Chapter 8: Cultivation in One Piece
A few days passed, and the Going Merry was currently sailing toward the entrance of the Grand Line, which, apparently, was a mountain.
On the ship's deck, Usopp was tinkering with his balls... his slingshot's balls he uses as ammunition. He was currently in the process of filling them with Tabasco.
At the same time, Luffy was sitting in his favorite spot, the figurehead of the Going Merry, enjoying the wind, while Zoro was sitting cross-legged on the ground, napping.
Finally, Nami and Sanji were below deck, and Yuna was sitting cross-legged on the ground, with her back resting against the ship's mast.
After carefully looking around, a smirk appeared on Yuna's face as she secretly took a large conch out of her pocket and pressed its tip.
"Usopp is an idiot."
Hearing Luffy calling him an idiot, Usopp twitched, almost causing some Tabasco to spill, before he started glaring at Luffy.
"Luffy! Why did you call me an idiot out of nowhere?"
"Eh? What are you talking about, Usopp?"
Luffy, who was out of the hearing range of the Tone Dial, looked at Usopp and tilted his head in confusion.
"I'm talking about you calling me an idiot, you idiot."
"Ah! Did you just call me an idiot?"
"That's right! Iiiiidiot~"
"Stupid!"
"Bastard!"
"Long-Nose!"
"So what if my nose is long!?"
"..."
"..."
"Short-Nose."
"HOW IS THAT EVEN AN INSULT!?"
While Luffy and Usopp were yelling at each other with their foreheads pressed together and with gritted teeth, Yuna chuckled in amusement as she stealthily stowed away the Tone Dial with the "Usopp is an idiot" line recorded on it.
'Well, that was a fun little play~'
[Do you want to cause a rift in this crew or something like that?]
'Nah, the bond between those two idiots isn't broken so easily.
""Iiidiot~ Iiidiot~""
As if they wanted to confirm Yuna's words, Luffy and Usopp were suddenly dancing around the deck, repeatedly chanting the word "idiot", to which Yuna could only smile wryly.
'See?'
[That wasn't even five seconds. How do they even reconcile so fast?]
'The power of two idiots bonding together.'
Being done with her little conversation, Yuna closed her eyes and leaned her head back, allowing it to rest against the ship's mast.
'However, I have to say, this ship is quite interesting. It's just a sliver, but there is a good chance this ship will awaken its Spiritual Consciousness soon.'
[Oh? From what I have heard, the crew got the ship only recently. Isn't that really fast.]
'Yup, it's incredibly fast. Well, it hasn't happened yet, so let's see how this works out.'
While Yuna was contemplating the situation of the ship's consciousness with closed eyes, she heard footsteps approaching her. After briefly listening to how they sounded, Yuna quickly found out who the owner of these footsteps was.
"Nami, what can I do for you? Have you finally decided to join my harem?"
Nami was startled that Yuna noticed her approaching without opening her eyes, but when Yuna yet again mentioned her harem, Nami could only roll her eyes at Yuna.
"Again, I have no interest in joining your harem, and besides that, how did you even know it was me approaching?"
"The sound of your footsteps. You are the lightest person on the ship, so as long as you aren't paying attention to it, your footsteps are the quietest."
Hearing Yuna's explanation, Nami couldn't help but be slightly surprised. Although, as a former thief, she could easily discern if someone was walking toward her or away from her through footsteps, pinpointing who it was was not something she could do.
"That's rather impressive. I didn't think something like that was even possible."
"Hehe, have my extraordinary skills finally caused you to fall for me?"
Nami rolled her eyes yet again as she continued speaking, totally ignoring what Yuna had just said.
"Anyway, you are strong, right?"
Yuna's eyebrows rose, and she opened her eyes, meeting Nami's gaze. Yuna went quiet for a brief moment before shrugging her shoulders.
"Depends on who I am facing, but generally speaking, yeah, I'm strong."
"What about someone like Sanji? Do you think you could win?"
Being asked even more questions, Yuna briefly remembered the brief glimpses she had seen of Sanji fighting. Following that, Yuna nodded her head with a confident expression on her face.
"Well, setting aside the fact that I believe Sanji is incapable of attacking women and that I have barely seen him fight, I think I should be able to win against him."
Hearing what she wanted to hear, Nami bit her lip in frustration. What happened in her home village a while ago had been quite the wake-up call for her.
Up to a certain point, Nami had always assumed that Fishman were pretty much invincible. Especially Arlong was someone she couldn't imagine winning against. However, Luffy entered her life and managed to deal with the Fishman and with Arlong.
