A few days later, at the Marine base.
"This is the famous bounty hunter in town, isn't it? I heard he really hates pirates!" One of the Marine soldiers watched Ryu drag a bounty criminal into the base like a dead fish and couldn't help but whisper to his companion.
His companion nodded, somewhat wary, and pulled him away, seemingly not wanting to interact with Ryu. In recent days, during their missions, if they encountered Ryu, he would beat them up along with the pirates, though he never harmed them seriously. This made the Marine soldiers keep their distance from Ryu.
"Where's that kid Ace? Why hasn't he arrived yet?" Ryu sat in a tavern, sipping on his barley wine, talking to himself.
During his stay in Loguetown, he had defeated several pirate crews, completely vanquishing their members, so Ryu had gained a bit of fame as a bounty hunter.
"Forget it; I might as well find some opponents to grind for experience!" Ever since his battle with Garp and the aloof swordsman under him, Ryu had become even more obsessed with improving his strength. He didn't spare the Marines either, treating them as experience points.
On the very day he arrived in Loguetown, he had captured a pirate with a bounty of three million, successfully claiming the diamonds and earning a considerable amount of berries for his expenses.
Having gathered a thousand diamonds, Ryu didn't rush to draw his prize. Instead, he found an inn, took a bath, changed his clothes, and after a sincere prayer, he opened the system to start the lottery.
Although deep down he thought this was all a formality that wouldn't affect the results, he couldn't help but do it, having staked all his savings.
The lottery wasn't a spinning wheel; instead, he spent a thousand diamonds to buy a fortune bag. The moment he opened the bag would determine whether those thousand diamonds were worth it.
So when Ryu opened the fortune bag, he felt a strange mix of excitement, worry, and anticipation—very peculiar emotions all at once.
"Obtained a mid-level Cultivation manual!"
The system's prompt nearly made Ryu's heart leap out of his chest. He looked at the book-shaped manual in his backpack, which read, "Open to obtain any mid-level Cultivation manual."
"Whew~ I hit the jackpot! Everyone said that the first lottery would definitely yield good stuff to entice people, making it hard to resist and quickly fleecing them!" Ryu quickly found the corresponding item in the shop.
Although there wasn't anything that allowed random acquisition of a mid-level manual, the cheapest mid-level manuals in the shop cost several thousand diamonds, especially the techniques manuals, which were worth over ten thousand!
With his mouth watering, Ryu couldn't wait to open the manual. The system prompt chimed in again:
"Congratulations, host! You have obtained the mid-level internal cultivation manual: Purple Mist Divine Skill."
"Wow, oh my!" Ryu was so excited that he didn't know how to express his feelings. He gazed at the beautifully illustrated manual, initially wishing to compose poetry to share his journey, but found himself lacking in literary skill, simply muttering a line about the world.
However, when Ryu opened the manual to use it, the system indicated that he lacked the prerequisite meditation skill to practice it.
At that moment, Ryu was completely dumbfounded. Did he really need to practice a meditation skill to learn the Purple Mist Divine Skill?
After closely examining the Purple Mist Divine Skill, Ryu discovered that the Cultivation Manuals was divided into three levels: basic, intermediate, and advanced. The Purple Mist Divine Skill was a mid-level manual, meaning he needed to learn an intermediate level meditation skill before he could practice it.
Looking at his experience bar, he was level 8 (87%). Before arriving in Loguetown, he had ground a ton of experience with Garp and managed to level up to just over level 8. Afterward, he defeated some pirates and the first bounty criminal after landing on the island, so his experience was nearly full.
As for skill points, he had quite a few now. He had one point left at level five and hadn't used any since because he didn't have skills to spend them on, leaving him with a total of four skill points.
Now that he was out of diamonds, the only way to obtain a intermediate level meditation skill was through the main storyline quest. At level ten, he could complete the second main quest, which, following the pattern of the first quest, would likely reward him with three intermediate level skills. Then he could learn the Purple Mist Divine Skill.
In the meantime, Ryu waited for Ace while relentlessly hunting down pirates in Loguetown. He wanted to ensure that when he hit level ten, if he didn't get the foundational mid-level skills, he could still purchase them from the shop.
However, since this was the East Blue, there were plenty of pirates, but not many bounty criminals. Ryu also learned that Smoker had just come here to take command and was vigorously capturing pirates, which meant there were even fewer bounty criminals than he had anticipated. Otherwise, he wouldn't have resorted to picking on the Navy just to gain a bit of experience.
