Chapter 11: Chapter 9: The slave owner who cried slave and a karmic twist.
[Urek D. Mazino's Point of View]
Menthos definitely was up to something since I was given a sword for my first extra fight. I still have to fight a thousand people each day but I got a decent amount of food and a weapon before the fight started which means that Menthos thinks he can get me killed even when I am not handicapped.
As soon as the fight started I used my upgraded version of Soru and Geppo. For starters, they are techniques that I learned from the Zoldyck albeit against their knowledge. Soru allows the users to move at extremely high speeds in order to avoid attacks, as well as to attack at higher speeds and with greater power.
The trick of this move is simple, the user has to kick off the ground at least ten times in the blink of an eye, and poof, it looks like they disappeared while Geppo allows users to push themselves off the air itself with superhumanly strong kicks, allowing them to travel through and remain in midair for an extended period of time. It effectively resembles flight.
By combining both of them or should I say by upgrading both of them and then combining them into one move, I managed to create a special technique that resembled how Utsuro moved during fights in Gintama... mainly because I was inspired by it. I have to be honest, to this day, I still have trouble deciding the name.
Anyway, Arcobaleno Sonído, Trattino Arcobaleno, or Rainbow Dash is a technique that allows its users to move at an incredible speed and can even allow them to move through the sky. Depending on how much force I use, it makes the same sound as a sonido.
[AN: I can't really decide on which one sounds best so I thought I would let you guys pick else I am taking the first one.]
When the technique is used, I leave a rainbow-like afterimage, that dissipates in individual single-color afterimage of myself, behind. When I use this to attack, I reappear after I have already attacked. This technique makes my attack invisible to my opponents.
"ARGH!"
"Where did he- ARGH!"
"Shi- ARGH!"
"ARGH!"
"ARGH!"
"ARGH!"
"He's over ther- ARGH!"
Since I was not drugged I figured I should end this quickly instead of what I usually do, which is to take some damage to increase my strength until I am able to defeat everyone. It took some time but I managed to defeat all but one opponent. The last opponent managed to dodge my attack.
He is a young man with an androgynous appearance, fair skin, and pristine shoulder-length white hair. Adorning his hair are red hairpins arranged in the shape of the Roman numeral XIII, 13, neatly taming his bangs. His eyes, a deep shade of red, are marked by noticeable bags underneath.
He has stitched his own body, a miniature set of red threads that appear to be two x's are stitched on below his right eye. One below his bottom lip, a line of several stitching threads from his upper neck downward, and several more around his right arm and hand.
His attire consisted of a white suit with sleeves rolled up to the elbows, left halfway buttoned, and polka-dotted red suspenders that supported his black pants and a pair of red slippers. He wears a black suit above all this, with rolled-up sleeves.
[AN: Imagine Juuzou Suzuya from Tokyo Ghoul.]
"Wow, you are really strong!"
My opponents said that I thought that this fight would not be as boring as I thought it would be. I dashed towards him and attacked him from behind, swinging my sword towards his left shoulder. He proceeded to dodge my attack and throw five knives at me, all aimed at vital organs.
I quickly evaded them and put some distance between us. He knew that I was going to attack him and where I was aiming at. I smiled as this fight was getting interesting and as if reading my thoughts, he spoke.
"Wow, you managed to evade my attack?! Good for you! Oh, you must be wondering how I managed to avoid your fast attack twice right? Well since I am going to win I think it would only be fair if I told you how I did it. I used Haki, more specifically Observation Haki."
I was bewildered as he said it with a prideful look and he took my bewilderment for confusion and proceeded to explain even more.
"Oh, right you must not know what even is Haki. Well, Haki is basically a mysterious power that allows individuals to harness their own spiritual energy for various superhuman feats. There are generally two types of Haki.
As for Observation Haki, also known as Kenbunshoku Haki, is a form of Haki that grants the user a sixth sense that allows them to sense the presence of others. Used in a fight and you can predict your opponent's attack.
Not many people can use it and unfortunately for you, I am a genius who managed to master it in under five years. I know you must be sad but that is just your fate to have met a talented person such as myself. HAHAHA!"
I wore a grim expression on my face as I realized something. He just ruined the fun I was going to have. The core part of the fun I get whenever I copy someone's skill is that I copy it while fighting them but now it feels like it was gift-wrapped.
It is like a meal tasting better after working but now you get the meal before you worked for it. Borderlining, it is not a good feeling when someone crushes the expectation you have about something, you were looking forward to.
I am being vague because it has been a while since I have had non-violent interaction with someone so I do not know how to properly make a non-violent metaphor. It seems that my grim expression was mistaken as he continued in his ramble after he stopped laughing.
