Secret Art

The sight of the guy standing guard over the shop made Ma Qiao's blood boil.

He had created the guy himself, yet the two were nothing alike. The guy had no flexible moral standards whatsoever and was rigid to a fault!

Unless he was paid, the guy absolutely refused to hand over any goods. He was a real tightwad.

Of course, as long as the appropriate amount was paid, the goods from the shop were quite good.

For example, the [Recurve Bow] Ashe held had been purchased here, and its quality was superb.

[Recurve Bow] +25% attack speed. Unique passive: Basic attacks deal an additional 15 physical damage on hit.

Against pirates with bounties in the millions, the effects of those stats were immediately apparent.

The bow was the reason Ma Qiao had brought Ashe rather than Garen on this mission.

Although, in theory, Garen could also equip the [Recurve Bow] and swing it around like a greatsword to beat people...

But the image was a little too bizarre.

As good as the [Recurve Bow]'s stats were, its price of 10 million Beli had pained Ma Qiao greatly.

After all, he didn't get a chance to line his pockets and skim off the loot every time he went on a mission, and not every pirate crew was as rich as the Driller Pirates he had just defeated.

Pirates were creatures that produced nothing and spent extravagantly. It was no easy feat for them to have any savings left.

Over the years, Ma Qiao had put a great deal of effort into making money.

He slacked off and goofed around on organization business, but went all out on side jobs for extra cash.

That was what it meant to be a freeloader in an organization.

To be honest, if he hadn't known what Baroque Works really was, or that the organization would eventually fall apart and its members end up in prison, Ma Qiao would have been quite happy to coast along in such a people-friendly company until retirement.

It would have been even better if they paid a pension.

Ma Qiao could have kept collecting it until Baroque Works went bankrupt!

Actually, as a ruggedly handsome man, Ma Qiao could have avoided working altogether.

The method, naturally, was to find a rich older woman with the means to support him.

But Ma Qiao was a man of principle. He would rather be a salted fish in a criminal organization than choose a happy steel-wool ball.

Besides, the looks of middle-aged and elderly women in the world of One Piece were hard to describe. Anyone who could live off one of them was truly ruthless.

Ma Qiao wasn't ruthless, so he could only work hard to save money and improve his strength.

At present, the three heroes, Garen, Ryze, and Ashe, were all only level 3. Besides their innate summoner spells and passive skills, each had learned their Q, W, and E skills, but they were still a long way from learning their ultimates.

Ma Qiao knew perfectly well that concentrating resources on one high-level hero would be more useful than spreading them evenly among three low-level heroes.

But the Q Coins needed to raise a hero's level multiplied with each increase, and no hero's level could exceed the total number of heroes on the field.

Simply put, Ma Qiao had only recruited three heroes—Garen, Ashe, and Ryze—so their maximum level was 3.

Only by increasing the number of heroes could he unlock higher levels.

Ma Qiao had an inexplicable intuition that the heroes he recruited had a level cap higher than 18.

As long as he had enough heroes and enough money on hand, it wasn't impossible for them to reach level 28, 38, or even 108.

Of course, the money required would probably be astronomical. Even going to Sky Island and clearing out Enel's gold might not be enough.

As extensions of Ma Qiao's power and his most loyal underlings, his heroes were naturally better off being as strong as possible.

But on the other hand, his own strength needed to keep up too.

There were too many bizarre abilities in the world of One Piece.

If someone with an ability like the Door-Door Fruit's were to suddenly appear beside Ma Qiao and attack him, it definitely wouldn't do for him to have no means of self-defense.

So over those five years, Ma Qiao had also gained a remarkably strong physique through his own persistent efforts and hard training.

Specifically, Ma Qiao mainly relied on Garen doing push-ups to strengthen his arms and on Ryze meditating to strengthen his mind.

As for Ashe's archery practice, Ma Qiao had originally thought it would improve attributes like his agility and evasion.

After all, according to the usual logic of games, archers were often the representatives of agility-based classes.

In reality, however, Ashe's archery practice also strengthened Ma Qiao's arms.

In the real world, archers were never frail, skinny fellows, but powerful warriors with astonishing arm strength.

Although Ashe's appearance couldn't be changed by the power of the world's rules, the benefit she gained from practicing archery was still an increase in arm strength.

So, hidden within Ma Qiao's ordinary-looking arms were the sweat and effort of both Garen and Ashe, giving him explosive strength—and making his handiwork more stimulating too...

·

Besides improving his physical condition, Ma Qiao had also devised some moves related to his Fruit ability.

Of course, he hadn't developed anything like penguin fist techniques or penguin martial arts.

There was no future in developing that lousy Fruit along the lines of a penguin's own traits.

Leaving aside the tragic exploits of the Penguin-Penguin Fruit's previous users, the current state of several other Bird-Bird Fruit users was enough to make Ma Qiao abandon the idea.

For the moment, he would leave aside the Bird-Bird Fruit, Mythical Zoan, Phoenix Form belonging to Marco, the first division commander of the Whitebeard Pirates. That thing was a bit beyond the scope.

He would look only at the ordinary Zoan types.

Pell, the Alabasta Kingdom's strongest warrior as boasted of by bounty hunters and the user of the Bird-Bird Fruit, Zoan, Falcon Model, was really just an oversized small fry.

In the story, he had been easily subdued by Nico Robin, who wasn't known for combat, and had lost battle after battle. Apart from being able to fly, he had almost nothing worth mentioning.

Then there was Big News Morgans, the user of the Bird-Bird Fruit, Zoan, Albatross Model, who was even more fucking useless.

He was the president of the World Economy News Paper, but the Albatross Fruit hadn't even given him the basic journalistic qualification of being able to run fast.

Morgans could only turn into a talking albatross and had never flown.

Ma Qiao figured the guy probably could fly.

But like a real albatross, he couldn't fly under his own power and had to drop off a cliff before he could use an updraft to spread his wings and soar. It was a very situational Fruit ability.

Still, however they compared, an albatross could at least fly.

But a penguin?

A fucking penguin could only swim!

What the hell is being a good swimmer supposed to do for me when I'm a Devil Fruit User?!

So Ma Qiao had long since given up on developing the Penguin-Penguin Fruit's abilities based on its animal traits.

Instead, he had developed some moves in another field:

[Penguin Style Secret Art: Sharingan] The user has a certain chance of successfully imitating one of the opponent's skills, making the imitation indistinguishable from the real thing or even superior to it.

[Penguin Style Secret Art: Acquisition] By spending a corresponding amount of Beli, the user has a high chance of obtaining one of the opponent's skills.

[Penguin Style Secret Art: Capital Injection] The user can inject certain factors into a target through some kind of physical medium.

[Penguin Style Secret Art: Pineapple Pizza...]