One Piece: Path to Power

Chapter 68: [68] A Meaningless Endeavour?

[2000 words]

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Damien was at the edge of the town, an empty yard with old rickety planks lying about. Dirty windows, cracked glass, rotten wood and newspapers from decades ago.

 *Knock* *Knock*

Just the banging on the door let out painful howls that would lead one to be concerned about structural collapse.

Silence.

"Old man Katsuyoshi, you in there?"

 *Knock* *Knock*

"Are you still breathing or did you croak in your sleep?"

Alas, a voice returned.

"Who are you, brat? Are you a spawn of one of my old flames? I ain't paying for your tuition!"

The voice was old, almost ancient.

 *Knock* *Knock*

"Scram away, kid! No respect for the old with all that banging… You annoying squirt!"

Damien felt it was quite funny that old people tend to get mad twice in a row, their voices oscillating.

"I wasn't sure if your hearing was still working so I didn't hold back," the pirate yelled past the frail door.

"Cheh, what do you want?"

"I want a sword forged for myself, can you do it?"

The voice was not amused as no reply came.

Damien smirked, "Never mind then, I'll just take my business of creating a Supreme Grade Blade elsewhere…"

He turned around to leave, only to hear some distant footsteps near the door.

*Creak* The door slowly opened, the hinges barely holding its weight as they let loose a sharp squeal.

"Hmph, you're a few centuries too young to bait me, kid! Trust me, ain't no one on this big blue planet making you a blade of Supreme grade."

Damien turned around to see the man and gawked. "Damn, old man! I almost mistook you for a walking corpse!"

Katsuyoshi pointed his skeletal finger at the pirate with a look of anger.

"Brat, I'm still in my early 180s!" he roared back.

Damien eyed the three-foot-tall man (0.91 m) with some intrigue.

He looked like a dwarf, with a thick nose and bush eyebrows. His beard ran from his face and littered onto the ground, probably uncut for decades.

Katsuyoshi wore dull, gray clothes that even hooded his head. The same dullness was matched by the perpetual scowl that dimly lit his aged face.

[Katsuyoshi Image (in Discord)]

.

"Well, old man, no one else can make a Supreme Blade, including you?" 

The words resulted in an audible scoff from the living fossil. "I can make anything… I just lack the proper ingredients."

His tone grew sour and annoyed as if he had been holding onto the anger for years now.

"What if I can get my hands on these ingredients?" 

Katsuyoshi looked up, his tiny frame was barely the size of Damien's knee, forcing him to look comically far up.

A mocking expression overtook the wrinkly scowl as he fired back, "If they were so easy to attain, I would have made twenty Supreme Blades by no-"

*Snap!*

"AHH! MY BACK!"

The old man cried out in pain, crouching to the ground.

Such a sight left Damien deadpanned.

"..."

Katsuyoshi regained his breathing as he looked up once more in difficulty, "Hmph, had I the ingredients, I could forge a Supreme Blade with one eye closed and one hand tied behind my back!"

He stood up with shaking hands and glared at the young pirate with a sharp look, a look that left Damien surprised.

"I refuse to die before I've done it!"

Boom!

Damien narrowed his eyes as he felt the rush of air burst out from the dying old man, echoing through the decrepit area.

*Squawk!* A flock of pigeons resting on a nearby tree fall to the ground, white-eyed, completely unconscious.

Damien lightly smiled, looking at the old man with a new light.

"Heh, did death just turn around and let you be till you fulfill that ambition?"

Katsuyoshi smirked, though his wrinkly face made it look quite disturbing. "Kokoko! Death was still in its mother's womb when I was waving the hammer!"

The perpetual frown on the old man's face warped into a that of pride.

*Crack*

"AHH! My knees!"

He fell once more, reeling in pain.

"..."

Damien hummed at the old fossil, thinking over his previous declarations.

"Just what are those ingredients that are so impossible to get?" he eventually asked.

Katsuyoshi, who was blowing on his knees as if to calm them down, ended up almost blowing his false teeth.

"We have the best metal in Wano and yet no one can forge a Supreme Blade. Not due to lack of talent but lack of materials… I've made too many trashy swords trying to forge a Supreme one now!"

He gestured his head to the side where a large bin sat, covered with a heap of dead leaves and dust.

Damien walked over and opened the old bin and the sight left him with a wry smile.

"Trashy, was it?"

The pirate felt it was comical that these swords, which seemed just as sharp as the average Great Grade Sword, were labelled as rubbish. 

They were fine pieces of work that would probably sell for tens of millions of berries yet Katsuyoshi did not seem to see it that way.

"Even the named Twenty-One are just replicas of the original Twelve Supreme Blades," came the old man's voice from behind. "Failing to recreate their Supreme glory with our feeble materials."

He sat down on the ground, drowning in self-pity.

"A thousand years ago, a bright light crashed into the planet from the heavens and the ore found at the site was labelled as 'Heavenly Rocks'."

Katsuyoshi continued, "The master weaponsmiths at that time used it all to birth the blades now called the Supreme Grade Blades!"

"Any derivatives of these Twelve were then broken down to the Great Grade, Skillful Grade and Grade levels," he finished.

Damien was a little unsatisfied as he refuted, "So no matter what, you can't bring about any new Supreme Weapons without those rocks?"

The old man exhaled a heavy sigh.

"That's right, the only other way is to take a Great Grade Blade and turn it into a Black Blade, effectively promoting it to Supreme Level."