While Nami was confident of defeating one, maybe two, Fishman, Luffy, Zoro, and Sanji simply busted into Arlong Park and started beating them left and right. Obviously, they didn't have an easy time, but in the end, they won.
While that was already quite a shock for her, she simply dismissed the situation as those three simply being even more monstrous than the Fishman.
However, suddenly, Nami's perspective changed yet again with the appearance of Yuna, who easily repelled cannonballs and even had the guts to raid a Marine Base alone and even succeeded in doing so.
Considering she spent her whole life in the East Blue, the weakest sea, Nami had a very skewed perception about a few things. In this case, the level of strength a woman could reach.
The strongest woman in the East Blue Nami was aware of was Alvida, who had a mere bounty of 5 Million Belly, elevating her slightly above being a small fry. However, not only was her bounty not that great, she looked rather monstrous as well. If Nami had to look like that in order to become stronger, then she would rather not do so.
However, that was when Yuna appeared in the equation. She clearly still had her feminine features and looked attractive, but at the same time, she possessed strength comparable to people who could easily beat up Fishman.
In conclusion, after Yuna joined their crew, Nami decided to ask her for help to get stronger as well. She was aware that sailing the Grand Line was no joke, so she wanted at least to be able to defend herself.
After Nami finished sorting through her thoughts, a determined expression appeared on her face as her eyes met Yuna's.
"Please help me get stronger."
Seeing the determination and resolve in Nami's eyes, Yuna nodded in approval, and after pondering how she wanted to answer Nami, Yuna resumed speaking.
"Very well, I'll help you. However, you do realize that you actually need to put some work in and that I don't have some kind of secret method that makes you strong without putting in any effort, right?"
The moment Yuna accepted her request, Nami's shoulders sagged in relief, but after hearing Yuna's warning, she quickly put her serious expression.
"Of course. For the sake of my dream, I don't mind going through hardships."
"Good. In that case, I'll need a drop of your blood first. Blood voluntarily given."
"B-Blood? What in the world do you plan to do with my blood?"
"Weeeeeeell~ I certainly don't plan to store it for later, to use it in an elaborate ritual to make you my blood slave, allowing me to make you do whatever I want. In this case, 'whatever I want' means sexual activities."
Seeing the wretched smile on Yuna's face, Nami almost instinctively pulled out her three-part staff and smacked Yuna with it, but she still managed to contain herself, thinking that Yuna was making another bad joke.
"There is no way that is possible, right?"
"..."
"..."
"Yes?"
"YOU ARE NOT GETTING A SINGLE DROP OF MY BLOOD!!!"
Seeing Nami's exaggerated reaction, Yuna couldn't help herself but chuckle in amusement.
"Hehe, no worries, no worries, I'm just messing with you, Nami."
"Unsurprisingly, I don't believe you!"
Yuna, while chuckling lightly, raised her hands in defeat before she resumed talking.
"I really was just messing with you. I don't need your blood at all. Just sit down in front of me and allow the tension to leave your muscles as you relax your mind.
Although Nami was still on guard due to Yuna's previous words, this time, what she wanted her to do at least didn't seem to be too suspicious. Additionally, she also noticed that over the course of their conversation, the rest of the crew got interested in the duo's conversation. Obviously, every single one of them had at least some interest in getting stronger to beat the storms that were inevitably to come.
So, with the reassurance that the rest of the crew was watching, Nami did as Yuna wanted her to, and as soon as she sat down in front of Yuna, she felt a palm touching the place between her shoulders, which didn't bother her.
"While I do this, try to get a feel for the energy I send into you, and, if possible, try to detect the place slightly above your belly button it is attracted to."
Nami didn't answer Yuna but did just as she said. Frankly, whatever Yuna was trying to do, Nami felt that it was a rather weird matter, but considering she had seen that there was no doubt about Yuna's strength, she decided to trust her for now.
However, what Nami didn't know was that Yuna's current strength actually had very little to do with the method she was showing to Nami. After all, she was currently teaching her the first step toward cultivation, but considering Yuna only arrived here a while ago, she hadn't much of that either.
Luckily, the little energy she managed to accumulate since she arrived in this world was enough to guide someone through the first steps of cultivation.
Unfortunately, unlike Yuna's previous two worlds, cultivating in this one was rather weird, as the Spiritual or Natural Energy, or whatever one wanted to call it, acted rather unusual here.
During her first and second life, this energy was usually emitted by nature itself, resulting in places with higher grades of natural influences creating corresponding amounts of energy; however, this world was a little weird in that regard.
