One Piece: Starting as a Celestial Dragon, Building Amazon Lily

Stussy turned back and asked curiously, "You know him?"

"No." Saint Dio shook his head and said evenly, "I've just heard a few things about him."

He said nothing more, nor did he have any intention of getting out of the carriage to approach him.

Saint Dio's attitude toward Kozuki Oden was simple: there was no need to have anything to do with him. Despite possessing the strength of one of the Four Emperors, enough to face Kaido head-on, and despite enjoying unshakable popular support in Wano Country, he had chosen to trust a despicable agreement with his enemies and voluntarily abandoned resistance, handing Kurozumi Orochi and Kaido five years to consolidate their power and eat away at Wano Country.

Had he launched a counterattack as soon as he returned to Wano Country, his reputation and strength within the country would have been more than enough to drag Kurozumi Orochi from the shogun's seat and drive Kaido's forces out of Wano Country.

The very fact that Kaido and Kurozumi Orochi had resorted to such a vile scheme to buy time showed that they feared Kozuki Oden's strength and dared not face him head-on.

Unfortunately, Kozuki Oden had chosen to believe his enemies' promises, squandering five precious years and exhausting every last bit of the popular support and prestige he had built up.

By the time he finally came to his senses, it had all been too late.

Saint Dio was no stranger to this sort of ploy.

Crocodile in Alabasta and Doflamingo in Dressrosa had both used similar methods, undermining the royal families' prestige through schemes and gradually eating away at the foundations of those countries.

The difference was that the royal families of Alabasta and Dressrosa truly lacked the strength to resist the Shichibukai. Kozuki Oden was different. He had possessed the strength, the people's support, and the ability to turn things around, yet had thrown it all away with his own hands.

Foolish.

Saint Dio delivered his final verdict inwardly, then stopped thinking about him.

Chapter 73: The Thrill of Battle

Saint Dio had never intended to find a dojo and dutifully become an apprentice to learn Ryuo from scratch, as Hancock and the others had. He had begun training in Haki as a child, and his foundations were already exceptionally solid.

More importantly, given his status and pride, he could not bring himself to bow to a samurai of Wano Country and formally become his disciple.

In his view, truly strong people were never made through someone else's step-by-step instruction.

The strong found their own way through actual combat and gained understanding on the edge of life and death.

Ultimately, Ryuo was merely an advanced application of Armament Haki. Given enough opportunities to fight, he could absolutely master its secrets himself through combat.

And the Flower Capital happened to have no shortage of such opportunities.

After nightfall, the Flower Capital was even livelier than during the day.

Lanterns lit up one after another along both sides of the streets, their warm red light joining together to shroud the entire city in a hazy, suggestive glow.

From behind the curtains of taverns and teahouses came the music of shamisen and the lilting songs of geisha, mingling with men's laughter and the crisp clinking of cups.

On the streets outside the pleasure quarters, heavily made-up courtesans waved round fans and walked gracefully through the crowds on tall wooden clogs. Young attendants and house stewards followed behind with lanterns, drawing countless men's infatuated gazes.

And the samurai with swords hanging at their waists were the most frequent visitors amid this nightscape.

In groups of three or five, they moved between taverns and pleasure houses, their faces flushed with drink and each voice louder than the next. They discussed swordsmanship, women, and their respective dojos. Occasionally, a few heated words would lead them to draw their blades in the street, scattering sparks and blood beneath the lanterns.

The Flower Capital's nights belonged to drink, women, and swords.

And those samurai were precisely Saint Dio's targets.

He did not need to become a disciple at a dojo, nor did he need to humbly ask for guidance.

All he needed was a provocative remark or two, or a contemptuous glance, as those samurai staggered drunkenly out of the taverns, and they would draw their blades on him.

And as their blades clashed, he could experience firsthand how Ryuo worked and feel what it was like to coat a weapon with Haki that flowed like water.

Tonight, he had already picked his first target.

The night breeze swept through the Flower Capital's alleys, and lantern light and shadows swayed over the stone pavement.

A samurai staggered out of a tavern, a drunken flush still coloring his face.

The geisha seeing him off at the entrance half-covered her face with a round fan and giggled as she bade him farewell. He reached out and frivolously pinched her chin, drawing a soft cry of feigned reproach. Only then did he turn away contentedly and stumble into a secluded alley.

