Kapitel 2: It can't be true!

Cherry awoke the next morning to sunlight streaming in from the window. She got out of bed and looked around the room. There wasn't much to it. There were some wooden toys, a full length mirror, a small desk on top of which were scatter sheets of paper with scribbles that in some places reminded her of simple inscriptions.

She walked over to the mirror to get a look at her new self. She had an unruly head of raven black hair, her mouth seems to frown slightly at rest, and perhaps her most striking feature were her piercing, scarlet eyes that gave the impression of a hawk seeking its prey.

'I guess they named me Cherry because of my eyes? Seems a bit too... sweet, considering how intimidating despite being only 5 years old.'

Her full name was 'Harpin D. Cherry'. She had asked what the D. stood for yesterday, but Grandma didn't know. Just that her Grandfather had insisted both she and her mother had the name and that it's a 'family tradition'.

Now that she's had a look at herself, she decided try her celestial energy cultivation method. She was excited about this, it's said the younger you start cultivating celestial energy, the greater the results. Normally a 5 year old child wouldn't possess the mental faculties to take advantage of this, but she already had a great deal of experience in cultivation.

She sat down in the position most comfortable and started to reach out to the celestial energy around her. And nothing.

'That's strange...' She furrowed her brow and concentrated harder and harder. However, no matter what she tried there was nothing. No celestial energy whatsoever, not even the smallest iota.

"Impossible!" She shouted, then covered her mouth and looked towards the door. 'This can't be possible. I'd understand if it was thin, but for there to be nothing at all? Life shouldn't even be sustainable without celestial energy...'

A thought occurred to her then. What if she wasn't on one of the many worlds she knew in her previous life? What if this world operated with different rules?

'Not all hope is lost, even if that's the case. I still have the divine body cultivation method I acquired from an ancient inheritance. I never practiced it since my vital energy was too measly in my previous life, but now I have a new body. Perhaps this body is suitable.'

Cherry slowly turned her senses inward, towards the seat of vital energy in the body, her heart.

What she found shocked her to the core.

'Am I really a little, human girl and not some ancient dragon hatchling?! How can a human possess this much vital energy, this is absurd?! No, perhaps it wasn't that crazy, there's no celestial energy here. Perhaps the humans adapted to the hostile environment by developing a ridiculous amount of vitality?'

The door to her room slid open, revealed her Grandma. "Why are you shouting, Cherry? Since you're awake come eat breakfast." She said giving her granddaughter a gentle smile.

"Can we hold hands, Grandma?" Cherry asked, hesitantly. "Of course, Cherry." Grandma answered, her smile widening.

Cherry cautiously tried to sense her Grandma's vital energy through their clasped hands. She found that Grandma's vital energy was also strong, but not quite at her own level and obviously it was waning alongside her advancing age.

'Hm, I can't tell if this is because we're related or if this is a normal amount. I'll need to check other people to be sure.'

Cherry went around the dojo 'introducing herself' and shaking hands to check the vital energy of the various disciples.

'It seems I was half right. Most people seem to possess 3 or 4 times as much vital energy as the average mortal from my previous life, but there's a few monsters aside from myself and Grandma as well.' She smiled widely. 'I guess this means I'm a genius in terms of body cultivation in this life. Now there's only one problem, in order to reach perfection in each realm of body cultivation, I'll need miracle medicines or treasures containing lots of energy. I need to figure out if such things even exist in this world with no celestial energy.'

Cherry went to find her Grandma and bombarded her with seemingly random questions, a few of which were the ones she really wanted answers to. This didn't come across as odd to her Grandma, as she was very young and only just became able to speak and understand others and she answered the questions patiently.

What Cherry learned about was something called a 'Devil Fruit'. Apparently, when consumed they granted strange abilities in exchange for becoming extremely weakened when submerged in water. This seemed like it was exactly what she needed, but unfortunately there was no known ways to find devil fruits in the wild aside of good luck.

'Well, that's something to worry about later. It's best to wait until my natural vital energy level has reached it's peak before I begin cultivating it. That won't be until I'm around 15 years old. For now, I need to refine the impurities out of my body.' Cherry spent the rest of the day circulating her vital energy to purify her body.

The next day, Cherry took a break from her body refining to observe the courtyard where her Grandma was instructing the disciples in swordsmanship. Most were what she would expect of young mortals, though two of the disciples (whom she had learned to have abnormally high vital energy levels yesterday) proved to be surprisingly talented. However, when her Grandma gave a demonstration, her jaw dropped. She'd seen better swordsmanship, of course, but this wasn't a level that could be reached by a 'mere mortal' in her previous life.

'Perhaps, I've underestimated these people, this world. Grandma is just the master of some small dojo on an island with less than 10,000 people living on it. If she can reach this level, what sorts of experts are there in the outside world. Just what sort of monster was my deadbeat father that defeated my Grandfather, who was apparently much stronger than Grandma.'

A sense of urgency and excitement began to build with her. She could hardly wait to get around there. 'No, she must be patient.' she told herself. There was time for exploration later, right now she needed to build her foundation.

...

*One year later*

Cherry had finally finished removing the impurities from her body. She hadn't expected to finish so soon, but her enormous vital energy pool made the process proceed quickly. Grandma had asked her why she sits around for most of the day, every day. Cherry told her she was meditating to keep her mind clear, which she accepted and she encouraged her to continue, but not to go so overboard about it. Now Cherry only needs to spend 10 minutes every day to maintain this pure state. Much in the same way cleaning your home frequently makes cleaning easier, so too was body purifying.

Now she was ready to explore this island she lived on!

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Kapitel 3: Going to the town

Cherry told her Grandma that she wanted to go down to the town. She didn't want to worry the old woman by sneaking off, at least not yet.

