Assessment

In the evening, at the Beasts Pirates' mess hall.

"Hahaha! What's wrong, Oshi? Why the long face? You almost beat me! In the Beasts Pirates, you'll be a big shot from now on!"

Burufatt gulped down a special liquor from Fish-Man Island, patting Oshi's shoulder forcefully.

"That's right! Big Sister Oshi, even though you narrowly lost to Big Brother Burufatt, your strength is already enough for you to walk all over the crew!"

The pirates nearby, with fawning smiles, refilled Oshi's juice.

"Big Sister Oshi, let me toast you."

"I didn't expect Big Sister Oshi to be so amazing! We'll be relying on you to protect us from now on!"

"Exactly, as long as you gain a bit more combat experience, surpassing me is just around the corner~ What was that saying again? Something about a new generation replacing the old."

"Sigh~"

Oshi ignored the pirates flattering her, resting her chin on one hand and aimlessly poking at the meat in her plate with the other.

[Something's not right~ If it were usual, this little girl would be walking on air. What's wrong with her today?]

Seeing Oshi's dejected state, Burufatt turned to Obe.

"What's wrong with you two?"

"Tsk~"

Obe also didn't respond, instead frowning deeply at her sleeve, her gaze seeming to try and discern every single thread.

"Hey! King, do you know?"

Having hit a dead end twice, Burufatt had no choice but to ask King, who was beside him, if he knew what was going on.

King was uncharacteristically dining in the mess hall at this moment. He had removed the lower half of his mask and was intently eating the flying fish sashimi on his plate.

Ever since he had tried it once while sailing not long ago, King couldn't forget the taste. Finally, today, a cargo ship from outside had brought a few flying fish, and King had bought them at a high price to be made into sashimi for the mess hall.

"It's probably because of that test Ra mentioned earlier."

King wiped his mouth, then handed the last plate of flying fish sashimi to Burufatt and the others.

"Try it, it tastes good."

"I don't like eating fish. You two kids can have it!"

Burufatt seemed indifferent to seafood, but since King was willing to share, he couldn't refuse. He looked at the two gloomy figures beside him.

"Here, you two try it. This is something King, that stingy guy, paid a fortune for."

"Ah, mmm?!"

Lost in thought, Oshi subconsciously picked up a slice of sashimi and put it in her mouth, chewing twice before spitting it out.

"Ptooey... Ptooey~ Why is it raw?!"

"Sashimi is naturally raw."

"Take it away, take it away, I don't eat raw food." Oshi quickly grabbed the juice on the table to rinse her mouth.

"Then..." Burufatt turned to Obe again.

"I don't eat it either."

The three sisters, or rather, the spirits, rarely had anything they disliked. Raw food was one of them.

He remembered a time when he had invited friends for dinner, and a friend had chosen a Japanese restaurant. Out of curiosity, he ordered a salmon sushi.

He had to admit it looked good, but when he put it in his mouth, he almost spat it out in front of everyone.

He still couldn't recall the taste of that sushi, as if his brain had selectively forgotten that memory.

"If you don't want it, then don't. Here! My subordinates, you guys try it. This stuff is several times more expensive than Sea King meat." Burufatt directly handed the plate to the subordinates gathered around.

"What do we do? We only have tomorrow left."

"Should we ask Sister Ra to give us a few more days?"

"Then you go talk to Big Sister."

"No, you go."

"I don't want to either."

"Sigh~" x2

"By the way, what exactly is this assessment of yours?"

After hearing about the assessment from King, Burufatt, now full and content, leaned in curiously and asked again.

Upon hearing this, Oshi and Obe's faces flushed. The former even angrily cursed, "Ugh~ What a strong smell of alcohol! Go away, go away! Can't you see we're troubled? You pervert!"

"Why am I a pervert? I didn't do anything to you! Besides, I'm a Fish-Man, I wouldn't be interested in a girl like you!"

"Perhaps you could tell us the content of the assessment, and we can help solve it together." Surprisingly, King spoke up at this moment.

"That's right, there's strength in numbers~ Let's hear it so everyone can offer some thoughts."