"Looks like you caught on. You can't hit me and you will eventually tire yourself out trying to do so. I figured since I was getting paid a huge sum of money this was the least I could do for my golden goose.
Oh by the way, in case you are wondering the other form of Haki is called Armament Haki also known as Busoshoku Haki. I wish I could tell you more about it so that you don't have any questions as you die but I am not really that familiar with it, my teacher was unfortunately not as talented as me so he never learned it and could not teach it to me, which is why I just know its name."
[AN: Little reminder that not everyone knows about Haki and very few manage to master one so it stands to reason that some might not even know what the other form of haki is. It is also never specified how long someone needs to train to awaken their Haki and even master it so I just picked ten years to be the expected time needed for a normal person to learn Haki from a normal teacher.]
*BOOM*
Sensing that he was going to throw six knives at me, yeah I managed to copy Observation Haki, I dug both my hands into the ground after throwing my sword in the air. Just like Gon when he fought Hisoka, I lifted a huge chunk of the ground and flipped it toward my opponent.
"Wha-"
I heard him say before my hands, which were aimed at the sky due to flipping a huge chunk of the ground, caught my sword that was descending towards me. I quickly sliced the huge chunk of the ground, that was flying toward my opponent, in smaller pieces before performing a roundhouse kick at the chunk of ground.
This roundhouse kick sent the sliced pieces toward my opponents at a higher speed. My opponent decided to jump out of harm's way which left him vulnerable to my next attack. I dashed towards him and spoke as I reappeared behind him in a rainbow assembly of afterimages of myself after my opponent groaned.
"ARGH!"
"You may be able to predict my movements but that doesn't mean that you can dodge all of them."
*Thud*
He fell onto his knees and spoke
"T-This isn't supposed to hap-"
*Slash*
*Thud*
I was not going to humor him, I cut his head clean as he was muttering something with tears of denial. It took two days excluding the one in which I copied Observation Haki but I managed to get used to using Observation Haki. I could sense almost everyone within a hundred-meter radius of me. I also noticed that Dawn of Avalon helped me replenish my Haki.
I could also hear their voice as if I was right next to them. This is how I managed to learn some shocking news while I was out looking for any information that could help me. I heard someone speak about Menthos.
'Menthos bribed his way into sneaking a devil fruit user and more haki user to kill Mazino. He seems to be in a very good mood just like me. Though laugh all you want, Menthos but soon, you and your entire precious Zoldyck will be reduced to dust. I will be the one that gets the last laugh.'
The devil fruit user and haki user were already precious information but the fact that someone planned to eliminate the Zoldyck Family was even more precious to me considering that I recognized the person's voice.
It is none other than Zahard and according to his tone, he may not be as Hollow as everyone thought. Luckily for him, I am not a snitch plus if his plan, whatever it is, succeeds then less work for me once I am free, and if it fails then I lose nothing.
It goes without saying that I won the one versus thousand match on both days, there was an Observation Haki user in each of those two matches but they were not able to fight properly. One tripped over a corpse and I killed him as he was getting up.
Funny enough, he asked me to wait like this was not a death match. The second Haki user lost concentration due to the smell of blood flooding our surroundings. I was not going to give him some time to regain his bearings.
I am not Goku, I am fighting for my life and my opponents better not be caught lacking. Frankly, now that I was not drugged or starved before my fights, I kind of understood why they did this. Each of the thousand opponents I faced was weak, I barely broke a sweat to defeat them.
I mean I knew why they were doing that before but that did not mean I understood how weak my opponents were to me when I was not being drugged or starved or poisoned. Then again, I do not see how anyone could get a daily set of a thousand strong people to fight me for a thousand days or better yet why they would do it unless they were Menthos but he does not have the money nor the connections to do that.
---
Today's fight just became even more interesting. I say this because of what is in front of me right now. It is a tall humanoid creature with Mantis-like qualities. He was encased in a segmented, thorny exoskeleton, with clawed feet and serrated, scythe-like forelegs, similar to those of a praying mantis. Mandibles protruded on each side of his mouth while he only had pants for attire.
[AN: Imagine Kamakyuri from One Punch-Man]
Until a few minutes ago, he was a bald man with no other discerning features. He fought barehanded and his skin was tough enough to block my attacks without getting so much as a scratch from my sword.
His skin was tough and for a moment I thought he was using one of the techniques I got from the Zoldyck, Tekkai. It hardens the users' muscles to the level of iron, allowing them to withstand and effectively nullify any damage they might have taken from attacks.
