"Fufufufu... There's no need to worry about that!"
"It'll take a little time to learn the Heavenly Tribute's shipping routes. Until we're ready to act, we should focus on staying hidden. Just make sure Kizaru doesn't spot us when he arrives as backup."
"Just like last time, we'll keep a low profile for a while until we know they've left."
With Doflamingo setting the tone, no one objected. They began carrying out the plan.
After restocking at their base, they set off to wander the seas.
After flying at full speed for a day and a night, Kizaru arrived in the North Blue from Marine Headquarters and met up with the three others at a Marine Branch.
"Yo~ Staff Officer Tsuru, Vice Admiral Gion, I finally found you!" A flash of yellow light streaked past, and Kizaru's figure took shape on the deck. The Light Man Kizaru, who had eaten the Sleaze-Sleaze Fruit, had arrived~
"What about Tokikake?" When he heard along the way that Tokikake hadn't died, Kizaru's anxious heart had finally settled down.
"Admiral Kizaru!"
"Admiral Kizaru is here! Thank goodness!"
"Quiet!" Tsuru stopped the Marines from clamoring. "Tokikake is in the infirmary. His condition isn't good!"
At that, Kizaru dropped his laid-back expression and entered Tokikake's room with Tsuru and Gion.
As soon as he stepped inside, Kizaru saw Tokikake unconscious in bed, his whole body wrapped in bandages, with oxygen tubes over his nose and mouth.
A red glint flashed in his eyes behind his sunglasses as he carefully sensed Tokikake's life force with Observation Haki.
"Tokikake's condition hasn't been good since he escaped Minion Island. The ship's medical facilities were limited, and even now, he's still in critical condition."
"And even if he wakes up, his Navy career..."
Kizaru understood what Tsuru meant, but after a moment's thought, he said, "Being alive is already good enough."
"Getting away from all the fighting might even be a good thing."
Tsuru said, "That may be true, but Tokikake's sense of justice—"
Kizaru: ???
"Tokikake has a sense of justice? Isn't Gion his sense of justice?" Though he grumbled to himself, Kizaru had already let out a sigh of relief, knowing Tokikake would probably be all right.
"So, Vice Admiral Tsuru, what do you plan to do now?" Seeing that Tokikake wouldn't wake up anytime soon, Kizaru asked Tsuru about the next steps. "Should we take him back to Headquarters for the best treatment, or should I go capture the Donquixote Family and avenge him?"
"We'll take Tokikake back. You stay and deal with the Donquixote Family!"
Kizaru: ?
"Vice Admiral Tsuru, I can't stay away for too long. You know Mary Geoise still needs me to guard it!"
"Kuzan will take care of Mary Geoise!"
"Kuzan's vacation is over!"
Kizaru: ...
With Tsuru putting it that way, Kizaru had no choice but to accept the assignment. "All right, all right!"
He might be a little lazy, but when faced with an enemy, Kizaru still did his best to capture them.
For example, when he encountered the Supernovas in the original story, he'd been leisurely the rest of the time, but the moment he saw Apoo and the others, he rewarded each of them with a kick.
He was quick and efficient when he got moving.
After the ship carrying Tsuru and the others set sail, Kizaru boarded a North Blue Marine Branch ship and began his search for the Donquixote Family.
But the warship's leisurely pace, along with the Marines' intelligence always arriving a step behind the Donquixote Family, made it hard not to wonder whether the world's fastest man was actually giving chase. Each time, they received word about Kizaru and left first, leaving him to arrive at an empty spot.
"Is Kizaru really chasing us?"
"I keep feeling like he's using work as an excuse to take a vacation!" They'd been at sea for a month, and Gray and the others kept getting news about Kizaru, then leaving one step ahead and letting him come up empty-handed.
But even so, Kizaru hadn't given up on them, and he didn't seem to be in any hurry.
That made Gray question Kizaru's motives.
It was as if he was chasing them, but never catching up.
The feeling was bizarre!
"Forget it. Who cares?"
"As long as he doesn't get serious!" Gray shook off the unnecessary thoughts and once again immersed himself in figuring out how to develop his Devil Fruit abilities.
"The rotation of the Personal Magnetic Field! It's not that the magnetic field itself can't absorb the energy of heaven and earth; I just haven't found the right method!"
"The energy of heaven and earth in this world may be impossible for people to consciously sense, except for Sea Kings, which absorb it passively as they grow."
"No! Maybe the energy layer and the humans' dimension aren't the same, so the ordinary natives of this pirate world can't sense it."
"But none of that matters to me. If I want to rotate my Personal Magnetic Field and make it stronger..."
"Then I naturally need to absorb magnetic fields to strengthen my own!" That was the reason Gray thought he hadn't managed to get his Personal Magnetic Field rotating.
He'd been going in the wrong direction, completely missing the point, so naturally, no matter what he tried, he couldn't get the result he wanted.
"If I want to rotate my Personal Magnetic Field, then the world itself is a huge magnetic field. I need to identify and absorb the magnetic fields that benefit me, strengthening my Life Magnetic Field and Soul Magnetic Field. That should be how I grow stronger."
As someone from the Zhonghua Family, when it came to the power system of the One Piece world, the first thing he thought of was how abundant its energy must be.
Only with abundant energy could the foundation for nurturing the strong exist.
After all, energy was conserved!
But the One Piece world was profoundly warped.
Even those powerful enough to destroy an island with one strike still lived about as long as anyone else. There was no such thing as evolving into a higher form of life.
Apart from the longevity granted by Devil Fruit abilities, no matter how powerful you became, once you reached the lifespan limit of your species, you still died.
To everyone from the Zhonghua Family, this way of cultivating only the spirit and not the body was warped and contemptible.
So Gray's development of the Personal Magnetic Field wasn't just about making himself stronger. He wanted to absorb the energy of heaven and earth and achieve true biological evolution.
Immortality!
It was the dream of countless people from the Zhonghua Family. If you had the ability and the ambition, who wouldn't want it?
After coming to this world, besides enjoying himself and watching the show, Gray couldn't help wanting to stand at the pinnacle of the world's strength and live a few more years.
From what he knew in his previous life, there were only two ways to achieve immortality in this world.
First: the Op-Op Fruit's ultimate ability, the Perennial Youth Surgery.
This ultimate operation used the power of the Op-Op Fruit user, sacrificing their own life to grant someone else immortality.
The Five Elders and Imu had lived from eight hundred years ago to the present through this method.
Who besides the World Government could brainwash someone into loyalty enough to make them willingly sacrifice themselves for another? That was the problem.
Loyalty was already difficult to secure. Training an Op-Op Fruit user to the point of Awakening was an even greater challenge.
Over the past eight hundred years, the World Government had collected the Op-Op Fruit many times, but aside from the Five Elders and Imu, no other Celestial Dragon had ever become immortal. That was proof enough of the difficulty.
The second method of false immortality was Pure Gold!
The cells of someone wearing Pure Gold divided at an extremely slow rate, allowing them to live much longer.
But Pure Gold also fixed the wearer's strength in place, making it impossible to train and grow stronger.
That was an option Gray would consider only if he truly had no other choice.
If he could evolve his life on his own, why rely on external means?
That was why, even after three years, Gray still hadn't given up on developing his Personal Magnetic Field.
Before you continue