Oshi and Obe exchanged a glance and nodded.

"The assessment is as follows: suppose you are, um... how to put it, suppose you are a Logia Type Devil Fruit user, like we mentioned before. How would you control the elements to turn them into clothing on your body?"

Obe didn't mention anything about Divine Power or energy, figuring they wouldn't understand. She directly thought of a similar example.

"Logia Type! Ra is a Logia Type user?! Or are you two?"

Hearing that the assessment was related to elementalization, Burufatt was a little surprised.

"Aiya~ Sister Ra and neither of us are! It's just a metaphor, a metaphor!" Seeing everyone's attention shift to the Logia Type users, Oshi quickly corrected them.

"Hmm~ This is a bit troublesome. We don't have any Logia Type users in our pirate crew. Most of them are Zoan Types," Burufatt felt it was tricky.

"I've seen a few Logia Type users. They seem to only be able to elementalize their own clothes, but not other things into clothes."

King found some information about Logia Type users from his memories.

"Yeah, those Logia Type guys are strange. Why can they even elementalize their clothes?"

Burufatt also remembered a Logia Type user he had encountered before, then looked at King.

"Speaking of which, you Zoan Types are also strange. You're just physically mutated, yet your clothes can deform along with you. Big Boss Kaido turns into a dragon with such a huge body, but his clothes are perfectly fine when he transforms back!"

King didn't answer, as this involved higher-dimensional rules, and he didn't know either.

"Alright, now is not the time to discuss clothes bursting at the seams... uh~ well, I guess it doesn't matter."

Oshi suddenly remembered that King could flexibly control flames and asked with anticipation, "By the way, Firehead Brother, how do you control that flame of yours? I see you putting it on your head one moment and on your wings the next. Is there any trick to controlling it?"

"Controlling flames is a talent of our clan, or you could say it's instinctual, like breathing. There are no skills to teach." King didn't mind Oshi's address.

Well, he might have cared a little, but he wouldn't say it.

"Like breathing? King, can you control flames to form a piece of clothing?" Obe asked.

Since their spar, Obe hadn't called King "Mask Man" anymore. The main reason was that whenever she thought of a mask, Obe would think of that distorted face, and then...

"Form clothes? I can cover my entire body with flames, making it look like clothing, but it consumes a lot of energy and doesn't have much practical value."

King said this and stood up to demonstrate.

He folded his wings, and then the flames on his back ignited and covered his entire body, like draping a fiery cloak.

However, after only a few seconds, he quickly dispelled it.

"So what kind of clothes are you talking about?"

Seeing King's demonstration, Burufatt felt it was still quite different from 'clothes'.

"Like this."

Obe lifted the hem of her skirt.

"?" x n

All the pirates, including King and Burufatt, were somewhat confused.

"The skirts Oshi and I are wearing were woven from energy similar to elements by Sister Ra," Obe explained further.

"?!" x n

"You, what did you say?! The clothes you're wearing aren't real?!" Burufatt's eyes bulged. He directly reached out and touched the hem of Oshi's skirt next to him.

"It feels like ordinary silk? The only special thing is that the texture is unbelievably good."

King, on the other hand, was staring intently at the skirt on Obe's body. He didn't touch it, but the trembling of his pupils showed that his inner state was far from calm.

"This is fire! And it's an extremely special kind of fire! I feel an aura from this fire that I can't look directly at!"

King blurted out the material of the skirt.

"I never thought I'd fear fire one day."

His race—the Lunarian Tribe—were natural children of fire. Fire was like a part of their bodies.

But now, King actually felt immense pressure from this gentle substance, which lacked the inherent ferocity and heat of fire.

However, after suppressing his awe and carefully observing the skirts of the two, King discovered an even more astonishing fact.

"This... this is actually weaving threads spun from fire into clothing! Unimaginable skill, it's simply a miracle of the gods!" He suddenly stood up, showing a rare loss of composure.

"Huh? There's fire involved? But Sister Ra said she only used pure Divine Power?"

Oshi rubbed the hem of her skirt with her hand, trying to rub out a spark or something.

