Chapter twenty one- Whisky peak, let the real party begin

After talking with Vivi, Gabriel made his way down to the main deck and climbed down to the men's quarters. The weather was calm at the moment, so he planned to take advantage of the lull to explore the system store a bit more now that he had some cash to spend.

As he did so he noticed that Nami was giving him the stink eye and arched an eyebrow at her wondering what he had done to piss her off.

But before he could say anything, she just turned away from him making him shrug his shoulders before he continued down to the men's quarters.

Now with privacy he opened the store menu and began to wonder just which section to browse first.

---Weapons---

---Clothing---

---Materials---

---Blueprints---

---Food---

---Skills---

---Upgrades---

After a few seconds he decided to see what the material section had to offer and wasn't disappointed by what he saw. It offered nearly every material he could think of from regular metals to to the more rarer stuff like Seastone, there were also dozens of varieties of wood available for purchase, and when he saw that he immediately went searching for one particular type and looked on wide eyed as he finally found it

Adams wood

The rarest and most valuable wood in the whole one piece world, the same wood that the king of the pirates had his ship made out of, and the same wood that the thousand sunny would one day be made of.

After a moment he tapped on it to see the price but frowned when instead of a price another screen came up.

Blueprints required to purchase necessary amount for exact crafting, user knowledge insufficient for task

Gabriel's eye twitched when he read that, had the system just indirectly called him stupid. Then stopped to think, it wasn't that it was calling him stupid it was more than likely because he didn't know how much wood he would need to make a ship from scratch, he knew jack shit about ship building. So he reasoned that the system was in some way connected to his own knowledge to some extent and without a blueprint for a ship it had no reference for which to give him a price.

With that in mind he went to the blueprint section and began to look for a blueprint to use to get some idea, but when he reached the section for ship blueprints his jaw dropped open, the prices were huge, the lowest one was ten million beri and it was just for a small three man sailing craft, though it had a star beside its name which caught his eye.

He hadn't seen that before and tapped it out of curiosity.

Customisable and Unique craft blueprint

Blueprint will be adjusted to the users abilities to allow for unique features on craft to be used with users abilities. User can customise blueprints style to limited extent.

As he read that he realised just what it meant, that ship was like some of the other unique vehicles that devil fruit users had, like Aces boat or smokers motorcycle, he would be able to use his powers to travel on it somehow that made him grin.

Though the boat was small, if he was able to buy that blueprint and hand it off to an experienced shipwright with the blueprints of another they would be able to design the bigger ship to incorporate the same features or design a completely new ship based around his devil fruit.

And once he had the blueprint for it he'd be able to purchase all the materials himself in the system store and have his ship crafted at no extra cost out of Adams wood.

He knew that it would already be super expensive to do so, the Thousand Sunny cost two hundred million beri, and while he didn't know how many he would successfully recruit to his future crew he liked to think that he would need a ship that was just as big if not bigger. He was going to be a Yonkō after all so the idea of him eventually sailing on a Galleon ship the size of the Moby Dick wasn't entirely out of the realm of possibility.

'Looks like I'm going to have to grind like fuck to save up cash for this, even with those discount tokens I have it will still cost a hell of a lot. I'll definitely be taking that golden pillar that the sky islanders wanted to give to the crew as thanks all that gold is bound to be worth a hell of a lot, and then there's the Ark Maxim, if I can get my hands on it after Enel is dealt with, if I can store something that size into my inventory and break it down I'll have an entire city worth of gold to sell' he started to plan.

He wasn't about to just let all that gold go to waste, nor would he feel bad about taking it all for himself, in the anime Engel just sailed off on the ark maxim so either way the gold was never returned this way he'd benefit from it, the sky islanders didn't care about gold anyway.

With all that gold he would be able to build his main ship with ease and then whatever else he had left he could do with as he pleased. Everything was coming together in his plan, he just had to be sure to see it through when the time came.

As he went back to the main store screen, he started to think on what he should plan next but all of a sudden the ship jerked under his feet and he had to struggle to keep his balance.

"What the hell" Gabriel said before he heard Nami starting to call out commands above deck, "guess the nice weather is over" he thought before rushing up to the main deck to give a hand to keep the ship on course.

Time skip

That was rough. He didn't know how long they were in that storm for or how long the crazy weather lasted, but by the end of it he, like everyone else on board, was exhausted.

Gabriel was lying flat on the front deck of the ship his limbs too tired to move, 'anyone who things sailing is easy needs to have their head checked out' he thought to himself as he lay there looking up at the clouds in the sky.

Knowing that they would soon be reaching the island and he would have time to rest later, Gabriel opened his skill menu and dropped thirty of his remaining points into his combat stamina to give him some energy in order to get to his feet slowly, it didn't take away the fatigue but it was something.

'Damn, I had better see about maybe getting a recovery skill from the store when I have some time later, if this is what sailing on the grand line is going to be like, insane stamina isn't going to cut it' Gabriel thought as he got to his feet and used the railing of the ship for support.

