Chapter 16: Step Forwad
A young man with curly black hair stood crouched in front of a stream, gazing at his reflection, while he was surrounded by trees and stones.
Landon was deep in the woods, in a fairly remote area.
The boy had been observing his reflection for a few minutes, lost in his own green eyes who staring back at him.
"Hmpfff," the boy finally stood up, sighing, and Landon looked to the right and left sides of the stream.
Observing which side the stream was growing wider, he started following the left side of the stream, walking for a few minutes.
Landon stopped when the thin trickle of water became a substantial flow.
'3 meters long and about 60 cm deep.' Landon assessed the river in front of him.
'This is perfect, I won't be completely submerged in the water,' Landon thought to himself.
He took off his pants and stepped into the river, the cool water touching his leg. Landon wanted to check if he, too, was affected by the weakness that all Devil Fruit users experience.
It is known that the more a Devil Fruit user is submerged in water, the weaker they become, and it only takes a small part of their body being submerged for them to lose their Devil Fruit powers.
If half of the body is submerged in water, the person becomes completely powerless and paralyzed.
Landon had less than half of his body in the water, but still enough to weaken any Devil Fruit user, reducing their strength to about 1/10th of normal.
Landon stood there in the water, and felt no weakness, only a void, an absence.
He raised his arm, stretched out his palm, and focused his will. No flames appeared, not even a blue spark. Nothing...
'Hmmm,' Landon pondered the situation. He felt no weakness, physically as strong as usual.
Landon snapped out of his thoughts and tried something else. This time, he concentrated his will, and his forearm became covered in a black layer.
'My Haki hasn't changed at all...' the boy concluded.
He thought about what he knew exactly regarding seawater's weakness. He recalled something important.
'Seawater, even in the smallest quantity, stops a Devil Fruit user from using their abilities. But when a Devil Fruit alters the user's physique or DNA, seawater doesn't affect that aspect...' Landon reflected.
Luffy had once drowned in the sea, but even underwater, the boy remained elastic.
Landon looked around and picked up a sharp-pointed stone, about the size of his palm. He tested its edge and found it quite sharp.
Gripping the stone like a blade, he plunged his hand into the water and slashed his leg.
Landon ignored the slight pain and observed the shallow cut, about ten centimeters long.
A few drops of blood trickled from the wound, but a faint blue-gold flame appeared on the injury, seemingly able to burn without being affected by the water. The wound healed in just one second, as good as new.
'It seems that even underwater, I'm pseudo-immortal...' The boy smiled at this thought.
Landon considered himself pseudo-immortal because he wasn't truly sure if he could rise from the dead, reborn from ashes like a phoenix. Marco had never died, so he didn't know what lay beyond.
But what he did know for sure was that before Marco, there had been several users of the Phoenix fruit, and they had indeed without a doubt died...
Still, he felt more confident on himself, even arrogant.
'Who can stop me now...' Landon felt a thrill at this newfound freedom.
He closed his eyes and savored the moment of euphoria.
He relaxed and stayed there for a minute, before reopening his eyes, calmed after the wave of emotion. Yet, in his eyes, there was no joy.
'The reality is that to be free, you must first be someone...'
This young boy was merely a man whose individuality had been stripped away. He had been given powers and memories from another world and a hollow body with a new name as a façade.
Landon lowered his head and looked at his reflection in the river where he was still standing.
He studied his pronounced face, his gray-green eyes, his unruly strands of hair, and came to the same conclusion he always did when he looked at himself in the mirror, that what he saw might not even be real.
He stared at his reflection a little longer before stepping out of the river and going hunting.
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"Hmmm, not bad, as usual, quality stuff. So, there are 3 rab..." Angus was talking, listing the hunting spoils, but Landon wasn't even listening.
The boy's thoughts had been in turmoil since he entered the butcher shop.
For the sole reason that, the moment he walked through the door, he felt a gaze on him, the same gaze he had constantly felt at the hospital for the past four days.
Landon once again pretended to ignore it, his Haki sensing the origin of the gaze, from the upper right corner of the wall in front of him. He knew Angus didn't have any cameras; it would backfire in his somewhat illegal dealings...
Moreover, it was a nearly invisible camera to the naked eye, completely camouflaged and hidden...
'He or they have tracked me here...'
"Hey kid, are you listening to me?" Landon snapped back to reality at the butcher's words.
"Yes, you were saying, Angus..." Landon replied.
Angus looked at him and summarized what he had said.
