One Piece : The Deathless Surgeon

After getting the Physique of the D clan, the biggest worry in my mind had been settled. Now it was just a matter of training endlessly to get stronger. At this point, what most people might do is start recruiting crew members, setting up a crew, and continuing to grow stronger—but this was not my thinking.

I always considered my personal strength to be the most important, and the identity of a pirate would be more of an obstacle for me than it would do any good. Of course, I could not join the Marines; my devil fruit ensures that the World Government and I are not destined to be together. Since I know that, I need to train my other skills more so that the instances I need to use my devil fruit are fewer, keeping it hidden for a longer period of time.

As for a crew or something like that, it could wait for about a decade. I was immortal after all, and I needed to think like one. It would be better for me to make a smaller team consisting of elites. Since I would certainly be deeply connected to my crew—and would most probably end up performing the immortality surgery on them—I would much rather prefer that they are women.

So for now, my idea is to stay for about a year here on Flevance, trying to train my body as much as I can using my devil fruit and start developing more conceptual qualities of it. I wish to control everything within my domain—not just space, but concepts like time and reality. I want to control them all. Once I can do that, my focus would be to develop one concept to a deeper level and wrap it around my sword-throwing, concept-induced sword energy. That would be a cool trump card to have.

With this in mind, I went to the coastal regions of Flevance. Every once in a while, a pirate ship would dock, and whenever they would port and leave the ship, I would take all their wealth. By looting... ahem... confiscating just 10 ships, I had already made a hundred million. Huh, Nami's mission was not that difficult, huh? Well, maybe it was—she was only a child when she had to set out and start collecting wealth.

Now that I wasn't lacking in the money department, I rented a room in a small hotel for a long duration. Well, it was just a house turned into a hotel. The proprietress, Helena, was a beautiful woman in her thirties. She started the tavern to take care of her two children, Phoebe and Jeremy, when her husband passed away from a disease about a year ago. I talked with her about renting a room for an entire year. Considering that the hotel also had food services, I reminded her of my massive appetite. After all, my appetite did increase a lot after my recent gene alterations—now I could eat as much as 30 times more than my Earth self. So she agreed on a different pay for the food, with me having to pay a separate sum just for my meals. It was still much cheaper than going to a restaurant.

And the food she cooked was heavenly—reminded me of my mom's cooking. So I happily paid all the sum she demanded, generally leaving quite the generous tip. After all, with the amount of wealth I had now, it was a small sum for me, but it could really help Helena. I am a kind man after all. And since physical training for me required more food than actual effort, I slowly progressed as well.

These kinds of small things going on feel quite good. I guess I understand more of the perspective of the ordinary people in this world. Their situation is quite bad if we're being honest. The pirates who seemed so passionate in the show are generally brutal murderers and bandits who wouldn't think twice before killing ordinary people. The World Government is like a bloodsucker, taking massive amounts of tax without any care for the people. And the Marines, despite being the only force focused on protecting civilians, were corrupt at several levels and not very efficient.

It was kind of understandable why so many people went to sea as pirates—because it was the World Government that forced them to become pirates. And the pirates threatened every nation, which were forced to join the World Government for protection. It was like a kind of twisted cycle that was hard to get rid of.

"Brother Alex, dinner's ready! Come and eat before it's cold," Phoebe, the 14-year-old young girl, called to me, breaking me out of my thoughts.

"Just a minute," I replied, relaxing my body. Yeah, I was training my body right now, and it was just in the straining phase. I often happened to think quite a bit whenever I did that. As I grew stronger, the longer it took for me to get completely tired. But this method of mine for gaining strength without much hard work definitely had me addicted. I would continuously use it whenever I was idle, even while sleeping.

Now, unlike my Earth body, this one felt like it could grow without any limits. The physical strength of people in this world truly amazed me. I had seen it in the anime before, but seeing it and experiencing it firsthand are two entirely different concepts. Another thing I noticed was that the strength increase using the Operation Fruit to exercise changed with my body itself. For example, if my original body had +1 strength per exercise, then the ordinary One Piece world body had around +10, while the body of the D clan yielded about +100. You can imagine the difference—same work, different gains.

This point was also enough to prove to me that no matter what, people are not equal. Even if they work the same, people with better blood and talent would be much stronger than ordinary people. It also shows why people without any extraordinary blood or talent need devil fruits to be counted among the strong. But people like Garp, Roger, or Shanks could do so without them. Notice how all of them have extraordinary blood flowing within them.

As for those who might say that characters like Zephyr also reached that level without any special blood—pity that he does not exist. He was not a canon character at all. These points are enough to prove that to grow strong, you need both hard work and talent. This was also the case back on Earth. Some people might toil their entire life but can't achieve a fraction of what a talented person could in just a day. Or some people are born with extraordinary talent but never work hard, often realizing at the end that they have wasted all their potential and can do nothing but regret. But let's think about that harsh reality later—for now, let's have dinner.

"Brother Alex, you are super strong, right? You can hunt all those big beasts from the forest. How did you get so strong? Can you teach me too?" I was sitting, having dinner along with the landlady and her children when Jeremy asked me with enthusiasm. He, like any normal teenager, was excited about growing strong, going to the seas, and making a name for himself. Pity his talent was really bad—even worse than the pirate I had first taken the physique from...

"Well, I was really lucky. Do you know about devil fruits? I ate one of those, gaining awesome powers. As for which devil fruit I have? It's a secret," I replied, attributing it all to luck. It would be bad if I told him that he could not get strong—I am not some Satan after all.

"Wow! Devil fruits? Do they really exist?? I always thought they were a legend. Where can I get one of those? Do you know, Brother?"

Well, someone's excited...

"Hahaha, it's all really on luck, really. But I think maybe if you dream and wish for it hard enough, you may get a devil fruit that belongs to you. After all, our dreams are what drive us forward."

And this world is a world running on the dreams of people.

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