Buggy: You Monster
"This Buggy the Clown has Devil Fruit powers..." Tashigi murmured.
"A Devil Fruit?" Nami exclaimed.
"That's right! You saw it yourself." Buggy's left hand flew back and brandished a knife in front of Ruidio, while his right arm remained draped around Ruidio's shoulders. He grinned menacingly, his voice full of threats. "I ate a Devil Fruit too! You're the same, aren't you? You've got so much gold on you. You used your powers to hide it, didn't you? Hehehe... Hand it all over, now, or else—"
Before he could finish, a blade rang from its sheath beside him, and the right arm hooked around Ruidio's shoulders was severed at the shoulder.
Sure enough, he turned on him and attacked!
Nami's heart tightened. Tashigi immediately gripped the long sword at her waist, but at the same time, she noticed that the pirates around them weren't reacting at all. Instead, they watched their captain get cut apart, laughing and joking—
Right, this pirate Buggy has powers. Even if his arm...
"Hahaha! Idiot!"
Buggy laughed at Ruidio. His severed right arm floated in the air, then suddenly clenched its fist and shot toward him.
Holding his long sword, Ruidio took a stiff, deliberate step forward and, with a loud shout, brought the blade down hard, slicing the oncoming arm in two lengthwise.
The two halves of the hand separated and reached for Ruidio from both sides.
Ruidio looked left and right, at a loss for how to strike with his sword. He was so frustrated with himself that he laughed. Shaking his head, he twisted aside to dodge and was about to raise his sword and thrust at Buggy's chest when he suddenly stopped.
"Wait, isn't this where I'm supposed to raise my sword and slash diagonally upward?" Ruidio looked at the long sword in his hand and muttered to himself.
This guy... is a complete beginner with a sword!
The pirates' jaws dropped to the deck. Nami stared in disbelief, while Tashigi looked dazed.
Buggy felt even more offended and roared, "Are you looking down on—pfft!!!" Before he could finish, the sword's hilt slammed into his chest.
The blow was so powerful that Buggy felt as if he had run headfirst into a boulder weighing hundreds, even a thousand pounds. His vision went black, and he spat blood as he flew backward and crashed through the cabin's outer wall.
[Shimotsuki Swordsmanship: First glimpse]
Ruidio had to admit that the system's assessment made perfect sense.
He wasn't some hard-work fanatic, after all. In just two years, he had conditioned his body and trained his strength to far surpass that of ordinary people, even reaching the point where he could spar with that monster Zoro. That was already no small feat.
How could he have had any energy left to study swordsmanship?
"Again!"
Ruidio rested Malevolent Shrine on his shoulder and beckoned toward the hole in the cabin. "It's not every day I meet someone I can't cut to death. Let me get some more practice in."
"Watch out!" Tashigi called from behind him.
Ruidio didn't have time to look back. He hurriedly jumped aside, but pain still flared in the back of his shoulder as a blade cut him, sending blood flying.
Buggy's hand, which Ruidio had split in two earlier, had quietly reassembled itself. It had found a dagger somewhere and stabbed at his back from a tricky angle.
The hand held the dagger at the ready and drifted back and forth in midair after the attack missed.
Inside the hole in the cabin, Buggy's upper body split into many pieces in the shadows. He laughed ominously. "You're pretty cocky for someone with a little brute strength, you brat. Let me show you—hey, what are you doing?!"
Ruidio had thrown his sword at him. The gleaming blade spun straight toward his face. Buggy's head was neatly split diagonally in two, and his mouth separated into two halves as he cursed, "Who uses a sword like that?!"
"Sorry, you might not have noticed..."
Ruidio said seriously, "When it comes to swordsmanship, I'm just a beginner."
"Everyone could tell!!!"
Buggy's split face, the other pirates aboard who had begun attacking en masse, and even Nami all yelled at him with bared, pointed teeth.
"Tashigi, Nami, I'll leave the other small fries to you."
Ruidio rubbed his fists and smiled as he charged toward Buggy. "Hey, Buggy, is that all you've got? How about showing me what you can really do?"
"What are you babbling about?!"
Buggy cursed him out. The moment Ruidio stepped into the hole in the cabin, he sneered. "Die!" From the shadows around them, his other hand, which he had hidden, stabbed a long sword at Ruidio's neck, while his detached legs flew at Ruidio in a kick from another angle.
The light was poor, and Ruidio really hadn't noticed. Though he dodged in time, the blade still cut his cheek.
From the other side, Buggy's lower body came flying in with a kick.
[Basic Physical Techniques: Beginner]
Ruidio raised a foot and kicked Buggy's independently attacking legs back with a bang. At the same time, he grabbed the flying hand that had ambushed him and cut his cheek. His grip was so strong that Buggy howled in pain.
Bang!
Ruidio slammed the flying hand against the floor. As the fleshy hand bounced off the deck, Ruidio somehow grabbed Buggy's legs, which he had just kicked away, and, holding them by the ankles, smashed them down onto the rebounding hand.
Bang!
Buggy felt the crushing blow to his palm and the excruciating impact on his lower body at the same time. His face turned green.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Ruidio swung the legs he was holding back and forth, slamming them down again and again. After each blow, he seemed to pause deliberately, waiting for Buggy to find a way to fight back. But though Buggy's legs struggled desperately, they could not break free of Ruidio's iron grip.
Buggy's upper body tried to launch a sneak attack, only to be whipped back by his own lower body, spinning through the air like a top.
As his view spun round and round in midair, Ruidio's expressionless figure flickered rapidly closer. The muscles in Ruidio's right arm bulged as he charged forward and drove a heavy punch into Buggy's abdomen.
Bang!