He took a few steps with one hand against the wall, seemingly intending to find a quiet corner to relieve himself.

Yet just as a gust of night wind swept through the alley entrance and stirred the hem of his clothes, he suddenly stopped.

He slowly straightened, most of the drunkenness vanishing from his eyes in an instant.

His hand silently settled on the sword hilt at his waist. Without turning his head, he demanded in a low, wary voice, "Who's there? Come out."

A tall, slender figure emerged unhurriedly from the alley's shadows.

Moonlight illuminated a young face bearing a faintly playful smile, his short white hair particularly conspicuous in the darkness.

"Pretty sharp," Saint Dio said approvingly.

The samurai turned around and narrowed his eyes as he examined the white-haired youth before him.

His gaze lingered briefly on the long sword of antique design at Saint Dio's waist, then his lips spread into a cold sneer. "Judging by your getup, you're not from the Flower Capital. What do you want, sneaking after me?"

He did not wait for Saint Dio to answer. He drew his sword outright, its blade flashing coldly in the moonlight. Stepping forward, he brought it slashing diagonally down with a sharp rush of wind. "Take this!"

Saint Dio did not dodge. Instead, he raised his right arm, jet-black Armament Haki instantly coating his forearm and the back of his hand as he met the blade head-on.

Clang!

The crisp ring of colliding metal echoed through the narrow alley.

The blade struck his Armament Haki-coated arm, scattering a shower of sparks.

Saint Dio stopped the strike firmly without moving an inch.

Yet the instant the blade struck his arm, he felt a strange force penetrate his Haki defense. Like an invisible ripple, it passed through his arm and reached his bones.

Although the force was not particularly strong, the sensation of being struck despite having a layer of protection stirred something within him.

Was this Ryuo?

Coating a weapon with Haki like flowing ripples of water, then sending the force into the target on impact to strike through a barrier.

It really was an entirely different application from ordinary Armament Haki Hardening.

A flicker of surprise crossed the samurai's eyes when his strike was blocked barehanded.

But he was, after all, a top enforcer who had spent years fighting his way through the Flower Capital's underworld. He reacted swiftly, twisting his wrist to withdraw his blade, and his second strike followed immediately, slashing straight for Saint Dio's throat.

Saint Dio stopped defending passively. He surged forward and drove a fist straight at his opponent's center.

The samurai pulled his sword back into a horizontal guard. The blade caught the fist with a dull impact, forcing him half a step backward, his wooden clogs scraping harshly against the stone pavement.

But he quickly steadied himself and swept his sword upward in a backhand strike, the blade rising straight toward Saint Dio's chin.

Saint Dio twisted aside and swept out a whipping kick toward the side of his opponent's knee. The samurai raised his leg to block. In the narrow alley, the two traded rapid blows, flashes of steel and flying fists weaving together ever faster and more densely.

Their feet barely shifted, but the collisions of blade and fist rang out without pause like a driving storm.

Sword cuts and fist marks continued to appear on the walls on either side of the alley as they fought.

Those were the traces left by the blade's passing force and the shock waves of the punches.

Loose stone and dust pattered down, drifting through the dim yellow lantern light.

Saint Dio's grin grew wider and wider, nearly reaching his ears.

A feverish light burned in his eyes. It was excitement, pure excitement from the bottom of his heart.

Fighting felt so damn good.

He had a clear understanding of himself.

Although he had recently fought the Pirate King's right-hand man, "Dark King" Rayleigh, and had even gained the upper hand, he knew perfectly well just how hollow that victory had been.

More than ninety percent of the credit for his ability to suppress Rayleigh belonged to Jörmungandr.

The Snake-Snake Fruit, World Serpent Form was on the same level as Mythical Zoans such as the Fish-Fish Fruit, Azure Dragon Form and the Dragon-Dragon Fruit, Nidhogg Form.

Only with it did he have the confidence to challenge the strongest.

Without Jörmungandr, relying on his own strength alone, he probably would not have lasted even a single exchange against an opponent of Rayleigh's caliber before being killed outright.

It was true that he had consciously trained himself since childhood.

