Awakening, Thunder Core

Werther felt groggy all over, without a shred of strength in his body.

He weakly raised his head and was just about to sit up when he discovered that his entire body was sore. Looking outside, he saw that it was already late at night.

"Seriously, Roy really hit hard. Partners really aren't reliable—companions are better." Scratching his head, Werther muttered as he lay in bed.

Just as Werther wanted to get up for a drink of water, his body suddenly went numb, and something strange began darting around inside him.

Werther was startled. He hurriedly felt around his body, but there was nothing there. That strange sensation remained.

This was some kind of energy? It couldn't be some bizarre parasite, could it?

With no other options, Werther sat on the bed despite his anxiety, trying to figure out what it was by feeling it out.

Sitting calmly on the bed, Werther sensed that there was some kind of energy within him. Wherever it passed, it left behind a tingling numbness, followed by a faint prickling pain. It was nothing when it passed through his limbs, but when it went through his fragile internal organs, it was no longer a faint sting—it was excruciating pain.

"What the hell is this? Did someone set me up? A Devil Fruit ability? That shouldn't be possible." Werther could only rack his brains over the source of this strange energy.

No, he had to figure it out quickly. Otherwise, even if the pain did not kill him, organ failure would. Werther could already feel that breathing was becoming difficult.

Just as Werther was falling into despair, the energy traveled to his left arm. He thought, Stop, and something strange happened.

The energy really did stop in his left arm. Before Werther could rejoice, the stabbing pain in his arm gradually became agonizing pain, as though it were heading toward complete numbness.

Weaken. Weaken for me! Another miraculous scene occurred. The energy really did gradually weaken until it was nearly nonexistent.

Covered in cold sweat, Werther felt as though he had escaped death. Since coming to One Piece, the first threat to his life had not come from the weather at sea, pirates, or Marines, but from an unknown energy. If he died like this, it would be a terrible waste.

His previous life had already been boring enough. Having lost his family in his teens, he had long understood that without effort, he would lose everything. Every day, he studied, worked, and studied again. In the end, only through his social skills, genuine knowledge, and more than a little luck had he achieved what he did.

And now that he had come to the place he had dreamed of, how could he accept dying like this?

Werther slowly sensed the strange energy in his left arm and gradually tried to control it. Before long, he succeeded.

He guided it toward his palm. Even if he could not remove it completely, he had to see what it was. He could not leave energy of unknown origin inside his body.

Before long, a pale blue glow slowly emerged from Werther's palm, accompanied by a faint crackling sound.

"This is... lightning? There's actually lightning inside my body, and I can control it? Did my former self eat the Rumble-Rumble Fruit?" Werther was overjoyed, but he soon realized he was wrong.

Because when he first woke up on the beach, he had deliberately tested himself with seawater. There had been no adverse reaction, proving that he had not eaten any Devil Fruit.

Nor did his body show any signs of elementalization. Aside from being electrocuted ******** and nearly dropping to his knees, he felt nothing.

He had never heard of anyone eating the Rumble-Rumble Fruit and electrocuting himself to death. If that were possible, no one would dare eat Logia Fruits. The Flame-Flame Fruit would burn its user to death, the Ice-Ice Fruit would freeze its user to death. Smoker would have it the worst of all—carbon monoxide poisoning, dead at eighteen.

After studying it for half the night, Werther roughly figured out this lightning energy.

This energy had no fixed form. It was pale blue on the outside, and the color grew darker toward the center. Its core was silver-blue.

At its greatest strength, it was not strong enough to electrocute someone to death. At its weakest, it was nearly nonexistent.

Werther had now tossed the idea of expelling this energy from his body to the winds, because he felt that this energy could play a tremendous role in determining whether he rose from an ordinary person to a strong one.

How had this energy come about? Looking at the blue glow in his palm, Werther fell into thought. A racial gift? The Mink Tribe? Unlikely, because of his age. Other than the hair on his head, his body was completely bare. He did not even have a single strand of body hair.

Then it must have been when he was on Earth, when he had been caught up in that lightning vortex resembling a tribulation. His soul had undergone some degree of evolution or mutation, producing this ability. Otherwise, how could his soul have survived under such harsh circumstances?

Having figured out the source of this energy, Werther felt much more at ease.

How exactly should he develop this ability? In the direction of the Rumble-Rumble Fruit?

No. This energy's electric shock was too weak. It might work against ordinary people, but it would be useless against strong opponents in the future.

And based on his earlier experiment, this energy could only cover the surface of his body or objects in direct contact with him. Forming long-range techniques was probably impossible.

Then he could only develop techniques that acted on his own body. Although this energy's electric shock was not very powerful, it possessed other traits: sharpness, speed, and excellent cutting ability.

He was not in a hurry to develop other techniques. Werther slowly moved the energy to the very center of his body, his chest. This greatly shortened the path lightning had to travel to reach every part of his body.

Slowly controlling the lightning as it spread throughout his body and carefully regulating its intensity, Werther's entire body turned pale blue. He looked in the mirror, but his hair had not stood up like a hedgehog's.

His body did not reject this lightning. Looking at himself in the mirror, Werther suddenly thought of two people.

The Third Raikage and Fourth Raikage from Naruto.

They used lightning to stimulate the cells within their bodies and enhance cellular activity. This was absolutely a feasible method, setting aside the differences in human physical strength between the One Piece world and the Naruto world.

The Raikage used lightning generated by chakra, while he used lightning produced by his own body. The effect should be even better.

He acted as soon as he thought of it. Sitting cross-legged on the bed, he first reduced the lightning's intensity and felt for changes in his body.

After slowly adjusting and sensing it, Werther soon felt that the fatigue from yesterday's training had eased somewhat, and his body was more vigorous.

The sky outside gradually brightened, and Werther opened his eyes.

"Sure enough, it won't be so easy to develop a method of using lightning to stimulate the cells inside my body."

Although he had not achieved his desired result—that was, improved physical strength, power, and speed—

it was still useful. The fatigue from yesterday's training had been completely swept away, and his body had become much lighter. Running lightning through his body no longer caused stabbing pain.

Most importantly, this newly developed state could be improved.

The lightning intensity Werther used to stimulate his body was now nearly at its weakest. Raising the intensity would improve the effect, but his body could not withstand it yet. Only after his body had adapted to the current intensity could he gradually increase it. It would take a great deal of time, but time was the one thing nine-year-old Werther lacked least.

Moreover, this state could be maintained continuously. Werther gave it an incredibly lame name: the Trace Lightning Stimulation Method for Enhancing Cellular Activity, or simply the Lightning Stimulation Method.

Using lightning consumed stamina, and there were two kinds of lightning consumption.

The first was running lightning within his body, which consumed very little stamina. His natural recovery could completely keep up with it.

The second was running lightning both inside his body and across its surface, which consumed a great deal. He could maintain it for roughly two to eight hours; the greater the intensity, the shorter the duration.

Werther was very pleased to have developed the Lightning Stimulation Method. It could restore fatigue, meaning he could at least increase his training intensity in the future and grow stronger faster.

Werther had no ambitions of becoming the Pirate King, ruling the world, or overthrowing the World Government.

But growing stronger, traveling everywhere, and fighting powerful people whom he could once only see on a screen—just thinking about it made him happy. Perhaps even Werther himself did not know that there was a battle-loving heart inside him.

Placing a hand over his chest and feeling the lightning energy within him, Werther once again displayed his utterly terrible naming sense.

"Mm, I'll call it the Thunder Core. For short, the Lightning Core."

He raised his head and looked outside. It was fully bright now.