"Here, take it! Practical Medical Handbook for Sailors: East Blue Edition! It covers the most common illnesses at sea and basic treatments. Go memorize it yourself and stop bothering me!"
Luffy felt as though he'd been granted a royal pardon!
In his eyes, this hefty book was practically no different from the One Piece itself.
He snatched it up and hugged it tightly against his chest. The twisted expression on his face melted away like snow, leaving behind nothing but overwhelming relief at having survived a disaster.
"Nami, I freaking love you!"
Luffy happily gave Nami a hug, then eagerly rushed over to the only chair at her desk. He slapped the book open, buried his head in it, and immediately began muttering the obscure medicine names and symptom descriptions under his breath.
Nami stared blankly at her hand, then at Luffy, then back at her hand.
What exactly had she touched just now?
Crisis averted.
Luffy instantly switched into forced-concentration mode.
Did he understand what any of this meant?
The answer was no.
But that didn't stop Luffy from chewing over every word and stuffing all of it into his head at once.
His head and eyes had both been completely empty before, but now a massive pile of information was suddenly being crammed inside.
【Through diligent study, your Medical Knowledge has increased. Experience +3.】
Experience?
Luffy suddenly felt like he could understand these concepts a little better.
Read more, learn more, practice more!
Could this really make him the Pirate King?
The Pirate King was supposed to be the freest person on the seas.
Luffy fell into self-doubt.
【Warning: During (Studying Medical Knowledge)...】
Luffy wailed internally.
Damn you.
Could it be that the Pirate King wasn't actually what he'd imagined?
Without strength, there was no freedom. So how was he supposed to become the Pirate King without working himself to death?!
The room fell silent for a while, with only the sound of Luffy seriously flipping through pages and the scratching of his pen across paper.
By the time she came back to her senses, Nami was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring blankly at the back of the figure seated at her desk.
That monkey who normally bounced around all over the place was actually hunched over a desk, studying with complete concentration?
The contrast was even more shocking than encountering a magnetic anomaly while drawing a nautical chart.
Just then, Nami felt one of her shoulder straps loosen slightly.
She looked down.
Oh no!
Sitting up so abruptly and throwing the book earlier had caused one of the thin straps of her already-loose nightdress to slip down her smooth shoulder.
A patch of pale skin was instantly exposed across her chest!
"Ah!"
Nami let out a small cry. Her cheeks instantly burned scorching hot, turning so red they looked ready to bleed. She hurriedly covered the side of her chest where the strap had fallen and glared at the culprit sitting at the desk with a mixture of embarrassment and fury.
Yet Luffy remained completely motionless, his head practically buried inside the thick medical handbook, utterly oblivious to the alluring sight beside him.
That reaction instead left Nami stunned.
A subtle trace of disappointment that even she hadn't noticed quietly passed through her heart.
He seriously hadn't looked at all?
Was she really less attractive than the book's diagrams of flea parasites?!
That damned, infuriating, dense rubber bastard!
"Hmph!" Nami snorted heavily in irritation.
"Nami!" Luffy suddenly shouted.
"What is it?" Nami's expression suddenly brightened.
"You can draw nautical charts, right? Can you draw anatomical diagrams too?"
The idea in Luffy's head was becoming clearer and clearer.
Reading this stuff really was useful!
"No!" Nami clenched her fist, barely resisting the urge to punch him.
She quickly pulled the fallen shoulder strap back into place.
"Hey! Idiot! I'm changing clothes! You absolutely, absolutely cannot turn around! Got it?!" Nami said.
"Okay." Luffy didn't even lift his head.
Right now, even if the most beautiful woman in the world stood in front of him wearing some seductive uniform or had just stepped dripping wet out of the bath, all he would do was push her aside and continue reading.
No one could stop him!
Seeing Luffy looking like a complete bookworm made that inexplicable irritation in Nami's heart flare up again, mixed with a strange sense of defeat!
This guy really didn't see her as a woman at all.
She bit her lower lip, but in the end, all she did was give Luffy's back another small, resentful snort.
【Through diligent study, your Medical Knowledge has increased. Experience +3.】
【Through diligent study...】
Medical knowledge covered all kinds of things: biology, human anatomy, internal medicine, surgery...
Cardiovascular systems, respiration, digestion, blood, and so on.
Luffy began thinking.
One thing Garp had constantly drilled into his head was that even dogs wouldn't eat Devil Fruits, and only a powerful body represented true strength.
That was why Luffy had built such a strong physical foundation, strong enough to withstand sleeping only one hour every day.
An ordinary person's body could be trained continuously until it reached someone like Garp's level.
Then what would happen if he broke past an ordinary person's limits?
Luffy remembered the Marine he'd sent flying with Giant Pistol not long ago. He seemed to have shouted "Iron Body." That was some kind of Marine technique, right? It turned the body as hard as iron.
"The human body can unleash two hundred percent of its strength when excited. If I stimulate my blood circulation to strengthen my body and use that to enter a completely different state from my normal form..."
Luffy burst into laughter.
"Then I'll call it Gear Second!"
"It worked! It worked!"