17 Chapter seventeen- preparations and dreams

Gabriel slept continuously for the next two days solid as the ship made its way to reverse mountain and the grand line.

All the running, the multiple fights with smoker and then being flung through the air like some bug being tossed off a car windshield had completely drained him both physically and mentally.

It was only during the evening of the third day that he finally got up out of the need to eat and attend to his bodily functions that he finally rose from his bunk.

After everything was seen to and his stomach full Gabriel made his way to the front of the merry for some privacy as he took a breath and decided to attend to all of the system notifications that he had been ignoring

Hidden Quest Completed: Pop, Pop, Why!!!!

Goals:

Punch Buggy the clown in his nose twice

Kick Buggy the clown between the legs

Reward: 1TP, 500AP

-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Buggy the clown has been defeated, 40AP points have been added to user profile

-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Buggy the clown looted: 5,000 Beri acquired

-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Quest Completed: through the smoky haze

Objectivists:

Join Luffy in his battle against Smoker

Fight smoker one on one

Beat or escape from Smoker

Optional Objective:

Steal Smoker's Jutte

Reward: 300AP, 100,000 berries, 2 discount store tokens (50%) , Skill book

Looking over the notifications Gabriel wanted to laugh, he couldn't believe that is what the hidden quest was, he just did that for the hell of it, well it was good fortune for him, and it explained where most of those points had come from during his fight with Smoker.

Looking over the notifications again Gabriel couldn't see one for defeating Smoker and guessed that his last punch hadn't done much else besides send him flying. If he wanted to get points for defeating an enemy he either had to knock them out or kill them, so it looks like he got nothing for his little match with Smoker.

Eh that was okay with him, between everything else he got plenty from their trip to Loguetown. Looking at the final mission he was interested in seeing the last reward, 'a skill book, interesting'

With a thought he opened up his inventory and searched for the book icon and tapped on it bringing up another screen.

Skill book: Mind palace

The user creates a large area inside their mind where they can repeatedly face enemies that they have faced in the past in order to combat them and train their abilities, defeating enemies in your mind palace gives points just like in real life but defeating previously defeated enemies will result in less points being given as a result.

Warning: should the user be killed while in their mind palace they will die in real life, use at your own risk

Do you wish to learn Y/N

Gabriel's eyes bulged as he read over what the skill was, this was exactly what he needed, he knew that he gained points from beating enemies over and over again but he was restricted to doing stuff to the main storyline as things progressed, with this skill he would be able to fight people he had already met over and over again or hadn't had the chance to beat before and battle them repeatedly to grow stronger. He immediately hit yes to learn the skill.

The next second he felt the familiar feeling of knowledge flooding into his mind of how to perform the skill only it was a lot more than normal and had to steady his breathing as the feeling continued for over five minutes before it finally faded and he could remember everything clearly.

He grinned like a loon, he was going to abuse the shit out of that skill while they sailed between islands.

Putting aside the thoughts of his future training for now Gabriel opened his profile page to get an idea of his remaining points and hummed seeing the numbers.

TP: 1

AP: 484

Beri: $195,000

That was a good amount he could certainly see about making some nice improvements with that amount and his current skills. Speaking of which he jumped over to the skills page and the menu there to get an abbreviated list of his current skills and their progress.

Crafting: 0/2000AP

Combat strength: 300/5000AP

Combat speed: 300/5000AP

Hand to hand combat: 100/2000AP

Combat stamina: 200/5000AP

Yure yure no mi: 300/10000

Rokushiki (Six Powers): Soru: 100/5000AP

Looking over the list Gabriel smiled, it was a good start, but he knew he could do better. His new Soru skill was a nice addition to his list giving him speed as well as strength, but at his current level with the drain on his stamina was too heavy, it was worse than what he remembered the drain it was like to vibrate his whole body to phase at the start, though that had significantly lessened the better his control over his fruit had become. He'd need to improve it first before he improved anything else.

So with that thought in mind he immediately dumped two hundred points into Soru to bring it up to par with his devil fruit abilities to minimise the drain, before dropping another hundred into his combat stamina and another hundred into his hand to hand combat.

Right after he did so he closed his eyes as he felt the surge of energy once more as the system filled his body with the energy from his changes and the knowledge of even more combat experience filled his mind like he had been on a three month training binge of only hand to hand fighting.

As the sensations faded leaving behind his stronger body and sharper mind, he let out a breath and grinned, the system really was a time saver.

Looking at the menu once again he shugged and dropped the last of his points into craft just to speed it up in the future, his skills were good at the moment and he knew he would have time to grind some more before they reached the next challenge so he wasn't worried.

After that he swapped to his inventory screen to see just what he had gotten from the deconstruction of the swords he had the system breaking down back in Logue town.

Looking over the screen he found what he was looking for at the bottom and tapped on the icons

Refined steel 4kg (9lb)

Wooden sword handles- 3

He nodded as he saw the names, 'looks like deconstructing items breaks them down into their base materials not bad, I might be able to make something out of all those crappy swords after all.'

With that thought Gabrial shifted to the store menu and went to the blueprints section, 'let's see now what weapon do I want to use'

The blueprints weren't expensive at all, well at least the common ones weren't, only costing a couple thousand of beri at the most, he hummed thinking that it would be troublesome to have to repeatedly buy all of them to see what he liked. But then noticed a menu to select that ended up grouping them all into various categories.

