Chapter 71: Swords and Haki

Chapter 71: Swords and Haki

*Author's Note*

I have good news and bad news. The good news is that my definition of Haki takes into account 100% of the phenomenon displayed in One Piece (Including Devil Fruits!). This is a thorough explanation that agrees with every single usage, and the usages not explained in this chapter will be explained in later chapters.

The bad news? If you don't like the idea of Haki ending up like a cultivation LN, I can only apologize. It's not my fault that this is the only explanation that fits all usages!

Chapter 71 Swords and Haki

Rayleigh sat next to a small bonfire on a riverside clearing with a stick skewering two large fish being slowly roasted along the outer edge of the fire. His eyes were still closed and his Wills continued to process his expanded senses. Although it felt like a new language, the world did not speak to him. It was more like the world simply added adjectives to everything and he was trying to figure out what those adjectives meant.

It was also only after these two weeks that Rayleigh realized that the new information he was perceiving through his newly expanded senses was a lot more than just a single language. The new adjectives he was discovering that were attached to everything were different depending on what they were attached to, though some similar things had similar adjectives and many things had different groups of adjectives attached.

Continuing to analyze them without learning about the physical aspect of Haki kept giving him a headache, so he often kept his Wills occupied thinking of other things.

At first, Rayleigh did not quite understand what Mihawk meant when he said that Observation, Armament, and Conqueror's Haki were not separate, but after spending two weeks thinking about it, he realized what he meant.

The Force was the Force, but its skills were divided into three categories: Control, Sense, and Alter. Control was about controlling the inner workings of the body, Sense was about sensing the world around you, and Alter was about altering the world around you.

Rayleigh realized that this was almost exactly how Haki worked. Observation Haki was too similar to Sense, Armament Haki sounded very much like Control, and Conqueror's Haki, something that required being able to use Observation and Armament at the same time, was almost identical to Alter, something that required being able to use Control and Sense at the same time.

Although Force techniques were cataloged using these three terms, all Force techniques were still Force techniques. In the same way, all Haki techniques were Haki techniques, even if they could be cataloged into different groups.

This led to an interesting revelation. Someone using the Force could access a myriad of powers, but the number of things that Rayleigh was aware that Haki could do seemed more limited. Then again, few knew what the Force could really do because the Jedi were boring and limited themselves to only using it 'safely.' While analyzing this paradox, he arrived at a question. Did Haki have a Dark Side?

If the well-known powers of Haki were the ones that the world allowed its users to wield, then what powers did the world frown on its users taking from it? And what consequences were there to using those powers? The answer to this question actually came quite naturally and in the form of another question. Why were they called Devil Fruits?

If Haki was the power of the world and contained all things the world contained, then you should be able to use the power of the world to do all things that existed in the world. Wasn't that exactly what Devil Fruits granted? Didn't Devil Fruits contain a part of the world and grant the person who ate it some measure of access to that part?

This brought up two more questions. Could the power granted by a Devil Fruit User be gained through Haki without the Devil Fruit? If it could, would doing it that way bypass the curse since you would not be 'stealing' from the world, but using it naturally?

Unfortunately, figuring that one out would have to wait until he learned how to apply Haki to his body.

Once the pair of fish finished cooking on the stick, Rayleigh picked up the finely roasted breakfast just in time for him to jump out of the way of a building-sized sword cutting through where he had been sitting. A swimming pool-sized crater formed from the impact but the Humandrill Monkey King was already mid-swing to cleave the air-born Rayleigh in half.

With his eyes still closed, Rayleigh used Moon Walk to dodge the titanous monkey's rapid swings while he blew on the fish in hand to cool them down before he slowly started nibbling on them.

The Humandrill King roared in protest and swung even more wildly, not caring about the trees and earth around him that had been destroyed by his rampage. When it stopped, he looked around and saw neither Rayleigh nor his mutilated corpse. His giant ears had no problem locating Rayleigh's location from the sound of chewing, but he heard it from above and then noticed the pressure on his scalp from where Rayleigh had been sitting, eating his breakfast.

