One Piece: Saving Hancock with the Batto Batto no Mi

Sabaody Archipelago, Grove 13, inside the house built on the tree slope.

"Mr. Rayleigh, wait a moment, I'll get the tuition fee now." As he spoke, Sephiroth used his power to split a black bat and left it in the room. Then, he drew the long sword at his waist, inscribed a line from thin air, opened a spatial door, and stepped into it.

Sephiroth, by means of his vampire bat position, appeared in the tourist area of Grove 41, in the living room of a three-story single-family villa, beside his Small vampire bat's iron cage. This villa, which he had bought for 46 million Beli, faced south, overlooked the sea, had good lighting, covered an area of two hundred square meters, and its overall color was white.

House prices in the Sabaody Archipelago peaked on the coastline where Marine warships headed towards the Marine Base, and gradually decreased on both sides. The better the security, the higher the house prices. When you reached Groves 1 to 29 in the inland area, which was the Lawless Zone, prices fell straight into a trough. The tourist area where Sephiroth's villa was located was not very expensive due to frequent pirate attacks and slightly poor security. If the villa's location were changed to near Grove 60, close to the Marine Base, the villa's house price would increase at least two or three times!

Sephiroth, as a Colonel at Marine Headquarters, naturally the Marine Base allocated housing for him as a Marine family member, and his living conditions were good. In fact, Marines who had reached a certain rank level, or who had served for a certain number of years, could be assigned houses near the Marine Base. And regardless of the size of the house, it was a blessing in itself to live in an area with good security in this mixed-race and lawless Sabaody Archipelago!

However, that was only concerning the islands around the Marine Base. Sephiroth considered that he occasionally needed to hunt down ability users among the pirates and needed to bring the other party home and kill them so that he could have as high a chance as possible of obtaining the Devil Fruit from rebirth. So Sephiroth asked Gild Tesoro to help him find a villa located in a relatively secluded location and that had a basement.

He gently waved his sword again, opened the spatial door, and entered the light green world within the door. In the space he had improvised, he stepped down the light green spatial stairs and passed unimpeded through the first floor into a separate room filled with fruits and with thick steel plates on the walls and floor. Sephiroth didn't stop, and he continued to use his Door-Door Fruit ability to pass through the thick steel plates and cement walls in different spaces, arriving in a warehouse with thirty-six suitcases stacked, opened the spatial door, and appeared on the side of the surface world.

"One, two, three..." Sephiroth quickly sorted out twenty suitcases, opened the spatial door, and threw them all in.

Twisting her slender waist, Shakky stepped over to the refrigerator in the living room and opened the refrigerator door. She glanced at the contents and asked, "What do you want to drink? Is it wine?... or coffee?"

"It's still early, coffee!" Hancock retorted without thinking.

"Coffee!" Sandersonia and Marigold exclaimed in unison.

Click! To the surprised eyes of Rayleigh and the others, Sephiroth, who had just been gone for less than two minutes, opened the spatial door again and dumped out twenty boxes one by one.

"Mr. Rayleigh, here's two billion Beli... Do you need to count it?" Sephiroth said, taking one of the suitcases and opening it. He presented the chest full of Beli banknotes in ten thousand Beli denominations, displaying them before Rayleigh's eyes.

"Brother, you're really quite fortunate..." Rayleigh rose from the sofa, walked to the open box, picked up a stack of banknotes, flipped through them, and found that they were all brand-new genuine banknotes. This made him secretly exclaim in his heart. He had thought that Sephiroth's promise to pay two billion Beli in tuition was to pay him back slowly in the future, but he hadn't expected the other party to pay everything in full.

Because Roger was always adept at not taking action against ordinary people, Rayleigh's targets for plunder were generally pirates and Marines. Among pirates, with very few exceptions, the rich ones, most were dirt poor, and at best they could rob some supplies, and occasionally, with luck, they could rob some treasures. As for Marines, people went out to sea just to catch pirates, and they weren't money-giving boys. How could they carry much money? It was good enough if they could take supplies!

Specifically, Roger, on his last voyage, borrowed Kozuki Oden from the Whitebeard Pirates so that he could read ancient texts. Roger directly gave the treasures that the Pirate Group had hoarded for many years to Edward Newgate, that bearded man, which made the Roger Pirates' finances even worse! Therefore, after Roger arrived at Laugh Tale, completed his final voyage, and became the Pirate King, when he disbanded the pirate group, he actually didn't have much treasure in the hands of each crew member, not even the "Dark King" Rayleigh, who was the Pirate King's right-hand man. In addition, Rayleigh always loved to drink and gamble, and he spent money like water. The money he had saved when he was a pirate had actually been almost all spent! If he didn't practice boat coating technology and barely make a living, he might need to find other ways to make money in the future, he thought.