That guess was proven wrong after I observed him a little bit more, he did not tense his muscles the same way one usually does for Tekkai, when he was blocking my attacks. It was interesting how he was able to also augment his attacks when he tried to counter mine.
Obviously, by now, I had already copied what he was doing to increase his offensive and defensive capabilities but that did not mean I was going to use it now. I wanted to see everything he had and if he had any other surprise in store for me until he had nothing left or things became dangerous for me.
"Hey, baldy what is that thing that you are doing called? You know, what you do, to not get cut by my sword."
My words stopped him in his tracks before he started yelling.
"Baldy? BALDY?! BALDY?!! LITSEN HERE YOU LITTLE SHIT, I AM NOT BALD! I HAVE HAIR! THEY ARE JUST TOO SMALL TO BE SEEN BY THE LIKE OF A MIDGET LIKE YOU! HOW DARE YOU CALL ME, THE MERCENARY KING DIO, BALDY!? IT SEEMS YOU NEED TO LEARN ABOUT MY GREATNESS BEFORE YOU DIE!"
He then proceeded to rant on about himself, how he became the Mercenary King, something I would later learn to be a self-proclaimed title, by mastering Armament Haki. This was the only pertinent information from his rant. It seems that I now possess all forms of Haki.
[AN: Remember, the MC does not know that there are three forms of Haki.]
He talked about how his growth came to an impasse with his training, his body reaching the limit of what it could achieve until one day he managed to buy a devil fruit with all the money he had collected through his years as a mercenary.
He proceeded to use his devil fruit and by a twist of fate, it was none other than the Mushi Mushi no Mi, Model: Praying Mantis, the same Devil Fruit that Menthos had won thanks to me. I guess Menthos sold it to this guy.
Thinking about it, I found it funny that the Devil Fruit that I won was now used against me. I threw my sword away as he lunged at me. I was curious at how far Armament Haki could block one's attack so I decided to use him as a guinea pig.
"I see, you have accepted your fate! Die!"
He said as he swung his scythe-like foreleg at my head while I used my right hand to perform a circular motion as it went down while muttering something.
"Whirlwind Water Stream:"
At the same time, I also used my left hand to perform a circular motion as it went up. I noticed that he stopped his attack and brought both his forelegs close to his body to guard against my attack. His instinct must have warned him about this.
"Roaring Aura Sky Ripping Fist!"
*BOOM*
I mutter as both hands stroke my opponent which causes a release of powerful shockwaves that surge through his Mantis-like body.
"BLARGH!"
Judging by the blood he coughed as he flew away, he sustained internal damage.
*BANG*
His body hit the wall before being lodged into it. By the way, his head hung low, I knew that he had passed out... or dead. I looked around and saw that the shockwave generated by this technique pulverized the ground around me into fine powder.
Side note, It seems that Armament Haki can be broken with enough force though I cannot feel my arms right now and I am sure I have a couple of fractured bones. It should be fine once I use Dawn of Avalon. It will not heal me completely but it will allow me to move my arms again.
"The Irregular has defeated the self-proclaimed Mercenary King!"
The referee said as I left the arena. I went back into my cell and rested before I started training my Armament Haki. I did not know when or what Zahard had in mind to destroy the Zoldyck Family but that did not mean that I was going to change my plans.
I was going to win and leave this Island but that did not mean I should not have other plans of escape since Menthos has already proven that they can go back on their words even when it comes to the Trial by a Thousand Blades.
So far, my other plans relied on me finding the key to my collar but now I had a better plan. I needed to train my Armament Haki to be able to cover my whole body and withstand the force of the Bomb Collar around my neck.
If I attempt to escape from this place, the collar explodes, heavily injuring if not directly killing me. To be honest, I really just need my Armament Haki to be able to allow me to crush the collar, with my speed, I should be able to throw it far away from me before it explodes in my face but it is better to be safe than sorry considering that after that I would have to escape while being chased by pretty much everyone on this Island.
[Third Person's Point of View]
What Mazino did not know about his recent fight was that his opponent, although claiming to have mastered Armament Haki had not in fact achieved such a stage. His state of panic caused his Haki to weakened before he even took Mazino's attack.
His devil Fruit was also not bought from Menthos but from a merchant that found it after its previous host, a Cipher Pol agent, died. Speaking of Menthos, he had managed to sneak true advanced Haki user, as in those that could use one form of advanced Armament haki being emission, in the upcoming fights to kill Mazino.
[AN: Changed the paragraph above to make it more realistic since if no one could use at least emission on the Island then there would barely be any reason for the Navy not to arrest the criminals on this Island. That's all I can say without spoiling the rest of the chapter.]
