in on the swirling chaos of the Sabaody Archipelago.
For two days, the ship had been a floating crucible of effort, the air vibrating with the raw output of straining wills. Dawn on the third day broke not with a gentle light, but with the sharp crack of displaced air and the low hum of concentrated energy.
Everyone was awake, their bodies moving with a purpose that bordered on obsession.
On the main deck, the men were deep in their grueling regimen. Zoro, his three swords sheathed at his hip, stood before a new log, his eyes were closed and his breathing was a controlled tide.
He placed a palm flat against the wood. There was no visible flare, no black coating, but the air around his hand wavered like heat haze off desert stone.
A moment later, the entire core of the log silently turned to splinters, the outer shell collapsing into a heap of dust-filled bark.
He grunted, unsatisfied, and moved to the next one. His control was improving, the internal destruction becoming less of a wild fracture and more of a precise, contained implosion.
Nearby, Kuro was a study in focused intensity. His glasses reflected the morning sun as he held his fingers, claw-like, an inch from a block of iron. Sweat dripped from his chin.
He wasn't trying to destroy it; he was trying to shape it. With a subtle flex of his will, a small, perfect divot, as if carved by an invisible chisel, appeared on the metal's surface.
His approach was surgical, aiming for absolute precision over brute force, understanding that Internal Destruction could be a tool for dismantling an opponent's defenses joint by joint, nerve by nerve.
Wyper roared, slamming his palm against a training dummy. The dummy didn't just break; it exploded inward, straw and sawdust bursting from its seams as the internal frame shattered.
His method was pure, unadulterated power, a contained detonation of Haki. It was effective, but wildly inefficient, draining him faster than the others. Bartolomeo, meanwhile, was still struggling.
He had managed to stop cracking the surface of his logs, but now they justā¦ sat there, stubbornly whole. He was trying so hard to "flow" that he was forgetting to "destroy." His face was a comic mask of frustration, his green hair seeming to bristle with the effort.
But the most formidable training ground was at the ship's bow. Here, Ragnar stood alone, facing a block of pure, unrefined sea stone taller than he was.
The dull, greyish-blue rock was the bane of every Devil Fruit user, sapping their strength and rendering them helpless. To any other, even touching it would be agony. To Ragnar, it was just a rock.
His purification from the Sea's Curse had severed that innate weakness. The sea stone held no power over him, nor over Wyper, Robin, or Bartolomeo.
It was the perfect medium for his training, utterly durable, completely inert to his energy, offering no resistance save its own immense physical density.
He began not with destruction, but with perception. He placed his bare palm flat against the cold, pitted surface. He closed his golden eyes, and his consciousness dove inward.
His Haki, refined and vast as an ocean, flowed from his core, down his arm, and into his hand. But instead of crashing against the sea stone like a wave, he forced it to become something else, a billion infinitesimal tendrils, each one an extension of his will.
He felt the stone's structure, the ancient, crystalline lattice forged under impossible pressure in the deep-sea trenches. He felt its flaws, its microscopic fractures, the spaces between molecules.
This was the first step of Internal Destruction: understanding the target from the inside out, without ever breaching its surface.
He held that state for an hour, his breathing so slow it was nearly imperceptible, his body a statue. Then, he shifted. The tendrils of Haki, which had been merely sensing, now began to vibrate, resonating at a frequency designed not to push, but to destabilize.
He wasn't trying to force his way in; he was convincing the bonds between the stone's particles to let go. A fine, almost invisible dust began to trickle from the point of contact. It wasn't a hole, but a localized area of disintegration, as if the stone was simply forgetting how to be solid.
He opened his eyes, examining the result. A shallow, bowl-like depression, about the size of his palm, had been worn into the sea stone. The edges were perfectly smooth, not jagged like something broken, but polished, as if eroded by a million years of wind. He had not broken it; he had unmade it.
He repeated the process, again and again. Each time, he increased the scale. From a palm-sized depression, he moved to carving furrows, then channels. He experimented with speed, a sudden, concussive internal burst that caused a spiderweb of cracks to flash through a cubic foot of stone before it collapsed into gravel.
He practiced control, writing his name in flowing script on the stone's surface by precisely disintegrating only the topmost layer of atoms.
The final test was one of pure, overwhelming power. He took a deep breath, placed both hands on the massive block, and poured his will into it. He didn't visualize needles or fluid this time.
He visualized a star being born in the heart of the stone. There was no sound, no flash of light. The entire center of the sea stone block, a volume large enough to fit a man, simply vanished. Not into dust, but into nothingness.
A perfectly spherical void now existed within the rock, the inner surface glassy and smooth, as if the matter had been neatly scooped out by a god. The remaining shell of sea stone stood, a hollow monument to his terrifying mastery.
