Chapter 23: Torino Kingdom
It took us a few weeks to reach the Torino Kingdom. On our way, we visited many islands and stocked up on our necessities. We did not need to stock up on water since one of Wolf's inventions was a water purifier that separated the seawater into drinkable water and table salt (in a separate container) by removing other unwanted chemical compounds into another container.
We got our main food from underwater animals but still purchased other food for a variety of nutrients. After all, the last thing we want is to suffer from scurvy like two bounty hunters.
Once we reached the Torino Kingdom, we parked our ship on the island shore. Our ship already had the same mechanism as Capone's ship to traverse the land.
Soon the kingdom people rushed to us with weapons. Barring a few rare ones, most pirates are actually the scum of humanity.
Shanba, the only named character of the village in canon, shouted
"Pirates, leave now or you will face death"
I said "Please be at ease. We are not here to harm you. In fact, we are here to learn medicine and technology"
Another person shouted "As if we will believe you. You are just scared of our weapons so you will kill us once we trust you"
Thor being the battle maniac said "Let's do one thing, you guys attack me will all you got. I will not even dodge your attacks or counter-attack you."
They looked at Thor as if they saw an idiot. We knew what Thor was up to. Hercules too loved fighting and he too wanted to join, but I said
"Let Thor do it alone. They will be more convinced that way. I will prepare some good fights for you"
Hercules did not like it, but he too agreed. Thor stepped up and said
"What are you waiting for? Give me your best shot"
The civilians started shooting at Thor one by one and Thor just tanked it all with his haki.
Our haki was nothing noteworthy since the Blues could not provide us with the required adversities, but if Chopper could tank one of their spear bazookas with guard point, it was nothing much for Thor with his haki.
They also tried shooting a few of them on others, since they believed Thor to have some weird devil fruit, but all of us countered it with ease.
Soon they were convinced that any one of us could take care of their entire village.
I approached them and said "Now that you are convinced, let me repeat myself. We will not attack your village or harm anyone. All we need is knowledge of medicines and technology."
"Further, we would like to use your island as our base for South Blue. We will also take care of any other pirates while our stay here. We will of course pay you for your services"
The villagers looked at us with suspicion, but Shanba spoke out
"If you can solve a certain problem for us, we will agree to the deal. You can see those giant birds there right, they are not allowing us to gather herbs, so take care of the problem"
The villagers were confused. On one hand, they wanted us to take care of the birds, but on the other, they did not want to trust us that easily.
I smiled and walked to the bird nest. The birds saw me and started attacking, but I dodged them and kept climbing up to their nest.
Soon I reached the nest and earned the hatred of the birds. They attacked me with more rage, but an invisible wave radiated out of me. With my control, I varied my pressure depending on their strength. None of them were knocked out, but all of them were intimidated, like the sea king and Shanks.
I did not use it on the small chicks who did not attack me. They were playful and one of them jumped at me. I too started petting it. The birds got at ease seeing that I was not harming them.
Unlike Chopper, I had no way to understand them, nor could I speak their language. But it seems that the creatures in this world are smart and I started explaining to them the villager's situation.
I asked Shanba to come and pick up herbs. I too explained to them not to go for the bird's nest or any of their possessions. Soon, the birds to understood the villager's intent and did not attack them anymore.
The villagers were finally happy to see this and they welcomed us wholeheartedly.
We had a feast and had some talks with the villagers. I too used [observe] to look for talents and personality. I found a guy who matched my requirements. His name was Lamba
His personality was good and also had [adventurous] in his personality. This made recruiting him easier. Also, his talent in medical science was very good. His combat talents are lower than Penguin and Sachi, but good. He should survive the New World. I mainly needed him for his medical expertise, not combat, so I was not looking for some very strong healer like Law.
I did not straight up ask him to join my crew. We were here for some time and had ample of time to bond with Lamba.
The next day, Law started studying medical science, and I had to teach Hercules and Arjun haki. Sachi and Penguin focused on learning technology.
They already knew what haki was since it has been a few weeks since they were traveling with us. I got them to do the exercises for unlocking haki, but it would take some time for them to learn.