Mazino trained his Haki while imagining how he could use it during his next one-versus-a-thousand fight not knowing that he would not need to fight in the arena anymore. As he was training, World Government agents came to Eisleymos to investigate the death of a Celestial Dragon.
Upon searching for clues, they stumbled upon one of the belongings of the deceased Celestial Dragon along with Menthos' diary. The diary explained how the main Zoldyck family ordered Menthos to eliminate the deceased Celestial Dragon as part of a bigger plan to frame their competitor in the future.
The diary also explained how Menthos was planning on using the belongings he ordered his slave to take from the deceased Celestial Dragon as a bargaining chip to get a higher position in the Zoldyck Family.
Naturally after acquiring the belongings and the diary, the Cipher Pol agents arrested Menthos and the slave that had killed the Celestial Dragon on the spot. They proceeded to interrogate the slave that had presumed killed the Celestial Dragon and after a non-suspicious amount of time under torture, the slave confessed to his crimes in front of a confused Menthos who became frightened.
The Cipher Pol agents then executed the slave in front of Menthos after informing the latter that the Zoldyck family would be destroyed for their crimes, not knowing that they were being played by the one they were executing.
Zahard kept his act till the end. Although outside he looked somewhat regretful to have failed Menthos, inside he was laughing hysterically. The only one to realize that Zahard was acting was none other than Menthos as he understood that only one person could frame him by copying his handwriting as well as placing the deceased Celestial Dragon's belongings inside his chamber without him knowing.
Menthos kept saying that it was all Zahard's doing but no one believed him. It was akin to the boy who cried wolf, he had spent so much time bragging about how Zahard listened to him and never disobeyed his order that no one would think that Zahard did something outside of his knowledge.
To atone for such a crime, he was sentenced to live the remainder of his life as a slave of the deceased Celestial Dragon's family. This frightened Menthos even more as he knew what kind of people the Celestial Dragons were when they were indifferent.
He shuddered to think of what they would do to him when they felt vengeful. Being a slave owner, he knew and had treated his slave poorly but none of what he did could compare to what was about to be done to him.
As a former slave owner, his experience only served to intensify his imagination and the nightmares that came from it. This was the fate of most of the Zoldyck that were captured alive while most of those that were strong died in battle. Unknown to all but Menthos, the Zoldyck Family had been destroyed by a slave.
To the common folks, the World Government publicly stated that they had and were still hunting down members of the Zoldyck Family due to them trying to awaken an ancient weapon just like the scholars of Ohara. They needed a public reason why they were hunting down people even if they were criminals.
Since the World Government fabricated this lie to cover the fact that they were punishing the Zoldyck Family for assassinating the Celestial Dragon, the news said that the Zoldyck Family had infiltrated Ohara and secretly managed to learn how to read Poneglyphs.
They supposedly left before the World Government learned that Ohara was researching the Void Century and avoided the suspicion of the World Government until now. Being a fabricated story, the World Government did not even bother to check for this possibility since they could not imagine that one of their numerous lies turned out to be true.
In an ironic twist of fate, the Zoldyck were publicly hunted down for a crime they secretly committed and they were punished for a crime they did not commit, though very few people in the Zoldyck Family knew enough to be aware of this irony.
The truth was that the Zoldyck Family did indeed infiltrate Ohara to learn about the Poneglyph with the intention of finding and controlling an ancient weapon but only the top members of the Family knew this fact.
A member of the Zoldyck with the ability of the Memo Memo no Mi managed to integrate themselves into the scholar of Ohara long enough to learn how to read the Poneglyph before erasing every trace of his existence in Ohara including people's memories of him.
This was an easy feat thanks to the power of that Devil Fruit after being awakened. What truly cemented this as an ironic twist of fate was that the Zoldyck had been the ones that caused the researchers of Ohara to be discovered by the World Government in the first place during their travel.
[AN: That's my theory about the awakened abilities of Memo Memo no Mi, being able to implant fake memories as well as erasing themselves from other's memories.]
They had done so to gain favors for the World Government as well as to avoid any suspicion of studying the Poneglyph since they had been the ones to report to the World Government about a strange rumor they had heard from one of their operatives in West Blue.
It was easy to know where the Ohara scholar would be heading since the Zoldyck member with the Memo Memo no Mi had been part of them. The Zoldyck gave enough information to be a contributing factor in the arrest of the Ohara's scholars but not enough to be related to Poneglyphs.