As he did so he heard a door open and saw Zoro coming out of the lower storage area yawning and his eye twitched, 'bastard was sleeping the entire time'

Zoro looked around the deck in bewilderment at everyone laying about, "hey come on, I know its nice out but that's no excuse for slacking off" he complained to them before looking up to Nami who was doubled over the railing outside the kitchen door, "we'd better be on course that's all I have to say"

It was at that that Gabriel shared the same thought as Nami, Sanji and Usopp, 'shut up you bastard'

Ignoring Zoro for the time being as he knew that Nami would see to him, Gabriel opened his inventory menu to see if the deconstruction list was completed and he was happy to see that it was, and the result.

Refined steel- 20kg (44lb)

Wooden sword handles- 7

Sea stone- 1kg (2lb)

Seeing that he grinned and instantly loaded up the blueprint of his staff and after a thought modified the settings to have both the ends tipped with sea stone taking an idea from Smoker's jitte before going into the system store and purchasing the blueprints to make jewellery and added a number of rings to the crafting list, two of them were steel signet rings with sea stone caps which meant that when he wore them his punches would land on logia users in theory, and another plane band ring was to be crafted entirely from sea stone which he planned to wear in the future when he took his training up a notch. His devil fruit powers strengthened his body to some extent, so in theory if he wore the ring while doing his physical training then he should see better results from it. with all the crafting he used up all of the sea stone he had but he was happy with his choices, even if his rings turned out to be a bust he could always deconstruct them again to get the raw materials back at no loss except for the time.

Glancing at the crafting timer he saw that in all everything would take just under three hours to make so closed his menu for the time being just in time to see Zoro get laid out flat by several fists to his head curtsy of Nami.

'I'll say it again, she is scary when she is angry' Gabriel thought as he pulled himself upright to stand as Nami called for them all to listen up.

"Listen up everyone, there's no way to know what's going to happen next. During the terror most of us just experienced. I've come to an understanding of why this sea was named the grand line. My navigation skills are useless here but mark my words I will guide us through" Nami said with determination in her voice.

Gabriel couldn't help but sweat drop at that, 'but didn't you just say your skills at navigating are useless here' he thought before shaking his head, 'eh it doesn't matter, even an idiot can navigate through the grand line when all they have to do is go in the direction the log is pointing to, the dangerous thing is the weather and she has that sixth sense for it…. hm I wonder if that's a skill I could purchase for myself, would come in handy' he thought before being broken out of his thoughts by Nami again.

"and there's your proof" Nami declared pointing ahead of the going Merry "Our first voyage on the grand line has come to an end"

And she was right, directly ahead of them was the island Whiskey Peak and its strange cactus shaped mountains.

Gabriel couldn't help but grin as he saw it, he knew what awaited them there, bounty hunters. Sure they wouldn't give a lot of AP indivigually but there was a lot of them and that meant plenty of grinding.

As if responding to his thoughts Gabriel heard two bell chimes from the system in his ear as two quest screens popped up

Quest: Split bounty

Goals:

Defeat 10 bounty hunters

Defeat 20 bounty hunters

Defeat 30 bounty hunters

Defeat 40 bounty hunters

Defeat 50 bounty hunters

Reward: 500AP, 2TP, sword grading book, ???

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Quest: Heavy Boom

Goals:

Defeat Mr 5 (Gem)

Defeat Miss Valentine (Mikita)

Reward: 2 store Discount tokens (50%), 400AP

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Reading both the missions Gabriel grin grew even wider, nine hundred AP, two TP and two discount store tokens, each of those would be great rewards to have, his skills would grow in huge amounts with that AP and he might actually be able to get a good sword from the system store with one of those tokens, he wanted to save the other three for later.

It was Gabriel's intentions to learn to use both the sword and staff to have multiple attack styles to fall back on in battle, being unpredictable was always a good strategy in his mind, if your enemy can't predict what you will do next how can they defend against it. He would unlock the swordsmanship skill only after he got a decent enough blade.

Gabriel accepted both missions before hearing a clatter, he looked over to the side of the ship to see both looking Mr Nine and Miss Wednesday standing on the railing.

"Thank you, but we must be leaving now,"

"It's been an interesting ride to say the least"

"Perhaps we'll meet again someday" Vivi said as she looked to Gabriel with meaning in her eyes.

He knew what the look meant and nodded to her subtly, he'd catch up with her later on the island later when everything was handled.

""Bye-bye baby""

They said before leaping off the railing and diving into the water far from the ship and starting to swim to the shore.

"what a strange pair" Nami said idly before glancing at Gabriel, she had caught the look that Miss Wednesday had given him and wondered just what was going on feeling the same pang of jealousy from before, 'what is with me, why am I jealous of her' she thought before turning away again, "well anyway, come on and bring the ship around and lets look for a way inland" she ordered as everyone began to move to follow her directions.

Gabriel glanced back at the island as he walked down to the main deck again seeing the mist that hung between the cactus like mountains and smirked, 'let the fun begin'