027. Pull!

I was waiting for Merlin to ask me what I was doing, so I could tell him I was only imitating him and couldn't learn it that way.

But after waiting several seconds and realizing Merlin wasn't paying attention to me, the anticipation in Yol's eyes gradually turned into confusion and disappointment.

Yol blinked, then couldn't help murmuring to herself:

"Weren't you the one who said you'd teach me? Shouldn't you be showing me how to do it, step by step?

So what's going on now?"

Merlin hadn't noticed Yol muttering. At that moment, all his attention was absorbed by the skill proficiency that had suddenly appeared.

As Merlin focused his thoughts on the proficiency, its details appeared right after.

[Beginner Level Lynx Body Tempering Technique]: Yoga shapes the body, while the lynx takes form. Combining the lynx's agility with yoga, you've gained a glimpse of the lynx's supple physique. Your body has begun to embody the lynx's fluid movements.

His breathing rose and fell slowly. The various yoga poses he'd memorized began to blur in his mind, replaced by a series of complex movements of a lynx stretching its body.

He mimicked the way the lynx's muscles, tendons, and bones worked, reproducing those movements in his own body to develop his flexibility to the fullest.

From breathing and movement to embodying its form and spirit, Merlin's understanding of the lynx was no longer limited to the [Equipment Slot].

Merlin blinked and withdrew his awareness from the Equipment Slot. The next moment, he saw Yol staring at him in confusion.

"What... are you doing?"

Merlin's voice brought Yol back to her senses. Once she realized what was going on, the corners of her mouth twitched, and she said with a faintly exasperated look:

"Did you forget what you were about to do to me half an hour ago?"

Merlin's eyes widened slightly, then he remembered. He gave an awkward cough and apologized to Yol.

"Sorry, I got distracted."

"I noticed. You were standing right in front of me and still completely ignored me! I might as well have been invisible."

Yol took a subtle jab at Merlin, but soon drew a deep breath and looked at him with a hazy, curious expression.

"Just now, your movements seemed a little different. More coordinated, and nicer to look at?

"By the way, are you still going to teach me?"

Merlin saw that she was clearly a little tipsy, the aftereffects of the Monkey Wine setting in. He thought for a moment, then nodded.

"I am!"

With that, Merlin stepped in front of Yol and began guiding her through the yoga poses, hands-on.

Since she was a beginner, he didn't start by teaching her the difficult version of the Lynx Body Tempering Technique he'd just grasped.

First, he hadn't perfected it yet.

Second, you couldn't expect to get anywhere by trying to swallow a whole pig in one bite.

But he quickly realized that her limbs were stiff, and Merlin sighed. "I'd better stretch your muscles and tendons first!"

"How do I do that?" Yol asked, a little embarrassed but perfectly willing to learn.

Merlin then explained the basics of stretching.

Before long,

Merlin and Yol sat facing each other, each gripping the other's wrists. Merlin braced his feet against Yol's ankles as she spread her legs.

Then he pushed outward with his feet, slowly forcing Yol's legs apart into a split. Heavy, muffled grunts kept escaping her mouth and nose.

Even though her grip on Merlin's wrists hurt, he kept the position steady.

Merlin looked at Yol calmly and said:

"If it hurts, let it out. You don't have to tough it out."

Fine beads of sweat appeared on Yol's forehead, but she only gritted her teeth and shook her head.

Seeing this, Merlin stopped holding back and began aggressively stretching her muscles and tendons, starting with the ones between her hips...

Her waist, neck, shoulders, chest, spine, arms, legs, and feet...

He worked on every tendon throughout her body. Eventually, Yol couldn't stop herself from screaming.

And so,

At Merlin's urging, Yol kept gulping down Monkey Wine, using the drunkenness to numb her awareness.

As time passed, both Merlin and Yol were covered in sweat and dust.

Every now and then, black flames flared in Merlin's hand, absorbing the calamity caused by the tendons in Yol's body being torn and strained.

An hour later,

Merlin laid Yol down on the monkey hide. She lay limp and unconscious, like a puddle of mud.

She had no injuries, inside or out. She was simply exhausted, and drunk.

He covered her with a monkey hide large enough to cover her body. Then Merlin got up and sighed with relief, looking exhausted.

"Fortunately, I can absorb calamity. Otherwise, we'd have had to take this process slowly.

"But..."

A glint flashed in Merlin's eyes. After pulling Yol's muscles and stretching all her tendons, and repeatedly using Disaster Absorption, he'd gained a new understanding of his Devil Fruit Ability.

