46 Chapter forty six- Final preparations

It wasn't long after that that Gabriel found himself being shaken awake, opening his eyes he blinked when he saw Vivi was the one to wake him up and rubbed his eyes, "Oh, hey Vivi" Gabriel said in greeting as he got up, "when did you get up here?" Gabriel asked as he got up from his seat.

"Just a few minutes ago actually" Vivi told him, "we came up using a lift that we found that still functioned"

Gabriel grunted as he reached out with his vibration sense and felt what was going on before nodding, "Ah good, everyone came up with you I see"

Vivi blinked, "yes, but how did you..." she began to ask but Gabriel waved her off.

"Devil fruit, I can feel vibrations if I focus, I can feel everyone moving around even if they are holding still, I can feel each person outside right now" Gabriel explained.

Vivi blinked, "wow, I didn't know your devil fruit was so versatile" she said sounding impressed.

Gabriel smirked, "it can do a lot more than that, but I'm still figuring things out with it," he explained before stretching, "right I'm going to head out and see what's going on," he said and headed for the door passing by Dr Kureha and some towns folk helping Dalton up the stairs as he went.

"Going somewhere?" Kureha asked as she watched him go.

"Getting a sit rep from my crew about what's been going on while I've been busy" Gabriel replied idly as he kept going down the stairs and went outside.

He found his crew and the other straw hats all gathered over to the side of the of the castle keeping out of the wind next to one of the castle walls.

"Someone want to tell me what happened while I was away?" Gabriel said as he walked up to them, "Heard that you guys may have had some trouble with the fatso's crew"

Keren snorted at that, "Nothing we couldn't handle captain"

Gem smirked, "Yeah, they didn't know what hit'm when they tried to mess with us"

Gabriel nodded, he suspected that their presence would have made it harder for them when they attacked but clearly the fatso and his two best made it through, "then how did that fatso and his two twits get through?" he asked.

Gem grumbled, "Nothing we could do when a freaking avalanche came rolling in just as we were about to finish them"

Mira shivered remembering it, "we barely got out of there when it hit, it swamped the whole town, by the time we managed to get out of the snow fatso and his cronies were already out of the snow and long gone"

Gabriel sighed, "yeah that would do it I suppose" he shook his head, "well at least it wasn't because you were all being careless," he stated, "the avalanche was caused by the Lapahns, Sanji, Luffy and I came across them when we were bringing Nami up here, when they couldn't seem to beat us they decided to try and burry us under a mountains worth of snow."

"Yeah, crafty bastards, should have kicked them harder, but those big three of them were a real pain, it felt like I was kicking steel when I tried" Sanji said as he let out a breath of smoke from his cigarette.

Gabriel smirked, "Don't worry I paid them a visit when I went down again, laid them out flat when I was exploring, they weren't so annoying when I could actually fight and not just dodge"

Sanji smirked, "good enough I suppose"

Gabriel nodded and looked around, "So where's Luffy?" he asked as he reached out with his vibration senses and felt him running around one of the castle floors.

"Trying to recruit that small reindeer as our ships doctor," Zoro said as he leaned against the castle wall.

Gabriel nodded, "okay then" he said as he started to walk off, "I'm gonna head back to the ship to wait then, seeing as you are all up here, someone needs to guard it" he said as he walked back to the edge of the mountain.

"Wait, how are you gonna get down?" Usopp asked as they all watched him.

Gabriel looked back at them with a smirk, "the direct way" he said before turning spreading his arms and letting himself fall backwards off the edge of the mountain and burst out laughing as he caught the sight of all of their shocked looks, bar Sanji, only for him to launch himself up into the air and start kicking off the air with Geppo laughing even more as their jaws dropped seeing him flying off towards the ship.

Twenty minutes later Gabriel touched down on the shoreline and began to make his way towards the Merry, as he did he looked down into the water and sighed seeing Carue frozen in a block of ice and remembered what happened in the canon, how the stupid duck had thought Zoro had drowned in the freezing water when he went ice water swimming.

Gabriel took a few minutes to fish the frozen duck out of the water and broke him free with a shatter punch and tossed a blanket over him, "head inside and warm up, I'll keep watch"

Carue gave a shaky quack and gladly went inside leaving Gabriel on deck alone.

Deciding that it was time he used those AP tokens rather than waiting Gabriel went into his inventory and started using them to see what points he had to work with.

