Bang!
"Psssh—"
As Obe's head kept refreshing with 'Merit +1' beside her, Ra, the eldest sister, quietly closed her eyes, seeming to enter a meditative state.
Sure enough, observing this world from the perspective of energy is clearer and more thorough than relying solely on the five senses.
As she sat in meditation, Ra had unconsciously spread her perception across the entire small island. She was trying to observe this world anew from the perspective of energy.
In Ra's current "field of vision," the energy emitted by every living and nonliving thing resembled colored lights of varying hues. Their size, shape, outline, and intensity were all clearly visible.
The one with the highest intensity... Hmm, so it really is Captain Kaido. But he's somewhat different from everyone else. This color... It seems like there's an additional kind of energy in his body. Could that be the Conqueror's Haki Burufatt mentioned?
I'll ask about it when I have the chance.
Lost in thought, she naturally tilted her head slightly. Only a beat later did King's scabbard come down, as though he had deliberately struck empty air.
"?!"
Ra's movement, which had clearly preceded his own, took King by surprise. In theory, even if she could evade, she should only have done so after he made a move to attack.
This blond kid dodged before I even moved! Did she know in advance that I was going to attack her?
To verify his guess, King tried launching several more surprise attacks. Yet, as expected, Ra had evaded every time before he acted.
Afterward, King attempted a feint. He assumed the posture and momentum of an attack, but stopped his scabbard above her head at the final moment.
Yet this time, Ra did not make any move to dodge from beginning to end!
One had to know that King had only suddenly decided to stop at the very instant before striking down. Anyone with Observation Haki should have reacted by this distance.
It really is Future Sight. This kid is barely over ten years old, isn't she?! She's practically a monster!
Ra's performance was already shattering King's common sense, making him wonder whether she possessed some racial talent for Future Sight.
Mr. Kaido said before that the golden-haired one was the most special among these three. I figured it would be difficult to teach her, and it seems he was right.
While King was still dazed from having his common sense torn apart, Ra had already withdrawn her awareness from her perception of the island and removed the black cloth covering her eyes.
"Mr. King, I think I've initially grasped Observation Haki. May I see Armament Haki?"
That was right. Ra had just used only a small fraction of the attention she had placed on King to foresee his movements.
"Just call me King."
Ra's ethereal voice pulled King back to reality, but he seemed somewhat unaccustomed to her polite form of address.
After realizing that her Observation Haki already surpassed his, King did not say much else.
He merely had Obe go over to Burufatt's side to continue training with Oshi, while he directly demonstrated Armament Haki before Ra.
That familiar energy to Ra spread over King's arm, then wrapped around both his arm and scabbard.
"This is Armament Haki. It can greatly increase the user's attack and defense. It can also be applied to weapons like this," King explained.
In Ra's perception, a mass of black energy had just burst forth from King's body before gathering around his arm and scabbard.
She reached out to touch the scabbard. As her fingers made contact, that pitch-black energy became even clearer.
What a fascinating power. This Armament Haki seems to possess the property of isolating external energy.
That reminded her of her previous battle with Kaido. At first, her flames had easily melted his spiked club.
But after Kaido coated it in Armament Haki, the high temperatures could no longer affect it.
Ra wrapped those energies in her divine power, then tried to separate out even a tiny bit of Armament Haki.
She proceeded very slowly. The Armament Haki on the scabbard was tightly intertwined, and stripping it away required extremely precise energy control.
It was like trying to peel a small advertisement completely off a door while wearing rubber gloves coated in lubricant.
Hmm... Success.
Only after roughly ten minutes did Ra finally withdraw her hand.
At the same time, King noticed that a tiny portion of the Armament Haki attached to his scabbard had suddenly vanished. It had not been consumed; it had truly disappeared.
He looked at Ra in shock and saw her staring at her palm, as if something were there.
Is it formed from the fusion of life energy and some strange kind of energy...?