But she failed. The smooth, warm texture was more like a stream in early summer than fire.

"Hey, hey, is it that exaggerated? You're actually making King make that expression."

Burufatt, standing nearby, found it difficult to understand what was so astonishing about these seemingly ordinary clothes that it would make King lose his composure.

"Burufatt, your Fish-Man Karate is a fighting style that manipulates water currents. Can you control water currents to form threads and weave them into a piece of clothing like this?" King made an analogy to Burufatt.

"Are you kidding me?! I can turn water currents into fine threads, but weave them into clothes? I'm not the Sea God, how could I possibly do something like that! At most, I can temporarily cover myself with seawater like you." Burufatt found King's analogy absurd.

"Wait, are you saying the clothes on these two brats..."

"Yes, it's woven from threads made of flame."

"Hiss~" x n

This was truly a work of divine craftsmanship!

The surrounding pirates slowly understood the terrifying nature of it, and they all gasped in unison, making the mess hall feel a few degrees cooler.

"Is your big sister a monster? So your assessment is..."

"Yeah, Sister Ra asked us to weave a set of clothes like this ourselves. If we don't finish it by then, she'll... mmmph~ mmmph ah~..."

Obe quickly covered Oshi's mouth. The rest of what she was going to say was not something to be said in such a public place!

"This is impossible, give up."

King said decisively. If he hadn't seen it with his own eyes, he wouldn't have dared to imagine that a skirt woven from flames could actually exist.

"Sigh~ It's really impossible then..." Oshi was a little dejected. They had tried every method they could think of and were truly at their wit's end.

Unless...

"At this point, we can only take a shortcut!" Obe seemed to have made up her mind.

"Take a shortcut? How?"

"Like this, like this... and then like that, like that..." Obe whispered her plan into Oshi's ear.

"Will this work?! This is completely cheating!"

"You don't have to if you don't want to."

"Let's go prepare now!"

"..."

One day later.

In this open space that no instrument could detect... cough, this empty space where no one was, Obe and Oshi nervously looked at Ra.

The training ground had become a sort of tourist attraction on the island, crowded with people every day, so it felt inappropriate to have their assessment there.

"So, this is the homework you've submitted?" Ra's tone was unreadable.

"...Yes." x 2

Oshi and Obe answered with their scalps tingling, their words filled with guilt.

They were like the class monitor and study committee member who told the teacher they had collected all the assignments when they only had two or three.

"You took a shortcut."

Her tone was still gentle and calm, but it made the two girls tremble.

"..."

After a suffocating silence, Oshi couldn't hold it in any longer.

"Ah! Sister Ra, I'm sorry, but I had no choice! It was Obe, it was all Obe's idea!" Oshi cried, clinging to Ra's leg.

"You!"

Oshi's actions made Obe's eyes widen. She hadn't expected Oshi to be so shameless.

"Big Sister, don't listen to her nonsense! I didn't..."

"It was you! You were the one who tempted me, saying 'At this point, we can only take a shortcut' and 'Big Sister won't do anything to us'! It was you! Sister Ra, please believe me, how could someone as honest as me come up with such a cheating method? Only a sly and wicked person like Obe would not only cheat but also drag me down with her!"

"You, you wretch! Talking nonsense, slandering, and falsely accusing!"

"Ababa ababa... Anyway, you were the one who first suggested cheating, and I'm at most an accomplice. No, I should be a pitiful hostage, a poor soul used as a shield by you. Wuwuwu~ Sister Ra, Obe is so mean~"

"Alright, stop acting. I know your personalities very well. Obe, you were the one who thought of the shortcut, weren't you?"

Ra grabbed Oshi by the collar and pulled her off her lap.

"Big Sister, I..."

"And Oshi, you absolutely didn't object, did you? On the contrary, with your personality, you probably pushed Obe even further."

"Big Sister sees clearly!" Obe exclaimed excitedly, like Dou E meeting Judge Bao, her grievances melting away like snow in the warm sun.

"Um, Sister Ra, how can you think of me like that..." Oshi still wanted to argue shamelessly.

