The Rejected Cipher Pol Trainee / Sucking Up? No, Sucking the Ship!

Colonel Ed's deep voice came through the transponder snail:

"Joker, I want to buy a Devil Fruit!"

Chapter 6: The Rejected Cipher Pol Trainee

After completing the paperwork at the harbor office and paying a fee, Dimon finally made it into town.

Port entry tax, dock usage tax, supply service tax, lighthouse tax... all the assorted taxes added up to more than 300,000 Beli.

When he used to watch One Piece, he had never seen the Straw Hat Pirates pay any taxes. He hadn't expected to run into them today. No wonder there had been "helpful local residents" waiting as soon as he disembarked—they were harbor office employees.

"How strong was that Marine colonel just now?"

Mammon followed close behind Dimon and answered without hesitation:

"He was no match for me. If he didn't have some kind of ability, I could easily deal with a thousand of him."

Dimon had no frame of reference, so he found it difficult to judge just how strong Mammon was.

It went without saying that Mammon was stronger than Colonel Ed. After all, Mammon was a Mythical Zoan Devil Fruit that had gained sentience.

Perhaps Mammon could even go toe-to-toe with a Marine Admiral...

"Can you continue growing stronger through training?"

"Training?"

Mammon recalled the training his master had done over the past few days and shook his head slightly. "Training means nothing to me. I can grow stronger by drinking blood."

Dimon understood. "We expect to stay here for a month. During that time, you can look for suitable targets on your own, but don't drain anyone to death or cause a commotion."

"Yes."

"Let's go. We'll gather some information first."

Dimon then took a brief look around Farn Town, and after asking a few passersby, he found a house available for rent.

The house stood beside a sea cliff outside town. From the living room window, one could gaze out at the distant coast.

The owner was a one-legged man named Cedric. He looked a little unkempt and appeared to be in his forties.

At that moment, in the living room.

Cedric poured the two of them each a glass of amber liquor and said in a flat tone:

"No one usually lives in this house. If you want to rent it, it's 100,000 Beli a month, for at least a year."

Dimon wasn't going to stay here for a year. He just needed a quiet place to lie low for a while and grow stronger with the help of the longevity wine.

Still, even a year's rent was only 1.2 million, and he couldn't be bothered to haggle over it.

"That's fine. But I have a question, if you don't mind?"

"What do you want to ask?"

Cedric stood motionless beside the sofa, a wooden crutch tucked under his left arm.

Dimon's gaze moved down from the man's face and settled on his empty trouser leg.

"How did you lose your left leg?"

"What does that have to do with renting the house?"

Cedric frowned. He glanced at Mammon, who stood faithfully behind Dimon, and was silent for a moment before answering:

"When I was a child, I took part in some special training. I failed, and someone cut it off."

"What kind of special training was that dangerous?"

"Heh... you really want to know?"

Cedric smiled self-mockingly. "I'm an orphan. I grew up in a World Government orphanage. Maybe I showed a talent that set me apart from other children, because I was chosen to join a training program."

The World Government, an orphan, a training program?

Dimon's thoughts wandered back to what he remembered from watching One Piece, and he gradually formed a guess.

"The World Government's intelligence agency, Cipher Pol. They were training you to be an agent?"

Cedric's pupils contracted slightly, and he blurted out:

"How do you know!? That's a World Government secret! Who are you?"

As he spoke, he reacted on instinct, turning to flee.

Dimon gave Mammon a look, and Mammon darted forward and grabbed Cedric's shoulder.

"Damn it! You're with the government!?" Cedric cursed. "I hid all the way out here, and you still found me!"

"Calm down. I'm not with the World Government. Judging by your reaction, is the World Government hunting you down?" Dimon looked surprised.

"..."

Cedric stared fixedly at him, gradually calming himself.

He doesn't seem to be a government agent. Otherwise, he wouldn't waste his breath—he'd have killed me right away.

"...You guessed right. The World Government has been hunting me down all this time."

"Since you know Cipher Pol exists, you should also know that failures like me eventually disappear from this world without a sound, to make sure certain secrets don't get out.

"But I was lucky. The person they sent to kill me back then only cut off one of my legs. He didn't expect me to survive!"

That had been more than twenty years ago, when Gol D. Roger was not yet the Pirate King.

After that, he had spent his life on the run from World Government assassins, until he came to this island and went into hiding ten years ago.

After hearing his story, Dimon couldn't help thinking how lucky the man was to be alive.

"Let him go, Mammon."