Buggy's eyes bulged. His torso below the neck shot away like a cannonball, while Ruidio caught him by his pigtails.
With a crash, Buggy's cannonball-like torso nearly smashed through the entire cabin from front to back before flying out over the stern. Ruidio held his head by the hair, blood spilling from its mouth and its expression listless.
One, two, three.
Holding Buggy's head, Ruidio counted silently. The instant he reached three, the system presented a notification, just as expected:
[Name: Buggy] [Overall strength: ★★]
Ruidio smiled and shook Buggy's battered head. "I, Ruidio, a dignified man, am two stars, just like you? Buggy, do you think you're two stars?"
"Cough, cough... you bastard..." Buggy's mouth was full of blood as he glared at him. I admit I can't beat you, but why are you spouting nonsense I can't understand?
Twenty, twenty-one... twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty.
Ruidio kept counting silently. When he reached thirty, the system presented a more detailed notification:
[Name: Buggy] [Overall strength: ★★] [Mastered: Swimming (expert), Chop-Chop Fruit (proficient), Basic Physical Techniques (beginner), Basic Swordsmanship (beginner), Basic Marksmanship (beginner)...]
Chapter 5: Buggy: You Monster
The system's [Personal Information] module could display not only Ruidio's own overall strength and mastered abilities, but other people's as well.
It was a very useful combat power detector.
However, to detect someone else's combat power, Ruidio had to touch the target himself.
Three seconds of contact revealed their basic information: their name and approximate strength rating in stars.
Thirty seconds of contact could even reveal details of some of the abilities they had mastered and their proficiency in each.
Because of this, during his first two years in Shimotsuki Village, Ruidio touched everyone he met. He was very curious whether there were any hidden experts among the villagers whose ancestral home was Wano Country...
[Mastered: Swimming (expert), Chop-Chop Fruit (proficient), Basic Physical Techniques (beginner), Basic Swordsmanship (beginner), Basic Marksmanship (beginner)...]
Ruidio looked at Buggy's abilities on the system display and smiled. "Expert-level swimming. Too bad you ate a Devil Fruit and can't swim anymore."
The system's labels—first glimpse, beginner, proficient, expert, and so on—were purely assessments of skill.
Both had beginner-level Basic Physical Techniques, but Ruidio's strength, explosive power, and speed all far surpassed Buggy's.
Technique was one thing; stats were another.
Even if the Four Emperor Big Mom's Haki and martial techniques all fell back to the lowest first-glimpse level, or were even wiped out entirely, she could still rely on her innate, invincible brute strength to crush every pirate in the East Blue tied together.
As for Ruidio himself, he had been a good student in his previous life. He had no real combat experience to speak of.
Half of his so-called beginner-level Basic Physical Techniques came from the intense training he had undergone over the past two years.
The all-around improvement in his physical condition made him calmer and improved his hand-eye coordination when fighting others. His well-trained, extremely flexible body could also carry out his on-the-spot decisions very effectively.
As for the other half... Ruidio felt that all the games he had played in his previous life hadn't been entirely useless. At least when he sparred with Zoro and the others, he often imagined he was playing Street Fighter or something similar, which had helped ease his initial nervousness. Treating it like a real-life fighting game, he grew more comfortable the more he fought.
"You bastard, I can't beat you. If you want to kill me, then kill me! You don't have to go on and on!"
Buggy's head alone was dangling from Ruidio's hand. He had no idea what Ruidio was thinking about just then; he only felt offended by the incomprehensible things the brat kept saying.
"Oh."
Ruidio hefted the head in his hand, kicked Buggy's other wriggling body parts away, and kicked open the cabin's half-shattered wooden wall, making as if to throw Buggy's head into the sea.
"Wait, wait, wait!!"
Tears streamed from Buggy's eyes as he cried, "I was joking! Don't kill me!"
By the time Ruidio returned to the deck with Buggy's limbs tied into a bundle, Tashigi had already dealt with all the other members of the Buggy Pirates.
Using professional Navy techniques, Tashigi tied all the pirate underlings together.
The biggest trouble had come from the large lion kept by the beast-tamer vice captain. But after the cunning Nami held a dagger to the beast tamer's neck, the lion obediently submitted as well. Nami even gave it a couple of commands, and it almost seemed ready to defect, squatting to one side with its tongue hanging out like a lapdog.
"You really are strong."
Tashigi was both surprised and unsurprised to see the pirate Buggy's head dangling from Ruidio's hand. Though his swordsmanship was somewhat... unpolished, someone who had the confidence to carry a Famous Sword no worse than those in the Great Grade Sword class and board a pirate ship alone was no ordinary person.
"Huh? Oh."
Her words reminded Ruidio of something. He glanced at the system's task list and saw that the group task he had accepted before leaving the passenger ship had long since been marked complete.
[Task completed] [Rewards: 777 essence; 420 essence; 233 essence]
Only the tasks given aloud by the first three clients at the time had provided rewards, yet the total still came to nearly 1,500 essence. As expected of a two-star difficulty task.
[Remaining essence: 2150]
Bring on more elite monsters like Buggy, all show and no substance!
"Let's introduce ourselves properly."
In a good mood, Ruidio casually tossed Buggy's head and bound limbs aside separately. He held out his hand to Tashigi and Nami and smiled. "My name is Ruidio."
Tashigi hurriedly held out her hand. "I'm Tashigi. I'm currently a corporal stationed in Loguetown. Ruidio, are you... a bounty hunter?"
[Name: Tashigi] [Overall strength: ★★]
You're two stars too?
Ruidio released her hand and smiled. "Bounty? Hunter? Hehehe..."
Tashigi glanced at the gold scattered across the deck that Ruidio had given the pirates earlier. She had already checked it, and it was real gold.