Eating

Marineford Military Academy, on the training ground.

Over two hundred Marine soldiers were panting, some standing, some sitting, some lying down. Those with relatively poor stamina had even passed out on the spot and were carried away on stretchers by the medical team waiting nearby for emergency treatment.

Out of the three hundred military academy students, only Tokikake and Gion had completed the task five minutes early. Everyone else had been punished with an extra hundred laps, and over ninety people were still running even now...

By the time Sephiroth reached his one hundred and eighty-sixth lap, the hour was up.

Though he cursed inwardly, he could only spend another half hour finishing all three hundred laps.

If not for the Vampire Fruit's absurd recovery ability, which allowed him to keep his physical condition at its peak, he had no idea how he could have maintained a high-speed sprint for over an hour...

Zephyr's adjutant, Shuzo, a major, stood on the training ground and roared loudly:

"Fall in!"

Swish! Swish! Swish!...

Although the academy students were all exhausted like dead dogs, they still forced themselves up and quickly lined up.

"You've all worked hard this morning. Now..."

As he spoke, Shuzo suddenly paused, making the academy students tense up for no reason, afraid he was about to pull some other stunt.

"Those who have completed their task, come with me to the cafeteria for lunch! After you finish eating, return to the training ground and assemble.

"Also... those who haven't completed the task, keep running. You don't get lunch!"

Phew! ×n

Everyone immediately breathed a collective sigh of relief, inwardly cursing Shuzo for deliberately pausing like that just to scare them.

However, the ninety-odd students who had yet to finish could only pull long faces and return to the track to complete their remaining laps.

Led by Shuzo, the group marched in orderly steps into the military academy's main cafeteria.

At that moment, the spacious cafeteria hall was filled with long tables piled high with food: roast meat, grilled chicken wings, steak, seafood fried rice, vegetable salad, creamy soup, and fruit. There was not much variety, but there was plenty of it.

"Eat as much as you want!... There's enough for everyone!"

With a sweeping gesture, Shuzo charged to the long tables first, grabbed four plates of grilled chicken wings in a row, found himself a seat, and began wolfing them down.

Having just finished intense exercise and burned through enormous amounts of energy, the academy students were already starving. Naturally, they could not care less about dining etiquette. They took whatever food they liked from the tables, found seats in the cafeteria, and began devouring it.

One guy even stood directly in front of the food-laden table, grabbing food and stuffing it straight into his mouth... Yes, that person was Tokikake!

His white Marine uniform was soon stained with large greasy patches as he gorged himself, making his already dreadful looks sink to even greater depths...

Sephiroth carried a plate of food and casually chose a table in the cafeteria. Picking up his chopsticks, he halfheartedly ate from his plate.

"Classmate, you're eating so little. Aren't you hungry?"

A fragrant breeze drifted over. Gion, standing two meters and forty centimeters tall with a pair of long, snow-white legs, sat across from Sephiroth and looked doubtfully at the small amount of food on his plate.

"..."

Sephiroth looked speechless as he stared at the mountain of food piled high on Gion's plate. He did not know how to describe the sense of dissonance he felt.

A gorgeous, curvaceous, long-legged beauty actually had the appetite of a competitive eater...

Seeing the boy remain silent, Gion blinked her big eyes and asked in confusion:

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing. I just don't have much of an appetite!"

Sephiroth scratched his head and casually brushed it off.

As for his appetite, Sephiroth had noticed it himself—he did not seem to be a big eater...

In the world of the Pirate King, all strong people had one thing in common... they ate a lot!

The energy their bodies required could basically only be obtained through food. The more they ate, the more energy their bodies could store.

Thus, the more a person could eat, the stronger their physical strength, endurance, and power...

Even if Sephiroth ate to his heart's content, he could only manage two or three people's worth of food.

In fact, he did not necessarily need to eat at all. He could maintain his body's normal functions simply by drinking blood.

He had once roughly estimated his daily energy expenditure and intake, only to find that the two did not match at all. His consumption far exceeded his intake, seemingly defying the law of conservation of energy.

It was not until one time, when he was too busy training to cook and had filled his stomach by drinking animal blood, that he figured it out.

His body did not defy the law of conservation of energy. Rather, the Vampire Fruit had given him some kind of passive instinct that allowed him to extract a certain substance from blood and synthesize energy from it, producing more energy to sustain his body's consumption. It was somewhat similar to photosynthesis in plants, with an effect much like Green Bull's Woods-Woods Fruit...

His body already possessed the ability to produce blood on its own. Under the effect of that passive instinct, his body had actually been continuously taking in synthesized energy.

Therefore, as long as his body could still make blood and produce that special substance, he would not feel hungry...

As Gion ate quickly yet elegantly with her knife and fork, she casually asked:

"Classmate, my name is Gion. What should I call you?

"Which branch did you come from?"

The long-legged beauty was filled with curiosity toward the silver-haired boy with the youthful face before her.

Judging from his appearance, he should not even be an adult yet. Yet the strength he had displayed during the long-distance run was only slightly inferior to hers.

"G-3 Branch."

"So you're from Vice Admiral Garp's G-3 Branch!

"That's the most famous branch of them all, and its soldiers' overall quality is also slightly higher than that of the other branches.

"Still, I often hear Sister Tsuru say that Vice Admiral Garp can be quite unreliable at times!

"I wonder if that's true..."

"Well! That old geezer Garp can indeed be unreliable sometimes...

"But when it truly matters, he's still someone you can rely on..."

Sephiroth instinctively nodded in agreement at first, but then seemed to recall something. He turned to look at the long-legged beauty with a strange expression.

"By the way, the Sister Tsuru you mentioned... is?"

"Vice Admiral Tsuru, the headquarters' chief staff officer."

"Classmate Gion, if you don't mind me asking, how old are you this year?"

A flash of white blade light!

Gion held a dining knife in her right hand and spun it through the air in a beautiful flourish. The green apple on Sephiroth's plate was instantly cut in two, splitting into halves...

"Little brother Sephiroth, casually asking a woman's age isn't a good habit!"

As she spoke, the long-legged beauty wore a smile that was not quite a smile, while a dangerous glint flashed through her eyes.

Seeing this, Sephiroth's eye twitched slightly. He simply could not understand why this woman had reacted so strongly...

Was this some instinctive stress response from an older unmarried woman...?