“Gin! Kaku! I have a proposition!”
Allan shouted with a grin.
Kaku and Gin were surprised, it wasn’t very Allan to scream in the morning.
“What proposition Al?”
Gin asked curiously. Kaku also looked at Allan.
“We should go to sea!”
Allan said before raising his hand with a wave.
“We’ll go out as bounty hunters, with our current strength, it shouldn’t be hard to take down most pirates in East Blue, as for our new base, finding an island near a place with a marine branch should do.”
Allan explained.
In the past, his and Gin’s strength was truly quite unsatisfactory, especially Gin, but after a year of training coupled with Gin’s Faceless Demon Tactics, their safety was basically guaranteed.
While Allan’s strength was already strong in the East Blue, after learning Shave and Storm Leg, as long as there were no monsters from the Grand Line, Allan could declare himself safe in East Blue.
“We also need to experience sailing at some point, East Blue is simply the safest to do so, we also need real combat experience, as well as capital, not to mention upgrades in terms of weapons.”
Allan added.
As for blacksmiths, Shimotsuki Village where Zoro lives should be a good place to find blacksmiths.
As for finding famous swords, for swordsmen who use one sword, this was definitely not a problem.
For the three swords style swordsman like Zoro, well, it didn’t seem like a problem, but for dual swords style like Kaku not counting his two legs, like Whitebeard’s 5th Division Commander Vista, both of their two swords were identical, of course, there might be dual swordsmen out there who use different swords, but so far none has been shown to do so in One Piece.
In fact, Allan had long been tempted to set sail, there was a limit to pure training so combat was something Allan was looking forward to.
Especially because his talent was not too outstanding, even learning Shave and Storm Leg was because of his enhanced physique, he felt that both Kaku and Gin had more talent than him, the only thing that Allan surpassed the two was height.
“Apart from weapons, I really want to learn another type of Martial Arts, Six styles is already good, but I still feel like it's lacking in flow, like an uncomfortable itch.”
Allan explained.
So far, the two understood what Allan said, that is…
Go to sea!
The two looked at each other with a smile.
In fact, the duo also wanted to go to sea.
But as Allan said, the East Blue was the safest of all seas, if they couldn’t even sail in the East Blue, then they had better stop and just live in the mountains.
“I agree!”
“Me too!”
Allan, Gin, and Kaku smiled happily.
Gin went to the village to ask the ten boys about their opinion and all of them agreed to come.
Allan and Kaku packed their belongings, especially the meat jerky they had stored.
As for the boat, Fossa had long been tasked to find people who wanted to sell their ship.
Two months prior, they successfully bought a caravel-type ship similar to Going Merry.
The ship's name was Alexandria.
The seller asked them not to change the name as part of the deal.
But unlike the Going Merry, Alexandria was a three-masted ship, its length was also 23 meters which was almost twice as long as Going Merry.
The seller also voluntarily asked to train them how to operate the ship, Allan, Gin, and Kaku tried to absorb everything they could learn from the old sailor, for one month, the three asked the old owner about navigation, Kaku was expected, but Allan was surprised about Gin’s enthusiasm, naturally Gin has long been able to read and write, but learning navigation other than combat was a bit surprising.
“What? You thought I was just going to just train while you two learned how to sail?”
Allan could still remember Gin’s rebuttal to his and Kaku’s stare.
Overall, the three especially Kaku learned enough about navigation.
Allan was just an average Joe in the past, nothing too special, but learning new knowledge with his young brain was of course not too hard, just that he lacked the enthusiasm of Kaku.
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That was to say, Kaku was a model good student, while Allan retained his not-so-good student style of learning.
It's not that Allan underestimated navigation skills that’s why he wasn’t too enthusiastic.
Rather, he learned what he could learn and that was it, Kaku on the other hand kept on pestering the old man for further knowledge.
Allan who knew the eccentricity of the sea, knows well that only truly skilled navigators could be useful in the Grand Line.
Someone like Nami who had extreme talent in navigation was rare, and most navigators put most of their time into learning navigation.
As for the four blues, basic navigation was fine already.
So instead of wasting his time learning navigation, he just learned the basics and returned to training.
As for Kaku, that guy was a genius, in Water 7, he spent 5 years mastering the craft that most people spend half their lives learning, he even became a veritable number-one shipwright.
Although he told Kaku that they were going to find a navigator in the future, Kaku still insisted, but also relented and said he would only learn after he finished his daily training.
The two boys pulled a huge cart with three small bags filled with their belongings and two enormous bags of meat jerky, the people stared at them which didn’t faze Allan and Kaku at all.
They’d become a sort of celebrity in the village especially when they defeated a pirate invasion three months ago, Kaku’s sword was also part of the loot, according to Kaku, the sword he got could pass as a Grade Blade in quality.
After reaching the port, Allan and Kaku finally saw Alexandria, although it looked like a simple ship without much embellishment, except for the figurehead, this was specifically asked by Allan to be prepared, it was a Jaeger, a type of sea bird, and a symbol of freedom.
Looking at the ship, Allan couldn’t help but smile, from a poor orphaned beggar to owning a ship, he felt a bit accomplished.
They bought the ship for about 15 million berries, Allan collected about 3 million from the gangsters, and the rest was selling the prey he hunted in the port, doing so for almost 10 months earned him about 20 million berries, the price differed depending on the ships that came by the port.
Now they had about 5 million remaining, and 4 million came from the pirates that tried to loot Apple Island, if their boat wasn’t trash, Allan would have requisitioned the ship, but no one would buy such a battered ship so they sunk it.
A proper funeral for a ship.
As for why they only had 1 million left, 15 million was spent on the ship, except for the meat, everything had to be bought with berries, so almost 7 million berries were spent by them and the 10 boys.
Allan somehow pitied Nami after thinking about Luffy and Zoro’s food consumption, there’s a reason why those two were the strongest in the ship, especially Zoro who fights, trains, eats, and sleeps for most of his scenes except the scene of him losing his way.
As for Sanji, as much as Allan could tell, he only eats a normal portion.
Maybe it was because of his latent genes that allowed Sanji to gain strength not proportional to the amount of food intake he had.
As the treasurer of the ship, Nami must have been constantly in distress seeing the money dwindle just from food consumption.
Allan suddenly realized that in the near future, he would face similar problems, after all, he can’t just go hunting every time.
“Maybe I’ll spend a few days each month to hunt food.”
Allan murmured.
Their food consumption was no joke, he, Gin, and Kaku, Gin still had an above-average appetite, but Kaku who learned Life Return, and Allan with his Devil Fruit were both starting to look like Luffy when eating.
“It’s good to be bounty hunters, we should be able to afford the consumption, no! I need to find more ways to find money.”
Allan murmured but shook away his thoughts since they arrived in Alexandria.
Allan saw the ten boys enthusiastically do chores around the ship, in the One Piece world, setting sail was definitely at the top of most people’s dreams.
Allan looked proudly at the symbol he painted, a silhouette of a sword with wings sprouting out of each handguard.
The wings meant freedom while the sword, depending on the situation could mean many things, but to Allan it meant protection.
At first, Allan debated whether to draw in a shield too, but just kept it as is.
Strength meant protection, the sword already implied protection so Allan gave up the shield,
Either way, he was going to protect his dreams as well as his family.
Allan nodded in satisfaction before turning to Kaku.
“According to the charts given by the old man, it might take a month to reach the Goa Kingdom.”
Kaku explained.
How big was the world of One Piece has always been a mystery, in one part Arabasta’s Sandora River was 50 km long, yet Arabasta was only an island country in the first half of the Grand Line.
But one thing was for sure, the One Piece world was huge.
The number of affiliated countries alone number up to 170 countries, while the number of non-affiliated countries and ruined countries were still unknown, after all, this world had 800 years worth of time for countries to rise and fall.
According to the old sailor’s navigational experience, traveling in the sea wasn’t as simple as it seemed, regular navigators just take everything as is, but good and experienced navigators know how to ride the sea currents and the air currents.
Sea currents can accelerate travel speed by at least twice to a whopping four times depending on the season.
Air currents specifically low ones were actually quite dangerous, and only ships with good enough durability could endure them, they come and go like the wind.
This was also a test of the navigator’s judgment, once an air current transforms into a typhoon or storm, then the crew and ship would be put in huge danger.
Even the old man himself said that he only rode weak sea and air currents.
Once any of the currents became stronger, the old man would immediately exit the current even if it meant going back a certain distance, this was his secret for living a long life.
No wonder Luffy and his crew traveled from one island to the other with exceptional speed, Nami’s genius was in play, detecting any of the two currents must be easy for Nami, especially in the Grand Line, with an abnormality like the Calm Belt, Allan could only imagine how crazy and dangerous the Grand Line truly was.
This further made Allan convinced to take Nami in.
Of course, the world was huge, and there should be people equally as talented or just a tad bit inferior to Nami in these seas maybe even better, Barto Club for example had a Granny who could guide them via calls.
Each major pirate group also had skilled navigators.
Shanks who liked to travel back and forth between the East Blue and New World had Building Snake as their navigator, there were also theories that Shanks knew some kind of shortcut or a way to navigate the sea with extreme speed because of how he appeared in Marineford.
This was, of course, just a theory.
“Boss! Everything is ready!”
Fossa said with excitement.
“Set sail! To the sea! To our future!”
Allan pointed towards the open sea with a smile.
The Helmsman Gin grinned while steering the boat, Kaku had already disappeared and appeared on the crow’s nest as a lookout.
Allan promptly sat his rear on the figurehead before deciding that this was now his favorite seat with a huge grin.
Filling the wind hit his face, Allan felt an abrupt feeling of calmness and peace.
“Freedom.”
Allan murmured and he could suddenly feel people moving within his senses.
“This, Hahahahaha!”