Without thinking, the monkey king smashed his empty hand at Rayleigh, only to knock himself out when Rayleigh jumped away.

Rayleigh landed safely on the ground as the Humandrill King collapsed. The area was surrounded by the majority of the humandrill clan but each was disappointed. Humandrills had Photographic Reflexes. They get stronger from watching skilled fighters, but Rayleigh rarely attacked and even when he did, it was really basic stuff like palm thrusts or straight kicks. Humandrills could even imitate weapon intent and use low-level Haki, but only if they saw it used somewhat recently. The Humandrill King's sword was gifted to it by Mihawk so that he could have a decent sparring partner who became more skilled as he improved himself, but that was over two decades ago and Mihawk had long since outgrown the Humandrill King.

The Humandrill King recovered as Rayleigh finished his breakfast, but instead of raging again, he started making disgruntled monkey noises.

Rayleigh replied, "I know, I'm sorry. I'm only training to dodge right now. But really though, I am very grateful for your help. Thanks to your constant attacks and ambushes, I've gotten to the level of predicting your attacks ahead of time, so I think I've finally finished this stage of training and can move on to the next one."

From a human's perspective, it might have sounded like Rayleigh was taunting the monkey, but he was being completely sincere. Even without access to the Force, these guys were smart enough to understand Rayleigh's intentions and understood that Rayleigh was there to practice. They also understood that once Rayleigh was done practicing dodging, he would start practicing fighting, so they had been willing to play with this new arrival who never killed them or stole their stuff.

The Humandrill King excitedly got up and made all kinds of energetic noises while Rayleigh nodded with a smile, just as excited as the giant monkey king to start his next lesson.

The humandrills returned to the forest and Rayleigh walked into the pond that formed from the crater of the monkey king's attack next to the river. This pond was an excellent place to wash up after a few weeks in the wilds.

Once clean and dry, Rayleigh returned to Mihawk's castle and found where he left his clothes and shoes. They had been left untouched and were fine to put back on before Rayleigh knocked on the door three more times.

The castle door opened once more and Mihawk motioned for Rayleigh to follow him inside. But rather than enter any room, Mihawk walked to the other end of the castle out the back door to a training area that had been set up. Mihawk drew Yoru and stated, "The quickest way to feel the flow of the world within your body is to experience the flow of the world through the attacks of others. You are not to dodge, only block. That sword of yours seems capable of doing so."

Without a word, Mihawk split the air between them with a slash that Rayleigh would have been unable to react against if not for his expanded senses warning him about the attack in time.

Rayleigh blocked the strike with his sword, but Mihawk's blade moved like it weighed tens of tons. The impact of his cutlass against Rayleigh's sword knocked Rayleigh back against the castle walls. Even then, it was obvious how easy Mihawk was going in his strike. He didn't use his own Haki, that was all from the sword itself, yet that was still a few levels above the Haki pressure he felt from Wonder Woman. If Rayleigh used his Nen and Force to augment and amplify his body, he would be able to take such a strike with ease, but without access to those, a multi-ton strike would have the appropriate effect of a multi-ton strike.

As Rayleigh got up, Mihawk explained, "Everything is a part of the world, including the body. The flow of the world moves by the will of the world. But we, as people of this world, are also a part of that will. Our will is a part of the will of the world, therefore our will is also capable of moving the flow of the world as we desire."

A heavy horizontal slash came before Rayleigh could see it but he could still block it in time. This one swatted him to the side into an already collapsed wall that might have been a building here long ago.

Mihawk did not have to tell Rayleigh to get up, and each time he did, Mihawk whacked him back, down, or to the side. With each blow, Rayleigh felt his entire body shake. He felt the pressure of Mihawk's sword pour through his body.

As an enhancer getting beaten up, his body felt innately rebellious at the treatment. He felt every cell protest at the pressure being poured in. He felt a pressure within his body well up in defiance and as Mihawk's giant cutlass came down, Rayleigh instinctively directed that pressure to flow into his strike as he blocked with an upward motion.

The clang of metal echoed triumphantly through the forest as Rayleigh's guard barely remained unbroken. Mihawk, not looking surprised at all, said, "Continue," and started actually using a small amount of his own Haki for the next attacks.

In this way, Rayleigh got beaten up until lunchtime. Mihawk then went to make food for himself and Rayleigh entered the Tavern to eat his own lunch before returning to get beaten up by Mihawk until the sun went down.

Due to his experience with the Force, Rayleigh's progress with Haki was very much like a Professional Gamer who finished a completionist run of a game and started playing the game's sequel for the first time. It was also what would happen if a Player with sufficient Haki mastery died and made a new character. Even if he was starting from scratch, his comprehensive foundation was enough to jump-start the training.

Still, this was only possible because Rayleigh had completely cut off his connection to the Force and the Empty Sword's ability to enhance the effects of training also shined through. Rayleigh had tested his new senses when out of his Second Stage Zetsu and he confirmed that the presence of the Force really muffled out the sensory input from Haki. It was the difference between pouring tea into an empty glass versus pouring tea into a glass containing coffee and needing to keep pouring until 99% of the coffee had overflowed out of the glass. It was possible, but it was a lot more wasteful and not nearly as simple, and even then, the tea would still have a slight taste of coffee that would probably ruin the taste of the tea.

Once Rayleigh's Haki mastery was high enough, there would be no problem using it with the Force, but for now, he would remain in his Second Stage Zetsu state to enhance his training speed.

The process of using the flow of the world through his body somewhat reminded him of Enbu, the Monkey Martial technique from the Toriko series.

According to Enbu, every cell had its own individual personality, likes, and dislikes, and would rarely act together as a collective due to the differences. Enbu used Willpower to control the actions of the cells to allow them to move as a unified whole. One of the more ridiculous uses of this was that a master of Enbu could have all his cells bypass the flow of gravity by turning the body from a bowl that could contain gravity to a strainer that allowed gravity to pass through mostly unimpeded.

In the example used, gravity was represented as a flow and the body's cells either resisted that flow or allowed it to pass unimpeded, with a majority doing the former unless Enbu was used.

Rayleigh visualized the flow of the world through his body in the same way, as a flow that was either resisted or unimpeded through his body's cells. Controlling the flow meant arranging a path through his body that did not impede the flow to where he needed it to be. Arranging this path was not always easy and some motions of the physical body made it easier. It was not the same path or method he used with the Force, but it was similar enough in concept.

Rayleigh's only problem was that even at this level of proficiency, it wasn't easy to merge flows. Mihawk's swordsmanship only contained Strong and Gentle for a reason. When Rayleigh tried to use a form and technique that seemed to allow the flow of wind and the flow of lightning at the same time, his sword exploded.

Thankfully, he never made a restriction that would cause him harm if the sword broke, so he could make it again through another round of recitation of his Force Code.

Deliberately mixing different identified flows into the same techniques was not a simple matter of addition. Thankfully, Rayleigh could use his insight from other hobbies to assist. Using his experience with cooking, Rayleigh could feel out the proportions of which flows could be added to others. It wasn't always a 1:1 ratio. Using his experience with calligraphy, he could figure out how to form a technique that could use the combination flow without his sword exploding.

While playing with the laws of reality for several more weeks, one of Rayleigh's Wills noticed something in the Pirate Chat Room.

[Immortal Beauty: I found the Pirate World MC.]

[Invisible Man: Took you long enough. I found him ages ago and am standing right next to him. Don't you see me?]

[Justice: Don't tell me, let me guess. Is he a... Pirate?]

[Captain Jack: How do you know it's him? Besides the fact that he's seventeen now.]

[Wonder Woman: Are you gonna join his crew?]

[Immortal Beauty: He has main character plot armor. He just broke into a Marine Base, stole some stuff, freed a prisoner, beat up the Marine Captain, and when he left, the Marines stationed here saluted him.]