A fine sheen of sweat coated his brow. This was the limit of his current ability, not just destroying from within, but erasing from existence. He knew that against a top-tier Logia, or a creature with mythical durability, this level of penetration and annihilation would be necessary.
Satisfied with the morning's progress, he turned his attention to the rest of his crew.
...
He found the women on the upper sun deck, but they were not lounging today. They were standing in a loose circle, dressed in practical training gear, their expressions serious.
Despite their transformation into Angels, which had granted them immense physical and immense power, Ragnar was a firm believer in fundamentals. Haki was the great equalizer, the power of the spirit that could harm any foe, bypass any defense.
Their celestial abilities were a tremendous advantage, but Armament Haki was their bedrock.
"Ladies," he began, his voice calm and instructional.
"Your bodies are stronger, faster, and more resilient than ever. Your Angelic powers give you unique offensive and defensive options. But Haki is the foundation upon which all of that is built."
"Today, we solidify that foundation. We are not aiming for Internal Destruction. We are aiming for perfection in the external application. I want your Armament to be so dense, so refined, that it becomes a second skin, harder than diamond."
He started with the basics, having them manifest their Busoshoku Haki. Robin's arms, crossed over her chest, bloomed into a dozen more, each one sheathing itself in a deep, glossy black.
The sight was mesmerizing, a beautiful, multi-limbed statue of obsidian. Nami clenched her fists, and the black coating crawled up her arms, solid and reliable. Isabella's Haki flared around her legs, the color a vibrant, almost crimson black, matching her own spirit.
Nojiko's hair was a steady, deep blue-black, covering her hands and forearms with the calm certainty of a deep ocean.
"Good. Now, hold it," Ragnar commanded. "Not as a momentary burst for an attack. Hold it as a permanent state. Breathe with it. Make it a part of your natural aura."
Minutes ticked by. For ordinary humans, maintaining full-body Armament for even a short time was exhausting. For the Angels, it was a test of endurance and focus. Robin was the steadiest, her countless arms never flickering, her breathing even.
Her historian's mind understood the principle of conservation of energy, of finding the most efficient way to sustain the output. Nami began to feel the strain, a dull ache building in her muscles.
She was powerful, but her strength had always been more in her intellect and her Clima-Tact than in pure, prolonged physical exertion.
"Focus, Nami," Ragnar said, appearing beside her. He placed a hand on her shoulder, and she felt a wave of stabilizing energy flow into her.
"Don't think of it as a drain. Think of it as a well. You are not drawing water from the well; you are the well itself. Your Haki is infinite because your will is infinite."
Emboldened, Nami took a deep breath, and the black coating on her arms deepened, becoming even more lustrous and solid.
Next, he had them spar. Robin vs. Isabella, Nami vs. Nojiko. The rule was simple: only Armament Haki allowed. No Angelic abilities.
The deck became a blur of motion. Isabella, a brawler at heart, launched a furious kick at Robin, her Haki-clad leg whistling through the air.
Robin didn't dodge. Six arms sprouted from the deck, their palms sheathed in black, and caught the kick in a perfectly synchronized block. The impact sounded like two slabs of granite colliding.
Robin used the leverage to spin, another four arms forming to deliver a series of precise, open-palm strikes to Isabella's guard, each hit landing with a sharp thwack.
Meanwhile, Nami and Nojiko were a dance of agility and power. Nojiko, relying on her brawling experience from Cocoyashi, pressed forward with heavy, Haki-infused punches. Nami, using her smaller size and quicker reflexes, parried and deflected, her own black-coated forearms redirecting the force of the blows.
She saw an opening, ducked under a wide swing, and drove a hardened fist into Nojiko's side. The older sister grunted, skidding back, but her own Haki had absorbed most of the impact.
"Excellent!" Ragnar called out, observing them all.
"Isabella, your power is formidable, but you rely on it too much. Use your Haki to sharpen your attacks, not just empower them. Robin, your control is masterful, but don't be purely defensive. Use your multitude of limbs to launch coordinated counter-attacks from angles your opponent cannot predict. Nojiko, your foundation is solid."
"Now, learn to flow with your opponent's energy, like water around a rock. Nami, you are thinking, which is good. But in a close-quarters fight, sometimes you must act on instinct. Trust your body, it is far stronger than you believe."
He pushed them for another hour, forcing them to the edge of their endurance. By the end, they were all panting, their clothes soaked with sweat, but the black sheen of their Armament Haki remained steady, unbroken. It was no longer a technique they activated; it was a state they inhabited.
As they finally relaxed, letting the Haki recede, a collective sigh of relief passed through them. They felt exhausted, but also empowered. Their connection to this fundamental force had been deepened, refined. They were not just Angels with strange powers; they were warriors with an unbreakable will.
Ragnar looked over his crew, the men still laboring below with Internal Destruction, the women standing tall and resolute before him.