Four Shortcuts to Strength: Seizing Imu's Body

"Yes, Saint Sumer!"

Doll first nodded firmly, then brushed aside the dark bangs over her forehead and continued.

"However, some exceptionally gifted geniuses can grasp the trick after seeing it only once and quickly master it."

"Even so, they still need to undergo arduous training before they can truly use it proficiently!"

After saying that,

Doll watched Sumer's ever-changing expression.

Last night,

Sumer had summoned her alone, which made Doll extremely nervous.

Because it was a late-night summons and they were alone together, Doll's first thought was that Sumer wanted her to attend him in bed.

She had been very unwilling.

But as a Marine vice admiral, she could not disobey orders. If she did, the consequences would be beyond her ability to bear.

After a bout of mental struggle, she resigned herself to it.

She would treat it as sacrificing herself for justice.

But when she entered Sumer's room, he had merely asked her questions about the Six Powers and Haki.

He had even asked her to teach him.

What Doll found most unbelievable was that Sumer possessed extensive theoretical knowledge of the Six Powers and Haki, often drawing inferences from one example to another.

He had even given her quite a few insights during their conversation.

At Sumer's request, she had repeatedly demonstrated the Six Powers and Two-Color Haki. The two of them had kept discussing and researching until one in the morning.

When she got up this morning,

Sumer had called her to the deck again, leading to their current conversation.

"So in the end, I still have to bleed and sweat through hellish training if I want to become strong."

After hearing Doll's words,

Sumer's heart sank.

He knew himself well. He simply was not the kind of person who could endure hellish training.

In his previous life, he had not exactly lived in luxury, but he had been the sort who preferred lying flat, could not endure hardship at all, and easily gave up halfway through.

The only reason he had worked twelve-hour rotating night shifts at a factory was because life had forced him into it. If he had not gone out to earn money, he might not even have been able to afford noodles.

Who would have thought that after only seven night shifts, his body would be drained and weakened because he had loved using his left and right hands too much, nearly causing him to drop dead from overwork?

More importantly, he was afraid of pain.

Looking at it this way, a lazy coward like him would never accomplish much, even if he obtained methods to train in the Six Powers and Haki—or even had someone personally teach him.

After talking with Doll last night, Sumer had given it a try.

He had planned to start by improving his physical fitness, but after doing more than fifty push-ups, he could not keep going.

That was with his body having already been initially strengthened after signing the Deepest-Sea Contract. Before transmigrating, even doing five would have been a struggle.

His mind had also been filled with all kinds of thoughts telling him to give up and denying himself.

It was as if two little people were arguing in his head. One urged him to give up. After all, he had already become a Celestial Dragon and possessed wealth, beauty, and power.

If he wanted to travel around, he only needed the Marines to protect him. There was no need to go through so much trouble, bleed and sweat, and deliberately make himself suffer.

The other little person urged him to persist.

Wealth, beauty, and power are all external things. Relying on others for protection is not a long-term solution. Only your own strength is real strength.

Besides,

Was he really going to spend his entire life bowing and scraping as Saint Nerona Imu's servant?

Was he going to place his life in someone else's hands?

The entire night,

Sumer had wavered and hesitated.

One moment, he would resolve to train hard and become a mighty powerhouse capable of swallowing mountains and rivers. The next, after doing a few push-ups, he would be too exhausted to bear it and give up.

He kept tormenting himself like that until he finally fell asleep at five in the morning.

Sumer understood himself too well.

He constantly wanted to try changing, but once he took action, he would soon sink back into decay and give up again.

He was just such a good-for-nothing: lazy, gluttonous, content with the status quo, lacking ambition, and prone to quitting halfway.

Yet in the pirate world, as long as one worked hard enough and possessed sufficiently firm willpower, even an ordinary person could gain power.

If someone possessed extraordinary talent, a monster-like physique, knew how to work hard, and had the luck to eat a powerful Devil Fruit, they would surely become a renowned powerhouse.

But Sumer was precisely the sort of person who feared hardship and exhaustion and had weak willpower.

Actually, he had overlooked one thing.

Most true powerhouses at the very peak of the pyramid had experienced unfortunate childhoods, the destruction of their families, or the deaths of friends and loved ones.