Even after her tendons were torn and strained, and he absorbed the calamity, they didn't return to their original state once she'd healed.

In other words, the results of the stretching exercises remained in her body.

Merlin pondered. "Absorbing calamity is just that: absorbing calamity. Calamity can be the negative effects of exercising without restraint.

"It can strip away harmful factors, layer by layer, while preserving the beneficial results.

"That makes sense. The recovery effect from absorbing calamity is a manipulation of cause and effect, not some kind of time reversal."

Once he understood, Merlin's eyes gradually lit up.

"From now on, I can expend stamina and mental energy and use my ability to ignore the injuries caused by exercise, speeding up my progress."

"Although Devil Fruit abilities are limited to the specific concepts associated with each fruit, within their range, they can produce effects that are practically miraculous."

Merlin sensed the strange ability he'd gained after equipping the Calamity Fruit: the ability to absorb, store, and release [Calamity].

The core of this fruit's ability lay in "absorbing," "storing," and "releasing" the concept of [Calamity].

And what was calamity?

After days of practicing with his ability, Merlin had already grasped the basics.

Misfortune and suffering that affected living creatures could all be classified as calamity.

As for damage to objects, Merlin had no idea how to handle that yet. He couldn't put a shattered mirror back together or restore a broken object.

A trace of hesitation crossed his eyes. "I just don't know whether Devil Fruit Awakening will bring about any unusual changes."

Merlin shook his head. There was no point dwelling on things he couldn't do yet. Even the current effects of calamity were already incredibly powerful.

As long as he had enough [Calamity] bullets that were "underhanded" enough, he could threaten any living creature with a surprise, one-hit kill?

Maybe.

Merlin couldn't say for sure.

The waters in this world ran deep. The Haki he'd learned about could already be used to counter Devil Fruit abilities.

And based on all the works of fiction he'd read...

There might be abilities similar to [Anti-Magic].

If someone who wielded Haki ever appeared, they might be able to resist or even nullify his Disaster Ability.

So Merlin's gaze grew resolute.

"I have to develop my ability, but I also have to keep strengthening my mind, technique, and body. I won't get far by relying on my Devil Fruit Ability alone."

Unbeknownst to him, Merlin had said something similar to a certain "teacher."

Just then, two faint snores, rising and falling, reached his ears.

Merlin looked at the two of them sleeping on the monkey hide. "It's getting late."

He went to Yol's right and sat on the monkey hide, setting down his backpack in a convenient spot.

He used it as a pillow, covered himself with a monkey-hide pelt, and slowly closed his eyes.

Before long,

Merlin drifted into a light sleep.

Whenever he heard something outside, he opened his eyes and warily listened to everything around him.

The next day.

Amid the noisy, shrill chattering of monkeys outside the tree hollow,

Merlin's half-open eyes slowly opened. After a while, he was fully awake.

He sat up, and the monkey hide covering him slid off. Merlin exhaled.

"It's starting to stink!"

His keen nose picked up the smell of rotting flesh coming from the Monkey King's corpse by the entrance.

Before long, he grabbed the tail of the monkey corpse, the only part still covered in fur, and dragged the rotting "lump of meat" out of the hollow.

After carrying it several hundred meters away from the ancient tree, Merlin tossed the corpse into a pit in the ground, watched by the monkeys in the surrounding fruit trees.

Merlin then went to the foot of a cliff not far from the ancient tree. There was a clear spring there.

It was also where the monkeys in this troop got their drinking water.

The spring lay right against the cliff. It was a narrow, rectangular hollow in the rock, two meters long and half a meter wide, with clear spring water welling up from it.

The water was so clear he could see the bottom, and about a meter deep. A crack ran through the rock beneath the spring, and water bubbled up from it.

From there, the spring water seeped away to the right along the narrow gap between the cliff and the rocky ground.

Looking at the spring, Merlin thought he could lie down in it.

Thinking that, Merlin did just that. He stripped off his clothes, jumped into the spring, and scrubbed them clean along with himself.

Before long, Merlin had wrung out the excess water from his clothes and put them back on. Though they were still damp, he headed for the ancient tree.

By the time he returned to the tree hollow, he had an assortment of fruits in his arms.

He went to the pelts and saw that Yol was still asleep. Merlin gently patted her cheeks. "Yol? Time to get up!"

She was clearly hungover, so Merlin kept calling her and patting her cheeks. Yol's tightly shut eyelids began to twitch. Merlin thought for a moment, then pressed the tip of his thumb firmly against her philtrum.

Yol's eyes flew open, and she quickly came to. Merlin let go and smiled.

"You're awake! Then get up!"