Chapter twenty seven- Answering questions and some much needed updates

"What do you mean by "Devil child", "Who was she!", "Do you know her?", "What do you mean by Poneglyphs?", "Ancient weapons,", "what is going on?"

Almost immediately Gabriel was flooded by questions coming from every member of the crew, who were understandably concerned by the things he had said.

Luffy stood away from the others who were gathered around Gabriel asking question after question. Gabriel took them all in silence until Luffy finally spoke, "Quiet!!!"

Instantly everyone shut up and looked to Luffy who was looking with steady at Gabriel who returned his gaze, everyone saw them looking at one another and gulped at the serious air between them.

"Gabriel, what do you know?" Luffy asked, "you're hiding something"

"I know things yes," Gabriel stated plainly, "But I have my reasons for not revealing them, you wouldn't want a boring adventure after all"

Instantly the serious air between them vanished and Luffy grinned, "Shishishis, Nope,"

Gabriel smiled and nodded, he knew that it was best to keep his mouth shut about things for the most part, Luffy wouldn't like it if he spoiled things, and everything would turn out fine in the end anyway.

"But I will answer some questions here, spoiler free," Gabriel stated, "that woman's name is Nico Robin, she's been a wanted woman since she was a young girl with a bounty of seventy nine million beri, she is wanted by the world government for being the only person alive who is capable of reading ancient texts that are written on indestructible stone monoliths called Poneglyphs." He explained, "the ancient texts are rumoured to speak about various things, one of the many things in those rumours are of three ancient weapons that have the power to destroy the world, which is supposedly why the government outlawed any research into how to read them and why Robin has such a high bounty"

Everyone listened to his explanation and found themselves even more afraid of what they heard, weapons that could destroy the world, that was just insane.

"and you said my family has one of these Poneglyphs?" Vivi asked as her mind raced over the idea.

Gabriel nodded, "the Nefertari family was one of the original families that helped found the world government as it is today, unlike the rest of the original families they did not move to holy land Mary Geoise atop the red line eight hundred years ago. It was from the time before the world government was formed that the Poneglyphs are said to originate, to protect the secrets on them from falling into the wrong hands the Nefertari family found one and hid it away" he explained, he of course knew more but knew that if he said any more he wouldn't be able to explain it away as just him doing research for his dream.

"Do you think Crocodile is trying to get a hold of one of these weapons?" Nami asked fear in her voice.

Gabriel shrugged, "hard to say, but I'm betting it's likely that he is, if that woman is in this with him." He knew that Robin didn't care about the weapons and wouldn't help Crocodile in that regard, but he had to keep up the appearance that he didn't know that.

"How do you know all of this?" Zoro asked, "how did you even know about baroque works?" he asked with narrowed eyes, he knew how he knew about them but everything else.

Gabriel looked to him, "you all know my dream, I've done my research into all of the powerful forces in the world, the Yonkō, the warlords, devil fruits of note, Marines to look out for and other groups to be wary of" he said before smirking, "I need to know who I can fight to test my limits after all" and thus his alibi was born through the skilful use of bullshitting.

Zoro smirked back at him understanding him, "any good swordsmen on that list?" he asked

"I'll make you a list of those I know of later that you can keep an eye out for" Gabriel mused.

Nami sighed, "alright everyone lets put this behind us for now, we have a voyage to get back to, we still have people after us so lets not dally" she said and everyone nodded and went back to their positions.

Time skip

It was a number of hours later that the going Merry was well underway on its second voyage into the grand line, after so long tentions began to fade and everyone began to relax as there had been no sign of anyone following them from the island or anywhere else.

With tensions calming down, Gabriel excused himself to the privacy of the mens quarters to think and plan. Laying down on his bunk he looked up at the ceiling going over his thoughts about his up coming fight with crocodile when they reached Alabasta.

He knew that he was going to seriously mess with Crocodiles plans when they reached alabasta, he didn't want to let the war happen and had plenty of ideas how to prevent it or to at least try. But either way he would end up fighting crocodile. He planned on letting Luffy take a shot at him to help sooth over his ego a bit but he already knew that Luffy would lose in the first fight because he didn't have haki, sea stone or know about crocodiles weakness and he didn't plan to help him out in any of those things, well at least not yet. Gabriel knew Luffy learned better by experiencing things first hand, it was how it was in the anime so he didn't intend to interfere and change much until after Alabasta.

'Right now I need to focus on myself, bettering myself and becoming stronger, I know I am well on the way but things could still be better,' Gabriel thought to himself as he knew what he had to aim for next, Haki, he wanted to learn how to use them because in paradise they would give him an edge over everyone and the sooner he learned it the better, but what he didn't know was to how to go about learning it.

He knew that he would eventually unlock it with his system, as long as he grew stronger where it mattered, but he also knew that it could take a while before he got to the point where they would become available, for all he knew he had to max out all his physical combat skills before he could even start, he didn't want to wait that long.

'maybe I can unlock them myself through actual training like other people do,' Gabriel wondered, but the downside was he didn't know anything about how to do about unlocking actual armerment haki, and the idea of having someone standing behind him with a stick hitting him while he was blindfolded didn't really appeal to him much.

'can I even learn things like that, will the system even recognise them as skills that I have learned if I do it that way?' he thought to himself, his AP hadn't risen at all in any of his phycisal combat skills despite his daily training, so he didn't think that it would work that way, 'unless the system needs to be upgraded for it to work like that' the thought crossed his mind and almost instantly he opened the system store and went right to the system update section and started to browse the list of updates that he could install, there were a lot.

'holy shit, how could I have never checked this out before' Gabriel berated himself as he looked over the list.

