“Refined to an extreme degree?”
Kuina had already started working on Haki and naturally wanted to understand more of it.
“Haki has stronger and weaker forms?”
“Of course.”
Rocks nodded.
“Every type of Haki has advanced applications, and they all have stronger and weaker expressions.”
“Observation Haki, at its furthest development, can glimpse the immediate future.
Armament Haki runs from weaker to stronger — coating, hardening, external projection, internal destruction.
Conqueror’s Haki has its own range of applications: intimidation, coating, defense.”
“Haki also has a question of volume.
The stronger your physical conditioning, the more Haki you have available to draw on.”
He counted it off on one hand.
“Think of it like the development of a Devil Fruit, or a swordsman’s level of technique.
Haki has its own benchmarks.”
Kuina’s brow drew together slightly.
“That’s considerably more complicated than I thought.”
“Developing Haki isn’t going to come easily, then.”
“Unshakeable conviction is its own strength.
A firm enough resolve and Haki will follow naturally.” Rocks said it plainly.
“A real fight against a strong opponent forces your potential to the surface.
What you’re missing is just finding that instinct — then turning something you do without thinking into something you can control on purpose.”
He paused, and a smile crossed his face.
“There’s also a faster method.”
“You may have heard the saying: take enough hits and Haki tends to show up on its own.”
Kuina: “…”
She read that smile perfectly.
This person wanted an excuse to put her through something painful, to satisfy his particular sense of entertainment.
She was not walking into that.
Kuina tucked her hair back behind her ear and declined without hesitation.
“No.
I’ll find that instinct on my own.”
Rocks shrugged.
“Fine.
Ask me if you get stuck.”
Kuina moved on.
“More than Haki, the iron-cutting threshold is what I’m after right now.
That’s what I want.”
“That last strike from our match — can you show it to me?
It might give me something to work from.
Seeing stronger swordsmanship is always useful.”
That was the truth.
Watching a higher level of technique might be exactly the trigger she needed to break through.
Haki could wait.
The sword came first.
“The Extreme Slash?
Sure.”
Rocks had no objection to a demonstration.
“This is my strongest strike.
Steel doesn’t stand in front of it.”
Old Dick had called his sword talent average.
Average talent reaches the iron-cutting threshold?
“Convenient timing , there’s a Sea King on my line that doesn’t know any better.
Let me show you exactly what this strike looks like.”
Rocks had rigged bait off the bow earlier, a fishing line he maintained specifically to catch sea beasts and Sea Kings.
He had long since worked out that the stronger a creature, the more energy its body contained.
Sea beast and Sea King meat carried far higher energy density than ordinary livestock.
Better fuel for what his body needed.
Rocks drew the nameless blade at his hip and raised it overhead.
His eyes went sharp and still.
Armament Haki coiled along the edge of the blade.
Poised.
Ready.
This strike needed a moment of gathering.
Everything had to be in it — physical force, Haki, understanding of the sword, the unwavering conviction behind the swing.
Every part of him at once.
What came out on the other side of all that was Rocks’s strongest strike.
“HRAAAGH!!”
Right as Rocks was gathering, the water erupted.
A Sea King shaped like a massive sea serpent, fangs bared and vicious, shot up from the depths toward the bait hanging from the bow.
It opened its jaw wide and lunged.
“Extreme Slash!”
The moment before it closed, Rocks moved.
Sonido, straight at the sea serpent.
The gathered strike came down.
Shhk.
The blade tore through air and connected.
A single clean sound, and the sea serpent — body more than ten meters from end to end — was split in two.
“SKREEEEE–!!”
The sea serpent shrieked and thrashed, its two halves scattering blood across the water, dyeing the sea red.
Life running down fast.
And then, after the cut landed, an invisible blade of force shot from the tip of the sword and kept going.
Shhk.
Shhk.
Shhk.
It carved across the surface of the sea, drawing a line in the water as if a thread had been dragged across it, stretching out and out until it was gone.
“…Huh.”
Rocks watched the line it left on the water.
Something genuine registered in his expression.
“A Flying Slash?”
Cutting a target at distance — that was a Flying Slash.
He turned it over in his mind.
Could it be that the Hollow growing stronger had given me a feedback boost, and somewhere in that boost, the Flying Slash just came through on its own?
He and the Hollow inside him had a certain balance between them.
As the Hollow grew stronger, some of that growth synced back to him as a direct power boost.
There was a ceiling on that boost, of course.
If there were no ceiling, the Hollow would always be kept below him and could never pose a real threat.
That wasn’t right.
Without it, the threat the Hollow represented would disappear.
His sudden grasp of the Flying Slash, that had to be connected to the Hollow’s recent growth and the feedback that came with it.
“And old Dick said my sword talent was weak.” Rocks shook his head.
“The old man’s eye for talent has always left a lot to be desired.”
Look at this.
Flying Slash.
Already.
He had taken another step toward the world’s greatest swordsman.
He was genuinely pleased about that.
“How did you do that?”
Kuina was still turning over what she had just seen.
She couldn’t stop herself from asking.
“That was a Flying Slash.
Your swordsmanship is…”
She stopped.
Better not to say.
But how.
How could Rocks, with that chaotic, undisciplined sword style of his, produce a Flying Slash?
Was it raw strength?
Did raw strength actually do that?
“Talent.” Rocks stepped back onto the deck and attributed it to himself without a moment’s hesitation.
“In swordsmanship, I’m a genius.
If you want to catch up to me, you’re going to have to work a lot harder.”
Kuina: “…”
Whatever had produced it, the fact that Rocks could now produce a Flying Slash was settled.
In swordsmanship, she had apparently fallen further behind than she realized.
“Hey!” Nami had been watching all of this and finally couldn’t hold herself back.
“Could you two please talk about things I can actually follow?
What was that just now?
Is that your ability, Rocks?”
One strike to split a sea serpent in two.
The sea surface itself carved into a line that went off toward the horizon.
Nami had no framework for any of this.
“You ask a lot of questions.”
Rocks glanced sideways at her.
Then explained anyway.
“A gun works at close range and long range both.
Swordsmanship is the same.”
“A sword was never limited to close quarters.”
Nami looked at him.
“You had better be talking about the same type of gun.”
“It’s just an analogy.”
Rocks shrugged.
“Once swordsmanship reaches a certain level, you can release a Flying Slash.
Kill someone at considerable distance with a blade you never bring anywhere near them.”
Nami thought about that for a moment and quietly swallowed.
“People like that actually exist on this sea?
Isn’t that more terrifying than a cannonball?”