"8 squirrels, 6 rabbits, 7 hares, and 2 pheasants. You've outdone yourself this time. It's probably your biggest hunt. They're all top quality. That makes a total of about $460. I don't have all the cash on me right now..." Angus said, handing him $250.
"Come back tomorrow," he told him.
Landon was still lost in thought but responded, "Thanks, Angus." He smiled at him and said goodbye.
And the moment he left the shop, he no longer felt the gaze on him.
'They're stepping up their game...' the boy thought. He had quickly realized that those watching him weren't from the hospital. On the first day he felt watched, he passed by the hospital's control room, where the cameras were, just close enough to sense the area with his Haki.
He saw only Hall, the security guard, on the verge of falling out of his chair, drooling as he snored.
Whoever was watching him had nothing to do with the hospital. Landon concluded that he or they had skillfully hacked into the hospital's security system...
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'So pathogens: bacteria and viruses, as well as gene mutations and genetic factors, are the three main causes of diseases...' Landon had just finished reading the book explaining the basics of pathology.
The boy leaned back in a chair at the reception desk, holding the book he was currently reading. He had healed a few people and was now waiting for any emergency cases.
'For infectious diseases, medicine or vaccines suffice, but for the more serious syndromes, more extreme therapies must be taken...' Landon concluded to himself.
'Hmmm, my flames easily burn bacteria, viruses, or even parasites, regardless of the tenacity or danger of the pathogen...' Behind the boy's green eyes, it was clear he was deep in thought.
'Where my flames are less effective is in healing and recreating genes...' The boy knew better than anyone what his flames could do.
'But as of now, my flames can easily cure all diseases caused by pathogens...' Landon realized.
Tuberculosis, cholera, hepatitis B and C, syphilis, the Ebola virus... He had just learned from the book, they were all diseases caused by pathogens...
Landon straightened up in his chair, his mind racing with this new perspective...
'I can eliminate the virus and bacteria without a problem, but removing the cause of the disease won't cure it. It will just eliminate its infectious nature, and the risk of an outbreak will no longer exist.'
Landon's mind was weighing what he knew against what he could actually do.
'But the damage will still be there. I could only easily heal the damage if the cells haven't undergone mutations...' If the cells were injured, damaged, or otherwise compromised, it was no problem to heal them. But if the cells had mutated, he still couldn't do much.
His flames either: healed the cells in the case of damage, which was a relatively simple and quick process, or destroyed and recreated the cell in the case of a mutation. The latter option was much more demanding and complicated: recreating the cell without the mutation wasn't easy, and then the hardest part followed, protecting the newly created cell from other mutated ones, allocating energy to preserve it.
It required an enormous amount of stamina and energy, especially since the process had to be repeated for each individual cell.
'Hmmm... what would be perfect is if my Observation Haki could see cells...' His Haki could only perceive the aura and emotions emitted by the patient's body, certain parts of their anatomy, and briefly where the illness was and what it was doing, where the injuries were and what damage had been done...
His Haki certainly didn't have microscopic perception, and Landon was well aware of this limitation.
The best observation haki practitioners are far from mastering this domain.
' Haki microscopic, it's on the verge of impossible, maybe even simply unreachable…'
Landon sighed, his observation haki covered 26 meters around him, knowing that he had only been in this world for 3 weeks and had gone from non-practitioner to this result, it was one of the fastest growths, even in the world of One Piece.
Marco's legacy had helped him; in a way, he had experienced haki through someone else, and it's not just that, he was aware of something: his limit was far below that of the people from Marco's world.
The big players in the Pirate world had observation haki that could encompass an island, around 2-3 kilometers of haki perimeter.
Landon felt that his limit was around 100-200 meters, no more. It was thanks to Marco's memories that he had come this far in his haki, but never, ever would he be able to match him.
And that was fine by him. This world, though intriguing and mysterious, was after all much less dangerous than the one where Marco lived…
"Hmpfff…" Landon sighed on his seat.
He looked around him and saw that the place was quiet and sparsely populated, it was quite a peaceful day.
Landon decided to check his discovery now, so he stood up and headed to the elevator. He entered, and when he wanted to press a floor button, he didn't know where to go.
'Where are the infectious disease patients kept…?' Landon took a few seconds to think and decided to go to the 3rd floor, the maternity ward; there were usually few nurses, and the computers were left open in the offices or at the reception.
He arrived on the floor and saw the sign on the wall opposite the door: '3rd Floor: Maternity and Obstetrics / Pediatrics.'