However, with those two billion Beli now, he should be able to enjoy his old age peacefully! Provided he didn't gamble.

"Haha! Mr. Rayleigh, I've already paid the tuition... When do we start learning?" Sephiroth rubbed his hands with a smiling expression, feeling a little excited. Spending "two billion Beli" and learning the skills of using Conqueror's Haki was no loss at all in his opinion! In this sea, Armored Conqueror's Haki was a must-have skill for the powerful top tier.

Armored Conqueror's Haki > Devil Fruit Awakening > Devil Fruit Abilities > Advanced Armament Haki.

The famous gold-medal teacher Kaido once said that only Haki could be above everything! Devil Fruit abilities and so on, as long as the dominating Haki was strong enough, you could resist and ignore them. Of course, the premise was that you had good enough physical talent yourself to possess extremely dominating Haki.

Rayleigh reached out and pushed up his glasses and said with a smile, "You can start now."

Boom! A mighty Conqueror's Haki aura exploded from the blond-haired middle-aged man's body, instantly locking onto Sephiroth and Hancock, but it didn't affect Shakky and the others. In an instant, the two people locked by Rayleigh's Conqueror's Haki suddenly felt their heartbeats quicken. The Conqueror's Haki within their minds seemed to be provoked, and they subconsciously unleashed themselves to compete with each other.

Crimson thunder and lightning spewed out in the void and filled the entire room, making the wooden furniture produce a subtle "creaking" sound, suppressed by the invisible force. Sandersonia and Marigold, the two girls, after being affected by Sephiroth and Hancock's aura, felt a rather stuffy feeling in their chests and a slight vertigo in their heads. They hastily covered their bodies with a bit of dominating Armament Haki, creating a transparent Haki layer that made them feel much better.

After a while, when Sephiroth and Hancock's momentum began to gradually decline, Rayleigh slowly retracted his Conqueror's Haki and praised, "You two have great potential!"

Sephiroth seemed to have thought of something. He suppressed his mental exhaustion and said with a strange expression, "Mr. Rayleigh, the teaching you talked about... Could it be that you're using Conqueror's Haki to suppress us?"

"Almost!" Rayleigh replied succinctly.

"..." Sephiroth could only be silent for a moment.

"When you awakened Conqueror's Haki, you must have awakened due to your emotional excitement, right?" Rayleigh, with a smiling face, questioned the two.

"Hmm!" Hancock murmured.

"Yes!" Sephiroth replied.

"In other words, with sufficient suppression, you can release it. When you are in constant release, carefully go and feel the process of that release, and gradually master it. Then, you can complete the initial withdrawal. And the next step is the local release of Conqueror's Haki." Rayleigh explained. "Just now, when the two of you released Conqueror's Haki, it was an undifferentiated release, and I partially locked on. What I did, it enhances the power and precision of Conqueror's Haki."

Recalling the fact that Luffy learned Haki in the original work for two years, he didn't know when he saw and heard Observation Haki and met the future, he didn't learn how to release Armament Haki through the air, and he relied on enlightenment to sheath Conqueror's Haki... So, Sephiroth subconsciously suppressed his curiosity and asked, "What about Armored Conqueror's Haki?"

"Um!? Unexpectedly, little brother, you know quite a lot!" Rayleigh first glanced at the silver-haired youth with surprise, and then explained, "Armored Conqueror's Haki requires one's own power and courage to be strong enough to master and use it... I can't teach this, I can only rely on you to comprehend it yourself in actual combat! However, this is actually just a partial release of Conqueror's Haki! However, it locks the release area onto one's own attack. By compressing Conqueror's Haki to the extreme, it can cause a strong mental shock to the enemy and suppress the opponent's Armament Haki dominance. Therefore, when the intensity of Armament Haki is the same, the side with Armored Conqueror's Haki in the attack will have a certain advantage! Some people, even if they possess Conqueror's Haki, may not be able to master this technique throughout their lives."

"Oh!" Sephiroth nodded in understanding. He wondered in his heart if he needed to sign up for a guidance class with the famous teacher Kaido in the future.

While pouring coffee for the five people sitting on the sofa, Shakky recounted, "Rayleigh, these three little girls haven't mastered the dominant power of Observation Haki, so you can help them train somehow..."

"Ah! This... OK!" Hearing this, a troubled expression flashed across Rayleigh's face, but he reluctantly agreed.

Sephiroth and Rayleigh, after some discussion, both finally decided that Rayleigh needed to be trained twice in the morning and twice in the evening to help them with Conqueror's Haki. In the daytime, the six found a not-so-great restaurant in Grove 13 and made do with lunch. In the afternoon, the three Boa sisters began formal training for Haki, while Sephiroth returned to the Marine Base to continue his 9-to-5 routine.

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