Vic dodged the dragon's claws and darted out of the battle. He looked back at the tree, where a leaf fluttered down, and heard the sound of something falling into the water. He was certain now: he really had awakened Observation Haki. Next, he would strike while the iron was hot and use the dragon to consolidate it.
Vic focused all his attention on the dragon. Furious that Vic had dodged its attack, the dragon swung its claws, snapped its teeth, spat fireballs, swept its wings, and lashed its tail. Its attacks came one after another. Vic leaped and darted in every direction, giving up on attacking entirely and focusing only on dodging.
Vic could move faster than the dragon and could leave the battle whenever he wanted. But up close, the dragon's limbs moved much faster than he did. With Observation Haki predicting its attacks, however, he could dodge in advance, and the dragon couldn't hurt him. His body was strong, and his injuries were slowly healing as well.
An hour later, Vic finally mastered the basic use of Observation Haki. A few times while dodging, however, his Observation Haki had failed to respond, and he hadn't avoided the dragon's attacks. A large patch of his clothes had been burned away, and he had taken a tail strike to the back.
Once he had grown proficient with Observation Haki, Vic didn't keep fighting him. He darted into the cabin and threw all the striped donkey-beast meat in front of the dragon. Afraid it would come inside after finishing the meat, Vic even poured out the oil he had fried it in. Only when the smell of meat was gone from the cabin did he stop. He left at once to find food. The dragon had eaten all the striped donkey-beast meat, and he was hungry too. Besides, he was injured and needed food to replenish his strength and speed his recovery.
Vic picked a powerful beast whose meat wasn't all that tasty and dealt with it, then went to the outer forest and roasted it there. He believed the dragon would look down on its meat and wouldn't come looking for him. After eating and drinking his fill, he sat casually on the ground and contemplated Observation Haki.
After contemplating it for a long time, he finally understood the nature of Observation Haki: it really was waves. Everything in the world emitted waves, and the essence of Observation Haki was using a powerful will to control one's own waves and bring them into contact with the waves emitted by everything in the world.
Of course, how much of everything in the world one could sense depended on the strength of one's Observation Haki. Take presence sensing, for example: when Rayleigh was teaching King Luffy, he knew as soon as they landed how many beasts on the island King Luffy couldn't handle. Rayleigh had covered the entire island with his own waves, contacted the waves emitted by every object on it, and received a three-dimensional map in his mind.
If someone had weak control over Observation Haki and had never seen the actual appearance of that kind of animal, the map could only show a ball of light, because their waves couldn't sense the animal's precise size and shape from the waves it emitted. That was merely the principle behind using Observation Haki to sense presences.
Predicting attacks was another application. One used will-controlled waves to sense an opponent's brainwaves. Since most of the body's actions were directed by the brain, the brain emitted waves whenever it issued a command. When the will-controlled waves sensed an opponent's brainwaves, the brain immediately processed the information in those waves and converted it into moving images-in other words, the attacks that would follow. (There was some evidence for this in the original work. When King Luffy fought Enel on Sky Island, he emptied his mind and relied entirely on instinct to dodge attacks in order to avoid Enel's Mantra prediction. Enel really couldn't hit King Luffy, because his brain wasn't directing his body; he was relying only on instinct, so Enel's Observation Haki didn't work. Also, King Luffy couldn't hit Enel because Enel's Observation Haki predicted the paths of his fists. But when King Luffy turned his back on Enel and attacked the golden wall directly, relying on the random rebounds to attack, it worked. That was because King Luffy wasn't using his brain to control his fists; he was simply attacking the wall wildly and relying on the rebounding fists to strike.) After understanding the nature of Observation Haki, Vic was a little dumbfounded. Here was another abstract concept-will.
Vic almost wanted to curse. The advanced realms of swordsmanship required conviction, and now the advanced realms of physical techniques required a strong will. If he ate a Devil Fruit later, would he have to deal with something even more arcane? Vic felt a little weary. He guessed that Armament Haki and Conqueror's Haki were also related to will, just applied in different ways. He would have to learn more before he could understand that.
Vic could only sigh. "Being uneducated is terrifying. It's all so mystical. It's really unfriendly to a transmigrator like me. It's hard to understand, all right? I've got more suffering ahead of me. It's like a reading comprehension test. Am I translating Taoist scriptures or Buddhist scriptures here?"
With that thought, Vic let it go. He would deal with it when he encountered it later. He had eaten his fill and needed to go back and recover from his injuries. He didn't know whether the big lizard had left, or how the cabin was doing. It hadn't been trampled to pieces, had it?
When he returned to his territory, the cabin was just as it had been. The dragon hadn't wrecked anything. Vic dealt with the bone wall he had knocked down and the big pit, then went inside and slept soundly to recover.
Vic recuperated for two days. Aside from going out to bring back some ingredients, he spent the time practicing Observation Haki. Now that he understood the nature of Haki, he could take the main road in his training and improvement. He believed he would progress quickly.
Once his injuries had healed, Vic wasn't in a hurry to leave the island. Although he had accomplished all the goals he had set, he now had a new one—the Mystery Fruit. He wanted to see if he could snatch one to eat.
While waiting for the night of the full moon, Vic replaced sleep with meditation. During the day, he would go and fight the Western dragon, honing the sword moves he had worked out through meditation while also training his Observation Haki. He didn't just fight all-rounders like the big lizard, either. He used giant beasts that specialized in defense to hone his blade, those that specialized in speed to train his Observation Haki, and those that specialized in flight to build up his Geppo.
Vic's strength kept improving. The door had already been opened, and all he needed to do now was advance steadily. There were no bottlenecks before the next realm.
The Western dragon was starting to regret eating his two donkeys. It was almost annoyed to death. He came every day, every single day! It wasn't some great beauty, so did he have to come so often? A month, a whole month! Even women got a few days' rest when their period came, but what about it? Not a single day off all month! If the island had a court, it would sue him.
Ignoring the increasingly violent look on the big lizard's face, Vic felt his luck was a little bad. Perhaps learning Cutting Steel and Observation Haki had used up all his luck on this island. On the day of the full moon a month later, a storm raged the whole time. The moon never showed itself, and the giant tree didn't appear either. This made Vic even more certain of his guess: the giant tree's appearance was connected to the full moon.
Vic didn't want to wait another month. The Mystery Fruit was here and couldn't run away, and he had made an Eternal Pose, so he could come back whenever he wanted. Besides, Vic's natural physical talent was no weaker than the Mystery Fruit's, so it wasn't something he absolutely had to eat. He could come back if he needed it. By then, he would be stronger and better able to compete for it. For now, he needed to hurry back and wring everything he could out of Koshiro. He also had to learn how to forge swords.
For the next few days, Vic continued training and fighting, but he was selective about what he hunted afterward. He prepared portions of the tasty meat that contained a lot of Primal Spirit, intending to take them back for Rebecca and Kuina to try.
A week later, Vic was finally ready to leave. Using a huge beast hide he had skinned off in one piece, he made an oversized backpack and packed all the meat he had prepared inside. Then he erased the traces of his life here.
He threw all the bones into the sea to feed the fish. He also threw the cabin onto the water, poured beast oil over it, and burned it. There were still some traces on the cliff, but in time, vegetation would cover them.
After checking that he hadn't missed anything, Vic used Geppo to leave the mysterious island.