"AAAAAAAH—!"
Accompanied by Sabo's shrill, voice-cracking scream, the sky over Mount Colubo seemed to be stained with a layer of despairing gray.
From that day on, the ASL Brothers officially began their sunless "lightning devil training" on this remote mountaintop.
Time flew by like a galloping white horse.
In the blink of an eye, five years had passed.
Sea Circle Calendar 1508.
Deep within Mount Colubo, on a massive clearing that had been forcibly leveled.
"Bang! Bang! Bang!"
Dull, oppressively powerful sounds of flesh colliding rang out in rapid succession like war drums, shaking leaves from the surrounding trees.
The air was thick with the pungent scent of male hormones and salty sweat.
Three youths, bare-chested and wearing only tattered shorts, were engaged in an incredibly savage brawl across the clearing at a terrifying speed beyond the limits of ordinary vision!
That was right, a brawl!
There were no flashy moves, only the purest violence—every punch landing on flesh, every strike deadly!
These three brats, once as skinny as monkeys, had undergone horrifying physical mutations after five years of hellish torment!
"Rubber-Rubber—"
Twelve-year-old Monkey D. Luffy let out a beastlike roar.
He took a fierce breath, and his seemingly normal body underwent an outrageously exaggerated transformation!
The muscles all over his body swelled and bulged, as though they had been pumped full of air!
Those rubber cells that should have been soft and elastic had become as hard as steel after five years of repeated tearing and reconstruction by lightning!
Luffy did not even need to inflate himself and "gear up" like in the original story.
He merely exerted force, and his sharply defined pecs, washboard eight-pack abs, and terrifyingly thick biceps seemed to burst the air apart!
"Take this punch, Ace!"
Luffy threw out his right fist, and the terrifying force actually produced a sonic boom in the air!
With a deafening "Bang!", a blast of air rolled outward!
"Don't get carried away, Luffy!"
Fifteen-year-old Ace had eyes as cold and sharp as blades. Without retreating an inch, he met Luffy's fist head-on and threw a punch of his own!
By then, Ace had grown to one meter seventy-five.
The boyishness he once had was gone, replaced by a perfect inverted-triangle physique like an ancient Greek sculpture, yet brimming with explosive power!
His muscles were smooth and solid, containing terrifying explosive force enough to tear apart tigers and leopards.
The two fists collided!
There was no enhancement from Devil Fruit powers, only a pure clash of flesh and muscle!
"Boom!"
A violent shockwave swept outward from the two of them, instantly blasting the sand and stones off the ground!
The hard rock beneath their feet was cracked with countless spiderweb fractures from the recoil!
"Hey, hey, don't forget about me!"
A blond youth wearing black goggles darted in from the side like a ghost!
It was fourteen-year-old Sabo.
Compared to Luffy's savagery and Ace's ferocity, Sabo's muscles appeared more restrained and lean.
But his tightly packed muscles radiated the same exceedingly dangerous aura of a predator.
"Take this! Dragon Claw Fist!"
Sabo curled his right hand into a claw. The force in his fingers was astonishing as they tore through the air with a piercing shriek and viciously clawed at Ace's shoulder!
This technique he had developed in the Gray Terminal had begun to possess the terrifying power to crush steel under Lei En's heavily modified guidance.
The three instantly descended into a chaotic melee, fighting so fiercely that neither could gain the upper hand. Fist winds howled, and force surged in every direction!
On a flat boulder not far from the clearing.
Fifteen-year-old Lei En was lounging lazily against the back of a chair.
He had fully grown into his frame, standing nearly one meter eighty tall. His black trench coat hung open, revealing solid but not exaggerated muscle lines beneath.
Holding a cup of black tea Dadan had just brewed, he leisurely took a sip. In his deep black eyes were reflected the three "monsters" below, throwing punches powerful enough to create sonic booms.
"Mm... not bad. Those muscle lines, that explosive power—they've got about fifty percent of my former skill."
