"Puff—puff—puff—"
Little Ace clung to the middle section of a vine three to four hundred meters above the ground.
His hands gripped the surface tightly as he gasped for breath with great difficulty.
This was partly due to his young age, and partly because of the thin oxygen here and the Haki pressure Boros had placed on him.
The chaotic natural energy, on the other hand, did not affect this place.
That was because the entire outer perimeter of Upper Yard, including the nearby Angel Island, had been sealed off by Issho using the Press-Press Fruit's power.
A ring of purple energy was clearly visible in the sky with the naked eye alone.
"Ace, you're too slow! I'm almost there already!"
Yamato's teasing voice came from above. Ace looked up.
Sure enough, she was less than two hundred meters from the top.
"You're seven years older than me, okay?" Ace replied with a pout.
"Oh? Didn't you point a tennis racket at the upperclassman regulars in elementary school's tennis club and say that age had nothing to do with strength?"
Yamato made no attempt to hide the view beneath her skirt as she openly mocked Ace for his double standard.
"Come on, they're them and you're you. How can you compare the two?" Ace said helplessly.
The premise of age having nothing to do with strength was that talent could make up for the gap.
Ace did not dare claim that he was more talented than Yamato, so age was naturally an insurmountable gulf.
Unless he asked the Vermilion Bird inside him for help.
But Ace did not dare break the rules Boros had set, nor did he want to.
Although Boros had not said it outright, clever as he was, Ace had already guessed that this was training for