Although trees and stuff like that were still producing Natural Energy, it was in much lower quantities than Yuna was used to, and after scouting around for a while and getting a feel for her surroundings, she realized why that was the case.
A lot of the energy produced was actually reabsorbed by the environment it was produced by, resulting in everything being significantly tougher than it should have been.
For example, the Red Line, which was a huge stone wall separating the world into two parts, going from north to south all around the planet, supposedly was only made of normal rock, but despite that, it was almost impossible to even leave a dent on it.
Obviously, the same was true for living beings as well, which should lead to outrageously strong bodies depending on how much energy a person had managed to absorb over the course of their life. For example, despite having never cultivated before, Yuna could feel some Natural energy within Nami's body, strengthening it beyond what a normal human was capable of.
Meanwhile, Nami felt something warm flow into her from the place Yuna's hand rested on. Initially, the warm current felt weird inside her body, but she quickly realized that it was a rather comfortable experience.
She felt the current wander through her whole body, seemingly following a predetermined path, before finally coming to a rest at the place above her belly button Yuna previously mentioned. There, the little ball of energy stopped moving, while the warm feeling it initially produced briefly became warmer before settling down.
"Did you feel something, Nami?"
Nami, who still had her eyes closed, nodded her head before she began to describe what she had felt.
"I could feel some kind of strange energy enter my body from the palm of your hand. It circulated through my body for a while before coming to a rest at the place you previously told me about."
After Nami finished her explanation, silence reigned the ship, confusing her a little, but before she could open her eyes and ask what the problem was, Yuna resumed talking.
"You felt all of it? Everything, from the point of me sending the energy into you, from it settling down."
"Mhh? Yes? Is that weird?"
"Sorry, Nami, but I'll be needing a drop of your blood after all."
"YOU ARE NOT GETTING ANY OF MY BLO..."
The moment Nami heard that Yuna yet again wanted her blood, she turned around and yelled at Yuna, but before she could finish speaking, her words got stuck in her throat, as Yuna actually wore a serious expression.
Seeing that kind of expression on Yuna's face, Nami's anger quickly dissipated as a feeling of slight fear overcame her.
"I-Is it something bad."
"Not at all. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's something good. I just showed you a technique that allows you to absorb the energy in the air around you: Natural Energy. However, the technique I showed you was a generic one that works for almost everyone.
Considering you could follow the energy on the first try, there is a high chance that you have some kind of special constitution. In case you do, only using a generic method would be a shame. So, I need a drop of your blood and analyze it to find out more."
Nami pondered Yuna's explanation for a brief moment before she nodded her head in understanding. Now that Yuna was actually serious for once, Nami felt that she gave off quite a trustworthy image.
However, before Nami could agree to Yuna's request, the duo's conversation was interrupted.
""Energy!? WILL NAMI BE ABLE TO SHOOT A BEAM!?""
Luffy and Usopp, who had listened in on Yuna and Nami's conversation, couldn't contain themselves any longer and were now looking at Yuna with stars in their eyes.
They didn't really get much of what Yuna had just explained, but since Yuna said something about energy, surely she was talking about energy beams, right? What else could she have meant?
While Yuna only chuckled, Nami sighed deeply while facepalming. She loved the whole crew; she really did, but sometimes she seriously wondered what made her think joining this gang of goofballs was a good idea.
"Well, that beams thing aside, I heard you have a training technique that can make someone stronger. If possible, can you teach me as well?"
""WHAT DO YOU MEAN WITH 'THE BEAM THING ASIDE', ZORO!? THAT'S THE MOST IMPORTANT PART!!!""
"YOU BASTARD!!! YOU ONLY WANT IT BECAUSE YOU WANT TO FEEL YUNA-CHWAN'S HAND ON YOUR BACK, RIGHT, MOSSHEAD!? Well... On a side note... hehehe, can you teach me as well?"
"WHO ARE YOU CALLING MOSSHEAD, SHITTY COOK!?"
"PIPE DOWN, YOU IDIOTS!!!"
While everyone suddenly started yelling at each other, Yuna only leaned back against the mast and enjoyed the chaos.
'Yup, this will be a fun ride~'
[As expected of you. Literally, the first people you meet in this world are the embodiments of chaos. This group really fits you well.]
'Hehe, I know, right.'
After another brief conversation with Kurama, Yuna closed her eyes again and started meditating, attempting to find the best method to absorb this world's Natural Energy while simultaneously trying to send her consciousness into the Going Merry, attempting to awaken her Spiritual Consciousness.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone