chapter 7

A month and a week had passed since Winston, and I had fought against those vicious giant tigers. I had visited Wilson daily for the first week of that time, not to fight, of course, but to check the state of his wounds and make sure none of them were infected. Surprisingly enough, his injuries were visibly improving every time I dropped by, checked upon them, and apply new medicine to them.

Other than that, I, of course, didn't remain idle as I continued my daily training by myself, and I also brought several big rocks to act as weights due to my lack of proper training equipment.

I had also continued trying to figure out the marine's six powers and finally made some progress. After not noticing any more improvement with my shigan technique, I stopped training it and turned to the paper drawing(kami-e) technique instead. Although I wasn't able to perform it in any way, shape, or form at the beginning, I finally found some success after persistently trying all kinds of different training methods like relaxing my muscles and bending my body in all kinds of nearly impossible shapes, trying to imitate Luffy's gumu gomu no Boh by turning off my conscious mind and floating around like a leaf, and miserably failing at turning off my conscious mind.

I had also tried all kinds of other improvised methods without much success. Until I finally came up with a method to train kami-e reliably and consistently that is, the way I came up with was both fun and straightforward, as all I had to do was to relax my body as much as I could while floating in the seawater motionlessly, while only minimally moving my muscles to try imitating the motion of the tides and small waves crashing into the shore of the island to try and remain still without being affected by the waves.

And once I got the hang of that by being able to stay still in the water despite the small waves crashing into me without moving my limbs and only wriggling my muscles, I decided that the next step was to try moving In the opposite direction of the waves, which was easier said then done. Still, I was nothing if not stubborn and persistent, and after going at it for a couple of days I was finally able to do it subconsciously without thinking about it.

I then swam deeper into the sea to test myself against bigger and stronger waves which was a terrible idea as I was instantly attacked by some weird, gigantic fish-alligator hybrid forcing me to stop my training and dive into the water to avoid being swallowed whole by its giant maw as it lunged at me.

The sea beast, of course, followed after me and didn't waste any time simply opening its mouth and shooting in my direction with its mouth wide open. I barely managed to avoid its gaping mouth by desperately waving my hands and feet in the water and working to dodge to the side, which put me In a good position to strike its side; however, punching it with my bare hands didn't do much damage thanks to its hard scales and the water mitigating the strength of my attack.

This situation repeated its self several more times as it purposefully tried and succeeded in pushing our fight deeper and further into the depth of the seawater. Until I started to run out of oxygen, so I punched it as hard as possible to make some distance between us and decided to swim back to the surface. It, of course, didn't want to let go of me and started chasing me, noticing the difference in speed between us and that it would most definitely catch up to me before I reached the surface and realizing that I would die If that happened by drowning due to the lack of air if I kept fighting it or by being swallowed whole if I turned my back on it, I hesitated for only a fraction of a second before I lifted my left prosthetic arm and aimed it in the direction of the incoming sea creature while holding its forearm with my right hand as my left prosthetic hand extended and moved to the side on its own.

I took another second to concentrate and steady my aim. Once it crossed the ten-meter marker that I set inside, I head quickly activated my arm's projectile launch system and then resolutely turned around and swam towards the surface.

However, a mere second after I turned around, as I was desperately making my way towards the surface, I was surprised by a sudden shock wave coming from right below that pushed me upwards and sent me flying out of the water.

I took several deep breaths of fresh air as soon as my head had left the water and prepared myself to dive back into the water, to check the state of my opponent after being hit by my explosive arm projectile, and continue fighting if necessary. So I dived back into the water only for me to stop dead in my tracks in shock at the state that the giant fish-alligator was in, its oversized, alligator shaped head was gone replaced by a red patch of water with tiny bits and pieces of flesh, bone and brain matter floating about and spreading in all direction tainting the deep seawater with its redness, while its fish-like body was was filled with all kinds of cuts all over it with even several of its fins missing.

Fearing that the blood would attract more predatory sea-dwelling creatures, I quickly swam back to the surface and then to shore.

once I was back on land, I started to frustratedly pace around the sandy shores of the island while throwing a hissy fit inside my head,' just when I found a fast and reliable way to improve kami-e this motherfucker just had to come and ruin it.' I thought inside my head and kept pacing until I finally calmed down and decided to give up training kami-e like that today, opting to do it tomorrow once all the blood and settled down and the sore became clear.

And so I did that the very next day but with much more caution, only starting to train after I made sure that all the blood was gone and that there were no large sea creatures capable of threatening my life anywhere nearby.

I didn't make much progress at first, very much like the beginning of my training. Still, I continued to throw myself at the exercise every day for the remainder of the month without doing anything except for my training routine and visiting Wilson two or three times a week. As the days passed, I was slowly but surely improving until I could do it subconsciously without any trouble by the end of the month.

Once I was able to do that, I decided that it was time to test its effectiveness in a fight, and so I spent the entire next week fighting as much as I could both against Winston, who had made a full recovery at this point, and all kinds of forest creatures until I was able to use kami-e subconsciously during a fight. If that doesn't make me a bonafide kami-e master I don't know what will.