Will felt groggy all over, his body completely drained of strength.
He weakly raised his head and was about to sit up when a wave of soreness spread throughout his body.
Looking out the window, he realized it was already late at night.
“Seriously, Roy really went all out on me.
I guess partners really can’t be trusted.
Companions are more reliable.”
Will scratched his head and muttered to himself as he lay back down.
Just as he was about to get up for a drink of water, his body suddenly went numb.
Then, a strange sensation began coursing wildly through his body.
Will was startled.
He hurriedly felt around his body, but there was nothing there.
The strange sensation persisted.
What was this?
Some kind of energy?
Could it be some bizarre parasite?
With no other option, Will, despite his anxiety, sat down on the bed and tried to figure out what it was through sheer perception.
He calmed his mind and sat quietly on the bed.
He gradually sensed that the strange thing inside his body was some kind of energy.
Wherever the energy passed, it produced a tingling sensation followed by a faint prickling pain.
It didn’t feel particularly unpleasant when it traveled through his limbs, but when it passed through his more delicate internal organs, the sensation was no longer a slight ache.
It was excruciating.
“What exactly is this?
Did someone secretly attack me?
A Devil Fruit ability?
That can’t be right.”
Will could only rack his brain, desperately trying to determine where this strange energy had come from.
No.
He had to figure it out as soon as possible.
Otherwise, even if the pain didn’t kill him, his organs might eventually fail.
Will could already feel himself having some difficulty breathing.
Just when he was beginning to despair, the energy traveled into his left arm.
Will thought:
Stop.
Something strange happened.
The energy actually stopped in his left arm.
Before Will could celebrate, however, the prickling sensation in his arm gradually intensified into excruciating pain.
It felt as though his arm was even beginning to lose sensation.
Get weaker.
Please, get weaker!
Another miraculous thing happened.
The energy really did begin to weaken.
Eventually, it diminished until almost nothing remained.
Covered in cold sweat, Will felt as though he had just escaped death.
This was the first time since arriving in the world of One Piece that his life had truly been threatened.
And it hadn’t been the weather, pirates, or Marines that had endangered him.
It had been some unknown energy inside his own body.
If he died like this…
That would be far too unfair.
His previous life had already been dull enough.
Having lost his family in his teens, Will had learned early on that if he didn’t work hard, he would eventually lose everything.
He had spent his days studying, working part-time, studying, and working.
In the end, through his ability to get along with people, genuine knowledge and talent, and a great deal of luck, he had finally achieved some success.
And now he had arrived in the place he had dreamed of for so long.
How could he possibly accept dying here?
Will slowly focused on the strange energy inside his left arm and began trying to control it.
Before long, he succeeded.
He directed it toward his palm.
Even if he couldn’t completely expel it from his body, he had to find out exactly what it was. Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
He couldn’t allow an unidentified energy of unknown origin to remain inside him.
Before long, a faint blue glow appeared in Will’s palm.
At the same time, there was a soft crackling sound.
“This is…
lightning?”
Will stared at his palm in disbelief.
“There’s actually lightning inside my body, and I can control it?
Could my previous body have eaten the Goro Goro no Mi?”
Will was ecstatic.
But he quickly realized he was wrong.
The first time he had awakened in this world, he had deliberately tested his body with seawater on the beach.
There had been no adverse reaction whatsoever.
That meant he hadn’t eaten a Devil Fruit.
Moreover, his body showed no sign of being able to transform into an elemental form.
Apart from nearly getting electrocuted to death when the lightning shocked him just now, he hadn’t experienced anything resembling the effects of a Logia.
He had never heard of anyone eating the Goro Goro no Mi only to be killed by their own lightning.
If that were possible, who would dare eat a Logia?
Imagine eating the Mera Mera no Mi and burning yourself to death, or eating the Hie Hie no Mi and freezing yourself to death.
And the Smoke-Smoke Fruit user would have it worst of all—carbon monoxide poisoning at the age of eighteen.
After experimenting for quite some time, Will finally gained a rough understanding of the lightning energy.
It had no fixed physical form.
Its outer layer was light blue, while the closer it approached the center, the deeper the color became.
At its core, the lightning was a silvery blue.
Its maximum intensity wasn’t even enough to kill an ordinary person with an electric shock, while its minimum intensity was almost negligible.
Will had completely abandoned his earlier idea of expelling the lightning from his body.
He had a feeling that this energy could play an enormous role in helping him go from an ordinary person to a true powerhouse.
But how exactly was this energy produced?
Looking at the blue glow in his palm, Will fell into deep thought.
A racial ability?
The Mink Tribe?
No.
That couldn’t be it.
Apart from his hair, practically his entire body was still completely hairless.
He didn’t even have fur.
Then it was probably because of the lightning vortex that had struck him back on Earth.
Perhaps the lightning had somehow affected his soul, causing some kind of evolution or mutation that gave rise to this ability.
Otherwise, how could his soul possibly have survived such a violent event?
Once he understood where the energy had probably come from, Will felt considerably more at ease.
But how should he develop this ability?
Should he develop it in the same direction as the Goro Goro no Mi?
No.
The electrical intensity of this energy was simply too weak.
It might be effective against ordinary people, but against powerful opponents in the future, it would be practically useless.
Furthermore, based on his earlier experiments, the energy could only cover his body or objects in direct contact with him.
Creating long-range attacks didn’t seem feasible.
That left him with only one option—
Develop techniques that enhanced his own body.
Although the lightning’s electrical power wasn’t particularly strong, it possessed other characteristics.
Sharpness.
Speed.
And an excellent cutting ability.
There was no need to rush into developing other techniques.
Will slowly moved the energy toward the center of his body, positioning it around his chest.
From there, the lightning would have a much shorter path to every part of his body.
He carefully controlled the lightning and gradually spread it throughout his body.
Keeping the intensity under control, Will’s entire body began glowing faintly blue.
He looked at himself in the mirror.
His hair hadn’t stood up like a hedgehog’s.
Looking at his reflection, Will suddenly thought of two people.
The Third Raikage.
And the Fourth Raikage.
Using lightning to stimulate the body’s cells and increase their activity.
This should absolutely be possible.
Setting aside the difference in physical strength between the humans of the One Piece world and those of the Naruto world, there was another important distinction.
The Raikage used lightning generated through chakra.
Will, on the other hand, was using lightning naturally generated by his own body.
The effect should be even better.
Once he had an idea, Will immediately put it into practice.
He sat cross-legged on the bed, first reducing the lightning’s intensity and carefully observing the changes in his body.
He slowly adjusted the output and focused on his body’s reactions.
Before long, Will noticed that the fatigue from yesterday’s training had diminished somewhat.
His body also felt more energetic.
Outside, the sky was beginning to brighten.
Will opened his eyes.
“As expected, developing a technique to stimulate my cells with lightning isn’t something that can be accomplished that easily.”
Although he hadn’t achieved the results he had originally hoped for—namely, a direct increase in physical strength, power, and speed—it wasn’t completely ineffective.
The fatigue from yesterday’s training had been completely swept away.
His body also felt considerably lighter.
Most importantly, running the lightning through his body no longer caused pain.
And there was something even more important.
This newly developed state could be improved.
The lightning Will was currently using to stimulate his body was almost at the lowest possible intensity.
Increasing the intensity even slightly produced better results.
However, his body couldn’t withstand higher levels yet.
He would first need to allow his body to adapt to the current intensity before gradually increasing it.
It would require a tremendous amount of time.
But nine-year-old Will had one thing in abundance.
Time.
Furthermore, this state could be maintained continuously.
Will gave the technique an embarrassingly long name:
The Low-Intensity Lightning Cellular Stimulation Method.
He shortened it to—
“Lightning Stimulation Method.”
Using the lightning consumed physical stamina, and there were two different levels of expenditure.
The first was circulating the lightning internally through his body.
The stamina consumption was minimal, and his natural recovery could easily keep up.
The second was simultaneously circulating the lightning through both his body and the surface of his skin.
This consumed a great deal more stamina.
At his current level, he could maintain it for roughly two to eight hours.
The higher the intensity, the shorter the duration.
Will was delighted with the development of the Lightning Stimulation Method.
It could help him recover from fatigue, which meant that he could increase the intensity of his future training.
And the faster he trained, the faster he could become stronger.
Become stronger.
Travel around the world.
Fight the powerful figures he had previously only been able to see on a screen.
Just thinking about it made him excited.
Perhaps even Will himself didn’t realize it yet.
Deep inside his body was a heart that longed for battle.
Will placed a hand over his chest and felt the lightning energy circulating inside him.
Once again, he demonstrated his truly terrible naming ability.
“Hmm.
I’ll call it the Lightning Core.”
He paused.
“Or just the ‘Thunder Core.'”
He looked up toward the outside world.
The sky was already bright.