บท 24: Chapter twenty four- Upgrading, skills and recruiting

Everyone watched on slack jawed having just witnessed Gabriel practically demolish the pair of officer agents, while Nami and Zoro didn't know who their were or what their strength was the others did.

'Impossible, he took them both out by himself and didn't even get a scratch' Igaram thought as he watched with eyes wide.

'So strong, they didn't stand a chance,' Vivi thought as she covered her wide mouth with her hand, and as she looked at him her eyes took his appearance and found herself swallowing as less than innocent thoughts came to mind causing her to blush faintly.

'Incredible,' Keren thought to herself as she saw him effortlessly defeat two that were said to surpass her in skill and strength.

Neither Nami nor Zoro looked all that shocked by his win but still marveled at how he beat them without a scratch.

'As expect just like the others, a powerhouse,' Nami thought to herself, but couldn't help herself but slight ogle his now naked upper half and lick her lips subconsciously at the sight.

'Not even a scratch, guess he really didn't need any help' Zoro mused inside his own head.

As Gabriel reached them he noticed all of them looking and him and arched an eyebrow, "what? I told you all I could handle it don't look so surprised" he said with a small grin before looking to Nami and Vivi, "you two caught up on things yet?" He asked as he put on his hat again before draping his haori over one shoulder.

"Not yet," Nami answered first, "we got a little distracted with your fight"

Gabriel snorted, "better hurry then Luffy could wake up at any…" he started to warn them before a loud bellow filled the air.

"Zoro!!!!!!! Gabriel!!!!!!!!"

They all recognised the voice and Gabriel sighed, "speak of the rubber captain" he said before looking to Zoro, "you can take care of him, seeing as I handled those two. He probably thinks that we beat all the towns people up for some stupid reason, probably doesn't even realise they were all bounty hunters"

Zoro groaned, "probably right, but why do I have to fight him, if he's pissed at both of us" he complained.

Gabriel smirked, "you're the first mate of the crew, and technically I'm not a crew member so he's not my problem"

Zoros eye twitched as he pulled his bandana from his shoulder and began to walk in the direction the yell came from grumbling to himself.

Gabriel smirked as he watched him go before looking to Nami, "get the info you need, I already know everything and have agreed to help her, Luffy will probably do so as well once he hears about things" he told her as he walked over to one of the buildings and slumped down against the wall, "I'm gonna take a nap" he said before pulling his hat down to cover his eyes.

The others just sweat dropped at his casual tone but didn't say anything. Keren arched an eyebrow at her new captain's actions and pondered on his actions, 'he was sleeping for hours before, he couldn't be that tired' but decided to just put it off as one of her captains quirks that she would have to get used to.

Gabriel for his part had no intention of sleeping, now that he had sorted all of this mess out he wanted to clear through his notifications and see what kind of points he was looking at, and so with a thought the screens appeared in his line of vision and he nearly gaped at what he saw.

Quest completed: Split bounty

Goals:

Defeat 10 bounty hunters

Defeat 20 bounty hunters

Defeat 30 bounty hunters

Defeat 40 bounty hunters

Defeat 50 bounty hunters

Reward: 500AP, 2TP, Wazamono grade blade, sword grading book

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Fifty bounty hunters defeated, 50AP, 25,000 beri has been added to user profile

20 common sabres, 15 pistols, 2 revolvers,14 knives, and an assortment of ammunition have been looted and added to user inventory

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Quest completed: Heavy Boom

Goals:

Defeat Mr 5 (Gem)

Defeat Miss Valentine (Mikita)

Reward: 2 store Discount tokens (50%), 400AP

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Mr Five (Gem) has been defeated

Miss Valentine (Mikita) has been defeated

2AP, 17,500 Beri have been added to user profile

The cash, loot and AP for everything that he had gotten from the missions and beating everyone was good, and as he expected he didn't get much in the way of points from either Mr Five or miss valentine given their bounty class, but the thing that really caught his eye had been the hidden reward of the Split bounty mission, a freaking graded weapon.

From what he could recall Wazamono class was only the first grade a blade could receive in ranking so in the grand scheme of things it wasn't all that impressive considering that Zoro was currently wielding three graded swords one of which was in the second highest grade another was in the grade below that and his third was of the same rank he had just received.

But still Gabriel was speechless for several seconds as he just stared at the words on the screen before a smirk came to his lips, 'looks like I'll be taking up swordsmanship a little earlier than I anticipated' he thought giddily before mentally closing the screens and opened up his profile to see what his points and cash looked like now after all that influx.

TP: 2

AP: 954

Beri: $192,000

He grinned at that, 'time to do some upgrading' he thought before opening his skills and unlocking Swordsmanship and dropping two hundred TP into it to bring it up to his other skills before looking over the rest and pondering just what he should spend his other points on.

'as it stands my skills are looking decent but that won't cut it the further we go into paradise, especially against Crocodile and other warlords, I have sea stone weapons now so that should give me an advantage over logia users but if I really want to get strong I need to expand my skill set, improve my devil fruit and unlock haki however I do that' Gabriel thought to himself before looking at the Rokushiki skill list.

So far out of the list that he could see he had only unlocked Soru which while it would give him a major speed advantage against canon fodder opponents, he knew he needed more if he wanted to advance.

He thought for a bit about how he had unlocked soru in the first place and came to the conclusion that certain new skills would require him to reach a certain AP amount in others before they could be made available for unlocking, it made sense to him given how he had only unlocked Soru when his combat speed had hit three hundred AP which meant that he had enough speed to perform the technique.

