The moment Martha said he had grown twenty centimeters taller, Kurogane Ren nearly exploded with excitement.
Before this, he had only been around one meter sixty.
Sure, he was only eighteen, so in theory he might have grown a little more anyway. But compared to the people in the world of One Piece, his height had been nothing short of tragic.
Now, though, he was a full one meter eighty.
And if he was lucky enough to grow a bit more in the future, then reaching one meter ninety might not be impossible.
As for the extra thirty kilograms, Ren didn't care at all.
Because he knew most of that weight was muscle.
Even through his clothes, he could already feel the outline of eight hard abs across his stomach.
Now he finally understood why the pill had emphasized, over and over again, that he needed to prepare enough food.
Even though the Strengthening Body Pill was a transcendent item, the law of conservation of energy still applied.
If he wanted to grow taller and stronger, then external energy had to come from somewhere.
And all the meat he had just devoured had clearly been transformed into the fuel his body needed to evolve.
Right now, Ren felt like his whole body was overflowing with power.
So naturally, he wanted to test it.
He walked over to a large tree, drew in a breath, and shouted,
"Shigan!"
Thud!
His entire finger sank straight into the trunk.
And around the point of impact, the surrounding wood caved inward in a visible ring.
Before this, because of his weak physique, Ren could only drive a Shigan three or four centimeters into a tree at most.
Now his finger not only sank all the way in, but the force behind it had crushed the surrounding wood as well.
After that, Ren started testing Shigan with each of his fingers.
In the end, he discovered that even his pinky, which had been the weakest before, could now sink completely into the trunk.
Once he finished testing Shigan, Ren decided to test his raw strength next.
He deliberately found the biggest tree nearby, raised his fist, and threw a punch.
To get an accurate measure of his power, he didn't use any technique at all.
It was just a simple, straightforward punch.
Boom!
The result was terrifying.
With one punch, Ren snapped a giant tree over two meters thick clean in half.
Looking at the damage his fist had caused, even he couldn't help swallowing hard.
Then he turned to Martha and said,
"Martha, stand still. I'm going to punch you."
"Understood."
Ren took a deep breath and threw another straight punch.
Martha crossed both arms in front of herself to block, but she had clearly underestimated Ren's strength.
The instant the punch landed, she was blown straight off her feet.
She smashed through several trees before finally stopping, her feet carving two long trenches more than ten meters across the ground.
At that moment, liquid metal was already flowing across her arms and re-forming them. A clear fist mark had been stamped into the internal metal frame beneath.
Seeing that, Ren could only sigh in amazement.
A transcendent-grade pill really was absurd.
Martha looked like a normal woman at around one meter seventy tall, but because of the metal frame inside her body, she weighed over six hundred kilograms.
And just now, Ren had sent her flying dozens of meters with nothing more than an ordinary straight punch.
If she hadn't used her feet to bleed off the force, she probably would have flown much farther.
Ren hurried over and asked,
"You're okay, right?"
Even if Martha was technically a machine, after nearly half a year together, Ren had long since started treating her like a close friend.
After all, he could talk to her about anything without ever worrying that his identity as a transmigrator would be exposed.
"Master's punch was very powerful," Martha replied. "However, it only caused limited damage to the outer layer of both arms. The internal operating circuits and weapon systems were not affected. Full recovery will take only a few hours."
Hearing that, Ren finally relaxed.
If he had actually broken Martha, he had no idea how he would ever repair her.
"That's good."
After testing his strength, Ren moved on to testing his reaction speed.
He tied a cloth over his eyes, activated his Observation Haki, and had Martha attack him with a wooden stick.
The moment she received the order, Martha began her assault.
With a machine's speed, she swung the stick at him three times per second.
But relying on Observation Haki, Ren controlled his body with quick, tight movements, dodging within a very small space.
He had known Observation Haki for a long time already, and he had even used a Skill Upgrade Card to raise it to the elementary level.
But before this, he had often run into the same problem.
His mind understood it.
His body didn't.
To put it simply, his body had never been able to keep up with what his nervous system could perceive.
After that, Ren also tested his speed, defense, and several other aspects of his physical ability.
The results were obvious.
Everything had improved dramatically.
For the first time, Ren felt that his physical stats were finally enough to compete with the more normal monsters of the One Piece world.
Of course, he still couldn't compare to freaks like Kaido or Big Mom.
Because he had only just gained this new body, Ren found it very hard to control his strength properly in the short term.
So he decided to remain deep in the mountains until he could fully get used to his new body before going back to town.
But the difficulty of controlling his strengthened body was far greater than he had expected.
Originally, Ren thought it would only take him three to five days.
Instead, it took him nearly twenty days just to grow familiar with the strength he had gained.
And only after a full month did he truly gain complete control over his body.
During that month of training, Ren also discovered something else.
His appetite had exploded.
And not by a little.
By a lot.
Before, he could get by on around two pounds of food a day.
Now, if he didn't eat at least a hundred pounds daily, he wouldn't even feel full.
And it had to be meat.
That made Ren think of one sentence:
In the world of One Piece, being able to eat a lot doesn't necessarily mean you're strong—but every strong person definitely eats a lot.
He was already starting to worry about his future food expenses.
Before, with only two pounds of food a day, his daily meal costs topped out at maybe one or two hundred beli.
But now, at this rate, he would need at least ten thousand beli every single day.
And after running the tavern for an entire year, he had made less than fifty thousand beli in total.
Of course, that was partly because his tavern sold food and drinks cheaply.
Still, the massive amount of food he had been consuming also led Ren to discover something encouraging.
His body was still slowly growing stronger.
Because of his absurd appetite, nearly every animal in the mountain forest had been hunted almost to extinction over the course of that month.
Thankfully, the One Piece world didn't seem to have any wildlife protection organizations.
Otherwise, his future would be looking even grimmer.
Now that he had more or less learned to control his strength, Ren started thinking about whether he should return to town.
After all, compared to a month ago, he had changed a lot.
His figure could still be hidden beneath clothing.
But his height couldn't.
A person disappearing for one month and coming back twenty centimeters taller would be shocking to anyone in the town.
Still, after thinking it through again and again, Ren decided to go back anyway.
Because even if he wanted to set sail, he still needed a ship.
And more importantly, he wasn't planning to go to sea just yet.
For one thing, because he had killed a Celestial Dragon, joining the Marines was no longer an option.
That didn't leave many paths.
After considering them, Ren decided on the most promising profession of all.
Pirate.
After all, if you transmigrated into the world of One Piece and didn't become a pirate at least once, then what was the point?
That said, if he wanted to go to sea, he still had a lot to prepare.
A ship, of course.
Supplies.
And most importantly, a Log Pose.
And all of those things required one thing.
Money.
Ren had decided to become a pirate, but there was no way he was going to rob the people in town.
They had all lived together for a year now.
So his plan was simple.
He would sell the tavern, along with his brewing recipes, to gather funds.
There was also another major reason.
He didn't have enough crew.
Right now, if he counted everyone, he only had Martha.
Sure, Martha was capable of almost anything.
But Ren didn't want to set sail like a certain someone, utterly unprepared, only to end up floating around in a special VIP barrel.
Especially not in the Grand Line, where the weather could change faster than turning a page.
So until he was fully ready, Kurogane Ren had no intention of going to sea.