Damien nodded, naturally such an occurrence happened with Ryuma but it was not a possibility for him. "I'm no swordsman that specializes in blades."

Damien then lifted his hands, unleashing a few torrents of pulverizing energy.

The crimson energy took the old man's attention as Damien went on to say, "I need a powerful weapon that can fully harness this volatile power."

He then held it out for Katsuyoshi to study.

The dwarf shot up as he ran up to the hand as if returning to his lost youth.

*Krrrr* He tapped the frenzied energy as if tinkering with it, while also testing its power with some loose stone and metal.

"Hmm, hmm, a very interesting ability you have here, a normal weapon wouldn't suffice."

He scratched his flakey chin in thought.

"An irregular blade that can be used both to slash and slam with, one capable of fully transferring this power."

He brought out a stick and started drawing some designs on the soil below.

*Scratch*

He worked at rapid speeds as the odd-shaped weapon soon came into being.

A long staff-like grip that allowed for a two-armed hold, a longsword body and a hilt that diverged into two elongated blades in the shape of a pincer. 

The blades were not smooth, but rather jagged, almost as if to tear apart the flesh they were lodged into for maximum damage.

"..."

Damien watched in silence as he looked over the result.

'For a guy who specializes in katanas, he can truly come up with some interesting designs.'

Katsuyoshi patted his hands together, ridding them of dust.

"Kokoko! If you add in your little sorcery while I forge the blades, it should be able to seep into the metal and make it highly harmonious with your powers!"

Damien nodded at the words as the fossil continued, "The wood of the staff portion naturally needs to be Adam's Oak."

Bang!

Katsuyoshi traced his eyes back to the unannounced guest and gulped at the sight of the bundles of wood that the guest had summoned.

"Your sorcery is more impressive than I thought, why don't you help me move some of my century-old furniture?"

Damien rolled his eyes, "Get back to the weapon."

The master weaponsmith scoffed, though returning to the design.

"The wood will do if anything, it looks even better than I remember… maybe I have gotten a little old…"

Damien was not surprised as the wood he had unveiled was not regular Adam's Oak.

>=-=----[]---<>---[]---=-=<

[Adam's Oak {Refined}]

[Wood from the Treasure Tree Adam.]

[Strongest Wood in the seas.]

[Deprived of all impurities and imperfections.]

>=-=----[]---<>---[]---=-=<

The wood had been 'refined' by Damien's deprivation powers, removing any problems and allowing it to be quite literally perfect.

.

"Listen up, brat. I find your powers interesting so I can use the finest metal in Wano and this beautiful wood to make you your weapon! Once it's done, you can consider it to rival Twenty-One Great Grade Blades!"

Such words may be music to most people's ears but to both Damien and Katsuyoshi, they felt lacking.

However, the reality of the situation had brought the latter to his knees over the past dozen decades.

He glanced at the ambitious young man in front of himself and advised, "Don't get lost in meaningless endeavours, kid."

"Don't worry, as long as you wrap it with enough Ryuo, I'm sure the blade will be more than enough for you!" the old man said with surprising levels of reassurance.

Damien silently nodded, still not wholly relenting to the impossibility of taking the weapon one step further.

Though Katsuyoshi did not see that emotion, if anything he found something interesting to make so he was lost in thought, as if dreaming to make this new weapon even better than his past ones.

"Come back in a week, I need to ready my tools and my tired bones for the coming work!"

The man pulled up one sleeve, showing thick and pronounced muscles brimming with strength. 

Katsuyoshi flashed a grin that showed his decaying teeth; some embers of his ambition were still burning bright.

…

Damien left the dingy old hut, lost in thought.

'Sibyl, any thoughts?'

She replied quickly.

[Well, if those rocks exist in space, I'm sure they aren't common. You could venture to space or train a Gravity-Fruit User to attain them, though it probably won't be fast and would take a decade or so.]

Damien shook his head, he did not have a decade, he barely had two years! God Valley could happen within twenty or so months, or at the latest, thirty months.

.

He walked past the warm streets of Hakumai, slowly returning to civilization brimming with life and spirit.

The pirate sat under the shade of a tree that seemed to dance from his presence, the greenery below growing stronger.

Damien was a perfectionist in his previous life, and that property had carried over. 

Though a Great Grade Weapon may work while Haki was used to make up for any structural incapabilities, he still prefers the best of the best.

…

"A way to attain things well beyond the geography of this world," he murmured in thought.

Suddenly, a lightbulb lit up.

"Maybe that will work," he recalled a little goodie he found in his previous endeavours that may solve the problem.

*Vrooo!* The air warped around his open palm as a brown fruit appeared. It had a swirl-like pattern over its body while the stem resembled a weighing scale.

>=-=----[]---<>---[]---=-=<

Balance-Balance Fruit (Heikō Heikō no Mi)]

[Paramecia Fruit | Special Type]

[Fruit Rating: 6.5 Stars]

[Allows the user to freely switch anything of equal value. Making them an All-Conserving Human.]

[Expanded: the trade can be anything material or metaphysical. As long as equal-valued material(s) and/or characteristic(s) is/are traded, the exchange will hold.]

>=-=----[]---<>---[]---=-=<

[A/N: Balance Fruit Image (in Discord)]

Damien's eyes flashed with a crimson glint, hiding a flood of thoughts that could remedy his dilemma.

"A meaningless endeavour..."

To Be Continued…

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Author's Corner.

Images are available on Discord alongside other niche details: https://discord.gg/aJHHHPvb6q