By the seventh morning since the Sea King encounter, Gildarts felt something miraculous: his prosthetics didn't suck.
Not completely, anyway.
They no longer rubbed his skin raw, and he could now swing his left arm without feeling like it was about to dislodge and fly into the jungle. The leg, though still stiff, had become less of a tree stump and more of a… really stubborn thigh-high boot. The metal creaked a bit during sprints, and it made bath time an exercise in acrobatics, but at least he'd stopped falling over every time he crouched.
He'd taken to shadowboxing every morning after his meditation—at first just to loosen up, but slowly, a real pattern began to emerge. He wasn't a swordsman. He wasn't some martial arts monk with ironclad stances. But he had spent an embarrassing number of hours watching anime and playing fighting games back in his old life.
Now those hours were finally paying off.
One morning, with Pork watching from a tree stump like a skeptical gym coach, Gildarts circled an imaginary opponent, arms raised in a tight guard. He jabbed twice, stepped left, ducked an invisible hook, and followed with an uppercut that might've launched a smaller tree squirrel into orbit.
"Left jab, right cross, weave left, body blow!" he muttered, panting. "Not pretty, but hey—effective."
He threw in a spinning backfist for flair and promptly lost his balance, stumbling forward and landing face-first in the sand.
Pork sneezed, unimpressed.
Gildarts groaned into the dirt. "I know, I know. Hajime no Ippo makes it look so easy..."
Still, he got back up and did it again. And again. Each time with a little more precision. Each strike was a test—how well did his body respond? How much force could his prosthetic arm deliver? How long could his leg hold up under a barrage of movement?
By the end of the session, Gildarts was shirtless, slick with sweat, and breathing hard—but grinning like a man who'd discovered fire.
"I'm not Gildarts Clive," he said aloud, slipping into a loose stance and jabbing at the air. "But I'm gonna fight like I mean it."
— — —
Later that day, the universe decided to humble him in the only way it knew how: by assaulting his nose.
"Okay, that's it," he muttered, sniffing his own armpit and recoiling in horror. "I smell like a dead fish that got punched by another dead fish."
Pork, sitting under the shade of a banana tree, gave him a look that said thank God you finally noticed.
"Shut up," Gildarts said, pointing at the fox. "I didn't ask for commentary."
But he had to admit, it was time. He hadn't washed properly in weeks. A few dips in the sea didn't count—he still had sand in places sand was never meant to reach. His clothes, meanwhile, had developed a life of their own. They smelled like damp forest and shame.
So he stripped down to his underwear and marched off with a bundle of clothing under one arm, towel over his shoulder, and Pork trotting behind him, squinty eyes squinting as they usually did.
The small freshwater pond tucked between the hills had become a go-to spot for bathing—quiet, clean, and free of crocodile-sized surprises. Gildarts knelt at the edge and dunked his shirt, scrubbing furiously with a handful of crushed herbs and fruit peel that smelled vaguely of lemons and dirt.
"I miss soap," he muttered. "I'd kill for a bottle of two-in-one shampoo and conditioner."
He wrung out the shirt and spread it over a sun-warmed rock, then stood up and stretched.
"Alright, buddy," he said to Pork, "eyes front. This is going to be a deeply vulnerable moment."
Pork snorted and turned his head away, tail flicking with dramatic disinterest.
Gildarts stepped into the pond, and the cool water hit him like divine intervention. He sank down to his shoulders, letting out a groan of relief so long and theatrical it could've earned a standing ovation.
"Oh man… I'm human again. A real person. With functioning pores."
He submerged fully, resurfacing with a flip of his red hair. For a moment, he floated on his back, eyes closed, letting the water soothe muscles worn raw from days of training.
Then a wet thud interrupted the peace.
Gildarts blinked, sat up, and turned toward the shore where Pork now stood. Clamped in the fox's mouth, like some canine offering to a lazy god, was a cube-shaped object the color of brick and slightly larger than a coconut. It had a strange, geometric spiral pattern etched across its hard skin, and a squiggly stem like a doodle drawn by a child with no sense of symmetry.
Pork plopped it onto Gildarts's drying towel with a proud little huff and sat down.
Gildarts stared, water dripping from his chin. "…Is that a—?"
He swam to shore in a frenzy, tripping over his own legs in the shallows and nearly faceplanting again. Sputtering and stark-naked, he knelt before the bizarre fruit as if it were an ancient relic from a lost temple.
"No way…" he whispered. "No freaking way."
The shape. The patterns. The weird aura of"eat me and regret it later." It was all there.
Pork tilted his head. Gildarts turned to him with wide eyes.
"You found a Devil Fruit! In the pond?! While I was bathing?! How!? I looked in here already!"
Pork swayed his tail exactly once, then began nonchalantly licking his paws like he did this sort of thing every Tuesday.
Gildarts scooped the noodle bodied fox up carefully into his arm, swinging the animal around in circles in his excitement, the long legs of the animal wiggling around in the air. "You absolute genius of a fox. You miraculous noodle-brained, fur-covered mailman."
He stood slowly, holding the fruit up like Simba on Pride Rock with Pork being held under his arm like a postage box. "Behold, Pork. We have acquired potential power. Or maybe crippling weakness. It's a coin toss, really."
Despite the temptation to take a bite, Gildarts hesitated. He stared at the red cube as his reflection shimmered in its skin. Devil Fruits were a gamble, even in the best circumstances. He wasn't ready to become something he couldn't control. Not yet.
With exaggerated caution, he wrapped it in a clean rag and stored it in a hollowed-out tree trunk near camp.
"Not today," he said. "But soon. Maybe after I learn how to punch properly without losing a limb."
Pork let out a sneeze and curled up in the shade.
— — —
The rest of the day became a blur of odd tasks. Gildarts finished scrubbing his clothes, then built a makeshift drying rack from bamboo and fishing line. He shaved with a sharpened clam shell—badly—and suffered a few nicks in places that didn't deserve it. He even shaved off his beard using a small shard of polished metal as a mirror, muttering, "There. Now I look less like a castaway and more like an unpaid anime protagonist."
He practiced his boxing form with renewed energy, inspired by Pork's surprise gift. Jab, jab, cross. Weave, hook, dodge. He added footwork drills, bouncing on the balls of his feet, testing his prosthetic's stability. There were still slips and wobbles, but for the first time since arriving, he felt… capable.
As the sun dipped low, he and Pork shared a fire-cooked fish and split a boiled coconut and some char cooked roots. Gildarts leaned back against a tree, arms crossed, devil fruit safely stored a few meters away.
"So now what?" he asked the night sky. "We've got a raft, a fighting style, and a demonic fruit that might turn me into a cube monster. Not bad for a week's work."
Pork, belly full, rolled over and snored softly.
Gildarts chuckled. "Yeah, I'll take that as a win."
— — —
Update Schedule:
11:00am-12:30am
Sunday: Break Day
Monday: 1 Chapter
Tuesday-Friday: 2 Chapters
Saturday: 1 Chapter