System quest update- multiple choice- 100,000 beri

System quest update- repeat quests- 500,000 beri

System skill update- Learn by doing- 50,000 beri

System skill update- skill books- 75,000 beri

System skill update- Devil fruits 2.0- 10,000,000 beri

System skill update- Devil Fruit 3.0- 50,000,000 beri

System update- system raffle- 200,000 beri

System update- system raffle 2.0- 400,000 beri

System update- system raffle 3.0- 800,000 beri

System update- system raffle 4.0- 1,000,000 beri

System update- mind palace challenge mode- 100,000,000 beri

System inventory upgrade- devil fruit item creation- 50,000,000 Beri

….

The list just kept going on after that, looking at some of the titles of the updates Gabriel's mind was already racing with possibilities for what some of them might be and winced when he saw the price tags on them

He knew he had less that 200K Beri to his name he wouldn't be able to afford any of the more expensive updates, he could maybe afford to use one of his discount tokens to get a bit more he still had three of the half price tokens and he could always grind more if he needed cash later and he might be able to get more in future quests.

So after thinking long and hard on the matter for several minutes debating the pros and cons he decided to go ahead and made his choices purchase both the learn by doing update, and the skill book update and used two of his three discount tokens to bring the first Raffle upgrade down to only fifty thousand beri before purchasing it as well.

Once he hit the accept button the screens all closed and another popped up and he wanted to face palm so badly, he should have seen this coming.

Thank you for purchasing your system updates, system will now restart to install new updates, please be patient

Gabriel had only managed to read the text before it blinked out and he felt the mother, father, uncle, aunt, grand mother and grandfather of headaches hit him all at once as he felt like his head would explode. He was glad he was already lying down because he was sure that he wouldn't be able to keep on his feet this time, as he saw the same percentage screen come up and begin to count up on the progress as the last time, but by the time it has reached thirty percent he couldn't handle the pain and his vision began to blur before he blacked out.

When he eventually came around again he groaned as he sat up holding his head as the remainder of the headache slowly faded, "next time only one at a time, I am never doing multiple updates like that again" he muttered to himself before looking at the screen that appeared in front of him.

System updates now successfully installed

Learn by doing- the user can now unlock, learn and improve selected skills by repeatedly practicing them,

Skill books- the user can now learn and improve certain skills by reading unique skill books that can be found in the world or received as rewards for completing quests

Raffle- the system raffle has been unlocked for the user, currently only the bronze level raffle is available for the user please purchase further raffle upgrades to unlock other raffle levels- one bronze raffle token has been deposited into users inventory, further raffle tokens can now be received as rewards from quests

Gabriel grinned, it looked like Christmas had come early, opening up his inventory he immediately looked for the raffle token and found it, a small bronze coin that had a stylised R on both sides, tapping on the icon he read the description.

A raffle token that can be exchanged for a spin of the bronze system raffle, prizes the user can get from the system are as follows:

Three to five bronze AP tokens: can be exchanged with the system to gain between fifty and three hundred AP per token (amount varies with each token)

One to three TP tokens: can be exchanged with the system to gain 1-5 TP per token, (amounts varies with each token)

Beri: between fifty thousand beri and one hundred thousand

Store discount token, can be exchanged in the store for a percentage off a singular item

Three to five, grade four Skill AP limit booster: An item that can be used on any unlocked skill to increase it's AP limit by a set amount depending on the booster

would you like to spin the raffle?

Thinking it over Gabriel grinned when he saw the prizes he could get. If he got the AP tokens the most he could get from them was fifteen hundred AP that would seriously increase his skills

If he got the TP tokens he could possibly get a max of fifteen TP that would also be a big boost it means he could unlock more skills right from the off to improve later.

The Beris might be a nice reward given how he had just blown a big chunk of all that he had on his upgrades, he just wished that the raffle would give more.

The discount tokens would be a welcome reward as he only had one left as well.

The only thing he was wary of was these limit boosters, he was no where near maxing any of his current skills if he got them as he was now it would be pointless, it seemed they were for when he wanted to push beyond what the system first allowed, end game items.

After looking over the rewards a second time, Gabriel hit the accept button and saw a screen come up with a large wheel on it with various icons around in a large circle the token icon appeared and then vanished as the wheel began to spin and Gabriel found himself crossing his fingers and hoping for something good to come out of it.

Slowly the wheel began to slow and Gabriel closed his eyes not wanting to see what it landed on only opening them again when he heard a bell sound in his mind, to see another screen in front of him.

Congratulations you have won 3 bronze AP tokens from the Bronze raffle

Gabriel grinned, it wasn't the absolute best he could have gotten from the raffle but it was definite one of the better rewards, even if he used them and got the worst from each result from each that was still a hundred and fifty AP that he could use.

So going back to his inventory he found the AP tokens, bronze square plates with AP stamped on them, and selected them and hit use on the menu causing three screens to appear up at once

145 AP has been added to the users profile

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205 AP has been added to the users profile

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250AP has been added to the users profile

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Gabriel grinned like a madman, six hundred AP just like, it was a great result, six hundred out of a possible nine hundred AP wasn't too shabby.

His first thought was to split them between his battle endurance and his devil fruit, but after thinking it over decided against it, since he had just gotten the Skill book and learn by doing upgrades he decided that he would save those AP points in case he needed them in the middle of a fight again like he had with Smoker back in Loguestown.

Looking back on that encounter, he realised at the time he had been an idiot to spend all his points at the one time, if it hadn't been for the points that he had gotten for busting Buggies balls and nose in that hidden quest he would have been in a tight spot to actually get away and he might have actually been caught, he wouldn't make that mistake again, from now on he'd keep a portion of his AP in reserve for emergencies. He needed to use the system smarter.

Getting up from his bed he grinned, besides now he had some new skills to learn and other ways to improve upon what he already had, it was time to train.