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Bang! "Ouch!"
Bang! "Ouch!"
Bang! "Ouch!"
Bang! "Ouch!"
Across the deck of the stolen Marine warship, the repeated sound of fists striking a wall echoes loudly. The wall was made of hardened mochi, and Katakuri had infused it with Armament Haki until it was even harder than the steel.
But the one throwing the punches is not Zechs.
It is Pudding.
With every punch she threw, she let out another pained cry. Tears gather in the corners of her eyes as she punches the hardened wall again and again.
Bang! "Ouch!"
Bang! "Ouch!"
It really hurt a lot, and she couldn't help but ask with a trembling voice, "Why... why do I have to do this?"
Each punch was sending a painful shock through her hand and up her arm, making her hand feel numb and somewhat bloody. She, who is not used to hitting something this hard, was in terrible pain and felt her hands go red and a little bloody as flesh there began to tear slightly.
After all, she had been punching like that for over an hour; the flesh was bound to tear. So what if she has a stronger body now? It still hurts badly and has slowly injured her.
These tears and injuries were appearing on her fists not only because the mochi wall is so hard, but also because Katakuri has infused the wall with Armament Haki, and every time her fists hit it, that Haki pushed back against her own fists, causing internal damage in her hands and bones.
But Zechs, who lies calmly on a reclining chair with his hands folded behind his head and a pair of sunglasses covering his eyes, answers her without even a trace of pity despite knowing perfectly well how much pain she is in.
"It is to make you stronger."
The answer is short, but it explained everything.
Pudding understood exactly what he meant. Even so, she still felt dissatisfied and clicked her tongue in annoyance, "Tch..."
But despite her complaints, she continued punching the wall because she knew that if she stopped, he would punish her. If it were a normal punishment, she could still endure it... But his punishments are different.
He spanks her bare naked Butt cheeks until they are completely red, welted, and burning. Just thinking about such a humiliating punishment makes her face burn with embarrassment. Compared to suffering through that kind of shame, it is better to grit her teeth and endure the pain in her fists instead.
Satisfied, Zechs did not say anything else, but a faint smile appeared on his lips as he thought to himself, 'That guy Coby managed to become ridiculously strong in just two years with this kind of training, even though his body was complete trash before he joined the Marines... With Pudding-chan's improved physique, as long as she keeps this up, she should be able to become monstrously strong too, right?'
This is Zechs' temporary version of the Battleship Bags.
Of course, they do not actually have battleships lying around to use as punching bags. But Katakuri's hardened mochi works well enough in their place.
In the future, they can probably find something even better.
But for now, this is more than enough.
That aside, while Pudding gritted her teeth and continued punching the mochi wall despite the pain, Zechs kept his eyes closed and remained lying in his chair.
Of course, just because he is lying there does not mean he is relaxing. He is training as well. The thing he is training is the Voice of All Things.
'Come on... let me hear it... the voice of your heart,' he thought as he focused on Pudding and Katakuri, trying to listen for the voices within their hearts.
But all he heard was the wind blowing, the waves crashing, fish swimming in the sea, and the other ordinary sounds around him. They did not come to him as 'voices' at all; they were simply the normal sounds reaching his ears.
He pouted, 'I already have the Voice of All Things... so why can't I hear the voices of their hearts?'
There was nothing he could do about it except keep trying, so he continued attempting as part of his training.
The ship sailed steadily through the waters while Zechs and Pudding continued to train. Katakuri watched the two of them with a faint smile and kept steering the ship, aided by his mochi clones. For them, it was just another ordinary day. Training like this had already become part of their daily routine.
Yet suddenly, on this very normal day, Katakuri, who has a habit of constantly keeping his Observation Haki active, saw a glimpse of a future.
He saw a cannonball hurtling through the air toward them at a terrifying speed. It travelled several times faster than the speed of sound, and what's more terrifying is that the cannonball grew larger with every passing instant as it closed in on their warship.
Because it moved so quickly, moving several times faster than the sound itself, neither he, Zechs, nor Pudding noticed it approaching at all. Only when it had nearly reached the ship did they finally catch a glimpse of the enormous shadow falling over them.
By then, it was already too late.
The cannonball had grown even larger than the Marine warship itself, and before anyone aboard could react, it exploded.
BOOM!!!!!
The blast was so massive that Katakuri did not even consider the possibility of escaping without injury. As far as he could tell, neither he, Zechs, nor Pudding could come through it unscathed.
"This... at this rate, we are all going to…!!!" Katakuri murmured, cold sweat instantly covering his forehead. But then, he shook his head and took action, 'I can't let that ominous future come to pass!'
He immediately abandoned whatever he had been doing and ignored both Pudding and Zechs, neither of whom had realised anything was wrong yet. He sprinted toward the side of the ship from which the cannonball was coming and thrust out his arm.
He coated it in Armament Haki, then rapidly inflated his mochi forearm until the pressure inside caused it to burst. The explosion launched his Haki-coated fist toward the distant cannonball like a projectile.
The fist flew so fast that it caught fire from the friction.
