With Garp letting the boys take off their training harnesses and only focusing on getting on the leaderboards, the boys ended up splitting up and going to one of the six training courses the next day. It was mostly so the boys could save time and didn’t have to wait for the others to run the timed course. So each boy went to their favorite obstacle course and focused on getting the best record on it they could.

Luffy went to the second obstacle course which was a massive set of monkey bars that are twenty feet wide and over one hundred feet long. Well they weren’t exactly monkey bars, they were a bunch of different bars, rings, ledges, and other objects you hold onto while you crossed over a sixty foot drop into water. Most of the hand holds moved, twisted or would slide once you put weight on them so you had to be careful how you went through the course.

Sabo picked the fourth course which was a climbing based test. It was a climbing wall that started vertically and moved to an overhead climb which rested over a deep pool of water in case someone fell. The wall was over a hundred feet tall with only tiny hand and foot holds used to traverse it. While it wasn’t as crazy as some of the other courses, the small hand holds and past vertical angles along with the last part being an overhang that spanned fifteen feet, made the climbing wall tough to complete.

Ace chose the sixth timed obstacle to challenge, which was a rope based course. The objective of the course was to climb up different types of rope based obstacles, all of which became harder with each level you completed. It started as a simple rope ladder and then transferred to a rope with knots before becoming just a rope. At that point the person was about thirty feet in the air hanging onto a rope and needed to swing to another set of ropes. The course just got worse from there and was placed over a pit of water in case a person fell. Which could happen when someone tried to jump between the different rope sections.

As for Marcus, he went to course one with the logs stuck in the mud. It was his favorite obstacle and he even had the fastest time out of the other boys on it. But today Marcus was going to run the course without his harness for the first time, so he hoped to make it in the top one hundred on his first run after doing his warm up.

Marcus moved to the starting stump and studied the area in front of himself for a few moments before he moved. His first jump shot him past the first row of logs and he landed on the second row without much issue. From there, Marcus moved through the area skipping over logs for the first half of the obstacle course. The second half he was forced to slow down and only skipped a handful of logs.

Once he completed the course, Marcus ran the whole thing backwards. He didn’t have the chance to do it before when training, since Garp would force everyone to only move forward during training. But now that he was free, Marcus decided to run the course front to back a few times as his warmup.

Once he completed the course five times, Marcus moved onto the course again and started to map out the best path from start to finish. He took his time and checked the distance between each log, while he test jumped from different logs to see how many he could skip and where they were. That took the longest since he would often miss the log or over shot it landing in the mud pit below. Hours passed as Marcus moved log to log before he had the information he wanted and with that Marcus was able to plan his perfect run though the log course.

It was around lunch time when Marcus finished so he went back to camp to eat and see how the others were doing. He was the last one to show up and was still a little wet from cleaning all the mud off from his last fall. But he smiled when he noticed his brothers were also in different stages of their clothes drying off.

Marcus walked over to the bonfire Garp used for cooking as he asked, “Has anyone reached the top fifty yet?”

“I made it to fifty six so far!” Luffy said before he took a large bite out of his seaking meat.

Ace smirked as he said, “Currently sitting at forty, but I know I can do better.”

“I made it to forty nine, but the time difference is only about twenty seconds to thirtieth place. So that’s my goal.” Sabo said as he smiled.

Marcus sat down and grabbed a piece of meat from the pile that was done as Luffy asked, “What about you? Did you get close to fifty?”

Marcus shrugged as he said, “I spent the morning plotting my run, so it hasn’t changed yet.”

Everyone looked at him including Garp who gave him a weird look. Marcus was in the middle of chewing so he just stared back at everyone else. A few seconds later he swallowed and asked, “What?”

“What do you mean you were plotting your run? You just hit the button and run across it.” Garp said matter of factly as the other boys nodded in agreement.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Marcus shook his head as he said, “If you don’t plot the obstacle course, how are you gonna know the optimal path to cross it?”

“You're not meant to think about it, you're supposed to do it as fast as possible.” Garp said.

“And I will, after I find the best path forward.”

Garp placed more meat over the fire as he said, “This best path forward better put you in the top fifty then. If it doesn't, it's a waste of time.”

