4 Chapter 4

I had boarded a merchant ship for about a week now and had one thought.

" The Sea was too dangerous!"

After all in this week , the ship was attacked by pirates three times and each of the pirate group had more than thirty people.

The merchant was a Fatty who had hired just seven strong men as bodyguards and I was one of them.

I had come to know by now that I was individually quite stronger than these guards and pirate captains but in group fights, I was in a mess.

I knew the reason too. Simply put, I did not have much combat experience and secondly I did not possess a good fighting style which would allow me to exert my strength properly.

I was quite confident in my strength before boarding this ship but now I had suffered three long knife wounds on my chest, waist and right arm in the hands of pirates way weaker than me individually.

This was real blow to confidence and also a wake up call that I should not become arrogant and think of learning some kind of fighting style as soon as possible. I wanted to learn how to use a hammer or axe in battle as my fighting style would be based one strength blows in future. I was going to take the path of body refinement after all.

Anyway I was finally out on the sea and heading towards an island which I had some impressions about.

My destination was the Whiskey Peak! Yea.. the same island from the anime which Straw Hats landed first after sailing on Grand Line.

When I knew that I had Grand Line as my starting point , I naturally wanted to head towards a familiar island at least for my first destination. I would start as a pirate from there after making some preparations.

I did not have much requirement for a particular island either except that I should have some knowledge about it beforehand.

Coincidently this merchant ship docked at the village from before and I heard about their route towards East Blue and Whisky Peak was one of the islands they planned to land for a while on the way.

I was in a hurry to leave so boarded this ship without much hesitation after beating one of the guards of the Fatty merchant in one blow. All of them were weaker than Moonie and honestly I was little disappointed.

One good thing was that I could earn money with this job and even eat free food and wine as much as I liked. This was definitely better than spending my own money after all.

So right now I was lying inside a hammock on the ship's deck while sipping on good wine while admiring the peaceful atmosphere. The weather had already changed for two times before during this journey reminding of the unpredictable weather in Grand Line.

I learned from one of the guards that this change in weather was mostly related to the islands in the sea area. Like if a winter island is close by then it may start snowing when we enter the area around this island.

I was quite excited after hearing this as this fact lit a little fire in my adventurous spirit.

....

" Would you please think about my offer once more? I will double the payment !" said the Fatty merchant to me and I did not even look at him.

In front of me was the island which had been my destination for a week now. This fatty had been pestering me to sign a contract with him and become Protector for him and his family.

Earning more than one million or two million berries a year sounded nice but I was going to become a great pirate of the sea so in the end this much money was nothing in my eyes. Besides I want to become a free pirate and cannot be bound in one place.

Obviously I did not tell him about me aiming to become a pirate but causally rejected his offer. This merchant fatty may have misunderstood that I was instead trying to increase amount of the contract in this roundabout way. Well even if it was so, what did it have to do with me?

I ignored the Fatty and jumped from the deck. I landed on the port and watched the infamous cactus like enormous landmark which I knew was huge graveyard.

On this island no ship stayed for a long time as it was common knowledge that here was huge den of bounty hunters. Fatty's ship also went away after about an hour of selling some supplies and restocking food.

I in the meantime spent my time searching for a secluded piece of land where I could train in peace but to no avail. Well that's a bummer.

....

" Ehh..?"

I exclaimed in surprise as I did not expect to see Igaram here on this island.

There were still about two trees before Luffy set sail so this meant that Vivi and Igaram should have been undercover for long time before canon then.

Nobody noticed my sudden outburst as I was right now inside a pub which was already too loud for my taste. Still the abundance of rum and meat made my time worthwhile.

I could feel many eyes on me though. They should secretly monitoring my actions to see if I was a threat to them or not. If I had been a pirate then they should have invited me to a banquet and then tried to kill me after making me drunk.

Hehe.. that would have been fun and all but honestly I did not want to fight them yet. Maybe later when I had practiced some weapon for a while. There were so many people here and all of them worked for Baroque Works organization so they should be nice as sparring partners.

As for my main weapon? I had been thinking of taking a heavy club as my weapon. Like Kaido and Alvida from anime. My fighting style was all based on powerful blows so this weapon should suit me well. I had thought about an axe or hammer but they did not appeal as much as a club to me for some reason. Maybe this presence had something to do with my hidden personality which I did not know about yet.

After leaving the pub, I went to my room in a medium sized inn and started thinking about my future.

Did I want to join Straw Hat Pirates? Did I want to join other pirate groups? or Did I want to form my own pirate group? Honestly I had no idea about which one to choose.

My dream was a simple one. I wanted to live free life doing whatever I wanted to do and try to travel the world with interesting members.

Straw Hats were interesting bunch and I can think of many other groups like Akagami, Whitebeard etc who also seemed to interesting bunch.

To recruit members myself would be tiring but at the same interesting too. Like I could try and recruit future powerhouses like Law , Basil Hawkins etc who had unusual but somewhat interesting personalities.

But this option did not seem much appealing when I thought about tiring job of searching for them while I'm not even sure whether I can successfully recruit them. I would rather spend that time either training to become stronger or visiting some interesting island.

By the way, I had become some sort of training addict now after relishing the feeling of strength increasing after completing sessions of hard training which could even said was torture of a kind. Maybe I'm a masochist and I just did not realise it before?

Hehe.. no I'm pretty normal but it's also true that training and breaking my limits made me feel alive and happy. I just did not discoverd this joy in my past life that's all.

Once again my mind came to the option to choose joining Straw Hats or another group.

Wait..

I suddenly thought of another option which seemed quite good.

Honestly I wanted to focus more on my training now before start of canon when the world would be thrown into turmoil.

So why dont I travel alone until then? I could just focus on training on some inhabitated island and casually visit another island nearby whenever I felt like it.

Little Garden!

The name of this island somehow naturaly came into my mind when I thought of a good training spot.

The dinasours and whatnot could serve as my training partners and most supply. The two giants there seemed to be friendly in anime so maybe I could learn a thing or two from them too.

The more I thought the more this idea felt good to me. So in the end I decided to procure a small nice ship on Whiskey Peak along with a sturdy iron club and even eternal log pose of Little Garden if possible. Then after things are ready, I will immediately set sail.