Sword Genius (Part 1)

When Alvin opened his eyes once again, he was greeted by a sandy beach and a blue sea. He was standing on the beaches of an Island!

He turned back to look at the endless ocean with waves crashing on the sandy beaches every now and then. He breathed in deeply and felt the salty moist atmosphere around him.

The visual impact of this world didn't look like a VR world to him.

"Is this how every VR gaming world feels like. This looks and feels so real." Alvin thought as he examined his surroundings.

He was currently alone on this beach. According to the information he read on Ares Corporation's website, every player will be randomly transported to an Island in the lower four oceans of the One Piece world i.e. North Blue, South Blue, East Blue and West Blue!

According to the information that he knew about this world from his previous life, East Blue was the weakest sea among the four seas with West, North and South Blue arranging accordingly from strong to weak.

Players who start off in either West Blue or North Blue would have it harder than their counterparts of the other oceans.

In terms of preference, Alvin would have liked to start off in East Blue since he was more familiar with this ocean but it wasn't up to him to decide. What he had to do now was figure out his situation and how to Level up at the fastest speed!

His main focus now should be to figure out his current location in order to better plan his future path. With a thought, a light blue holographic projection of his attribute panel in front of him again and he looked at his level, the skills and his system backpack. With a thought, an ordinary steel sword appeared in his hands and he began swinging it around to test his strength.

"Even though the strength of this body is weak compared to people from the real world, but if compared to people from my previous life, it can be considered average. Let's look at the skills that I can use for now..." with this in mind, Alvin looked once again at his skills and focused of the Basic Sword Arts. He noticed that it was uninitiated meaning he hadn't began practicing it.

Following the information he had read earlier, he looked closely at it and immediately, information about the moves and stances of the basic sword arts began to flow into his mind. It had been ingrained into his mind, as if he were born with them and won't be able to forget them.

Reading through the information in his mind, Alvin sighed as he realized how difficult this game was going to be. Every player who was starting off in this game would have to practice the skills they will use in the game manually until they are proficient in them. They will have to reach the initial stage of their skills to be able to go hunt monsters and level up.

Without wasting much time, Alvin left the beach and found a shade under a coconut tree and began to manually practice his basic sword art.

According to the information that he just received, the initial stage of this basic sword art contains about twelve different attack and defense stances and are the basics that every person who wishes to wield the sword should have.

Because Alvin had seen in his attribute panel that his talent in swords is at the highest rank of SS+, he decided to pick the path of a swordsman. Also, unlike people who focus on body techniques, becoming a strong swordsmen in this world would mean that he could take all his comprehensions back to the real world. This is the real reason he chose this path.

The first six stances and moves are the defense stances and the later are the attack stances and moves. According to the instruction in the manual, if all these stances are perfected to at least the peak of Initial stage, coupled with his abundant combat experience, he would be able to handle creatures who are Level 1 and lower.

Without wasting much time, he began to practice according to the instructions in his memory. Unexpectedly, a few minutes after beginning his practice, he seemed to have entered a very magical state. After just a single try, he had gone through all twelve cycles of both defense and attack styles of the initial stage of this basic sword art. Unknowingly, the proficiency of this skill on his attribute panel was also slowly increasing.

If someone of this world saw him at this time, they would be very shocked! Because even if this skill is just a basic sword art, it requires at least a week of constant and repetitive training to be able to perform it in such a manner.

Then he went through the second cycle and then the third. The more he executed them, the more proficient he became. When he finished running through the third cycle of stances of moves, he finally heard the notification of the system.

[Ding! Congratulations to player Monkey D. Arnold for being the first player to comprehend a bronze ranked skill to the Initial Stage. Because player Monkey D. Arnold is the first player to comprehend a skill you get the Reward: Pursuing Winds Intermediate Sword Art (Silver Ranked)]

"Hmm, First person? Reward?" when Alvin saw this achievement prompt he was both surprised and happy at the same time.

He quickly brought up his attribute panel and viewed his skills:

....

Battle Skills

Force Fist (Initial Stage-10/10) – Effects (exerts 5 % extra explosive fist force)

Basic Sword Arts (Initial Stage – 40/100) – Effects (Improves attack speed, attack power and movement speed by 8%)

Pursuing winds Intermediate Sword Arts (Uninitiated) – Effects (None)

...

When he saw the effects of the bronze ranked basic sword art, he became very excited. From the amount of proficiency points he had accumulated, he surmised that he got 10 points for the perfect execution of the whole twelve stances. If he didn't perform it perfectly, he wouldn't get the whole ten points. Also if he completed just the initial stage of this basic sword art, he would get at least 20% increase in his attack speed, attack power and movement speed.

But what surprised him was how amazingly fast he comprehended this art and performed it perfectly. This was very strange. According to the information he had received about this sword art, for someone like him who has no background on sword techniques, it should take him at least about a week if he had very good talent to grasp and execute these moves as perfectly as he did.

He felt very strange when practicing this skill. The first time he went through the cycle, he didn't feel jerky at all but rather it felt as if the art was part of him.

"Is this the effect of SS+ level sword talent?" Alvin became excited when he thought of this. The feeling of continuously comprehending the meaning behind moves was really magical.

"Grrrrrr!"

Suddenly, his stomach started making growling noises and he felt a little sense of exhaustion wash over him. When he checked his energy points on the attribute panel, he noticed his stamina levels had reduced to 30/150!

This was really shocking. Just four executions of the cycles of this basic sword skill had reduced his stamina by 120! It would be imagined how difficult it would be for others who did not have his amazing talent to grind through this skill when they could only go through a maximum of two cycles per session before having to rest to replenish his stamina.

He immediately stood up from his position and looked up the coconut tree under which he was currently standing. There were some ripe coconuts on it so he picked some stones and started to snipe at them.

With his monstrous marksmanship level in his previous life as an elite soldier, it wasn't difficult for him to take down four coconuts in four shots.

But when he shot down the final coconut, he received another surprise.

[Ding! Congratulations to player Monkey D. Arnold for comprehending the bronze ranked skill Basic Marksmanship!]

"Eh, snipping coconuts can let you comprehend basic marksmanship?"