The trace of Haki, completely enveloped in divine power, gradually broke down in Ra's palm, revealing its essence before her.
But I don't seem to possess this special energy in my body. Is it because our races are different? Or is this energy unique to the people of this world?
When it came to this sort of energy characteristic of another world, Ra's first thought was the famous "chakra."
Things had run into a slight bottleneck, but that did not count as trouble for Ra at present.
Let's first see whether I can imitate it with divine power.
Her body moved with her thoughts. As soon as Ra thought this, she immediately began adjusting the nature of her divine power to resemble that strange energy.
It had to be said that energy originating from a god possessed extraordinarily high plasticity. It could simulate the properties of nearly any other kind of energy according to her will.
At its root, this Phantom God power, which could be considered the "Ditto of the energy world," was actually a distortion of reality and an alteration of rules.
However, due to the influence of her divine status, this energy of limitless possibilities often took on only a single form when manifested in the outside world.
Yet that singularity meant that when divine power manifested as an authority, the level of power it could attain far surpassed an ordinary release of divine power.
Put simply, divine status was like an amplifier and converter, transforming divine power into its most suitable form when it was released.
For example, Ra's flames and Oshi's lightning were the essence of a god's external authority.
And now, Ra had found a second form through which to release divine power: Armament Haki.
With a thought, she fused her fully simulated divine power with life energy. Golden Armament Haki, marked with flame patterns, appeared over Ra's arm.
Moreover, unlike ordinary Armament Haki, Ra's Haki was directly visible to the naked eye and did not require Observation Haki to perceive.
"Th-this is golden Haki?! How is that possible? Isn't all Haki black?! But this feeling is unquestionably Haki..."
King could no longer comprehend what kind of being this little girl before him was. In merely ten minutes, she had learned Haki from scratch without anyone teaching her.
This had long surpassed the realm of genius. She was a monster in the truest sense! It was as though the common sense of this world simply did not apply to her.
"Yes, this is indeed Haki. The reason it differs from that of ordinary people is probably because our race is somewhat special."
"Thank you for your patient instruction, King. Leave Oshi and Obe's Armament Haki training to me. Ordinary training methods may not suit them."
Ra gave King a slight bow in thanks. After all, he had stood still and maintained his Armament Haki coating for a full ten minutes for her to observe, without urging her even once.
King, meanwhile, grumbled inwardly that he had not taught her anything at all. He had just stood there for ten minutes, and she had figured it out herself.
"Since you've already learned it, I'll go teach that blue-haired kid first. You're free to do as you please."
"Yes, I was just planning to ask Captain Kaido about Conqueror's Haki. Please excuse me for now. I'll leave my sisters to you two."
"Huh? Sister Ra, you're leaving already? You mastered Haki that quickly?" Oshi and Obe, still being beaten up, watched Ra's departing figure like two little raccoons abandoned by their mother, their eyes full of helplessness.
"Learn properly from your two teachers. I need to speak with Captain Kaido about something. I'll probably be back by dinner."
Ra turned back and gently waved at Oshi and Obe with a smile, like a young mother saying goodbye to her children at kindergarten every morning.
"Hey, what kind of monster is that little girl? Could she really be some kind of Race of Gods, like that blue-haired kid said?"
Burufatt had clearly noticed Ra's process of awakening Armament Haki as well. That dazzling, sacred flame-gold Haki had likewise shattered his common sense.
"Perhaps. After all, anything can exist on this sea. And even if the Race of Gods truly existed, they probably wouldn't be this powerful in reality... All right, continue teaching them."
King seemed unwilling to discuss the matter any further. Burufatt tactfully did not press the subject.
"Fine! Since your sister has already graduated, you two younger sisters can't be too bad either! Get up and keep dodging my attacks!"
Bang~ Bang~ Bang~
"Damn it!" "Gah! That hurts like hell!"
"Stop letting your thoughts wander and focus!"
"Red-haired girl, don't run! Get your ass back here!"
Before you continue