Chapter 43

As Brook listened to the request, he replied affirmatively, "How long has it been since we had a proper spar, more than 2 years have passed hasn't it, let's see how much you have grown?"

As Acreu's request for the duel got accepted it created a ripple of noise and clamor, which soon attracted the attention of almost all the pirates on the ship. some of the crew members who were busy doing other work inside the cabin also came out to check it out.

Amongst the pirates Law and Reiju who were adorning a wooden mask also came. Brook had ordered Bolton to inform the crew that the kids were pirate apprentices, that Captain Momonga had taken under his tutelage.

This caused rumors to go around that Captain Momonga had a soft spot for kids, Many even deduced he was somewhat similar to White Beard and liked taking talented children under him.

While they were preparing for the challenge, Brook asked, " Do you want to take a weapon or go hand-to-hand?"

Thinking that Longsword was not brooks ideal weapon, and wouldn't bring out the best. Acreus decided to have a hand-to-hand duel, Brook didn't mind whatever it was, because he was much stronger than Acreus.

So to prepare a temporary battleground he froze the ocean by embedding his sword with frost energy and throwing it into the ocean. As his sword made contact with the ocean it froze in a rough diameter of 300 meters. Looking at the ability everyone once looked at the ocean in awe, no matter how many times they see it. They couldn't comprehend such power in the hands of a human.

After that Brook jumped into the frozen platform and started freezing it further with his aura until he created a solid platform 1000m long.

When the platform was fully prepared he invited Acreuss to the frozen sea to have his spar.

As Acres followed him by jumping on the ice, he immediately got in a boxing pose. "Ready" was all he needed to say as Brook began his assault.

Swiftly approaching him, Brook Attacked, using a swift head kick.

The attack was swiftly blocked by Acteus using his arm. As Acreus attacked him using his remaining hand. Brook also used his palm to stop it, but to everyone's surprise, with a resounding crack, he was sent skidding backward.

There was already a significant amount of crowd gathered on the ship observing the battle. Some were observing while sitting at the edge of the ships as well as those who were using binoculars to observe the battle.

As all of them were observing the battle they were utterly shocked with their jaws hanging down. They had never expected Captain Momonga to be pushed back. They had never seen their captain have a bad hand in a battle till this moment.

All of them had thought that Acreus was also a kid that their captain had taken in, as they had inquired about Acreus, they came to know despite his large size he was only 14 years old and stayed with the caption for the longest.

They had attributed him as a slightly bigger kid since he didn't fight and always followed Bolton.

But as they looked at Captain Momonga who was sent skitting backward with a large crack in his armor due to the punch of Acreus they felt god-smacked, they finally realized the kid was also a monster.

As both Law and Reiju looked at this site they both turned their head toward Boltona and asked, "Is that guy stronger than Captain Momonga? I thought he was just a few years older than us so how is he so strong?"

Listening to that Bolton laughed, "HA HA, don't be mistaken brats, yes Acreus is quite strong but not as much as Momonga."

Hearing that both of them asked, "Why isn't that attack strong enough to send him sliding back?

"

Bolton pointed at the battle arena and said, "It's haki, while Acreus is using it, Momonga hasn't used it yet. So, no need to be too hasty, just observe the battle for now."

As all of the noise caused by their discussion reached the battlefield, Brook let his hands down checking the cracks in his armor, "not bad, not bad at all." saying that he immediately fixed his broken armor by spending ice through it.

As he finished fixing the crack in the armor. Brook quickly jumped up, folded his hands together, and used them to slam it on the place Acreus was standing.

Acreus looking at that, wondered what Brook was up to with that obvious attack. He would have a lot of time to dodge that attack, But other than that, he was unable to find a solution, so he backed off.

"Crack"

With a loud cracking sound, the place Acreus was standing was blown to smithereens as Brook smashed the spot where he was standing with his hands.

Acreus couldn't see anything due to his vision being obstructed by the ice fragment and dust, as he was keenly observing the crashed site hoping to spot the next attack of the brook, he noticed something coming towards him with his observation haki, as he tried to dodge it he realized that it was too fast to dodge, As he stood covering his body in haki expecting the imminent attack he was sent flying due to an ice crystal the size of a car.

As he shrugged off the attack by landing on the ground more ice projectiles kept launching towards him.

As the projectiles were too fast for him to dodge he was hit by quite a few of them but he didn't take much damage as he coated his body using armament haki.

As the dust and ice fragments settled down he saw Brook throwing an ice projectile at him with precise accuracy. Realizing that this old man was quite good at throwing things he felt a headache, 'the old man was quite familiar with a lot of weapons as well with weird techniques, which the old man had tried to teach him'.

'There was this one time when he tried to teach him something called breathing style, He didn't know what bullshit it was but it was supposed to give his attack different abilities by controlling his breathing.'

'Now, that was a load of bullshit, how is someone supposed to do that by breathing, After being taught some incomprehensible bullshit. he got fed up, so pretending to have mastered one of the techniques, he told Brook to watch him, he warmed his body up by running and increasing his breath. He then held a sword, he then went near him and released a huge breath from his mouth, as it was relatively cold outside it looked like mist came from his mouth. Releasing that breath in Brooks's direction, he slashed at him normally with a sword, then he shouted mist breathing.

That was one of the times he had seen Brook Flabbergasted this was the first time he saw a proper emotion on Brooksface despite him being a skeleton. After that trick, he didn't get a hard beating or anything, but from that day Brook stopped teaching him these so-called breathing techniques.

As he was reminiscing, the ice shards stopped coming towards him, now instead Brook was running towards him.

Acreus's body looked quite battered but it was nothing of much significance. Because he had been using armament haki.

Seeing that the ice shards were useless, Brook probably decided to have a more direct confrontation.

On the other hand, seeing that the old man was still charging without haki, Acreus started to get pissed off.