Everyone's progress

After touring the Wanderer a little longer with Master Yor as their guide, Lind and the others decided to return to their base.

They left the remaining work to Master Yor. All they had to do was come back in twenty days to collect the ship.

By the time they returned to the base, it was nearly dinnertime.

Lind sent the others off to train at the training grounds, then went over to the cooks alone.

None of the cooks were professionals. They had simply been responsible for cooking aboard their old ships, which counted as work experience, so Allison and the others had assigned them to kitchen duty.

Lind frowned slightly as he watched them scrambling around the kitchen.

He felt that giving these fellows the kitchen he had painstakingly designed, along with all the cookware and seasonings he had prepared, was an utter waste!

"Ahem!" Lind cleared his throat, hoping to catch the attention of the men locked in battle with their ingredients.

"Boss!"

"Boss!"

Noticing Lind's arrival, they hurried to greet him.

"For the next little while, I'll be teaching you some basic cooking skills. You'd better pay attention and learn properly. Don't embarrass me!"

Lind picked up a kitchen knife and continued, "First, knife skills. We'll start with how to prepare Sea King meat."

"Hand, pass me that piece of meat in front of you. I'll demonstrate!"

"When preparing Sea King meat, you need to..."

Before long, Lind had walked them through knife skills, heat control, seasoning, and basic cooking methods such as pan-frying, stir-frying, stewing, boiling, and roasting.

"That's all for today. Each of you will handle one dish so you can put it into practice," Lind said to the dumbstruck cooks as he set down the pan.

"Don't worry. I'll be right here to guide you!" Seeing that they still hadn't recovered, Lind offered a few words of reassurance.

"All right, get started!"

Only then did they snap out of their daze. Racking their brains to recall the cooking techniques Lind had just explained, they began preparing the Sea King meat according to his instructions.

Lind had already expected this response, so he stayed in the kitchen and guided them through the cooking step by step.

Fortunately, while their cooking skills were mediocre, they weren't complete beginners, which made teaching them fairly easy.

Cooking for over a hundred people was no small workload, especially when every one of them ate far more than the people in his previous life.

Even though the cooks were all in excellent physical condition and could handle several pots at once, preparing dinner still took quite a while.

Fortunately, the kitchen Lind had designed was spacious enough. Otherwise, they wouldn't have had room to work, and it would have taken even longer.

Including the time Lind had spent teaching them earlier, it took nearly two hours in total before that evening's dinner was finally ready.

As for the taste, while it could hardly be called a culinary masterpiece, it had more or less reached the standard of the big-batch meals from Lind's previous life.

Compared with their previous ability to do little more than cook food through, it was a tremendous improvement.

After tasting everyone's dishes, Lind felt that in a few more days, they would be fully qualified to serve as the Seventh Division's cooks.

As for finding a successor to "Lin Family Cuisine," Lind could only say there was a long road ahead. That would depend on talent and fate.

All Lind required of them was to handle the crew's meals, much like the kitchen staff at a cafeteria in his previous life.

In the dining hall, everyone looked pleasantly surprised by the dishes, which were completely different from yesterday's. They were clearly very satisfied with that day's food.

Several pirates even kept shouting, "Long live the boss!" and "The boss is the best!" Their sense of belonging to the crew kept growing.

Lind felt that he had merely done what a boss ought to do.

But to pirates who lived on a knife's edge, a boss who looked after his subordinates the way Lind did was a rare find indeed.

He provided everyone with good living conditions and well-equipped training facilities, and patiently guided each of them toward becoming stronger.

Now, because the food hadn't tasted good, he had even stepped into the kitchen himself to teach the cooks.

On top of that, he was powerful and treated people kindly. Although he didn't quite fit the image of a pirate, he was unquestionably the perfect boss.

Watching the pirates in the dining hall declare their loyalty to him one after another, Lind felt very happy as well.

He silently decided that, as long as the people here didn't betray him or do anything else unforgivable...

He would make sure to develop their abilities, rather than use them up as cannon fodder.

Twenty days passed in a flash.

Over those twenty days, every member of the Seventh Division made tremendous progress.

First were the five officers. Thanks to their steady supply of Dragon Bananas, each of them had taken their physical abilities to the next level.

Their combat skills had also improved considerably under Lind's guidance. He estimated that each of them now had overall strength on par with an ordinary Marine Vice Admiral.

Once they set sail and went through a few major battles, they might well reach the level of an Elite Vice Admiral.

Next were the rank-and-file pirates. Over those twenty days, aside from correcting shortcomings in their existing training methods and combat skills, Lind had also...

most importantly, he taught them the Six Powers, focusing heavily on Soru and Geppo, which everyone had now mastered, while also learning the other four techniques to varying degrees.

With constantly refined training methods and an unlimited supply of Sea King meat, everyone's physical abilities had also improved dramatically.

Although they couldn't compare to the five officers who had been eating Dragon Bananas all along, their progress was still astonishing.

The ninety-two rank-and-file pirates had now all reached the strength of field-grade officers at Marine Headquarters.

With every one of them wielding two types of Haki, possessing powerful physiques, and knowing a few of the Six Powers, they were unquestionably one of the strongest fighting forces in the world.

Last were the cooks. Under Lind's attentive guidance, all of them had successfully completed their training five days earlier.

They had essentially reached the standard of a first-rate cafeteria kitchen staff, and Lind could now entrust the crew's three daily meals to them without worry.

As for Lind himself, at his current level, it was already difficult to make rapid progress unless he grasped advanced techniques for the three types of Haki, or mastered Iron-Cutting and Flying Slash in his swordsmanship.

All of those required time to build a foundation, or the stimulus of intense battles. Lind had only been in this world for a little over two years, and had spent even less time training systematically. Reaching his current strength was already quite an achievement.

Lind wasn't in a hurry. There were still a few years before the battle at God Valley, and he believed he would definitely possess Admiral-level strength by then.

Once the Rocks Pirates disbanded, he would become a new legendary pirate.

On the training grounds, Lind looked at the core group he had begun to build, and for a moment, he found it hard to calm his emotions.

He had been in this world for almost three years, and now he finally had a foundation of his own and the strength to protect himself.

Together with his connections, that was enough for him to scrape by in this dangerous world.

The only remaining uncertainty was the final catastrophe. In his previous life, One Piece had never finished.

Although everyone had speculated that the ending would involve rising sea levels flooding the world, Lind couldn't be certain that was really what would happen.

Even if it was, how far would the sea rise? Would he be able to survive it?

All Lind could do now was stay alert to the danger and keep growing stronger. It was best not to pin his hopes on Nika. If he could clear the game early, he would!