Mammon silently released Cedric, stepped back twice, and returned to his place behind Dimon.

"Are you done with your questions? Can I leave now?"

Cedric spoke in a low voice. He had realized that the bodyguard called Mammon was not to be trifled with. Mammon was stronger than several Cipher Pol members he had met who had passed the assessment.

"Don't rush. Why were you rejected back then?"

"..."

"Is that hard to answer?"

"No... never mind. The reason is simple." Cedric sighed. "Only those who completely master the Six Powers can graduate and join Cipher Pol. Back then, I only learned four of them."

After a pause, he added, "As for what the Six Powers are..."

"I know." Dimon raised a hand.

Even if he only learned four, surely that wasn't enough reason to kill him outright?

Wasn't that a waste of talent?

As One Piece went through "version updates," the Six Powers users who had once made such an impression had become minor characters.

But that was only true in the New World. In the first half of the Grand Line, even someone who knew only four of the techniques would be an expert.

Before the protagonist Luffy developed Gear Second and Gear Third, he had barely been able to fight back against the superhumans who used the Six Powers.

So... this man wasn't telling the truth. There was probably a secret behind it, but it didn't matter. Dimon wasn't that interested.

Without exposing Cedric's lie, Dimon thought for a moment and made a proposal:

"You seem to be short of money. Besides renting the house, I'd like to hire you for a while to teach me the Six Powers."

"You want to learn the Six Powers? Hmph, I have to warn you, this isn't training that an ordinary person can endure!"

"It won't take long. Just one month."

"It's not a question of time..."

"Ten million." Dimon calmly held up one finger.

"Deal!"

Chapter 7: Sucking Up? No, Sucking the Ship!

The Six Powers were six combat techniques that surpassed the limits of the human body.

Soru: A technique for moving at high speed by kicking off the ground dozens of times in an instant.

Rankyaku: A leg technique that sent a vacuum slash at an opponent with a kick.

Tekkai: A defensive technique that made the body as hard as iron.

Geppo: A technique that allowed one to walk through the air as though climbing stairs.

Shigan: A technique that gave the fingers the power of bullets.

Kami-e: A technique that allowed one to control the body freely and easily, making it as light and thin as paper.

None of the six techniques were ones an ordinary person could learn.

Dimon was no ordinary person!

To be precise, having crossed over in his own body, he had genuine Earthling genes. He couldn't possibly have learned techniques like these.

However, the longevity wine had changed his physique.

In fact, learning the Six Powers was not all that difficult. The techniques themselves were not hard to learn. Back then, Luffy had quickly mastered Soru, one of the Six Powers, after seeing it only a few times.

The real difficulty lay in the prerequisite: the practitioner needed a superhuman physique!

Without a powerful body, mastering the techniques was meaningless.

In the blink of an eye, a month passed.

On the sea cliff, the two men finished a day of training.

Cedric looked at Dimon with a complicated expression. Dimon's bare upper body was packed with strong muscles, making him look like a completely different person from a month ago.

"If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I'd find it hard to believe someone could master three of the Six Powers in just one month."

"Well, now you've seen it."

Dimon wiped off his sweat with a towel and smiled at that.

Soru, Geppo, Rankyaku.

His goal had been clear from the start. Those three techniques had the highest priority, were the most practical, and all relied on the legs.

As for the other three, he already knew their secrets; he just needed a little more practice. It wouldn't be long before he mastered them too.

Cedric had held nothing back in his teaching and had earned his pay. Dimon was very satisfied with that.

"I remember that people in Cipher Pol like to use 'Doriki' to rate a person's fighting ability. Roughly how much Doriki do I have now?"

Doriki referred to a person's basic physical combat ability. Devil Fruits and the like were not included.

A qualified Marine soldier armed with a gun had a Doriki Value of 10.

"With a kick from you now... at least 2,000 Doriki!"

"2,000?"

Dimon raised his eyebrows.

There was a man in CP9 named Blueno, a Door-Door Fruit user whose Doriki was over 800. Another man, the long-nosed Kaku, had a little over 2,000.

So was his current fighting ability roughly equal to Kaku's?

"It's about time. Let's stop training here for now. You don't need to come anymore. But speaking of which, why do you need money? You don't seem like the sort of person who loves money all that much."

"There are a lot of orphans in town. Their fathers were either killed by pirates or went missing. I need money to support those children."

Cedric's expression was perfectly calm, as though he were talking about something insignificant.

"I see... What about their mothers?"

"Would they be orphans if they had mothers?"

Cedric asked in return.