The sea breeze of Marineford had been blowing for three whole months, carrying the scent of salt and rust.
In the afternoon training ground, heat waves shimmered, and dust billowed.
"Bang!"
With a dull thud, like a siege hammer striking a city gate, Seraphilia felt the bones in her forearm cry out in protest under the immense strain.
Her entire body was thrown backward as if hit by a runaway locomotive. Her feet plowed two deep furrows into the solid ground before she could barely dissipate that overwhelming, unstoppable terrifying force.
Intense pain and numbness instantly exploded from the point of contact, sweeping across half her body. But she did not fall.
"Oh?" The figure opposite her stood like an unshakeable mountain; it was the "marine hero" Garp.
He retracted the fist capable of shattering icebergs, grinned widely, revealing a smile full of admiration and wildness. "You learned to use your body's axis for power, combining it with Cloud Mist for force deflection and turning? You've improved, little girl!"
"But!" Garp's smile vanished, his eyes suddenly sharpening. "Still too soft! Too slow! Your body hasn't memorized this feeling yet! Again! Use your Cloud Mist to assist your power, be a little faster, a little fiercer for this old man!"
Before the words faded, an even more ferocious assault descended like a violent storm.
Fists, kicks, elbows, knees... Garp seemed transformed into a humanoid disaster, crushing down from all directions.
Seraphilia gritted her teeth, pushing her combat instincts and Cloud Mist control, honed over three months in endless agony, to the absolute limit.
The Cloud Mist beneath her feet erupted at the critical moment, allowing her to slip half a step sideways like a phantom, narrowly avoiding a sweeping kick; the highly compressed Cloud Mist on her arm instantly hardened like steel, meeting Garp's finger gun head-on, at the cost of her entire arm going numb; even while being sent flying once, she forced down the churning blood and Qi, condensing a Cloud Blade to shoot toward Garp's face. Although it was dispersed by a casual puff of air from him, it successfully bought her a split second to adjust her posture.
She was still repelled time and again, crashing into walls, smashing craters into the ground, dust and sweat mixed with streaks of blood sliding from the corner of her mouth.
Pain was her constant companion every day, but the speed at which she got back up grew faster and faster. In her ice-blue eyes burned an almost obsessive fervor and an unyielding fighting spirit.
"Teacher Garp!" After being blasted backward again by a straight punch to her abdomen, curling up like a shrimp, she spat out the sand in her mouth and asked, her voice hoarse yet exceptionally clear, "In that punch just now, the degree of your waist and hip rotation was three parts greater than usual. Was that to gain a longer acceleration distance and penetration power?"
Garp's movements suddenly froze. Even Bogart, who was leaning nearby gnawing on an apple with a sword, looked up in surprise.
"Hahahaha Hahahaha!" Garp was stunned for a moment before erupting in deafening laughter. "Little girl! You've gotten so good at taking beatings you've developed X-ray vision, and now you're starting to dissect my punching style? Come on, watch closely!"
He actually slowed down and demonstrated the technique for generating power in detail, then said, "Theory is theory. If your body can't keep up with your brain, it's all useless! Keep going! If I don't beat you into the ground ten times today, you're doing extra training before dinner!"
"Yes!" Seraphilia's eyes ignited with fierce flames, and she once again fearlessly lunged forward.
If the afternoon training ground was a furnace for tempering the body, then Teacher Tsuru's office in the morning was a chessboard for forging the mind.
"...Therefore, the 'delay' in intelligence itself can also become a weapon." Vice Admiral Tsuru put down the sea chart in her hands and looked calmly at the silver-haired girl sitting upright opposite her. "Intentionally leaking a semi-true combat plan, using the time lag in the enemy's intelligence transmission and analysis, to launch the real attack before they can fully react or deploy. What are your thoughts on this, Seraphilia?"
Three months ago, she was just a silent, listening private first class here.
Now, Seraphilia raised her head, her ice-blue eyes flashing with thoughtful light.
"Teacher Tsuru," she used a more intimate form of address, "I believe this is a mastery of 'momentum.' The key lies in the 'rhythm.' The timing of the intelligence leak, the ratio of 'bait' to 'trap' in the content, and the activation time of our real action must form a chain of oppressive timelines. My ability might assist in this—creating localized weather matching the weather description in the 'leaked intelligence' to enhance its credibility; or using Cloud Mist to conceal our actual movements during the real operation."
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