557AP has been added to the users profile

710AP has been added to the users profile

697AP has been added to the users profile

528AP has been added to the users profile

802AP has been added to the users profile

845AP has been added to the users profile

508AP has been added to the users profile

Gabriel started laughing when he saw the influx of free points he had just been given, the system was practically spoiling him with these tokens, each one was like the equivalent of completing a mission in terms of AP points. With those seven tickets he had gained just shy of five thousand AP in a few seconds.

'not to put them to use' Gabriel thought to himself as he opened up his skill list and began to look over what he had that needed upgrading.

As soon as he did so he arched an eyebrow when he saw that he had apparently reached some skill level where he had unlocked the other Rokushiki skills but hadn't noticed, and with all his use of Soru and Geppo his affinity in both had gone up, not by much only about a dozen points each but it was good to see that his repeated use of both skills had gained him something.

He decided to put some points into both skills to round them up to keep his skills on round numbers. With that done he began browsing his other skills, Immediately deciding that since he would soon be fighting Crocodile that he was going to need even better Mastery of his Devil fruit and dropped an even thousand points into it, and in doing so he noticed the next branch of its skill tree became available to unlock.

'hmmm Vibration Extension' Gabriel read the next stage in his head before shrugging, and unlocking it for a single TP.

As soon as he did he decided to close the screens and let his system do its thing. The information that flowed into his mind after that made him want to cackle, yes actually cackle, vibration extension, it was obvious now what it was to him.

Before he could only cause his body and anything he touched to vibrate, he had tested it and found that he was unable to make others shake like him, but now with this new knowledge he could do just that, and more, his devil fruit powers were no longer limited to his own body any more, anything he touched he could make shake, people weapons, he could control the vibrations of their molicules at will.

Looking to the staff in his hand Gabriel gripped it tight and focused his power down his arm and into the body of the staff, the entire body of the staff seemed to hum and shake and as he focused more he could control it to gather at a certain point at the end, the very air around the head of his staff seemed to vibrate and he couldn't help himself, he laughed. It was weaker, but it was clearly recognisable as the same vibration style attack that Whitebeard used during the marineford war.

Gabriel doubted that he'd be able to cause destruction on whitebeards level with his current control, but all the same he knew that anyone he hit with his staff now was going to be feeling the pain. He knew that his powers didn't extend beyond what he was touching, and he wasn't strong enough to send shockwaves through the air but he could focus on that in the future this was enough for now.

Spending a few more TP points Gabriel unlocked Tekkai and Shigan and put five hundred points into each of them to give him access to all but the final Rokushiki, the Rokugan, he was a little annoyed when he didn't get a notification about it unlocking but figured he'd probably have to master the others before he unlocked it.

Deciding he had enough skills to focus on Gabriel looked over them to see what needed improving, next he added a five hundred point boost to his hand to hand combat skill, he had been neglecting it before adding eight hundred to his combat speed to bring it up to par with his strength.

Looking over his remaining points he saw he had a little over a thousand AP remaining and decided to save the rest after putting two hundred points into his Combat stamina, that would let him train longer to get better at his other skills while they kept sailing on to Alabasta, he still had plenty of room to improve but from what he could see of his skills now, they were looking decent all over.

Crafting: 250/2000AP

Combat strength: 2000/7000AP

Combat speed: 2000/5000AP

Hand to hand combat: 1000/2000AP

Combat stamina: 1500/5000AP

Battle Endurance: 3000/10000AP

Yure yure no mi: 2500/10000AP

Rokushiki (Six Powers):

Soru: 1200/5000AP

Geppo: 400/3000AP

Rankyaku: 1000/5000AP

Kami-e: 1000/5000AP

Seimei Kikan: 2000/10000AP

Tekkai: 500/10000AP

Shigan: 500/2000AP

Mind Palace: Max

Bōjutsu: 1000/10000AP

Swordsmanship: 2500/10000AP

Marksmanship: 400/5000AP

Musician: 200/2000AP

Navigation: 300/2000AP

Weather detection: 500/5000AP

Cooking: 500/2000AP

Teaching: 300/2000AP

Closing down his screens Gabriel waited a few minutes as the system did its thing once more and he felt his energy restore, and his body become even stronger before nodding to himself, he was confident now that he could take on Crocodile with ease, yes he may not have Haki yet but he didn't need it, he had sea stone and if he struck before crocodile knew about it then he would be able to beat him with a single blow.

Putting his staff back into his inventory Gabriel walked over to the side of the ship and leaned against the railing just as the sound of canon fire echoed from the top of the Drum Rockies, Gabriel smiled as he looked up and watched as the snow turned pink and the largest white mountain looked like a massive Sakura tree from a distance, that told Gabriel that it wouldn't be long until the rest of the crew got back and they would soon be on their way to Alabasta.