That member upon delivering the knowledge of how to read the Poneglyph was soon after killed to ensure that nothing could be traced back to them. The fact that the user of the Memo Memo no Mi not being that proficient in combat, due to them spending years mastering the Devil Fruit's abilities to awaken it, worked in their favor. In fact, they had groomed that member for such an occasion.
[AN: I'm basing myself on the fact that devil fruit awakening is rare and that when it was introduced it was said that in rare cases a devil fruit user managed to reach such a stage.
Couple that with the fact that not everyone is strong like the characters that often fight in One Piece and it's more likely that someone who awakened their Devil Fruit would have spent years training it and not enough time training anything else.]
As for the top members of the Zoldyck Family who were aware of this irony, they perished in the battle against the full might of the Navy and World Government while some members managed to escape long enough to be hunted down by the World Government.
---
Mazino was placed in the custody of the agents that were stationed on Eisleymos to find out if any more individuals were responsible for the death of a Celestial Dragon. He could have escaped after a week of being in their custody but his instinct told him that it was not the time to do so.
He used the time of being under custody to train his haki whenever he was not being watched. He also used that time to gather as much information as he could from the agents. He managed to learn everything that happened to the Zoldyck Family thanks to a certain Cipher Pol Chief.
That Cipher Pol Chief, with wild lavender hair, had rushed to Eisleymos in hopes of personally gathering information that could allow him to an even bigger promotion since it was linked to the death of a Celestial Dragon.
Due to his cowardly nature, that same chief brought a lot of Cipher Pol agents on Eisleymos to protect him. He would rant about pretty much anything which allowed Mazino to gather information whenever that chief came to rant near his cell, demanding that one of the slaves tell him who else was in on the assassination of the Celestial Dragon.
Mazino waited for a while until he saw that the Chief had become impatient enough to propose something out of the blue. He put on his most innocent facade as he asked one question that shocked the Chief.
"Hey, mister. If what you want is to find someone who was also in on the assassination of whoever died, why don't you frame all the top bosses on Eisleymos? I'm sure you get the right gu-"
"AH! That's right! I forgot! I came here to frame one of them not investigate! But you know what kid, you are right, if I frame all of them then my promotion is guaranteed! Hahaha!"
Mazino's eyebrows twitched at the chief's words. He had expected that it would have taken at least some convincing for the chief to frame the top bosses of Eisleymos but he could not have imagined that it would be this easy to get his revenge on them for increasing the difficulty of his Trial by a Thousand Blades.
The top bosses of Eisleymos received the same fate as Menthos though from what he overheard, the chief did not get a promotion, he was only given praise for his work. Mazino was put on a ship that was headed to the home of the Celestial Dragons.
While on board, he was told that he would now become a slave to the Celestial Dragon and should be glad to receive such honor. That did not matter to Mazino since he was about to be free. His instinct told him that it was almost time to make his escape.
Some might ask why, it is thanks to the action of an incompetent Cipher Pol Chief, most of the strong Cipher Pol agents that were on board this ship, which was originally meant to go from the destroyed Zoldyck headquarters to the Home of the Celestial Dragon, stayed on Eisleymos to assist him into arresting and framing the top bosses of Eisleymos.
It is also thanks to that incompetent Cipher Pol Chief that the World Government failed to learn the potential of Mazino. Excluding Menthos and Zahard, the only people who had noticed his potential were the top bosses of Eisleymos along with those who worked under them.
Naturally, they kept this information to themselves because it would be idiotic to spread information that would cause others to covet what they coveted. Even during the stay of the Cipher Pol, they kept it a secret and tried to buy Mazino which that same incompetent Cipher Pol Chief refused to sell.
That Chief simply thought that the top bosses of Eisleymos wanted Mazino because he looked like a Lunarian. Although he was incompetent, he was still knowledgeable enough to not get fired. He had already tested Mazino's blood to see if he was a Lunarian and he was disappointed to find that was not the case as that would have helped to obtain his promotion.
The reason why he can be classified as incompetent is that he did not even bother further researching the reason why the top bosses of Eisleymos wanted Mazino, he simply decided to offer Mazino as a slave to the Celestial Dragon in the hope of getting in their good books.
[AN:
Again this is going into some kind of Haitus while I write my first one piece fic to get good at it then come back to write this one though I will be writing this one as I write the other but I won't be posting it
Edit: I will stop posting when the time skip arrives. Until then Posting will unfortunately be irregular.
since I could suddenly decided to change part of chapter A which would mean that chapter F would have to be rewritten.
Again check out the other One Piece fic:
One Piece: The Cheapskate of the Straw Hats
Want more? Like Thanos, I want those STONES!!!]
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