Chapter 303: Life Return? Immortality?
Terrible Tornado: Why's the Moderator title colored green, of all things? And such a vivid, eye-catching shade of green, too. Meanwhile Admin's title is gold, which looks properly impressive.
Terrible Tornado: Something about that bright green Moderator cap just feels... a little off, honestly.
Eternally Seventeen: The hidden meaning behind "green hat" is a China-specific thing, I believe—so Little Tornado, no need to worry at all, seeing as you're not from China.
Eternally Seventeen: Speaking of which, what nationality is Little Tornado, anyway? I recall Earth's continental map in the One Punch Man world looks completely different from every other Earth.
Terrible Tornado: We don't really have set national borders where I'm from. The whole planet's basically one federation, just divided up by major cities.
Eternally Seventeen: Ah, I see...a federation, huh!
Master Roshi: Did I miss something important here? A Moderator election?
RawrSoFierce: Eh, you're still a newbie, no harm done missing it.
Master Roshi: Really? Now I'm even more curious. Better go dig through the chat logs real quick.
Admiral Kizaru: Senbei, Sengoku-san, I think we might be in trouble—the Five Elders specifically asked to see me by name. You think we got spotted while we were out at Whitebeard's place?
Kaguya-sama: Eh? Kizaru-ojisan got caught by the World Government?
Admiral Kizaru: Not totally sure, but if the Five Elders want to see me specifically, guess I've got no choice but to go.
Senbei Is So Tasty: They shouldn't know exactly where we were these past three days, but if they cross-reference it with whatever's been going on with the Whitebeard Pirates lately, it wouldn't be hard for them to piece the truth together.
Senbei Is So Tasty: Our leave request was exactly three days, and Whitebeard's feast happened to run exactly three days too. If the Five Elders catch that overlap, they're definitely going to smell something fishy.
Crazy Diamond: So THIS is what the world of real power players looks like—all this scheming and political maneuvering. Terrifying!
My True Form Is Cola: So what happens if the World Government figures out Kizaru-ojisan and Sengoku-ojii-sama are actually connected to Whitebeard-ojii-sama?
Senbei Is So Tasty: If the World Government decides to look the other way, we treat it like nothing happened. If they try to force the issue, Marine Headquarters breaks off from the World Government entirely!
Admiral Kizaru: Well... old me's on Sengoku-san's side no matter what. Should we go rope Kuzan and Sakazuki into this too, get them on our side as well?
Senbei Is So Tasty: Yeah...those two are irreplaceable combat assets. Can't afford to just hand the Admirals Marine HQ trained up to the World Government.
Edward Newgate: Gurararara! If Sengoku old boy ever needs backup, just say the word and old me's there.
Senbei Is So Tasty: Don't worry about it—Marine Headquarters alone is more than enough to handle this on our own.
[...]
At this point, Sengoku genuinely didn't hold the Five Elders—or that so-called "Im-sama"—in any real regard at all.
Those so-called Celestial Dragons were, in his eyes now, nothing more than disgusting little bugs he could crush without even trying.
If the World Government ever wanted to burn that bridge, Sengoku wouldn't hesitate to take the entire Marine Headquarters and break away, founding a brand-new Navy from scratch!
A Navy that answered to no one but itself—one that decided for itself what counted as justice, and what counted as crime!
If the Five Elders ended up saying nothing and taking no action at all, Sengoku wasn't in any rush to burn the bridge himself either.
Because right now, the Navy still needed to secure a stable source of funding. Once that was locked down and military expenses were covered, they'd no longer need the World Government's backing at all.
It had to be said—Sengoku's newfound backbone owed a great deal to the Dimensional Chat Group.
Before joining, even with his solid strength, Sengoku still couldn't have taken on two Admiral-tier fighters solo.
Now, though, taking on two at once was practically effortless for him—and that wasn't even counting Kizaru, who currently outclassed him.
Combat strength at that level—did it really have anything to fear from the World Government?
And if push really came to shove, they could always pull Whitebeard out of the New World as backup. That ought to settle things for good.
Ryū could more or less guess where Sengoku's head was at with all this.
"If Marine Headquarters really did split from the World Government, Monkey D. Dragon—Luffy's father, from the original canon—would probably reach out to them with an olive branch."
Ryū mused to himself, "Or maybe he'd try to swallow up Marine Headquarters entirely? If Dragon actually had that in mind, though, he'd be seriously overestimating himself—Marine Headquarters currently has both Sengoku and Kizaru holding it down. If anything, Dragon's own faction is far more likely to get absorbed INTO Marine Headquarters instead."
The One Piece world's storyline had already drifted completely off its original track. No telling how Luffy's own journey would unfold once he finally set sail—probably nothing like the original canon at this point, either.
With the plot this thoroughly derailed already, it wasn't unreasonable to think Luffy's entire future crew lineup could end up completely different too.
Once the butterfly's wings start flapping, all kinds of things suddenly become possible.
Ryū found the whole thing mildly interesting, sure, but he wasn't going to fixate on it too much. At most, he'd just check in with Kizaru and the others later for updates on how things played out.
For now, Ryū pulled his consciousness out of the Dimensional Chat Group and turned his attention to the two Skill Breakthrough Cards he'd earned. (Correction from earlier: it's two cards total, not one — fixing that now.)
"So I've got two Skill Breakthrough Cards on hand right now. My currently capped-out skills are just Life Return and Armament Haki. As for the Dragon Ball world's Kamehameha and Thunderclap Fist..."
"Thunderclap Fist's ceiling's probably pretty high too—hitting its actual cap would probably take at least a year. Kamehameha's even more absurd—reaching its ceiling there's probably a multi-year commitment, easy."
After a few minutes of weighing his options, Ryū ultimately decided to spend both Breakthrough Cards on Life Return and Armament Haki instead.
Both of these One Piece world techniques mattered enormously to him. Armament Haki dramatically boosted a person's offense and defense across the board.
And Life Return let him perfectly control any cell in his body—which raised an interesting question. If, once its ceiling was broken, he could make his cells divide infinitely without burning through excessive resources to do it... wouldn't that essentially amount to immortality?
Ryū had always been hopeless at biology, so he genuinely had no idea whether perfect cellular control could actually grant true immortality. Still, it seemed worth testing out, at least.
Then again, the One Piece world's power systems never really bothered with scientific logic to begin with.
...
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