Chapter 37: New Moves
"So? Isn't that an incredibly grand dream?"
Ain lifted her chin proudly, clearly pleased with herself.
Axel looked at her, then gave a lazy nod. "Yeah. Very grand."
His tone was so flat that it sounded less like praise and more like a thinly veiled jab.
Ain's eye twitched.
She immediately raised her fist at him in protest, her cheeks puffing slightly with anger. "What kind of answer is that?!"
Axel was not remotely frightened.
With his ability, any physical attack within the limits of what he could currently reflect would simply bounce back at the attacker. If Ain really punched him, there was a good chance she would only hurt herself instead.
That was also one of the main reasons he had refused to spar with her earlier. He did not want to accidentally injure her.
Still, seeing the little tyrant in front of him ready to explode, Axel hurriedly put on an exaggeratedly alarmed expression.
"So scary. Very impressive. Truly a grand dream."
The obvious act actually worked.
Ain hmphed and lowered her fist, satisfied.
Then she looked up at the sky. The sun had already dipped low, and dusk was spreading across the streets. The road outside was slowly turning dim.
It was clearly time to head home.
She placed both hands behind her back and struck a pose that was meant to look dignified and teacher like.
"That's enough for today's lesson. Remember to review properly, Axel."
Axel cooperated at once. "Yes, Teacher Ain."
"Mm. Very good."
Ain nodded in satisfaction, then slung her bag over her shoulder and trotted toward the door.
But just before leaving, she suddenly turned back and called out, "I'll come tutor you again tomorrow!"
Again?
Axel stood there in silence.
He genuinely could not tell whether that was good news or terrible news.
After watching her leave, his eyes slowly drifted to the notes she had left on the table.
The handwriting was neat, the structure was clear, and everything had been organized with surprising care.
Axel let out a quiet sigh and put the notebook away.
There was no point dwelling on it now.
He quickly pushed those unnecessary thoughts aside and returned to what actually mattered.
His training.
Going back to the earlier problem, he had initially assumed that the reason his attempts kept failing was because once the path of his punch changed, the energy attached to it would also change direction too abruptly. That newly altered flow would then collide with the original energy path, creating instability and causing everything to collapse.
That theory had troubled him for quite a while.
Was it a calculation error?
It did not seem likely.
After so much training, his calculation ability had already far surpassed the current level of power his vector manipulation could produce. In theory, he should have been able to control that kind of adjustment perfectly.
Still, "in theory" and "in practice" were not always the same.
Once a force began changing direction, merging, splitting, and layering onto another force, the formula behind it became far more complex than a simple reversal or deflection. One small mistake could ruin the entire process.
Just thinking about it made Axel understand all over again how absurd Accelerator truly was.
To casually gather the wind of an entire city and manipulate it like a living storm...
That was not just ability. That was madness supported by an inhuman mind.
There was no point thinking too much.
Practice was always the best answer.
Axel clenched his fist and began punching into empty air again and again, carefully feeling every change in resistance, every shift in force, every tiny fluctuation caused by the movement of his own body.
He observed.
Calculated.
Adjusted.
Repeated.
Hours passed in that manner.
Then, at last, he found it.
"This is it...!"
It was not that the temporarily altered energy could not be changed again.
Nor was it that his calculations were wrong.
The real problem was far more annoying.
When his punching path suddenly shifted, the energy attached to it was being unconsciously disrupted by his body's instinctive reflection.
His own defensive reflexes were interfering in order to protect him.
That was why it kept failing.
Once he understood the cause, the solution became obvious.
He simply needed to include the factor of reflection in the calculation itself.
If even his body's automatic defenses were accounted for, then the formula would finally stabilize.
Axel immediately tested the idea.
He adjusted the formula.
Injected reflection into the calculation.
Then punched again.
This time, the energy attached to the strike did not collapse.
It held.
Axel stared at his own fist, then slowly clenched and unclenched it a few times, as if he still could not quite believe it.
He had actually succeeded.
Just like that.
No, not just like that.
He quickly realized what this meant.
All that endless calculation training had not been meaningless after all. Even if his overall power had not made some dramatic leap, his control had definitely improved. His manipulation of energy intensity and directional layering had become much more precise than before.
It was already late into the night by then.
But Axel felt no sleepiness at all.
If anything, the excitement of finally taking a real step forward had left him more awake than ever.
He opened the window.
Moonlight spilled into the room, cool and pale. Above, the night sky stretched wide and clear, dotted with scattered stars.