After seeing all of my crew members unlocking haki, I got some experience in haki training. Right now, Arjun and Hercules were not ready to face adversity to unlock haki. To simply put it, if they face some life or death situation to unlock haki, there was a greater chance of them dying than unlocking haki.
So I had them do all the exercises for haki unlocking. I also started teaching them rokushiki. Hercules was an unarmed fighter, so he decided to focus on each of them and Arjun focused on soru, and geppo since that complemented his marksmanship.
Unlike us, who started training in Rokushiki from a young age when our bodies were relatively weak, Arjun and Hercules already had the required physique to learn them. Hercules especially was the brute of the crew. I was sure it will take them much lesser time to learn it compared to us.
We also sparred with each other regularly. Arjun definitely had trouble when someone reached the close quarters, since he is a marksman, to begin with. But I gave him an idea. I started showing him my fighting style and he got some idea from it.
What I wanted to teach him was Izo's fighting style where he could defeat even CP0 agents in close combat with guns. Arjun could also incorporate his devil fruit into it.
Arjun previously did not need to focus much on close combat since he could take down anyone in long range, and if anyone got closer, he relied on his metal fruit for defense. But in our case, we could destroy metal and also avoid his shots with haki. He was lucky to correct his weakness before he got to the New World.
We also roamed around the South Blue. The sea's danger ranking can be said to be East, South, North, West, Paradise, and New World from weakest to strongest. There were no adversities for us here, but we enjoyed the journey nonetheless.
There were various islands from poor slums to rich cities. The culture varied too from different clothing to different foods. Hercules was the cook in my crew and he had a very good talent for cooking. I can guess that it is lower than Sanji, but it is still very good.
He learned different recipes from different islands and we used to enjoy his food. I gave him a few recipes from my past life and he made them. I must say they tasted very good even better than in my past life, courtesy of this world's ingredients.
Today we traveled to the Mecong Delta, another island/archipelago that had a very similar name to a place from my previous world called Mekong Delta from Vietnam.
It was an archipelago made of many marshy islands clustered together. Like its Earth counterpart, it had small boats for traveling among the islands.
We visited it and had some Ga Kho Sa Ot, a specialty of the island, and kept roaming around. We anchored the ship in one of the islands and had Law on board to guard it. The guarding duty is decided by drawing lots. Law would later switch his duty with someone else and visit the island.
After some time, Hodur stopped and said
"Increase your haki range, everyone. I sense someone very strong"
Hodur passively used a slightly bigger range of observation haki than us and he sensed someone in his sensing range boundary.
All of us increased our range and sensed someone very strong. That person was very large and was even stronger than the grandmas individually.
With a grin on my face, I dashed to that presence. The person must have sensed us too, and ran to a house. He said something to 3 people who consisted of a large male and 2 normal-sized females.
From their actions, it seemed that they were arguing with the male and a female. But after that person bonked the male, he left with the others. That person picked up a trident from under a bed and rushed outside his home and waited for us.
We reached there and saw him. He was an old man with blue-green skin, black hair and beard, big lips, and sharp triangular teeth. He looked somewhat familiar. I was not able to point my finger at it. I had a perfect memory of the series, but that memory is basically made of drawings, not of real faces. I could only assume that I must have seen him in his youth and now he is an old guy.
Before I could think any deeper, he said
"Why did you run after me? Are you here to capture me?"
I said, "No old man, I sensed your haki from far and I wanted to see for myself who had such strong haki in this weak sea. Who are you old man?"
I did not shy away from using the word haki since, given his strength, he must have haki too.
He looked at us and said
"Who am I is not important, but leave now. I don't like visitors like this"
Thor could not help and say "Want to have a spar old man?"
Penguin: "Wait wait, Thor. He will defeat you easily. He might even kill you"
He looked at Thor and said, "I have seen many people like you and you do not know the meaning of refusal. Fine, but I will not go easy on you. In fact, I can see that all of you are somewhat eager to fight. Come together!"
It looks like we have awakened a sleeping beast.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone