Seeing that Ian understood, Rayleigh didn"t say much, just mentioned something: “In the future, whether it"s your physical or swordsmanship practice, try to use the Haki as much as possible. In this way, you can continuously strengthen your Haki.”Ian nodded said: “Alright, Mr. Rayleigh!”
“Call me Sensei (Master)!” Rayleigh suddenly smiled and said to him.
Ian"s heart was very pleased. When Rayleigh said this, undoubtedly, he officially confirmed his discipleship, not just the simple guidance that was announced at the beginning, which meant that he was quite satisfied with him, so he immediately called out: “Hai, Rayleigh-sensei!”
In this world, Ian only had two official Masters, one was Koshiro, and now, the recent Sensei is Rayleigh.
“Since you called me Master, then I will not hide it from you anymore!” Rayleigh said: “I used to be the Deputy Captain of Pirate King, Gol. D. Roger. Since Roger died, I have been living in seclusion on this Archipelago…”
Ian smiled and said, “I know, you must be a very famous person!”
“What, a famous person! I"m just an old man now!” Rayleigh took a sip of his Sake and said, “Do you know why I took you to the auction house?”
Ian shook his head. He also felt that there was another reason for taking him to the auction house, not just to make him Awaken his Haki.
“Ian, you are a good boy!” Rayleigh sighed: “You have a conscience, and every awful thing you saw in the auction house made you angry. However, I have been on the Sabaody Archipelago for so long, and I have seen so much, which gradually made me numb. It"s not just me, I"m afraid that there are many people on the island like me. This has always been something I have not understood. Why would Roger tell the world to seek his treasures when he died…”
“Yeah, indeed, I haven"t figured it out yet, too!” Ian said: “Because of his words, the great era of pirates has begun, and the number of evil pirates has also increased. The ones who get hurt are always ordinary civilians!”
“My thoughts are the same as yours!” Rayleigh said: “But after a long stay on the Sabaody Archipelago, I gradually understand Roger"s meaning. The World Government has ruled for many centuries. In dark places, everything is slowly spoiling. Such a privileged cla.s.s as Celestial Dragon is the most obvious example. If these corrupted things continue to be concealed by the World Government, then in the eyes of the world, everything would still be prosperous on the surface, so the damage to the world will be more serious in the end. However, Roger started the Great Era of Pirates, and began to reveal these decadent scars little by little with the impact of the pirates!”
“It"s like a building. If we start destroying it from the top, it will take a long time to collapse!” Rayleigh said: “And the huge amount of Pirates would act like waves. .h.i.tting the bottom of the building, accelerating the time of the collapse…”
“Do you mean, Roger wanted to use the power of the Pirates to overthrow the rule of the World Government?” Ian asked doubtfully.
“I don"t know!” Rayleigh shook his head: “Even what I just said is only my speculation. No one really knows the true intentions of Roger.”
Ian wanted to ask something else, but Rayleigh said: “Okay, don"t say too much. I"m just an old man who is too angry. Our era is coming to an end. It"s useless to talk much about it. So let"s change the topic, or think about what happened today in the auction house and its consequences!”
When Ian heard this topic, he frowned suddenly.
Indeed, although all the people in the auction house have fainted by his Haoshoku Haki, that will not erase the memory of those people. When they wake up and look around, finding all the auctioned slaves at the auction has escaped, they will definitely react badly…
“Don"t worry, they won"t be able to find you easily!” Rayleigh smiled and said, “I made sure that you disguise to protect yourself. And if they want to find the one who caused all of this, they can only look for me! The forces behind that auction house are huge, but they don"t dare to retaliate against me, so during this time, you can stay on the island with peace of mind.”
Ian knows very well that the force behind the No. 1 auction house was Donquixote Doflamingo, the Shichibukai. To put it, Doflamingo can be regarded as the biggest dark force of the Shichibukai, the most influential underworld broker under the codename “Joker”. Ian was not sure if he could deal with him now, but that"s not the same with Rayleigh. Doflamingo should be so terrified of him.
Moreover, there were no Celestial Dragons in the auction house. As long as these privileged cla.s.ses were not involved, according to Ian"s understanding, with Doflamingo"s arrogance, it"s estimated that he won"t pay attention to those ordinary n.o.bles and wealthy people. If only because of the protests of these people vs. Rayleigh, it won"t be worth it. So Ian guessed that he would probably put this matter down.
After chatting with Rayleigh for a while, Ian went back. Rayleigh told him that he planned to go back to Shakky"s Rip-off Bar for this period, and if something happened, he could find him there.
Now following Rayleigh"s instruction, his training was temporarily on hold, so when he returned to the family stronghold, Ian called Hawking and asked him about the recent family situation.
Recently, because the World Council was about to be held, the Marines have sent a lot of soldiers to escort the world"s leaders. Therefore, the number of pirates on the Sabaody Archipelago has increased since this time. Many pirates took this opportunity to go to Fish-Man Island, and then rush to the New World.
These Pirates" bounties were varied, but the highest one has only 92 million Berries. It seems that during this time, no new high-bounty pirates other than Ace appeared.
On the contrary, there were a lot of pirates with low-to-medium bounties.
The so-called treasure, the One Piece, left by Roger, has attracted a large number of pirates to go to the New World. However, most of them, lacking strength, think that they could do it without even knowing how cruel the New World is. So eventually, they face their fate, and none of them would last more than a month there.
Ian doesn"t care for them, if they want to go to the New World, that"s their own thing. However, the emergence of these pirates has made the business of the Ian family thrive.
Ian was focusing on his training with Rayleigh during that time, so he wasn"t taking care of the business in person. However, the family members caught six or seven pirates.
Most of the pirates they caught were worth 10 to 20 million Berries, according to the gathered information, they were all weak. Ian knew about this, but today, when Hawking was called, he wanted to ask the situation of the family.
Hawking didn"t conceal anything, and said to Ian: “Boss, these days, we"ve got a total of 120 million Berries for the pirates we caught. According to your instructions, I"ve collected some of them and given the rest to the family members. In addition, I"ve also paid some money as compensation for the bereaved families. So now, there are only 67 million Berries left in the safe!”
When Ian first heard that his family had made 120 million Berries, he thought it was pretty good. After hearing the final savings from Hawking, he suddenly frowned.
“How come only that amount left?” Ian asked, “Didn"t I tell you to save 80%?”
“Yes!” Hawking said with a wry smile, “I"ve been saving 80% of the prize money. Originally, there should be 96 million Berries left in the end, but the problem is that there are too many casualties when catching pirates! The family members are very opinionated now!”
“How about the casualties?” Ian Asked.
“More than 20 people have been killed!” Hawking said: “The rest were even more numerous, we have a lot of people with minor or serious injuries. During this time alone, compensation cost almost 30 million Berries!”
“So, their complaints are against me?” Ian said with a sneer.
Hawking swallowed his saliva and said, “Boss Ian, you know, when a bounty hunter wants to catch a pirate, he will inevitably fight back. It would be much easier if it was just robbery or kidnapping?”
It"s true that the people he recruited were all selected from the four families he eliminated. These people were used to doing restful but shady business. Now they were under Ian"s repression and transferred to pirate hunters. They immediately felt that the difficulty was greatly increased. Although their number was quite large, Pirates were not easy to be trifled with. It"s impossible to catch them while they give up obediently, for sure, there would be a severe battle.
The reason why Shakky said that Ian was a stranger on this island was this, instead of doing comfort businesses, he was only focusing on the difficult one.
Hawking reported these situations to Ian, just because he wanted to let him know and pay attention to these complaints. However, Ian had his own considerations. To be honest, the family he formed didn"t mean much to Ian. The people he gathered were treated as cannon fodder by Ian, because they were not good people, he can"t train them as his real team.
Moreover, Ian didn"t intend to run the family for a long time. Sabaody Archipelago was just a station. Whenever he decides to leave, will he take all these people with him?
However, Ian could not say these words to Hawking. Hawking and the first guys who joined the family were loyal to him. Ian thought about arranging something like a back-up plan for them to help them maintain a normal life when he is about to leave.
“I see!” Ian nodded and said, “For the time being, just keep it as it is, and give me the money we saved!”
Hawking nodded and went back to bring the money. Ian sat on the sand and began to calculate his a.s.sets.
There was still a lot of money left for Lucius" bounty. There were about 60 million left, plus the savings, this time, he has about 120 million Berries. It"s an excellent time to recharge some diamonds and start drawing waves of cards.
Just as he thought about this, a systematic prompt sound echoed in his mind.
“Fusion has been completed! Please open the System interface to check the modifications!”
Ian quickly opened the System Interface and went in to look at them. Before Awakening the Haki, he was worried about what kind of changes would be caused by this integration. Now he must confirm it.
At this point, however, Ian breathed a sigh of relief!
After the combination of Haki and Nen, the biggest change was the composition of the Nen skills!
The original Advanced Nen skills, after Ian awakened his Haki, broke through to the expert level directly! However, in the description of the Expert-level Nen skills, the recovered amount of the Nen value (per hour) disappeared!
[Expert-Level Nen skills: increase the total value of the Nen by 5%. The host can use the Nen diffusion “En” and launch it in many forms. The recovery of Nen is related to the physical strength (stamina) of the host. The more abundant the physical energy, the faster the recovery of Nen will be. Current proficiency (0 / 200000)]
In addition to advancing to the Expert-level of Nen skills, Ian"s own Nen has increased a lot, and even reached the value of nearly 800 points!
Ian understood that this may be the value of his own Haki Strength being integrated with the Nen, which increased the amount by a lot, plus the improvement of the Nen skills to Expert, so it has risen to this level.
In other words, the shackles of the system on Ian have disappeared. The recovery of Nen/Haki is linked to his Stamina, meaning that restoring physical strength is equivalent to restoring the Nen, which is the same as the nature of the Haki. At the same time, because the Nen and Haki integrated in his system, Ian can also use the Haki to display the unique skills of his cards!
From then on, for Ian, Haki is Nen, and Nen is Haki (T/N: We F*cking Get it)! When others use Haki, they may only be able to use Busoshoku or Kenbunshoku, but Ian can also display more special effects!
Ian was delighted to see these changes. He didn"t want to restrict himself to the bottomless-pit card system from the beginning, but insisted on having his own power. This choice was indeed right!
This time, as long as the Flying Shadow"s (Hiei) card is upgraded to five stars, he can use his Haki when launching the Black Dragon wave (The Dragon of the Darkness Flame)!
"What should I call it then?"
Haki-Wave!!