"This is Armament Haki—the power to armor your hands or weapons for defense or attack."
On an abandoned ship a short distance from Sabaody, Rayleigh's hand turned pitch-black. He drove his fist into a mast so thick it would take two people to wrap their arms around it.
A shockwave rippled outward from the point of impact. As easily as snapping a disposable chopstick, the mast buckled under that single, modest punch and toppled toward the sea, crashing down in a tall plume of spray.
"Ooh..." Yimi sat perched on the bow, head tilted back, mouth slightly open around a bite of cotton candy.
Rayleigh walked over to her. "Try hitting me with everything you've got."
Yimi punched him square in the stomach. It felt like slamming her fist into a steel plate—but the pain backlash got shunted away from her before it could register.
"Congratulations, Host! Achievement unlocked: Lightning Five-Strike Whip. Reward: portal energy +5%."
This one was a flexible achievement—because Yimi hadn't actually hurt him, she unlocked the one above. If she'd managed to injure Rayleigh, she probably would've gotten I'm Farming Here instead.
"Want to learn?"
"Yes." Yimi glanced at the broken mast. This was exactly what she was missing.
Then she turned a look of undisguised contempt on Rayleigh. "But not from you."
"..."
This derelict ship had been left here last month by a crew of vicious rookie pirates who'd parked it while looking for someone to coat their hull.
For pirates who wanted to reach the New World, the only route was to dive down to Fish-Man Island. But in a world full of sailing ships, what vessel had the ability to dive? And even if one did, it couldn't withstand the crushing water pressure. So they had to find a local coating specialist to apply a bubble-like membrane over the hull. As it happened, Rayleigh's cover job after going into hiding was exactly that—a coating specialist.
These particular pirates were apparently used to throwing their weight around. When they ran into a Celestial Dragon passing through the area, not only did they fail to run—they actually charged at him. The result: most of them were killed outright by the Celestial Dragon's bodyguards, and the survivors were hauled off as slaves on account of their sturdy builds.
So why was Rayleigh out here demonstrating Haki?
After chopping up several large sea creatures during the voyage, Yimi had been forced to accept that the Insect Glaive's raw damage output was genuinely feeble. At the very least, without her spiritual power she couldn't replicate Mihawk's feat of cleaving a galleon clean in half with a single stroke.
The Doom-shroom also had a one-week cooldown. She needed a reliable, heavy-hitting technique.
As for learning Haki—that had been Rayleigh's own idea. He was the one who offered to teach her, and Yimi figured she might as well see what this "Haki" business actually was.
But then—why would Dark King Rayleigh, a man who wanted nothing more than a quiet retirement, volunteer to take on a student?
Rewind to the moment they first met:
"Little girl, did you come to Sabaody looking for me?"
Being recognized on sight had caught him off guard. People in their thirties didn't know who Rocks was; kids under ten not knowing Dark King Rayleigh was the norm. For her to point right at him the instant she saw him and call out "Dark King Rayleigh"—he didn't buy for a second that no adult had put her up to it.
After all those years, even though the younger generation all knew Roger was the Pirate King, it was easy to forget his first mate, left gathering dust in a corner of history. But this little girl had docked her own boat right in front of him—no sign of Mihawk following—and Rayleigh had taken in every moment of her clumsy, fumbling efforts at mooring.
"I'm looking for the Four Emperors." That line again.
The question, then: if no adult had sent her to find him, how had this kid recognized him on sight?
He and Hawk-Eye Mihawk didn't have much of a relationship. But as the Pirate King's first mate, he certainly had history with Red-Haired Shanks—one of the current Four Emperors, formerly just an apprentice on Roger's ship. He'd mentored Shanks more than a few times back in those days.
While it had never been made public, Rayleigh had heard rumors that Mihawk and Shanks had... rendezvoused (not like that). A certain woman living in hiding with him happened to be an excellent information broker.
"Shanks told you about me, didn't he?" Rayleigh settled into a cross-legged seat.
"You know Shanks?" Yimi's eyes lit up.
Red-Haired Shanks. She'd seen him when flipping through the Four Emperors' bounty posters. Missing an arm—definitely an easy target.
"I see..." Rayleigh chuckled softly and took a swig from a bottle at his hip.
