Journey to One Piece

270. A new skill

With that, the Straw Hats vanished from Sabody altogether. They were back on the Merry, which was quite a distance away from the island and fully coated. Though after coming back from the 2 years of training, Franky had upgraded the ship by a lot, but they would go so deep that they would still need the coating anyways.

After they returned to the ship, Luffy shouted.

"Everyone, we have been away from adventure for such a long time and I am sorry to have dragged you all into this, but I hope that in this next journey of ours we will be more victorious and realize our dreams that we have been craving for such a long time."

"Of course."

"We are gonna rock the Grand Line."

"The New World wouldn't know what hit them."

With a small celebration, Merry slowly dipped down into the water. Their main hall had a ceiling made of glass so everyone got to see the scenery outside. At first, it was all bright due to the sun, but as they dipped more, it became darker and by the end, it was darker than night. Nothing could be seen, so Franky had to switch on the spherical 360-degree lights and illuminate the deeper ocean.

It made everyone a little more uneasy seeing the pitch-black darkness, but they got used to it, and the light of Merry helped a lot. The fish started getting larger as they dipped down more, and soon they got to meet the sea beasts.

At first, it was fine, but some of them were bold and wanted to take a bite at them. Ken had to scare them away with Conqueror's Haki to make their journey easier. After everything settled and their journey continued, they just got bored and talked about what they had achieved all these months.

Ken had other thoughts in mind and brought out Caribou, who was now tied in sea stone chains, thanks to Vivi.

"Who the fuck are... Straw... Straw... Straw Hat!!" Caribou was very angry that he was captured and left in the dark all this time. And he was ready to lash out when he saw brightness, but once he saw the Straw Hats and the whole crew, he knew that he would be screwed.

"Oh, so you're the weird guy Ken caught. You are quite ugly," Luffy said not being considerate at all.

"He really does look like a sleaze bag," Sanji said.

"Why do we even care about him?" Nami said.

Ken just put his face opposite to Caribou, who was now trembling and pleading to let him get away.

"I haven't done anything. Please let me leave. I promise I will be a good pirate and your subordinate," Caribou said. He still didn't understand how he fainted, and that gave him more fear than ever.

"Well, leaving you isn't a huge matter. But I do have a question. Who are you working under?" Ken asked. This made Caribou's eyes wide, and he looked at Ken with extreme fear, so much so that he almost fainted.

"What a wuss," Zoro commented while cleaning his swords.

"I..I am alone.. I am the Captain of my own pirate crew." Caribou said shakily. 

"Heh! I don't believe you. But it doesn't matter." Ken said and in the next moment he took him back to his kamui dimension, but this time Ken too had gone himself to the dimension, following Caribou. 

Caribou thought that he would be again shut down in this weird place and left alone but when Ken too appeared and seeing the smile in his voice, he knew something was up. He was ready to plead again but Ken didn't even give a chance for Caribou to speak and used his sword on him. 

A long gash out of nowhere appeared on his chest and blood splattered everywhere. He cried out in pain but soon fainted. Ken wanted to do an experiment and see if his knife worked the same way it did in the bleach and the dead's soul could be brought out. 

With the blunt end of the handle of the sword he struck the head of Caribou. The moment he struck his forehead with his sword, another Caribou came out from behind and his main body went limp. 

Caribou got scared when he saw this and more scary part was that there was chain that went straight from his chest to the limp body. 

"What.. What did you do?" Caribou now was genuinely scared. He remembered being struck by the sword of Ken and feeling pain and now suddenly there was two of his. 

"Well you are close to death." Ken said. 

"What? No. Impossible." Caribou cried out but Ken before replied with not much thought. But now that he has seen that Caribou could have a 'soul' body he knew that the shinigami powers were the same. But that was not what Ken was really surprised about. 

He was surprised because he saw another foggy substance of about few centimeters floating nearby the limp body of Caribou. Ken didn't know what this was and was thinking of what it could be. The foggy substance was glowing a bit and was giving Ken an ethereal feeling. 

After some random thought, Ken took a whole apple from his pouch and let the foggy thing touch the apple. The moment the apple touched the foggy substance, the apple started to transform and within seconds the apple transformed into a muddy colored apple and simultaneously the chains that tied Caribou to the limp body of Caribou broke. 

The ghost Caribou cried out in pain as he did that and Ken got irritated by his constant rambling and praying before and so he just killed the ghost form of Caribou and with that this small time pirate who had a logia fruit died without the knowledge of anyone nor his crew. 

"So I was right. If I bring the soul out I can get the devil fruit without it being appearing in a random place in the world."