Marcus smiled before he said, “It’ll be fine grandpa, trust me.”

“We’ll see how good it works after lunch. I’ll come watch you run the course.” Garp said.

“I’ll come along too. I wanna see if it helps.” Ace said.

Sabo and Luffy also agreed to join, since they wanted to see what Marcus was doing. The rest of lunch was spent chatting and eating, before a short break to rest a bit. Afterwards everyone moved to obstacle course one to watch Marcus and see if his method helped improve his time. Once there, everyone except Marcus moved to the billboard side, while he went to the starting log.

Once he was ready Marcus moved out onto the course. He didn’t go all out and didn’t skip logs. He just moved through the course and rechecked the path he plotted as he landed on each log to double check his footing. Once on the other side Luffy asked, “What was that? You were so slow and didn’t hit the button.”

Marcus smiled as he said, “I was double checking my path and warming up. Let me run it a couple more times and then I’ll run it for real.”

Marcus then turned around and did the log course backwards as everyone watched. Over the next ten minutes Marcus slowly ran the course two more times as a warm up. Once he finished the second trip back, he stood next to the button and said to the others, “Alright, this time I’ll do it with the timer!”

Marcus pushed the button and moved near the front of the log and waited. After five seconds a buzzer went off and Marcus exploded off the starting log. His first jump was big and he actually landed on one of the logs in the third row. From there every jump he made skipped at least one log and within a flash he completed the first half of the course.

As he moved into the second half of the course, Marcus kept his crazy pace and kept skipping over logs. With the smaller logs he actually looked like he was running instead of jumping, as he would land on only one foot and use that foot to jump to the next. He also used the movement of his free foot to help move him forward as he jumped, which helped to increase his jump length.

As Marcus crossed over the gap to the last log another buzzer went off and everyone turned to look at the time. On top of the leaderboard was a time of one minute, three seconds and thirty four one hundredths of a second. As everyone looked at the time Garp started to laugh as he said, “That was great, as expected of my grandson!”

On the leaderboard Marcus’s time came up as number eleven, with only a five second difference between him and first place. Marcus wasn’t sure if he could do it, but he was going to try for first place. As Marcus was thinking about how he could improve his time, Luffy hugged him as he said, “That was awesome! You have to show me how you did that so I can get a good score also!”

Ace and Sabo nodded their heads in agreement as Marcus said, “I can show you, but you’ll have to figure out your own path.”

Over the next hour Marcus showed the other boys how to do his weird running hop while he also taught them how to plot a path through the log course. For a few hours they all hung out at the log course and practiced before they moved back to their chosen obstacle course with a different outlook on how to complete it.

When dinner came around, Marcus was able to shave off two more seconds and was currently ranked fifth on the leaderboard. As for the others they took their time and studied their own obstacle courses and figured out faster ways to complete them. During dinner they all sat around chatting about different things they found and figured out about each course they picked. The next day the others went back with even more motivation to improve their times and spent the first half of the day studying, while Marcus worked on improving his time.

By the next day everyone was pretty happy with their current times on their chosen obstacles, so they switched and moved to a different obstacle. Within the next few days everyone completed every course in the top thirty or better. With that done, the boys went back to their favorite courses and attempted to get a better time during the last few days of their stay on the island.

When everything was said and done Ace won Garp’s contest of getting the best overall score. It was actually really close with Sabo only being a few spots behind him and Marcus about ten spots behind Sabo. Luffy came in last but he was still happy overall since he was only a single spot behind Marcus. Marcus did beat his goal though and set a new record for the log course. It was only a few hundreds of a second faster than the last person, but that was good enough for him.

With everyone satisfied with their scores, they spent the last day just relaxing on the island and playing some card games before they packed up and got ready to leave the next morning. The next day Garp woke everyone up early in the morning and made them a breakfast of sea king meat before they loaded up the ship. While they didn’t bring much with them, Garp killed a bunch of sea kings while they stayed on the island and made a bunch of jerky out of the meat for the boys. So they ended up loading up the ship with a ton of sea king jerky that should last them for about six months when they get back home.

With that they pulled out the oars, removed the ship from the dock and set sail through the calm belt back to east blue.