Chapter Six: Smithing

Victor tied up the boat to the dock, eying the knots and finding they were satisfactory. He glanced at his undead, his minions dressed in rags and robes taken from the corpses of pirates. All of them were armed and would wander the deck, given loose 'orders' to attack anyone on the ship.

'Not that would stop anyone from harassing them if they choose not to enter the ship, but it'll do for now.' Victor thought tiredly, getting annoyed with having to micromanage his undead constantly.

'Oh well, let's try and find somewhere I can start learning how to make swords and shit. Once I get a half decent scythe, I'm fucking off somewhere to go train. Ayy, this is already feeling like a damned chore.' The young man scratched at his neck as he started navigating his way through town.

He asked a few locals and men on the street to give him directions, and was soon led to 'Randal's Weapons.'

He opened the door and noticed the quality of the weapons on sale. 'These are some nice revolvers, not anything like the flintlocks I've seen around.'

"What'dya want?" Came a cranky sound. Victor looked over, then looked down to find an actual Dwarf. 'The fuck is one of these guy's doing away from the Grandline?' He wondered, before shrugging it off. 'Not my business.'

"You accepting students?" Victor got down to the meat of the matter.

The dwarf, and old one by the looks of things, blinked. "Students? You want to learn how to make my revolvers?" The man frowned deeply.

"No. I want to learn how to forge a blade."

"...A blade? What, a sword?"

"A Scythe."

"...why? That's a shit weapon."

"So is the sword. Spears are superior in most every right. Swords are just 'cool'." Victor shrugged.

The smith snorted, "I know a thousand men who'd kill you for those words."

"Different martial philosophies will often clash in battle." Victor shrugged.

"So, you want to make a Scythe?"

"Yes. I want to learn how to make a Scythe that is at least a Grade ranked blade before I set sail on the Grandline."

"Hnn." The dwarf rubbed his beard down. "Give me a punch."

"...deja vu." Victor muttered and threw a punch at the dwarf.

The small man caught the attack easily and gave Victor an impressed glance. "Well, you're strong for this sea. Fodder in the New World and of decent worth in Paradise." The man stroked his beard extra hard.

"...I see you'll go far in this world. You have a decent jab, that's most of what you need to know to be anyone of note. However, you came here to learn metalwork and smithing. I will test your mettle, your talent, and by the end of my tests I will agree to teach you in truth. I can not promise that through my teachings you will create a Grade Ranked blade, however, if my hopes are true, the World led you here for a reason."

"Victor 'Vic' Vici." Victor held his hand out. A hand that was taken by the short man. "Randal D. Colt. A pleasure."

Victor hummed, "Same. Well, what are we waiting for. Let's get started."

...

Victor and Randal stood by a table, both gazing down on a piece of steel.

"...You're talented." Randal stated eventually.

Victor frowned, "It's a piece of scrap."

"It's a blade. Your first blade. That means you have talent."

Victor huffed, "Thought this would be...harder."

Randal snorted, "If my son heard you, he'd strangle you. Making a blade, even if this one has a dozen of flaws, proves that you have at the very least a basic understanding of the process. I have tons to teach you, but this was less to see the depths of your potential and more to see how much you already know. Which is to say, some, but not a lot."

Victor nodded. He'd drawn on a lot of his youtube blacksmithing video knowledge.

"Furthermore, you see your first piece as a piece of garbage. That's good."

Victor turned his gaze to Randal. Not glaring, not threatening, just...staring. That was message enough. "It means you have a pride. Not in a piece of work, but in the quality of your work. That's important. Means you have a craftsman's heart, not a salesman's who cares more about the glory a work might bring to his name."

Victor snorted. "My blades must be of a quality to ruin kingdoms. This is very much about glory. Not in the quality of the blade, but of the feats they must live up to." Victor brushed his finger along the edge of his steel blade, pulling back when a prick of blood dripped off. "I have high expectations for any piece of work I make, and if they fail to live up to them, then they are failures."

Randal gazed up at Victor and nodded. "Your words ring true. A smith you might become. Now, go get some drafting paper. I'm going to teach you about some rules and regulations regarding..."

....

Victor bounce on one leg, shooting up in the air and contorted his body mid air. Sand bags swung to-and-fro, his limbs bending and joints cracking as he contorted around a rope, only to flip and reorient his body while in air to dodge a sweeping bag.

With a snapping of sinew and crack of joints popping back into place, Victor fell to the ground and landed on his feet, not moving an inch. He released a deep breath and nodded to himself as he tilted his head and dodged a bag, before bouncing back up into the air and flipping around even more swinging projectiles as he ascended and descended.