"Saint Sumer, every famous powerhouse on the seas today became strong only after enduring countless hardships in training and fighting life-and-death battles."

"I have never heard of anyone becoming a powerhouse overnight without putting in any work."

Doll frowned as she kindly reminded Sumer.

She had figured it out.

This Saint Sumer wanted to train and grow stronger, but he could not endure hardship.

That made sense.

As a World Noble, he had lived in comfort since childhood. His status was exalted, and he could have anything he wanted. Suddenly asking him to suffer was obviously impossible.

"I understand what you mean. To become a true powerhouse, three basic conditions are needed."

"The most savage body, the most civilized mind, and an unconquerable spirit."

Sumer spoke in a low voice.

His mind had already begun racing.

Since he could not endure too much physical suffering or mental suffering, he would have to use his brain and find another way through wisdom.

For a moment,

four paths emerged in Sumer's mind: genetic mutation, technological modification, body-snatching, and Devil Fruits.

Since transmigrating to the pirate world, he had not spent all his time doing nothing.

He might not have a cheat like a system or Deep Blue stat allocation.

But he knew the plot, had been through the great cesspool of the internet, and had read plenty of anime, webnovels, films, and comics.

That gave him abundant theoretical knowledge and a wildly imaginative mind.

First came the genetic mutation and technological modification routes.

They were simple.

He could take Marvel as a reference: poor people relied on mutation, rich people relied on technology.

As for body-snatching, before transmigrating, Sumer had happened to read a One Piece fanfiction called Offering Pain to the Wonderful Pirate World!

Its protagonist, Jaeger, had been a useless person without any cheat, just like him.

He had used his knowledge advantages regarding Sky Island and Pluton to join the Blackbeard Pirates. In the middle of the story, he used the Op-Op Fruit's mind-swapping ability to exchange bodies with Blackbeard.

Then he took off directly.

So Sumer could learn from that. And if he used this method, he did not necessarily have to snatch Blackbeard's body.

Because there were plenty of powerhouses on the seas.

Monsters like Kaido and Barrett, for example.

If he was bold enough, he could even go all the way and exchange bodies directly with Saint Nerona Imu—

At that thought, Sumer's eyes gleamed with restless desire.

Because if he succeeded, he would truly soar to the heavens in a single step!

Not only would he obtain the power of the Devil Fruit, he would also gain control of the World Government, a terrifying weapon.

It would mean he had both strength and influence!

Last came the Devil Fruit route.

In the pirate world, there were certain special Devil Fruits that were practically cheats and incredibly sinister.

But Devil Fruits had one enormous flaw: they relied too heavily on stamina and imagination.

Stamina was the most important factor.

It was not just Devil Fruits. Martial arts, Haki, and every other power system all required stamina to activate.

Without sufficient stamina, any power or ability was useless.

If Sumer wanted to eat a Devil Fruit, he had to choose one that did not consume much stamina, was easy to develop, yet remained immensely powerful.

Luckily,

there really was a Devil Fruit that suited Sumer's desire to avoid suffering and exhaustion while still gaining immense power.

It was Kurozumi Kanjuro's Paramecia-type Brush-Brush Fruit.

The ability of this Devil Fruit was simple: it could turn things the user drew into physical entities.

The creatures drawn even possessed independent consciousness.

It was similar to Ma Liang's magic brush.

The most important point was that improving the Brush-Brush Fruit's ability did not require arduous development or training. It only required improving one's painting skills.

The better the user's painting skills, the more lifelike and powerful the things they drew would become.

Conversely,

if the drawings were too poor or ugly, they would directly affect the strength and function of the things brought to life.

In other words,

if he drew a Whitebeard realistic enough to pass for the real thing, that Whitebeard could possess seventy to eighty percent of the original's combat strength.

The problem was,

Kurozumi Kanjuro seemed to still be traveling through time during this period. He would not appear in Wano Country until two years after the Marineford War, before later fleeing to Dressrosa.

That was far too long to wait.

Even if Sumer waited two years and killed Kurozumi Kanjuro, there was no telling where in the world the Brush-Brush Fruit would reincarnate.

Unless he mastered mature "Devil Fruit extraction" technology.

Or had Blackbeard help him.