"Alright, it's also my fault for not paying attention earlier and letting you exploit loopholes. Perhaps the task I assigned was too difficult, forcing you to resort to such methods to try and pass it off."

Ra examined the "clothes" on the two girls.

Under the loose long dresses Ra had woven for them were actual clothes bought from a town shop, and the two girls had evenly infused their Divine Power into every strand of thread, forming another set of "clothes."

This was almost identical to the technique of imbuing Armament Haki.

It was equivalent to Ra asking them to submit an original painting, but they had directly traced a copy, and a copy directly onto the original.

What pleased Ra, however, was that both of them had covered their 'Authority' onto the clothes. For example, faint golden currents could be seen flashing across the surface of Oshi's clothing.

This was beyond Ra's expectations. After all, she had only mentioned that her clothes were woven with Divine Power, but not that she had simultaneously applied Authority related to fire to ensure comfortable temperatures—this involved more advanced energy control.

I didn't expect the two of them to notice this. They really put in the effort.

Although in Ra's opinion, the arrangement of their Divine Power and the micro-management of their Authority were still very crude and incomparable to her own naturally formed fiery dress, the active attempts by the two still made Ra feel very gratified.

At least they've shown initiative, right?

What she didn't know was that this was actually discovered by Xian Jin, who was very sensitive to fire. Oshi and the other girl, after knowing this, perhaps out of a mindset of 'not wanting to be too perfunctory,' simply imitated it and added their own Authority.

However, even with this shortcut, the difficulty of completing this dress was not low.

Divine Power was one thing, but stably applying Authority to clothing... it sounded simple, but the control required to dynamically manage these energies, keeping them activated without damaging the actual clothes underneath, was quite terrifying.

At the very least, going from merely being able to release Authority to this level within a week was a huge improvement for the two of them.

It just goes to show that when people are pushed, they can do anything—except calculus.

But when gods are pushed, they can even do calculus!

Dispersing her own power, Ra watched as the plain dress made of fire and Divine Power dissolved into points of light, revealing the golden and indigo "fabric" beneath—Oshi's lightning and Obe's gale.

"Hmm, while it's a bit rough, to achieve this in such a short time, you must have put in a lot of effort."

Looks like there's hope!

Hearing Ra's words, Oshi and Obe's eyes lit up, and they looked at her with hope.

"I'll consider you to have passed, for now." After a long silence, Ra finally let the two pass the assessment.

"Hooray!" Oshi jumped up and hugged Obe beside her.

Obe, who was tightly embraced, also let out a long sigh, her worried heart finally at ease.

"But don't get too happy too soon. Letting you off the hook this time doesn't mean you won't have to weave this 'dress' anymore."

Just like any homeroom teacher, after giving a sweet date, she would follow up with a big stick.

"This assessment will continue until you can truly complete your own dress. Only then will you have graduated from my tutelage, and I won't be managing you at every turn."

"Got it, got it."

At this moment, Oshi didn't seem to take it to heart at all. After all, she'd worry about tomorrow tomorrow. As long as she passed this time, that was enough. Who would actually study after an exam when they're on vacation?

At least Oshi's mind was filled with thoughts of setting sail.

"I understand, Big Sister."

In contrast, Obe was unusually serious this time. After all, if there were no other options, Obe truly didn't want to be as perfunctory with Ra as she was today.

In her eyes, this 'Big Sister,' who originated from the same source and was of similar age, always took care of her and Oshi like an elder.

She had seen the shadows of her parents in Ra more than once, though it was more often her mother's shadow.

She always walked ahead of Oshi and herself, whether in combat or learning... Obe didn't know what kind of scenery Ra saw before her eyes, how far into the future her gaze reached, or if the other party already had plans for the future in her heart...

Every time Obe looked up, all she could see was that small golden figure, blocking all the sky and the sun.

This made her feel both secure and, paradoxically, a little apprehensive.

She was afraid that if the figure before her disappeared one day, would she have the courage to continue walking in the completely unfamiliar scenery?

She wanted to become someone Ra approved of, a sister who wouldn't hold her back, a sister who could walk alongside her.

Next time, I won't disappoint you again. Big Sister...