Would it be the same for the other skills in the Rokushiki list? Would he eventually be able to unlock Haki in the same way if he just upgraded the right skills enough?

Thinking hard on that he should do for a few minutes he nodded as he came to a decision and began to distribute his points. He put two hundred into Combat strength and speed, before adding a hundred and seventy to his combat stamina as well to bring each up to five hundred.

With that done he closed the screen to let the system do it's thing knowing that he was about to get a major power boost and wasn't disappointed as he took in a deep breath and closed his eyes as he felt the system start to work.

In only a few seconds he felt his muscles begin to swell once again as his mind began to race as the knowledge of months of swordsmenship training flooded his mind, it felt absolutely amazing as he felt the effect again. This was the largest amount of points he had ever spent at the one time and it really showed as the feelings seemed to go on for longer before they eventually faded and he let out his breath slowly. He could feel the difference immediately and knew he was a hell of a lot stronger than before.

'I bet that bastard Arlong would feel my punches now, thick skin or not' Gabriel mused to himself, very pleased with the level of strength he was feeling from his own body.

But he was soon brought out of his thought by a series of bell chimes in his ears and opened his eyes to see three screens appear before him making him grin, success.

Requirements met, Rankyaku is now available to unlock in the Rokushiki (Six Powers) menu

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Requirements met, Kami-e is now available to unlock in the Rokushiki (Six Powers) menu

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Requirements met, Battle endurance is now available to unlock in the combat menu

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Gabriel grinned when he saw the notifications, two more of the Rokushiki had been made available to him and he had also apparently unlocked another combat skill unknowlingly.

'lets see what it's all about' he thought and opened up his combat menu before browsing down to the new skill and tapped on it to review its use.

Battle endurance

Greatly increases healing rate and recovery time, recover stamina quicker to fight for longer, recover from wounds dealt and become harder to damage over time.

Gabriel just stared at the skill, holy fuck, he had been thinking about getting a recovery skill from the store at some point but apparently, he didn't need to now with this. Reading it's description he immediately thought of Kaido and his supposedly immortal body. 'if I were to max this skill out would I become like him' Gabriel thought to himself and realised that if that was the case then with this skill his dream of becoming the strongest Yonkō was an even closer reality than he had thought.

Almost without thinking Gabriel immediately unlocked the skill and dropped a hundred points into it as fast as he could, this skill was now key to him achieving his goal.

With that he closed the screen and instantly gritted his teeth as he suddenly felt his body begin to tighten like something was squeezing his entire body, he felt rather uncomfortable and very warm for several seconds before the feeling faded and he took a breath and looked at his skin and rubbed his fingers together, it was almost unnoticeable if he wasn't paying attention but his skin felt harder and the swelling in his muscles had noticeably gone down and he began to realise just what had happened.

His muscles had begun to compact in on themselves making themselves denser, it was only by a small amount but he realised that this was the start of his body becoming more like Kaido's. if he kept this up soon his skin would more than likely be impossible to cut without haki, and his muscles would be as dense as metal or stone. He also realised that this more than likely meant that he wasn't going to become some great big wall of walking muscle which he was internally happy about, as much as he would be intimidating like that it didn't have any appeal to him. He'd rather be a lean powerhouse like Shanks rather than a big buckish brute like Kaido.

Happy with his progress so far Gabriel idly tossed fifty points into his crafting skill as he knew he would need it in the future to break down and create bigger things for him and put all of the swords he had in his inventory into the deconstruction list to break them down for the raw materials. He'd decide what to do with them at a later time before opening up his condensed skill list to see his overall progress

Crafting: 250/2000AP

Combat strength: 500/5000AP

Combat speed: 500/5000AP

Hand to hand combat: 200/2000AP

Combat stamina: 500/5000AP

Battle Endurance: 100/10000AP

Yure yure no mi: 300/10000AP

Rokushiki (Six Powers): Soru: 300/5000AP

Mind Palace: Max

Bōjutsu: 300/10000AP

Swordsmenship: 200/10000AP

Looking over the list Gabriel nodded, yes that was a good start for so early on, he noted that his devil fruit was starting to fall behind but wasn't concerned about that for the moment. They still had two more islands before they reached Alabasta and Crocodile he would have time to get it up to scratch before then.

Closing the screen Gabriel began to get up and stretch as he started to make his way over to the others who were all gathered sitting on some barrels and boxes.

"So, is everyone up to speed yet?" Gabriel asked as he came over tilting his hat up as he looked at them all.

"Not yet," Nami said as a building crashed back in the distance, "things keep distracting us" she said sounding annoyed at the noise disturbing them once again.

Gabriel chuckled before glancing back down the road, an idea coming to mind, "why don't you go and shut those two up, I have something to take care of, then we can all meet up by the river"

Nami got up and nodded, "sounds good"

Gabriel looked to Igaram and Vivi who both nodded in agreement and got up as well, before he looked to Keren, "come on, I could use the extra hand with what I have in mind" he told her as he turned and began to walk back down the road.

Keren looked curious but shrugged and followed him. Soon enough the pair of them came to the two beaten forms of Mr Five and miss Valentine.

Mr Five was only starting to come around again, and Miss Valentine had somehow managed to climb her way out of the hole she had punched into the ground on her landing, when Gabriel and Keren approached them both of them tensed up.

Gabriel smirked at the reaction as he pushed the butt of his staff into the ground and leaned one shoulder against it, "so, now that you two seem to be more in a listening mood, let's talk I have a proposition for the both of you"