As his level increased, defeating ordinary minions yielded him very little experience.
"Damn it, if it weren't for the fear of missing Ace, I would definitely head to Cocoyasi Village since it's basically a dungeon!" Ryu muttered to himself, staring at his experience bar, which had just barely passed halfway through level nine.
Today, he had finally encountered a bounty criminal, gaining a good amount of experience and 200 diamonds. However, he still needed 500 more diamonds for the intermediate meditation skill.
That's right, since arriving on the island, he had only managed to catch a few bounty criminals—a three-million one, but the diamond reward from that had been spent on the lottery, plus three one-million ones, and today's 200-thousand, so he only had 500 diamonds total.
"Damn you, Smoker! Can't you arrive a little later? If you were here, I would've definitely farmed you too!" Ryu grumbled quietly as he walked toward the tavern.
Though he wasn't sure whether his internal strength would have any effect on logia type devil fruits, that didn't stop him from muttering some threats in secluded places.
"Look, what happened to that person inside?"
"It seems like he's dead. The boss is considering whether to call the Navy!"
"I heard he suddenly died in the middle of his meal!"
"Could it be that there was something in the restaurant's food that caused poisoning and death?!"
As Ryu approached the entrance of the restaurant, he overheard a crowd discussing the situation.
"That feeling is Ace!" Ryu recognized the familiar scene and, reminiscing about it, squeezed his way into the restaurant.
"Sure enough, it's you, you bastard!" Ryu said through clenched teeth. However, now that he had seen the main character, he was no longer as anxious as before.
At the center of the crowd was Ace, who had suddenly fallen asleep halfway through his meal.
Even Ryu, having known about such things beforehand, was startled when he witnessed this while eating with Ace. How could someone fall asleep in the middle of eating? Originally, Ryu had found it hard to believe, but seeing Ace like this made him realize that no matter what happened in the future, he could remain calm.
"Ahah I'm sorry, I fell asleep again halfway through! Ah, yum~~" Ace, who had just woken up, immediately continued to eat.
The owner of the restaurant, now overly shocked, didn't know what expression to wear in front of Ace. He could only twitch his lips a few times and said, "N-no problem~ Please continue, guest!"
"Hey~ Ace, long time no see!" Ryu plopped down beside Ace, resting an arm on his shoulder while eating the food that the staff had just served, greeting him.
"Yo~~ Ryu! Long time no see!" Ace replied happily upon seeing Ryu.
Clank! But what awaited him was Ryu's handcuffs.
These weren't Seastone handcuffs; he wasn't strong enough for that yet. However, these handcuffs were made of iron that Ryu had paid a hefty price for. While they couldn't restrain a Devil Fruit user, they were not easily broken either, serving as a "welcome gift" for Ace.
"Hey~ what are you doing? It's been a while since we last met, and you treat me like this?" Ace said helplessly, feigning a pitiful look at Ryu.
"Don't! We're not that close. Vice Admiral Garp is coming in a few days, and I just want to be cautious!" Ryu shrugged nonchalantly since everything was going smoothly.
"What? The old man is coming?" Upon hearing this, Ace immediately stood up and looked around.
"Thanks for the meal!" Bowing to the owner, Ace then took off like the wind.
"Bastard, behave yourself! I just want to complete my mission!" Although Ryu had expected Ace to run, he didn't anticipate that he would do so so decisively. He yelled as he chased after Ace.
"Is he skipping out on the bill?" The restaurant owner was taken aback and asked in confusion.
"Damn it, don't run!" Ryu angrily chased after the fleeing Ace, with a crowd of chefs and restaurant staff following him.
Originally, it was just the restaurant's people chasing him, but as Ace's escape stirred up more commotion, the number of pursuers grew. This was also part of why Ryu was furious; that bastard had definitely been in Loguetown for several days, or else so many people wouldn't be after him.
Meanwhile, not far from Loguetown, a Marine ship was approaching the harbor. Smoker stood on the deck with Tashigi. Even though they had captured many pirates on this outing, they were all small fry, which left Smoker feeling somewhat dissatisfied.
On another side, three days' journey away from Loguetown, a dog-headed warship was also heading toward Loguetown.
..............
Started editing the chapters now ^^
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