'Burning Mochi!'
'Come on... I hope this is enough...' he thought. But he was not certain. Therefore, after firing one Burning Mochi fist, he immediately prepared a second in case another cannonball came.
After all, in the future he had seen, everything ended the moment the entire ship was swallowed by flames. He had no idea what happened afterwards or who the attackers were.
Even so, that was enough for him to understand one thing: The cannonball could not be allowed to get any closer.
It absolutely could not be allowed to reach its full size either because he has seen a glimpse of the future and knows that the explosion it would create would be so terrifying that even someone as calm as him felt shaken by it.
A moment later, the Burning Mochi fist he had launched at tremendous speed collided with the incoming cannonball, and a massive explosion erupted in midair.
Boom!!!
The impact generated so much heat that it instantly evaporated huge amounts of seawater, while the resulting shockwave violently rocked the warship.
"Wh-what's going on?!" Pudding exclaimed as the ship shook beneath her feet. She only managed to remain standing because one of Katakuri's mochi clones caught and supported her.
At the same time, Zechs opened his eyes and rose from his reclining chair. "An enemy..." he muttered, walking beside Katakuri.
Both he and Pudding had noticed Katakuri suddenly move a moment earlier, but neither of them had understood what he was doing. Before they could react, Katakuri had already fired his Burning Mochi fist.
Only after the explosion did they finally realise that they were under attack and became vigilant.
Zechs, in particular, felt a flicker of tension. If not for Katakuri's Future Sight, that cannonball, considering how fast it was travelling, and that it was becoming bigger with each passing instant, would have exploded directly on the warship.
The thought made him realise just how dangerous the situation had been.
Of course, he would not go so far as to say that the explosion could have killed him. That would be underestimating himself far too much. He possessed Linlin's Steel Balloon Physique. Since when had a cannonball, regardless of how big, been enough to kill someone with a body like that?
But the warship itself would certainly have been destroyed.
Pudding would also have been injured. While her physique is indeed stronger compared to earlier, it's nowhere near as durable as the 100 % Steel Balloon Physique, nor does she possess Katakuri's logia-like abilities, and would have definitely suffered severe physical trauma.
Worse, both Katakuri and Pudding would have been thrown into the ocean, and that would have created an entirely new set of problems, repeating the series of events that had happened against Kong.
The very thought that someone had dared to attack his ship without provocation, and might have caused such serious damage, made his anger rise. The possibility of another incident like the one with Kong only made it worse.
With a dark expression, he questioned, "Who is the enemy? Marines... or a pirate crew?"
Considering what they had done to Alpha Male and his island, the Marines pursuing them should have been the obvious answer. Even if they had destroyed all the ships on that island, considering just how many Marine bases are there in the world, Warships could have just been sent from another island.
"Not certain yet..." Katakuri answered as he fired another Burning Mochi fist. It shot forward at tremendous speed and collided with yet another cannonball hurtling toward them at several times the speed of sound. Another violent explosion erupted in the distance, shaking the entire warship and churning up huge waves around it.
Zechs narrowed his eyes and tried to locate the attacker, but the rising waves and thick vapour from the explosions made it difficult to see anything.
Of course, the waves and vapour were not the main reason why he or Katakuri couldn't locate or identify the enemy.
"The distance is probably too much..." Zechs muttered with a frown.
After training with Katakuri for several months, although Zechs had not yet awakened Future Sight, the range of his Observation Haki had improved considerably. His eyesight was excellent as well, yet he still could not see or 'hear' the attacker.
That could only mean one thing. Whoever was attacking them was absurdly far away. Far enough that they lay beyond even the range of either of their vision and also the range of their Observation Haki.
But knowing this only made him even more tense. To fire cannonballs from such a distance, at such speed, and with such accuracy... whoever the enemy was, they were not someone to be taken lightly.
'Is there someone in the Marines with this kind of power?' he wondered as he ran through one possibility after another in his mind.
The only person who came to Zechs' mind was Monkey D. Garp.
But that did not make sense. In this era, Garp was still only a Rear Admiral, and his strength should not yet be enough to pull off something like this.
'Yeah... it shouldn't be Garp...' Zechs thought.
At that moment, Pudding, who had climbed up to the crow's nest, suddenly called down, "Zechs-sama... It's not the Marines. It's a pirate ship."
Thanks to her enhanced eyesight, she could see what neither Zechs nor Katakuri could.
"Are you sure, Pudding-chan?" Zechs asked.
"Yes... they're flying a Jolly Roger... and this Jolly Roger..." She paused as she tried to remember where she had seen it before.
She did not recognise it from forty-nine years in the future, which meant it was probably the flag of a pirate crew active only in this era and long gone in her own time.
She had carefully read through the months of newspapers and the Bounty posters Zechs had brought over in order to keep track of current events, intelligence, and identities of major threats.
Because of that, even though this pirate crew only existed in this era, she was still able to recognise the flag and wasn't much known in her own era.
After searching through her memories for a moment, she informed him, "It's the World Pirates, led by the pirate Byrnndi World!"
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