So this little girl had heard about the whole "Dark King Rayleigh, Misguiding Students" affair from Shanks himself. Not just mentioned in passing, either—Shanks must have gone on at length, bounty poster in hand, ranting about it so thoroughly that even a child had the image burned into her brain.
Rayleigh tilted his head back and gazed at the sky. His thoughts drifted to the past—two young apprentices on Roger's ship, arguing over whether the North Pole or the South Pole was colder.
Then his thoughts drifted back to the present, and he pictured a plastered Shanks ruffling some bewildered little girl's hair: "Let me tell you—the stuff Rayleigh taught us back then was utter garbage. I never bothered saying anything but I still remember it to this day... Who's Rayleigh, you ask? (pulls out wanted poster) This old bastard right here..."
His fist clenched. If this wasn't biting the hand that fed you, what was?
Rayleigh sat cross-legged. "Little girl, why are the Four Emperors your goal? Are you trying to become the Pirate King?"
"If I beat the Four Emperors, I can go home." More precisely, it would bring her one step closer to going home.
"..."
Something Big Mom or Kaido did to her?
Rayleigh's mind went to the same place Mihawk's had.
...
Back to the present.
Because Yimi's control over Conqueror's Haki was poor, Rayleigh assumed Mihawk didn't possess it.
Rayleigh smiled helplessly. "That's slander on his part. Think about it—if I really couldn't teach, how could someone I trained have become one of the Four Emperors?"
Somehow, the look the little brat gave him only grew more contemptuous.
"Are you stronger than Dog-Eyes?" the kitten inquired.
"Dog-Eyes..." Rayleigh laughed in spite of himself. "Hard to say. But if it actually came down to a fight, I don't think I'd lose."
If he could produce a Fifth Emperor from his tutelage, he wondered whether that ungrateful brat would still dare throw around that "Misguiding Students" garbage. He was getting on in years—he couldn't very well carry that label all the way to his coffin.
The kitten eyed him with open skepticism. "Fine. Try teaching me."
Consider this your one chance.
He wasn't going to turn this cat into one of the Four Emperors, was he?
"..." Rayleigh opted to ignore her attitude for the time being. Never in his life had he volunteered to teach someone, and now he was getting this kind of reception.
"Before we start training properly, try pulling your Conqueror's Haki back in." This was also the main reason Rayleigh had noticed her in the first place.
Armament, Conqueror's, Observation—of the three, Conqueror's was the most special, because the other two could be developed through training. Conqueror's alone could only be innate. The common way to put it: the disposition to become a "king."
Normally it lay dormant inside the body. Released, it could knock out anyone too weak to withstand it. But there was an advanced application—wrapping it around oneself just like the Armament Haki he'd demonstrated moments ago, striking at a distance without physical contact. Among those who possessed Conqueror's, only a handful of the strongest had mastered this technique.
What made this little kid feel different was precisely the matter of "containment." She seemed to radiate Conqueror's Haki around the clock, twenty-four-seven—yet the output was so weak it couldn't even knock out ordinary people. And instead of sweeping across a wide area the way it normally did, it seemed to blanket only a small zone around her body.
Yimi tried reining in the spiritual energy she'd been unconsciously broadcasting.
She couldn't entirely blame Mihawk for not noticing before. Back when she'd been with him, someone else had handled the cooking, so the kitten never needed to absorb sea monsters' massive bodies. Her spiritual energy hadn't grown significantly during that time.
"Good. Your Conqueror's Haki control is better than I expected. Let's focus on Observation and Armament training first—lay a two-year foundation."
Kids still had growing to do, after all.
"How many days is two years?" Yimi counted on her fingers.
"Seven hundred and some, Host."
"Seven hundred and something?!" The kitten shot to her feet. A hundred was already a big number to a child.
She spread her little hand. "Seven days. That's my limit."
"You're only holding up five fingers." Rayleigh shook his head with a helpless smile. "Nothing worth learning can be rushed."
"You mislead your students!" The kitten jabbed a finger at his nose.
Seven days and the cat still thought it was too long. What if someone beat one of the Four Emperors to death while she wasn't looking? Normally, a cat only needed three minutes to learn something (book-eating time)!
"That's slander." Something like a ＃ seemed to materialize on Rayleigh's forehead.