But even counting every year, he was only fourteen now.

And his opportunities for genuine combat had been pitifully few.

During his years in Mary Geoise, the only opponents available to him had been slaves.

Chapter 74: One Breakthrough After Another

And how many of those captured and sold into slavery had truly been strong?

People with genuine strength and spirit had either died resisting or would never have fallen so far as to be sold in the first place.

Those captured as slaves, even members of the Giant Tribe, were mostly the cowards and weaklings of their people. Those without spirit could not endure the hardships of training and naturally could not become strong.

Sparring with such opponents every day had amounted to little more than warming up, hardly qualifying as effective combat training.

As for the Holy Knights, that was certainly somewhere he could hone his strength.

But Saint Dio had always deliberately kept his distance from them. He worried that if he kept showing up around the Holy Knights, sooner or later he would be pressed into service and dragged into those troublesome missions.

Thus, over all these years, his combat experience had consisted almost entirely of fighting opponents weaker than himself.

And most of the truly powerful were in the New World. Finding them was like searching for a needle in a haystack.

That was also why he had been so excited when he encountered Rayleigh in the Sabaody Archipelago.

It had been his first encounter with an opponent against whom he could truly go all out.

And now, Wano Country was full of powerful samurai.

Unlike Mary Geoise, it did not offer only weak slaves for his amusement, nor did it require him to wander aimlessly across the sea in search of opponents as the New World did.

Here, whenever he wished, he could find different opponents in different alleys every night: drunken samurai, arrogant ronin, top underworld enforcers... These people might not compare to someone of Rayleigh's caliber, but every one of them was ten or a hundred times stronger than the slaves of Mary Geoise.

To Saint Dio, this place was nothing short of paradise.

He could finally fight to his heart's content.

The samurai before him grew more alarmed with every exchange.

The white-haired youth's fighting style was becoming increasingly unrestrained, even downright insane.

He clearly had countless opportunities to strike the samurai's body directly, yet every time, he passed up those openings and smashed his fists against the blade instead, as though he had come not to fight, but to take a beating.

The feverish light blazing in those eyes sent a chill down even the spine of a seasoned veteran like this samurai, who was accustomed to living on a knife's edge.

Saint Dio was indeed enjoying the process.

Every time blade and fist collided, the shock transmitted through his Armament Haki deepened his understanding of Ryuo.

The more it hurt, the more excited he became; the more excited he became, the fiercer his attacks grew.

He carefully observed the way his opponent's Haki flowed. Just before the blade struck, the samurai's Haki would swiftly gather along its edge as though alive, releasing that penetrating force at the instant of contact.

That flowing sensation was like water running through a channel, natural and smooth.

Saint Dio began trying to imitate it.

He concentrated, attempting to mobilize the Haki within his body and make it flow through him like water.

Then he tried drawing away the unnecessary Haki coating the rest of his body and gathering it in his fist-the first time, the Haki fell apart as it reached his shoulder, like trying to scoop up shifting sand in his hands; the second time, it successfully gathered in his fist, but he lost control the instant he punched, making it burst prematurely and greatly reducing its power; the third time, the fourth... Several consecutive attempts all ended in failure.

After all, making Armament Haki flow freely through the body like water was an extremely abstract undertaking, not something one could immediately master just by watching a few times.

But Saint Dio did not lose heart.

Through failure after failure, he gradually began to get the hang of it.

It felt like trying to make a warm current travel along a particular path within his body. It needed to be guided by thought rather than driven by brute force.

They clashed once more.

Gripping his sword with both hands, the samurai brought it down with all his strength, the blade whistling through the air straight toward the crown of Saint Dio's head.

Saint Dio did not dodge. Instead, he gathered all his Haki into his right fist and drove a punch toward the descending blade.

Clang-crack!

This time, the blade did not rebound. The instant fist and edge collided, a penetrating force spread up the blade. The sword gave a groan under the unbearable strain, then snapped in the middle. Half the blade spun away and landed on the distant stone pavement with a clatter.

The samurai stared blankly at the broken sword in his hand, momentarily at a loss.

He raised his head to look at the white-haired youth before him and opened his mouth, seemingly about to say something. But what greeted him was a fist rapidly growing larger in his vision.

Thud.