While Tobirama Senju was turning things over in his head, trying to figure out how to get Rowan to bring Konoha along for the ride, Rowan suddenly realized he was hungry. He stood up and brushed the dust off his backside.
"Let's go get something to eat."
Tobirama replied reflexively, "I don't need to."
He was in an Edo Tensei body right now. He didn't feel hunger at all, and even if he ate, he wouldn't be able to taste the food.
Rowan rolled his eyes. "You may not need to, but I do."
With that, he strode out of the park and found a nearby restaurant with a long line of people outside.
In a world without influencer check-ins, a restaurant being empty didn't necessarily mean the food was bad. But if a place had a line that long, then the food had to be good—otherwise, there was no way so many people would be waiting.
Rowan stood in line for a full half hour before finally getting inside. Once seated, he ordered their signature beef fried rice.
Maybe it was because everyone in the One Piece world seemed to eat like a bottomless pit, but this "small" serving of beef fried rice was absurdly huge.
The plate alone was ten inches across.
Rowan stared at the waiter carrying it over and asked, speechless, "You don't have a smaller portion of beef fried rice here?"
The waiter answered calmly, "Sir, this already is the small portion."
Just then, another waiter walked past carrying a plate the size of a washbasin.
Rowan: "...What the hell."
After the waiter left, Rowan looked at the beef fried rice in front of him and couldn't help muttering, "I swear when I read the manga, the food didn't look this huge."
Tobirama said evenly, "A manga only shows the tip of this world's iceberg."
That actually made sense.
Rowan couldn't be bothered dwelling on it, so he picked up his spoon and started eating.
The moment the first bite hit his mouth, his eyes widened.
It was delicious. Ridiculously delicious.
The rice grains were distinct, fragrant, soft, and pleasantly chewy, each one coated in oil and flavor. The beef was tender, yet still had just a little bit of bite to it—not hard to chew, but with enough texture to make it satisfying.
And especially that intense wok hei flavor—it was unbelievably good.
Rowan had to admit that the food in the One Piece world really was on another level compared to the Naruto world.
A random restaurant here could already beat Ichiraku Ramen.
It was obvious that the ninja world really didn't have much worth getting excited about in terms of food.
Rowan started devouring it enthusiastically, but before long, something unexpected happened.
He had only eaten about one-fifth of the fried rice—and he was already full.
Rowan was sure he hadn't eaten much at all. Sure, the plate was big, but based on his normal appetite, he should at least have been able to finish half of it, maybe even two-thirds.
But now he was full after only one-fifth.
That left him utterly baffled.
With an appetite like this, he barely deserved a seat at the kids' table.
"Can't eat any more?"
At that moment, Tobirama seemed to notice what was going on and asked.
Rowan nodded. "Yeah, I really can't. My stomach feels stuffed. Maybe I just don't have much of an appetite today?"
Tobirama shook his head. "It probably doesn't have much to do with your appetite. It should be because of the rice itself."
Rowan looked completely confused. "What do you mean?"
Tobirama said, "When I was reading the manga earlier, I noticed something. The physical constitution of the people in this world is absurdly strong. Some of them can fight continuously for days and nights without getting tired."
"More importantly, they don't have a power like chakra. They fight purely with physical stamina."
"That would be almost impossible in the ninja world."
In the ninja world, taijutsu specialists still basically relied on chakra. Even someone like Might Guy still depended on chakra.
Without chakra, forget the Eight Gates—even ordinary taijutsu might be beyond him.
A random kunai could kill him with no problem.
A taijutsu fighter with no chakra wouldn't be much different from a roadside nobody.
But the One Piece world was completely different.
Even without Devil Fruit powers, there were countless physical fighters everywhere, and many of them could stand at the very top of the world.
Black Arm Zephyr, Garp the Fist, Red-Haired Shanks—all of them were examples.
And their recovery ability was incredibly strong too.
Even if their bones were broken, they could recover after eating a lot and resting for a few days.
Compare that to the top fighters in the ninja world—no matter how much chakra they had, if their bones broke, they still needed one or two months to recover.
Unless they had help from a medical ninja, there was no way to shorten that recovery time.
Their recovery abilities simply weren't on the same level.
"So I became curious. Without a supernatural power like chakra helping them, where exactly does the energy come from to restore their injuries and recover their stamina?"
"After thinking it over, I could only come up with one possibility."
Tobirama raised one finger.
"Food."
"Especially Sea Kings. They have to be the best kind of food there is. I'd bet the energy provided by a single Sea King is beyond what most people can even imagine."
"But the problem is, not everyone can catch a Sea King."
"So I suspect that the food in this world is packed with extraordinary energy. In other words, its nutritional value is several times higher than that of ordinary food in the ninja world."
"So the reason you got full after eating such a small amount isn't because your appetite is off. It's because the nutritional density of this food is too high."
"Your body has already absorbed all the nutrients it needs."
At that point, Tobirama sighed and said, "If food like this were brought back to Konoha, the strength of Konoha's ninja would absolutely go through an explosive surge."
Rowan didn't disagree with that.
The source of chakra was explained clearly enough: it was a mixture of physical energy and spiritual energy.
Leaving spiritual energy aside for the moment, physical energy was extracted from the cells.
If there were enough food to constantly replenish the body's energy consumption, then Konoha's ninja really would experience explosive growth.
Some ninja whose strength had stagnated for years would definitely break through their limits.
If someone really could eat this kind of food every day, then maybe every jōnin could end up with chakra reserves comparable to those of the Uzumaki clan.
And conversely, with the physical constitution of people in the One Piece world, if they learned to cultivate chakra, they might end up comparable to tailed beasts.
And for some of the stronger ones, surpassing tailed beasts wouldn't be impossible either.
Looking at it that way, the One Piece world and the Naruto world really were perfectly complementary.
This should have been something worth celebrating.
But for some reason, Rowan couldn't feel happy about it at all.
The reason was simple.
He was neither from the Naruto world nor the One Piece world.
He couldn't cultivate chakra, nor did he possess some absurd monster physique.
Who could feel good about that?
Rowan certainly couldn't.
Still, he wasn't the type to get stuck brooding over things. He quickly adjusted his mood, tossed that little bit of frustration to the back of his mind, and happily went back to wandering around.