Attribute Improvements

Shiryu was obviously joking.

As close roommates, he knew exactly how hard Noah worked, so he was not surprised by whatever breakthroughs the latter had made. He was a man who firmly believed that sweat would never be wasted.

The only thing he was curious about was just how far Noah had trained Kami-e.

With that in mind, Shiryu tried several more offensive and defensive approaches with Noah. His final conclusion was—this guy was simply inhuman. Without making a sound, he had trained Kami-e to a level far beyond what any recruit could reach, leaving both Shiryu and Rosinante far behind.

Thus, since entering the Recruit Camp, Noah had, for the first time, sensed a sour note from his proud friend in matters other than looks...

That put him in high spirits for the entire day, making up for his regret at not being able to show off during the assessment. At noon, his appetite was so great that he accidentally wolfed down five extra bowls of rice, leaving Rosinante across the table staring in stunned disbelief.

The afternoon training focused mainly on swordsmanship.

Zephyr, who had not appeared all morning, finally showed up. He personally confirmed that tomorrow's assessment had been canceled, and that after next week's practical assessment at sea, he would begin personally teaching the disciples swordsmanship.

This former Marine admiral, who had once dominated the seas and earned the title "Black Arm," was undoubtedly most proud of his overwhelmingly powerful taijutsu.

But Zephyr was also quite accomplished in swordsmanship. Perhaps he could not compare to veteran Swordmasters who specialized in it, but teaching recruits like Noah and the others was more than enough.

Noah listened attentively throughout, and during free practice, he often approached Zephyr alone for guidance.

He was a Two-Sword Style swordsman. He needed to integrate Zephyr's teachings with his own unique sword techniques, which consumed a great deal of physical and mental energy, making his training far more arduous than that of the others.

But Noah relished it.

At night, he continued training alone.

After adding points to endurance, Noah could now keep training until around ten at night. To avoid knocking on the door and waking Shiryu, he conscientiously brought his key this time.

The Taijutsu Training Acceleration Card was even more effective than he had expected.

When he finished training and dragged his exhausted body back to the dormitory, Noah could practically feel that he had grown much stronger than the day before.

After calculating carefully, he realized that by the time he used up this seven-day Acceleration Card, it would be just in time for the practical assessment Zephyr had mentioned. The timing connected seamlessly, with virtually no waste.

This made Noah begin looking forward to the practical assessment. At this rate, if he continued training hard over the next few days, then by the day they set sail, his strength would probably rise by another major step, right?

Before going to sleep, adhering to the principle that wasting his daily free detection chance would be a crime, he thought for a moment and quietly used a detection on the sleeping Shiryu.

Garp had been too strong when he had scanned him before. The string of question marks had provided limited information and merely satisfied Noah's curiosity.

But Shiryu, one of the strongest recruits of their generation, had highly useful basic physical data. It would let Noah see exactly how long he needed to catch up to him—and even surpass him.

[Character: Shiryu of the Rain]

[Age: 23]

[Strength: 9]

[Agility: 8]

[Endurance: 9]

[Intelligence: 7]

[Charm: 3]

[Skills: Rokushiki (Beginner), One-Sword Style (Intermediate), Firearms Shooting (Beginner), Observation Haki (Beginner)...]

[Estimated point reward for successful conquest...]

Before seeing that last line, Noah swiftly moved his gaze upward, barely saving his eyes from being polluted.

He was not interested in how many points he could gain from conquering Shiryu, and he decided to develop a good habit from now on: whenever he scanned someone of the same sex, he would instinctively block out the text at the end.

"His strength and agility are both two points higher than mine. As expected of Shiryu."

Looking over the basic stats, Noah could not help feeling envious. But Shiryu also had several basic attributes lower than his own, which gave him a little consolation.

Especially in terms of charm. This guy always wore a gloomy expression and looked like he wanted strangers to keep away. Sure enough, once the data came out, it was unsurprisingly terrifyingly low...

By comparison, what caught Noah's attention more was that Shiryu's skill list actually included Observation Haki.

He had never heard that guy mention it.

Looking at the "Beginner" rank behind it, Noah pondered for a moment. He guessed that even Shiryu himself had not noticed it yet. He would probably need a few real battles before gradually finding the knack and truly mastering Observation Haki.

"Observation Haki..." Noah lay in bed, staring quietly at the ceiling.

As a swordsman, he had always longed for that ability. Unfortunately, their batch of recruits had only been studying the Six Powers for two or three months. If they wanted to systematically train the two types of Haki, that would have to wait until at least the latter half of the year.

Come to think of it, Kami-e and Observation Haki did share certain similarities. Kami-e was not exactly a prerequisite skill, but in a sense, it could entirely be considered a low-end version of Observation Haki.

Now that he could be considered proficient in Kami-e, perhaps he would find training Observation Haki easier than the others in the future.

Carrying beautiful hopes for the future, Noah eventually closed his eyes and drifted into sleep.

Over the following days, Noah repeated a training routine that outsiders would find unbearably dull, enjoying the pain that came with growing stronger.

He had temporarily thrown the Romance System completely to the back of his mind, though he had not forgotten to randomly select a colleague nearby each day and use his free detection chance.

There was no reason not to take advantage of the system.

And so, several days passed in a flash. The Taijutsu Training Acceleration Card expired, and Noah's basic physical attributes finally achieved long-awaited breakthroughs over the course of that week.

[Name: Romanov Noah (Romanov)]

[Age: 19]

[Strength: 8]

[Agility: 7]

[Endurance: 12]

[Intelligence: 8]

[Charm: 10]

[Current points: 1301]

...

Strength and agility had each increased by one point, which was within Noah's expectations.

After all, he had been stuck at a bottleneck for a long time before obtaining the system. His entire body had been like a volcano ready to erupt. Such an opportunity would only come once; in the future, even with Acceleration Cards, he would not be able to improve his basic attributes so rapidly through hard training alone.

But his already absurdly high endurance had also risen by one point during these days of hellish training. That was a complete and pleasant surprise.

By his rough estimate, his endurance had improved by about thirty percent compared to a week ago. It was simply terrifying.

—Even by the most conservative estimate, there was probably no second recruit in the entire Marine Headquarters Recruit Camp who could stand shoulder to shoulder with him in this regard.

"I'm one step closer to taking two Thunder Baguas in one go."

Late at night, Noah lay in bed and silently summarized the progress he had made over the past week.

Tomorrow was the day when all the new recruits of the Elite Training Camp would head out to sea for their practical assessment. He was so excited that he could not fall asleep for a long time, accidentally staying awake past midnight.

It was then that Noah remembered something. He checked the system panel and, as expected, discovered that the shop's random items had finally refreshed—

[Swordmaster Ryuma's Insight Notes (Incomplete): 2000 points]

[Mandatory Volume Regulator (Consumable): 100 points]

[Senzu Bean (Consumable): 60,000 points]

[Six Styles: Soru Skill Scroll (Intermediate): 1000 points]

[Gambling Mastery (Master Level): 60,000 points]

[Western Economics (Master Level): 8000 points]