For a brief moment, Axel stood there in silence.
A gentle breeze brushed against his cheek.
It had already been more than half a year since he came to this world.
More than half a year of drifting, struggling, adapting, surviving.
Like a rootless leaf carried by the tide, he had simply kept moving forward without ever quite finding where he truly belonged.
When he spoke with Luffy and the others about dreams, he had said he wanted to be a hero.
But even he knew that at the time, part of that answer had been borrowed from a childish fantasy.
Now, the truth felt much harsher.
At his current level, protecting himself was already difficult enough.
Protecting others was still a distant thing.
Axel raised his eyes and stared into the sky, his red pupils reflecting the moonlight.
"Maybe..."
He paused.
Then the thought finally formed clearly.
"No. There's no maybe about it."
A faint look of realization surfaced in his eyes.
"In the end, everything really does start with strength."
He lifted his left hand.
The wind coming through the open window gathered in his palm, slowly forming a rotating sphere.
What he lacked right now was a true long range offensive move.
He did not yet possess Accelerator's overwhelming power, the kind that could simply ignore enemy attacks and crush them outright. And the One Piece world was not a place where arrogance got rewarded.
There were too many strange abilities here.
Too many Devil Fruits that could kill someone instantly if they got careless.
The Hobby Hobby Fruit. The Dark Dark Fruit. All sorts of absurd abilities.
Axel had no idea whether those kinds of powers would work on him or not.
And because he did not know, he had to assume the worst.
If one of those powers really could affect him, then getting dragged into close combat without a backup plan would be suicidal.
Back when he used the "wind ball" against Bluejam's men, the move had been inspired by the dragon in the original story dispersing the flames at the Gray Terminal.
But what Axel had made then was only a crude imitation.
The damage had been negligible.
Now, however, he had a new idea.
Under the same amount of kinetic energy, the result varied depending on the area of impact.
A wide impact spread the force out and reduced the damage.
A narrow impact concentrated it.
That was the difference between being struck by a blunt hammer and being cut by a sharp blade.
Using that principle, Axel stabilized the wind ball in his left palm, then used his right hand to draw it outward, stretching the gathered airflow into a thin, solid looking edge.
A blade of wind.
He swung.
The invisible slash shot out and struck the wall with astonishing speed.
A shallow cut appeared on the surface, roughly a centimeter deep.
Axel narrowed his eyes.
So this is what it feels like.
The move resembled the kind of wind blade mages might use.
But its power was still insufficient.
Not nearly enough.
"The power's too low."
He quickly began analyzing the result.
"Is it because the energy isn't being maintained properly?"
"Or because there isn't enough wind gathered at the source?"
"If I layer extra force onto it through resistance during release, would that increase the damage?"
"And if the wind blade's form destabilizes halfway through flight, what exactly happens then?"
Like a child who had suddenly gotten hold of an exciting new toy, Axel fell completely into experimentation.
He kept trying.
Again and again.
More shaping. More slicing. More adjustments.
Wind blades flew one after another into the same unfortunate wall.
By the time mental exhaustion finally dragged him back to his senses, Axel blinked and looked up.
Then his smile froze.
The wall was ruined.
It was covered in scratches and shallow gouges. In some places, even bits of cement had been chipped away. The once smooth surface now looked miserable, full of ugly marks and pits.
It looked like something had spent the whole night clawing at it.
Axel stared at it for a few seconds in silence.
Then his lips twitched.
He had trained in the forest for so long that he had unconsciously treated this room the same way.
But this was not some mountain cave.
This was not a tree trunk.
This was not even his room.
This was Garp's room.
For a moment, Axel could practically picture the future.
Garp returning.
Opening the door.
Seeing his beloved little nest looking like it had been attacked by wild beasts.
And then...
The Iron Fist of Love descending on his head with divine inevitability.
Just imagining it made Axel feel a chill crawl up his spine.
He could already remember the pain.
No.
This would not do.
He had to fix it before that old monster came back.
A repair shop.
Right. This was a Marine town. Since it was a proper town, there had to be craftsmen or repairmen somewhere.
The problem was that Axel was still new here.
He had no idea where to find one.
Then, almost immediately, another thought surfaced.
Ain.
She was supposed to come again tomorrow anyway.
Axel's expression turned complicated.
"It looks like I'll have to ask Ain..."
He stared at the damaged wall again, then rubbed his forehead.
The only problem now was how exactly he was supposed to explain this disaster to her without making himself look completely insane.
.....
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