Lei En nodded in satisfaction.
Over the past five years, aside from giving the three brats "deep therapy" with varying voltages of electricity every day.
He had also traveled everywhere to capture massive Sea Kings and ferocious beasts for them to use as living punching bags.
Combined with specially made Seastone weights that increased in mass every day...
He had forcibly trained these three, who were originally focused on agility or Devil Fruit abilities, into muscle dinosaurs who could crush their peers hundreds of times over with their bodies alone!
The current Luffy could punch a hole straight through an ordinary East Blue pirate ship with one punch, even without eating the Rubber-Rubber Fruit!
Not to mention Ace and Sabo. Their hand-to-hand combat skills had probably already reached the threshold of a Marine Headquarters rear admiral.
"Stop!"
Lei En set down his teacup. His voice was not loud, yet it reached the ears of the three who were fighting fiercely with perfect clarity.
"Whoosh!"
Luffy, Ace, and Sabo seemed to have heard some terrifying curse. Their bodies froze midair, then they landed in front of Lei En in perfectly straight attention stances.
They panted heavily, sweat streaming down their solid muscles, but their eyes were filled with extreme reverence for Lei En.
"Boss, we fought three thousand rounds today. Nobody lost, and nobody won!" Luffy wiped away his sweat and grinned, revealing a mouthful of white teeth.
"Idiot. If I hadn't held back, I would've knocked you flat long ago!" Ace curled his lip in annoyance.
"Oh, please, Ace. If you hadn't dodged so fast just now, my Dragon Claw Fist would've crippled your arm." Sabo adjusted his goggles and mercilessly exposed him.
Lei En raised an eyebrow as he watched the three still bickering.
"Enough. Stop arguing."
Lei En stood, jumped down from the boulder, and walked up to them.
He reached out and tapped Luffy's chest muscles, which were as hard as iron, producing dull "thump, thump" sounds.
"Your foundation is more or less complete. Your physical endurance and strength barely count as passing."
Upon hearing the word "passing," all three secretly breathed a sigh of relief.
Only heaven knew how they had survived those five years!
"However..."
Lei En's tone shifted, and his gaze deepened.
"There is a limit to body tempering. You may have enough strength now, but to true experts, you're still just a bunch of reckless fools with brute force."
From his system space, he pulled out three enormous iron blocks, entirely pitch-black and radiating a suffocatingly heavy aura!
"Boom! Boom! Boom!"
Lei En casually tossed the three iron blocks onto the ground, and all of Mount Colubo seemed to tremble!
Each iron block was as large as a small hill! And every one of them was forged from high-purity Seastone!
"Th-This is?!"
Looking at the three black mountains, Luffy instinctively felt his legs go weak. Under the pressure of the Seastone, the power of the Rubber-Rubber Fruit began to ache faintly.
"These are your 'summer assignments' for the next few years."
Lei En clapped his hands and looked at the three pale-faced boys, a deeply sinister smile curling at the corners of his lips.
"I have some personal business to handle. I'm going out to sea to have some fun, and while I'm at it, take a trip around the Grand Line."
He pointed at the three Seastone blocks, his tone leaving no room for argument.
"When I get back, if you still can't carry these things on your backs and run a marathon on the seafloor..."
Between Lei En's fingers, those ghostly blue electric arcs that made their souls tremble began to dance once again.
"Then I'll fry all three of you into roast lamb!"
With that, Lei En turned around and walked mercilessly down the mountain, leaving them only with his carefree back.
Luffy, Ace, and Sabo stared at the mountainlike Seastone blocks, swallowed hard, and felt like crying without tears.
"Boss... you're trying to kill us..."
Just as the three wailed in despair, Lei En's relaxed voice drifted over from afar on the wind.
"Oh, right. While I'm gone, if you run into a one-armed drunkard called Red-Haired, tell him for me..."
Before you continue