Sword blueprint bundle- (ten designs) $30,000

Gun blueprints- (five designs) $15,000

Staff weapons- (seven designs) $25,000

Specialised weapons- (fifteen designs) $75,000

Jewelry design bundle- (thirty designs) $10,000

…

The list continued and he smirked, that was handy. In the end he chose to just buy the sword and staff bundles, he could see himself using either of those, he knew guns might come in handy but he preferred fighting close up rather than from long range.

With that done he went back to his inventory to see what he could make and after a few minutes came across one design he liked.

Steel battle staff

The design was good, a nice length of six foot in all, a body made of pure steel so he knew it wouldn't break easily with his strength, the only problem was the materials needed for it.

Refined steel 17kg (37lb)

He was tempted to go back to the store and see if it was possible for him to just buy what he needed, but decided that he had wasted enough money on blueprints and decided to just break down the swords that he had to make his staff later, and so shoved the lot of them into the deconstruction menu and checked the time that it would take. Three hours, fifty minutes a sword, not bad. That meant that they'd all be broken down in… seventy six hours give or take, that was just a little over three days, he could wait that long.

With that thought he closed the menu and set about his exercises for that evening to keep himself in shape and do his part to get stronger.

Time skip

It was later that evening that Gabriel had finished his training and slipped down to the lower deck to lay down planning to continue his training in his Mind palace. So after changing out of his sweaty clothes into something more comfortable he lay down in his bunk and closed his eyes as he steadied his breathing as he spoke out in his mind, 'mind palace'

Seconds passed and Gabriel opened his eyes to find himself standing on a wide grassy plain that stretched as far as the eye could see, with blue cloudless skies overhead and a sun in the distance.

Looking around for a moment Gabriel nodded before closing his eyes, 'okay, let's try something basic to get started off shall we' and pictured the marines that followed Nezumi around back in Cocoyashi.

Seconds later he heard the cocking of riffles and opened his eyes to find those same marines standing in front of him by the dozens, rifles at the ready.

Gabriel grinned as one thought crossed his mind, 'this is going to be fun,' before clenching his fists and rushing them.

Three hours later

Gabriel smirked to himself as he looked at the beaten forms of the marines that were scattered across the grassy plains in front of him, and the multiple Nezumi's that he had imagined up to beat down over and over and over again. It was somewhat therapeutic to beat that rat faced bastard into the ground repeatedly.

As the last marine dropped to the ground out cold after he had just lights knocked out courtesy of Gabriel's fists, all the marines began to slowly fade away and a screen appeared up in front of Gabriel.

One hundred grunt marines defeated- 50AP awarded

Forty five Captain Nezumi's defeated- 43AP awarded

Looking over the screen he nodded, not bad, but not good either. He could see what the system meant about the lack of returns, after he beat them a few times the points were going to get harder to get this way and until he was capable of large scale attacks then beating grunts like these would only give him so much. He'd have to fight stronger opponents if he wanted to get anything major out of it.

Thinking back for a moment he tried to think what enemies he could bring up, aside from the marines, there were the fishmen, he could beat them easy, there was also the officers of the Fishmen pirates, Arlong himself, the Buggy pirates were another option. He could face Smoker, but he knew that without haki there was no way yet for him to be absolutely sure of victory and the last thing he wanted was to be stuck in an endless battle.

He sighed and shook his head, now he wished that he had joined the crew earlier, he'd have more enemies to fight then.

"Well nothing for it I guess, back to the grind" he said to himself before he brought up another wave of enemies, this time it was the Fishmen from Arlong's crew, he'd beat them and then take on the lieutenants before he fought Arlong himself.

Time skip two hours later

Gabriel paused as he took a breather as the last of the hundred fishmen he brought up faded, that had been a good warm up for him, he had actually been hit a couple of times by them given the overwhelming numbers he'd chosen to fight against, but thankfully his devil fruit powers meant that he avoided most of their attacks.

One hundred Fishmen pirates defeated- 45 AP awarded

Dismissing the screen Gabriel focused on his breathing, "Right, rest now and then I can make a start on the lieutenants, they should get me some good…" he began to say before the world began to shake and he fell on his ass only to find himself blinking rapidly and suddenly staring into the face of Usopp above him.

"What the fuck!" Gabriel gave a yelp suddenly and the next second he was falling out of his bunk and hit the ground with a thud.

Usopp chuckled awkwardly, "sorry sorry, Luffy's calling everyone on deck, you were sleeping pretty deeply so I came down to wake you up" he explained.

Getting to his feet with a sigh Gabriel shook his head, "I wasn't sleeping I was meditating" he said giving the excuse not wanting to mention what he was actually doing.

"Kay whatever you say, come on, everyone's waiting, Nami says we'll be in range of reverse mountain shortly" Usopp said as he left to climb back up on deck.

Gabriel sighed and opened his inventory and swapped out his clothes back to his kimono and hat before he followed him up.

Up on deck everyone was gathered around a large wooden barrel.

"There you are, come on we're all announcing our dreams since we're soon to enter the grand line" Luffy told him.

Gabriel smirked, "alright sounds good" he said as he came to stand beside Luffy.

Everyone looked to one another and nodded as Luffy started.

"To be the king of the pirates"

"To be the world's greatest swordsman"

"To find the all blue"

"To draw a map of the world"

"To become a brave warrior of the sea"

Gabriel listened to each of them as each of the straw hats announced their dreams and raised their foot up to place it on the barrel. Gabriel couldn't help but grin as he did the same.

"To gather a crew and become the strongest Yonkō ever," Gabriel said with a grin as Luffy chuckled beside him

And with that they all raised their legs high and cried out, "to the grand line!" before bringing their feet down as one crushing the barrel beneath their feet.