{Observation Haki: 25/100, Level UP!}

{Six Powers: 10/70}

The powers and skills developed by the World Government and Marines alike.

- Paper Drawing: 2/10

- Finger Gun: 1/10

- Iron Body: -/10

- Shave: 3/10

- Storm Leg: 1/10

- Moon Step: 3/10

- Six King Gun: -/10

Victor smiled as he inspected his status. He took a deep breather, ducking and dodging under the attacks and swings of the sandbags, rocks, and streamers he planted through the forest canopy he was using for training.

Victor had truely fallen into the hole of Multitasking. This training he devised was a method he'd created to train several aspects of his skills.

One of which was most obviously Shave, Moon Step, Storm Leg, and Observation Haki. The sand bags were a tried and true to leveling up -sorry training- one's Observation Haki. He just took it up a bit with little plastic streamers he tied to the trees, and some swinging rocks. His senses were also enhanced and he was getting better and better and using his ears to sense where the sandbags were instead of his supernatural senses. Still a good skill to have, but Haki beat out echolocation.

The plastic streamers where there to expand his situational and spacial awareness. He needed to be able to pick up on the smallest of details, so he wasn't only just dodging and bending around the swaying strings of plastic, but also cataloguing their colors and counting how many he was close to hitting and how many he needed to actively dodge and which ones he could just passively dodge or redirect with a breath or flex of a limb.

Blasting himself into the air was training his legs, largely focusing on Shave and Moon Step, and Paper Drawing was the newest addition to his training.

Victor would have liked training Iron Body as well, it being the only Power he hadn't started on in the past three months he'd been in Ion learning under Randal-Sensei.

As the multitasker he was, Victor was constantly learning or doing something to improve himself.

Even now as he walked and trained his Paper Drawing and Observation Haki, he was communicating and controlling his undead. Inside his Sloop he'd created a crude 'on-ship' smithery. He didn't need a kitchen, bathroom, utilities, or even a bedroom, so creating and designing a ship that had such a thing was on his to-do list.

His total wealth was taking hits as the days and months went by, from a total of ~84 Million Berries, he now had 17 Million left. The remainder spent renting out Shipdocks and Anchorages and building ships that he never planned on selling. It was always a loss, but his current level of Shipwrighting 42 left him very satisfied. He was only a few levels off of being an Adept, which was where he'd begin to start dabbling in even more expensive and rare materials.

He didn't trust himself to even touch Adam Wood, not until he was an Expert or Master at the very least. However, beyond Shipwrighting being his highest skill, he'd also done great work in Weaponsmithing. The skill was hanging right behind his Shipwrighting at 37, and the reason these two skills were so high could all be attributed to his minions and undead. Through controlling them, he could manage several 'teams' of smiths and Shipwrights.

It was through their power-leveling and practice that he completely blew his sensei away with his progress. At level 37 he was making actually decent blades that were selling well in his Sensei's shop, in a short few months.

Beyond his improvements to his skills in the Technological Path, his progress in his Martial Path had stagnated somewhat. He'd only gained a couple levels in his Cursed Stance, although that was par for the course he'd set.

Randal-sensei had asked if Victor used any martial arts, and he'd stated yes. The dwarf recomended Victor to go to Karate Island and to challange the dojos there to further refine his abilites.

Victor was somewhat hesitant to go, as he was developing a martial art that was more suited towards killing and assassination than merely 'fighting'. He eventually decided against going to Karate Island, seeing as the island might try to instill 'non-lethal' values inside his martial art. Such would go against its founding and his legend. It would sully the Cursed Stance. He decided to keep to his bounty hunter roots, but only weak bandits and thugs had found his path in-so-far, so his progress there was unsubstantial.

Not that Victor wasn't fine with such, as he figured that he'd want to master Finger Gun and Paper Drawing first, before heading out on a Bounty Binge as he called it. Victor was 'over-leveled' for the sea, however he meant that not in the literal sense.

Outside of a Logia popping up, Victor couldn't see anyone really besting him in this sea. The thought of a Logia appearing did give Victor a bit of a scare though, and he really wanted to at least unlock his Armament Haki before he left.

However, once again, it all went down to the end result if his training with Randal. Before he wanted to progress on his path to power, Victor wanted to first create a blade that could be a Graded Blade. Something that would require him to be at least an Adept in Weaponsmithing first before such a thing could be obtained.

Thankfully, Victor wasn't that far and it had only been a few months and he still had plenty of things to train, so his strength and abilities weren't being crippled by staying in the peaceful and technologically advanced kingdom of Ion.

"Better head back to Randal's." Victor muttered as he walked out of the forest he was training and started heading back to the city.