Training

After that fight with the buggy pirates, Neve began taking his training so seriously that he put aside the painting of the goddess.

He got so serious with the training that he even made a timetable to ensure he didn't mess up the sequence. It goes like this: physical training in the morning, Devil fruit training in the afternoon, and physical training again in the evening to increase his stamina so he could use his Devil fruit longer.

After a month of training, he made considerable progress. Right now, his physical strength has reached a doriki level of 1000, which surpasses the superhuman level.

He has also made astounding progress in discovering he could draw things like runes, and they could apply their meanings to whatever they are written on.

He came up with this theory while researching his ability to grant anything he draws power. He wondered if he could also make stuff like runes with his own made-up language and grant them effects which could affect where they are written.

Right now, Neve is standing in front of a lake with his shirt thrown to the other side and a paintbrush in his hands, the tuft of the paintbrush dripping ink.

"Ok… here goes nothing," Neve says as he brings the paintbrush close to his chest and starts drawing on it.

He first draws the strength while imagining its effect and meaning. Then, he imagines himself carrying a boulder, running faster, and deflecting a bullet with his hands.

Not long after he finishes drawing, he feels something coursing through his body. He opens his eyes and looks at the symbol, seeing it glowing blue, which means it is working.

"Yes!" Neve shouts as he jumps high in the sky, almost reaching 3 meters above the ground.

Not long after he lands, he starts to draw other African symbols on his chest. He draws the symbol for immortality and the symbol for resilience.

After he finishes drawing those two symbols, he discovers two things about this theory:

First, the abilities are all nerfed and below what he imagined. When he imagined immortality, he pictured himself coming back to life after being stabbed in the head, but all he got was just fast regeneration.

Second, he can only draw three runes on an object, meaning he can grant his body three runes, and those runes are permanent, which he utterly regrets, as he could have just spammed the strength rune.

"Well, no need for sulking, now onto the next agenda of the day," he says as he takes the notebook from the back of his pack and flips through the pages, looking for the page where his next goals are listed.

After 10 seconds of flipping, he already reaches the page, which depicts a double-bladed staff with a cool design on its body, black and white with pure white blades.

Confirming the page, Neve puts his hand on it, and his hand passes through the paper. When he brings his hand out, he is holding the double-bladed staff depicted on the page, only this one is the length of an average man.

"Let's check if this is working," he says.

He then wills the staff to turn into a paintbrush, and it does. Next, he turns it back into a staff and throws it far until it's out of sight. After waiting for 30 seconds, he stretches his arm and wills for the staff to come back. After 10 seconds, it comes flying back to his hand.

Neve added two powers to the staff: transformation and Return, meaning it can transform into a paintbrush and return to him no matter where he is. He got this idea from Thor's hammer.

After checking the powers, he takes his paintbrush and adds the runes of Hardness, Self-repair, and Weight onto the staff, making the weight of the weapon 2000 doriki, requiring all of Neve's strength just to carry it.

"Now I can finally switch things up," Neve says as he detaches the body of the staff, revealing a silver chain that connects the body together.

Neve planned to change the timetable today, noticing he didn't have much experience fighting with a weapon and that his physical improvements were slowing down. That's why he opted for the easiest weapon he could learn, which was a staff. So, the timetable is now weapon training in the morning, Devil fruit training in the afternoon, and physical training at night.

And just like that, two months have passed by with astonishing progress in all three training areas.

First, his staff mastery has gone from that of a novice to that of an advanced beginner, which is actually quite impressive in the East Blue. With just his spear mastery, he could beat the likes of Mohji and the rest of Buggy's crew.

Second, his physical strength has also increased astonishingly, which can be attributed to training with a spear heavier than himself. Now, he has a physical doriki of 2,200 and can lift the spear with ease.

Lastly, his Devil fruit has grown to the point where he can actually create real living beings with souls and intelligence, who can also get stronger on their own, although they still need his energy to perform activities.

This idea sparked the concept of creating a technique with the Devil fruit, and he finally came up with an idea by mimicking the ten shadow technique from Jujutsu Kaisen.

His idea is to create seven living beings derived from mythology and give each of them the power to enter his shadow so that they wouldn't waste his energy and he could summon them anytime.

Currently, he is painting the image of a griffin on a canvas, constantly pondering the griffin's habits, personality, likes, dislikes, and powers. These are all the conditions for making his paintings have a soul and for them to become actual living beings.

As soon as he makes the last stroke, he feels a tremendous amount of energy being sucked out of him as the griffin in the painting jumps out and becomes a huge, real-life griffin (TLW: about the size of a house).

"From now on, your name is Greer, meaning guardian. Welcome to the family," he says as Greer cheers happily, making the wind around him go crazy due to Greer's wind powers.

Not long after creating Greer, Neve faints out of exhaustion, and Greer turns into dark liquid and enters Neve's shadow due to the lack of energy.

When Neve wakes up again, he finds himself still in the same position he was in before he fainted and gets up to look for Greer.

"Chirp," Greer chirps from Neve's shadow, asking if he is okay.

"I'm okay. It seems that making just one of you takes a toll on my body," Neve says as he puts on his weight for physical training time, understanding that he can communicate with Greer through their connection.

And just like that, 10 months passed in a flash. Neve had already summoned all seven beings and could summon at most two of them together.

He also managed to reach a competent level in his staff mastery, which classified him as a genius beyond reason. However, he reached a bottleneck in his physical abilities, which didn't disappoint him as it was expected.

"I guess it's time, huh," Neve says as he ties his hair in a ponytail with his callused hands.

"Well, Bucky, your luck has run out. I ain't going easy on you today," he says as he picks up the double-bladed staff and puts it on his back.

"Time for round two," he says as he runs to the town where he hears an explosion coming from.

Meanwhile, on the sea in the East Blue, a small boat is visible. In it, there's a boy with green hair, accompanied by three swords by his side, and another boy wearing a straw hat with a small scar under his right eye.

"Zorroooo, I'm hungry," the boy in the straw hat says to the green-haired boy who is currently sleeping.

"Maybe if you hadn't finished the rations within a day, you wouldn't be hungry," Zoro replies, still half-asleep.

"Aren't you hungry?" the boy in the straw hat asks, just before he notices a bird in the sky and stretches his body to an unimaginable length to catch the bird.

"I've gone longer days without... LUFFY!!!"

Zoro immediately shouts as he hastily maneuvers his boat, trying to catch up with the bird that just swallowed his captain.