"Alright, you can go with Borke to do the grocery shopping. Don't go wandering off on your own. Just because I've been spoiling you doesn't mean I won't discipline you if you act recklessly." Grandma stated, trying to look stern.

Borke was one of the two disciples that Cherry determined to be 'some-what talented'. He was a young man in his late teens, nearly 2 meters tall, extremely muscular, shaved head, a ordinary face, blue eyes, and dumb as a bag of hammers. He was honest and extremely loyal to her Grandma, so she had a good opinion of him.

Though that didn't stop her from messing with him. He's such an easy target she just can't help herself. Cherry finds it especially funny how he never seems to realize she was the perpetrator, no matter how obvious she makes it. She had once painted him red from head to toe while he slept, and then painted her own hands red. After waking up (and taking far too long to realize he was covered in paint) he had asked her if she knew anything. She shrugged, revealing her red hands.

"Ah!" He shouted and pointed at her hands.

'Is this the moment I get caught red handed? hehe' Cherry thought.

"They got you too, Cherry! It's one thing to prank me, but pranking Master Angela's granddaughter is going too far! I'll definitely find out who did this!" He stormed off to interrogate the other disciples. Cherry had nearly suffocated laughing.

The other disciple she had taken notice of was Slenk. He was a few years older than Borke, rather short at 1.5 meters tall, sported a green mohawk, green eyes, handsome, but looked like a snake. Unlike Borke, he was very intelligent and observant. If it weren't for the fact that Cherry remembered him protecting her from another disciple's bullying when she was still an idiot, she would have been very wary of him.

Cherry met up with Borke when the time came to go down to the town. Pebbleton was where most of Boulder Island's residents lived, with the rest living in small farming or fishing villages.

After her grandfather died, more pirates started to get bold enough to mess with our dojo. So the marines set up a base to discourage them. A number of the dojo's disciples end up joining the marines after all. They often ended up becoming officers because of their swordsmanship; one even became a Captain.

Cherry and Borke walked down the main street, which was bustling with activity.

Occasionally, Cherry would meet eyes with someone, who would then flinch and look away quickly. She wondered if someone had started false rumors about her or something, but then remembered how intimidating her face was.

After accidentally making a child cry, she tried to put on a friendly, innocent smile. This seemed to have the opposite effect, as people instinctively opened a path ahead of her.

"Oh! People seem to be especially polite today." Borke said. He looked down at Cherry and flinched.

"What's wrong Borke?" Cherry said, sensing an opportunity. "Did something startle you?" This time she gave her best attempt at a demon's twisted smile.

Borke started to sweat, a rather strange thing to happen on such a cool morning. "I-I was just surprised to s-see Cherry's evi- um, beautiful smile, haha!" He gulped.

"Oh! Then I should do it more often, since you like it so much!" Cherry said with great amusement.

"T-that's not- I mean, you don't have to go out of your w-way for my sake, Cherry. Um, I think I r-read somewhere that smiling too much will make your face hurt. Yes, I definitely read that somewhere!" Borke said, his eyes darting around, trying to look anywhere but at Cherry.

Cherry let her face return to it's natural frown. "Alright then, but let me know if you ever need cheering up. I'll happy to give a smile."

'I've grasped your weakness, Borke. I hope you're prepared, hehehe'

The two arrived at the farmer's market, where Borke hurriedly went to collect the things on his grocery list.

Cherry spotted the blacksmith the dojo get's it's swords from nearby and decided to have a look.

When she opened the door a bell above her rang and she walked inside the store. Various weapons lined the walls and counters in the room.

A young man came into the showroom from a back room and spotted her. "Hey! This isn't a place for brats to play around in! Get lost!"

Cherry had expected this, but she had a plan. She called it 'Spoiled young mistress won't take no for an answer!' It wouldn't work on prideful master craftsmen, but it was good enough to deal with this guy.

"Don't you know who I am?! I'm the granddaughter of Harpin Angela and Harpin D. Mortis! Don't compare me with common children who can't handle a blade without tripping and stabbing themselves with it! I want to speak with with whomever is in charge here!"

The young man was stunned silent. He'd had the brats argue with him before, but he was at a loss with this one. If what she said was true (and she was wearing the dojo's uniform, so it may very well be), then he couldn't afford to offend her. 'I'll just go get the old man and let him deal with her. She'll regret not leaving when I told her to, I bet!' He imagined the haughty little girl carried by the scruff tossed out the door like a stray cat.

He put on his best sales smile and assured "Yes, of course, young miss! I apologize for not recognizing you're, uh, esteemed excellence. I'll get the master right now!" He scurried into the back room while bowing repeated towards her.

Cherry knew what he was up to, planning to exaggerate her bad attitude even more than it already was to the master no doubt. Naturally, she had a plan for this as well.

She walked over to one of the sword racks and started searching. It didn't take long for her to find the best piece in the shop. It was a mass produced sword, nothing special at all about it, but she could tell it was made by the most skilled smith in this place. Even when made in a hasty manner, the skill in it's make was plain to see in her eyes.

'Now to put on a show.' She walked to the center of the showroom and started going through the motions of the dojo's particular style. Cherry wasn't a sword immortal in her last life, in fact she hardly ever fought at all, let alone with a sword.

However, she did possess a great deal of knowledge about swordsmanship, book-learning you might say. It was necessary to know how a sword would be used to make a good sword. And she had made the best sword ever crafted by someone who hadn't reached divinity.

After a few moments, an irritated old man burst into the showroom. "Which arrogant brat thinks she can come into MY smithy-" He stopped dead in his tracks, his mouth dropping gob-smacked at the sight before him.

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