He walked for a bit and found what he was looking for after 5 minutes, a room with an office and the door slightly open.
'Where's the nurse?' Landon extended his haki to the maximum and saw she was in the bathroom, in one of the toilets. He sensed combativeness and an exhausting effort emanating from the nurse.
'Big business…'
Landon entered the room and went to the PC. He pulled up the patient files and saw a small button at the top of the list that allowed sorting by pathology. He clicked on it and began scrolling.
He saw the names, photos, and conditions of each patient appear, reading them one by one until, 30 seconds later, he found what he was looking for: Elisa Yang, 20 years old, syphilis.
'Ouhhh, bad luck, I hope at least she had fun…' Landon smiled as he closed the window on the computer and left the room.
The poor nurse was still struggling with her digestive system in the bathroom.
'I could have stayed an hour; I doubt she would have finished before me…'
Landon then went to the east wing of the second floor where the patient was, tucked away in a separated corner.
She was in the tertiary stage of the disease, the stage where organs and tissues start getting damaged.
He quickly arrived in front of her door and sensed with his haki that she was awake, lying on her bed, watching TV.
Landon took a small coin from his pocket and opened the door slightly, just enough for his hand to pass through.
Naturally, Elisa didn't notice anything, and a few seconds later, as she was watching an episode of Looney Tunes, she heard the sound of a metallic object falling on the floor to her right.
Elisa turned toward the sound and sat up to get a better look, staring at the spot where she had heard something fall.
'Hmmm, probably a…' Elisa didn't finish her thought before she collapsed onto her bed, unconscious, as a young boy suddenly appeared right next to her.
Landon didn't need to place a cloth over the door since there was no window. He could start right away, his palm lighting up with azure blue flames with golden spots.
He placed his hand on the belly of the pretty young girl.
'Though being pretty is probably what got her here…' thought Landon.
And he began the healing process, focusing most of his attention on the anatomy of the patient and a little on his haki to check behind the door.
He immediately sensed a difference with all the people he had healed up to this point, there was something foreign in the girl's body, a sort of parasite.
He could feel his fire suddenly have a furious urge to burn, to purify the young girl.
He let the flames do their work by themselves; the purification process had begun. Wherever the flames burned, his haki sensed a kind of foul thing sizzling and evaporating into ashes.
The cells affected by the parasite were healed by his fire while burning the bacteria.
The boy with gray-green eyes decided to intensify the process. He removed his right hand from the girl's body, raising the palm about ten centimeters above her.
He brought his other hand close and unleashed a torrent of blue and gold over Elisa's body, even over the bed and the furniture nearby.
He felt the same purification sensation, but a hundred times stronger, as if he were decontaminating the girl's body from all foreign matter.
His haki sensed the sizzling and evaporation of a thin gray smoke coming out of Elisa's pores.
And within seconds, no parasites remained after the passage of his flames. Then came the second stage. Fortunately, syphilis doesn't mutate cells but gravely damages them, with tissues and internal organs not spared in the late stages of the affliction.
'Her liver, her lungs, her spleen were starting to be affected…' Landon realized, reducing the number of flames. For this part, power or quantity wouldn't help and could even slow down the process. Here, softer flames of better quality were necessary.
'But it's not any less tiring…' The torrent of blue and gold became a gentle, calm flow, and each flame was worth consumption of several in normal times.
Her spleen, the tissues around it, the entire damaged organ was enveloped by his blue-gold fire, healing the damage like a gentle embrace. After a minute of this gentle caress, the fire slowly died out within seconds, leaving behind fully restored organs.
'That was pretty easy…' Landon smiled. It was a victory.
'Hmmm' he snapped out of his thoughts when he felt a small part of the flames not extinguishing but moving elsewhere on her body. He looked and saw the girl's arm covered by a long sleeve.
He took her arm, pulled the sleeve back, and saw several cuts and scars on her arm, all recent, no far away than 2 weeks old, and one just a few days.
Landon stood still, staring at the girl's scarred arm, disfigured by her own hand…
He turned to the TV, which was showing an old episode of Looney Tunes.
'Hmmm' He recalled what his haki had sensed before he knocked the girl out, she had been watching TV, radiating particular emotions…
'nostalgia, sadness…'
Landon lowered his eyes to the girl's arm. He extended his hand and released his flame, which burned her skin for a few seconds before disappear, leaving behind a smooth, flawless arm.
Landon hesitated a bit before deciding to pull out a pen from his pocket.
He left the room a minute later.
'Anyway, it's a success.' Landon smiled broadly.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone