That was a ferocious tiger far exceeding ordinary size, its shoulder height almost approaching Luna’s chest, muscles bulging, its amber vertical pupils flashing with a glint of tyranny and hunger, and the dagger-like sharp teeth in its opened bloody maw were chilling.
Its speed was shockingly fast!
Ordinary people simply didn’t have time to react.
But Luna was not an ordinary person; the moment the tiger’s roar sounded, her body had already instinctively reacted—not stepping back, but dodging sideways!
At the same time, her right leg stretched and lengthened violently to the side like a whip!
“Rubber Whip!”
Snap!
The leg whip, elongated by nearly a meter, fiercely lashed across the front side of the tiger’s pouncing path; although it failed to directly hit the tiger’s body, it precisely swept a bowl-thick sapling, the trunk snapping in response, and the falling tree happened to block the tiger’s pouncing route.
The ferocious tiger evidently didn’t expect this move, its forward pouncing momentum tripped by the fallen tree, landing somewhat disheveled, letting out an angry low roar, its vicious gaze locked onto Luna.
“Beautiful!” Yasopp’s voice carried praise, but the gun in his hand was already raised, the muzzle swaying slightly with the tiger’s movement without firing, keeping his promise to let Luna experience actual combat.
The tiger adjusted its posture; this time it did not rashly pounce straight ahead, but lowered its body, moving slowly around Luna to look for openings, a heavy sense of oppression permeating the air.
Luna was fully focused, the [Listening] skill fully activated, the tiger’s heavy breathing, the sound of claws crushing withered leaves, the subtle sounds of tightening muscles…
gathered into an information stream flooding into her mind, while she simultaneously felt the changes in her own body, her Rubber Constitution seeming even more active under the tense state.
“I can’t just defend…” Luna’s eyes narrowed as she decided to take the initiative.
“Rubber…
Pistol!”
Her right arm stretched backward like a fully drawn bowstring, and then was instantly released!
Her fist shot toward the tiger’s head like a cannonball leaving the chamber!
However, the tiger’s reaction was extremely fast, shaking its head fiercely, causing the rubber fist to fly past its ear and strike a large tree behind it, emitting a muffled “thud” as the bark burst apart.
The attack missed, and as her arm was retracting, the tiger seized this opening, its hind limbs exerting force to pounce up at an even trickier angle than the first time, targeting the flank exposed when Luna retracted her arm!
Too fast!
Seeing that the sharp claws were about to touch her body.
“Form Control!” Luna shouted anxiously in her heart.
At the critical moment, the skin and muscles of her flank instantly partially rubberized and slightly depressed inward, rotating to form a small elastic vortex!
Rip!
The tiger claws swept past; the imagined lacerated skin did not appear, but instead it felt like grabbing onto a tight and slick rubber net, most of the force being defused by the eerie rotation and elasticity, leaving only a few tears on her clothes and a few shallow white marks on her skin—not even bleeding!
Missing its strike, the tiger was instead stunned by that strange tactile sensation.
Right now!
Luna’s retracted left hand had its five fingers closed together, her arm not stretching significantly, but instead concentrating the rubber’s elasticity and speed into the instant burst of her wrist and palm, like a viper spitting its tongue, fiercely piercing the tiger’s relatively fragile bridge of the nose!
“Rubber Finger Pistol!”
Poof!
Although inferior to the piercing power of the Navy Six Styles “Finger Pistol”, a strike condensing the piercing power of rubber solidly poked the tiger’s nose; the ferocious tiger let out a roar of pain, stumbling backward with nosebleeds streaming down.
“Chance!” Luna did not let success go to her head and wanted to pursue, when she suddenly felt a slight dizziness—it was [Form Control]’s brief local fine-grained manipulation consuming her already sparse mental power.
The tiger was completely enraged, roaring wildly, no longer probing, and launched the most violent pounce, its huge body carrying a fishy wind to completely shroud Luna!
“That’s about it,” Yasopp’s eyes turned cold, his finger resting on the trigger, as he couldn’t let Luna truly fall into mortal danger.
But Luna clenched her teeth without calling for assistance, the dizziness suppressed by a strong fighting spirit, a trace of ruthlessness flashing in her eyes as she advanced instead of retreating; the moment the tiger reached the highest point of its pounce—when its old force was spent and new force hadn’t been born—she lowered her body, rolling and sliding forward, passing under the tiger’s belly with extreme narrowness!
At the same time, her legs stretched to the limit kicked fiercely upward like springs!
“Rubber Bazooka!
(Prototype)”
Her feet kicked heavily onto the tiger’s relatively soft abdomen!
“Woo!” The tiger let out a painful wail, kicked upward for a short distance by this huge rebound force, crashing heavily onto the ground a few meters away, struggling and failing to get back up immediately for a moment.
Luna also seized the opportunity to roll up and stand, panting slightly as she stared at the temporarily unbalanced tiger; although the few rounds of confrontation were brief, it gave her a qualitative understanding of the application of the Rubber Fruit in actual combat, and on her skill panel, the experience values of [Basic Taijutsu], [Rubber Constitution], [Form Control], and even [Listening] were jumping up.
Yasopp lowered his gun and whistled: “Not bad, little one!
Reaction, adaptability, and that strange deflecting technique…
You really are a monster rookie.”
Luna calmed her breathing, looking at the tiger struggling to stand, its gaze already carrying a trace of fear and vigilance; she knew that today’s actual combat lesson yielded far more than expected, and how to balance energy consumption and mental burden would be the focus of her subsequent cultivation.
Deep in the forest, the standoff between human and tiger continued, but the balance of victory had begun to tilt; Luna’s path to growing stronger took a solid and bloody first step in this morning forest.
Luna stood in place, panting slightly, staring at the struggling tiger getting up; the brief confrontation consumed a lot of her physical strength, especially the two uses of [Form Control] and one high-burst attack, bringing a mental burden more obvious than physical exhaustion, and she clearly felt the dizziness of mild brain hypoxia, just like forcing herself to get up after pulling an all-nighter in her past life.
But the tiger’s condition was worse; the pain of its poked bridge of the nose constantly stimulated its nerves, and the heavy kick to its abdomen made its breathing carry painful spasms, its amber vertical pupils staring dead at the strange little person before it, its rage already mixed with a trace of instinctive vigilance and confusion—never had any prey been able to harm it like this, nor been able to deflect its fatal claw strike.
“Roar…” A low, painful roar rolled from deep within its throat, and the tiger did not pounce immediately again; instead, it began to pace slowly, its huge body casting an oppressive shadow in the dappled morning light of the woods, attempting to re-find openings in its prey.
Yasopp leaned against a slightly farther tree trunk, the muzzle of his gun drooping slightly, but his gaze remained sharp; he saw Luna’s consumption and the tiger’s caution after being injured, “In hunting, patience and keen observation are sometimes more important than pure strength, little one,” he reminded and guided in a low voice.
Luna heard it, taking a deep breath and forcing herself to calm down from the excitement of the intense confrontation; the restlessness brought by the Rubber Fruit was slightly suppressed by the sanity of her past life, and she no longer rushed to attack, but instead learned from the tiger’s appearance, moving her steps slowly, maintaining a safe distance while fully activating the [Listening] skill.
The sound of the wind, the rustling of leaves, the tiger’s heavy and slightly disordered breathing, the crisp sound of paws snapping small dead branches…
streams of information continuously poured in, and she noticed that the tiger’s injured right forelimb had an imperceptible sluggishness when bearing weight—was that the joint consequence of being kicked in the abdomen just now?
Also, every time it exhaled, its nostrils would flare painfully.
“Weaknesses…
more than one place,” Luna’s eyes narrowed slightly, recalling animal documentaries she had watched in her past life, as well as Luffy’s seemingly reckless yet always core-grasping combat intuition from the original work; now, she was going to combine the two.
The tiger seemed to have lost its patience, or rather the pain in its abdomen forced it to finish the battle as soon as possible; it lowered its body again, letting out a threatening purr in its throat, and then launched forth fiercely!
This time it wasn’t a high pounce, but an extremely fast dash hugging the ground, like a yellow-and-black lightning bolt straight for Luna’s lower body!
It wanted to use its size advantage to knock Luna down, and then end the battle with its body weight and sharp teeth.
“Well timed!” Luna advanced instead of retreating, and the moment the tiger was about to crash into her, her legs exerted sudden force to leap upward!
The excellent jumping ability brought by the Rubber Constitution allowed her to easily jump over two meters high.
The tiger rushed past beneath her, missing its pounce, slammed on the brakes to turn around, and Luna, who was mid-air, began her counterattack; taking a deep breath, she concentrated her spirit—not the delicate [Form Control], but a coarser, more direct application of power!
Her right arm stretched backward like a rubber band, stretching and stretching all the way to the limit, the entire arm trembling slightly due to over-stretching, making a taut creaking sound; the morning sunlight shone on her tensed arm, the muscle fibers beneath the skin seeming to wriggle and reorganize, accumulating terrifying elastic potential energy.
[Rubber Constitution LV7 (27 / 100)]
[Form Control LV2 (24 / 100)]—even with such a relatively crude stretch and charge, it touched upon the basic control of form.
“Rubber…” Luna adjusted her posture in mid-air, locking her gaze onto the tiger below that had just turned around and looked up, especially its open, bloody, and drooling huge maw.
“…
Bazooka!”
The arm tensed to the limit was like a released animal trap, and also like a giant cannon firing from the chamber, the fist carrying a sharp sound of breaking air, crashing down with a speed and power far exceeding the “Pistol”!
The target pointed straight at the tiger’s wide-open mouth!
In panic, the tiger tried to close its mouth and tilt its head, but it was already too late; that punch, condensing most of Luna’s physical strength and the rubber elastic potential energy at this moment, solidly slammed into its oral cavity!
“Bang!!!”
A muffled, teeth-aching impact sound rang out.
The fist did not punch through the skull, but that huge impact force went straight through the upper jaw into the braincase; the tiger’s roar was instantly interrupted, turning into a short, shrill wail, its entire head violently thrown backward by the blow, its huge body dragged to roll backward, breaking several clumps of bushes before collapsing softly onto the ground, its limbs twitching, more blood and saliva mixture overflowing from its mouth and nose, its eyes having lost focus, leaving only unconscious spasms.