[Dragon Chef: ... Yeah, that would do it.]

[Titan: I'm convinced. So who is he?]

[Justice: I'm guessing he's not in the Grand Line yet.]

[Immortal Beauty: From the name he gave, I'm also pretty sure he is related to some very impressive people. I've also decided not to join his crew. He'll probably catch up sooner or later, but he is really weak right now and I don't want to wait and watch while he fights weakling after weakling.]

[Swordsman: Ummm... He's not in the East Blue, is he?]

[Immortal Beauty: Why'd you ask?]

[Swordsman: Cause Mihawk went in that direction a few weeks ago.]

[Dragon Chef: Did Mihawk train you?]

[Swordsman: Yeah, I learned the horrible truth about Haki from him.]

[Titan: What, is it powered by devils?]

[Swordsman: Worse than devils. It seems to be a lazy rip-off of a Law Cultivation System that gets nerfed if the person using it is boring.]

[Captain Jack: Eh?]

[Titan: ?]

[Wonder Woman: ?]

[Dragon Chef: ?! What?!]

[Justice: Yeah, we're gonna need more details.]

[Swordsman: Summary, Haki is the Law of the World. Observation Haki is understanding the Law of the World. Armament Haki is applying the Law of the World to your defense and offense. And Conqueror Haki is basically commanding the Law of the World.]

[Swordsman: Oh, and Devil Fruits are minor Laws that make up the world, stolen from the world. The curse is just the world punishing a thief.]

[Goddess of Ice: ...]

[Captain Jack: I'm gonna sit down.]

[Dragon Chef: Are you being for real here? Like for real for real?]

[Swordsman: Yep. Also, you can use Haki to mimic the effects of Devil Fruits. You can apply fire to your punches, ice to your sword strikes, lightning to your kicks, etc by feeling out the related law and applying it into a technique.]

[Mimic: I think I know what he is talking about. According to some of the secret reports I've read, if a Devil Fruit user reaches a certain level of mastery, they awaken their Devil Fruit. I did not understand the context of this, but if Swordsman is accurate, that means if you can master the law associated with your Devil Fruit using Haki, you will attain far greater power.]

[Titan: Oh? It seems I will have to increase my training load.]

[Gravity King: How can I train more? I'm already using islands as barbells.]

[Fire Queen: Maybe by not making them weightless before lifting them Gravity boy?]

Rayleigh smiled and went back to his training. If the other Players cannot keep up with him, he might lose motivation in the future. He shared what he needed to share so it wasn't his fault if they didn't listen or ignored his advice. As for the world's MC, Rayleigh wondered how the will of the world thought of him. Since Haki had similarities to the Force, then this world's MC was likely beloved by the Will of this world.

It didn't matter too much though. Rayleigh felt that he would see him eventually.

*Author's Note*

Again, it is not my fault that this is the only explanation that makes sense for how everything in One Piece works. How the hell can Sanji light his feet on fire and thoroughly cook enemies with a kick? Why can Zoro conjure the image of tigers and demons with his attack? Why can Brook apply Ice to his sword when his Devil Fruit only gives soul related powers? How does Fishman Karate work? Why can Luffy casually apply fire to his fist? How does Nami's Climitact actually work? How does Devil Fruit Awakening work? How can a sword made of steel cut through a larger block made of steel?

So yeah, this explanation, like it or not, works for all observed phenomena so far and probably has enough wiggle room for future phenomena.

Rayleigh's observation Haki and his world senses are in fact supercharged compared to normal Haki users. The main reason is that his brain, which developed his entire life to use the Force and was enhanced through esoteric Force practices is just wired differently. In that state, Rayleigh while completely cut off from the Force gave his brain an alternative which it took to completely.

Next chapter will be less thinking, more doing. Gonna Montage straight to the War of Marineford where the Marines, who know Rayleigh is Mihawk's student thanks to the Marine Players, will ask Mihawk to invite Rayleigh for the fun. Hoping to have it out Sunday.