'Cover Story: Chopper and the Quack Doctor Vol. 8 , "The Quack Doctor Everyone Wants to Beat Up"'
'Life in the Drum Kingdom went on as usual. The snowstorms howled endlessly. Angry shouting echoed through the towns as Hiriluk, clutching his hat with one hand and carrying his medical bag with the other, fled in panic from yet another mob of furious villagers.'
'Not far away, Chopper watched in confusion mixed with frustration. That quack doctor is the worst! His medical skills were terrible, yet he insisted on treating people anyway. Someone was going to die because of him sooner or later!'
'Days turned into weeks, and weeks into months. The infamous exploits of the quack doctor, Hiriluk, spread through every town in the Drum Kingdom. King Dalton had constant headaches because of him, while Kureha couldn't have been happier. Thanks to that fool Hiriluk, even more people came to her and Chopper for treatment.'
---
When a 'Paramecia' user awakens their Devil Fruit, they assimilate the surrounding terrain, creating a vast area they can freely control.
When a 'Logia' user awakens... assimilating the terrain is like creating an enormous elemental body.
No wonder Aokiji had been able to manipulate the ice in the South Blue as if it were a Paramecia ability, even moving through it as though he were teleporting. The ice assimilated by his Awakening had literally become part of his body. Naturally, he could control it. Naturally, he could appear anywhere within it.
After realizing this, Liam found himself surprisingly calm.
'...That's all? It's impressive, sure. But not overwhelmingly so.'
He looked for a while at the gigantic arched ice bridge Aokiji had created to force apart the mochi that had pinned him down, then he glanced up at the sky.
The Pirate King. Whitebeard. Shanks. Kaido. Big Mom. The true monsters at the top of the seas could split the heavens apart with a single attack filled with Haki. A Logia Awakening certainly looked spectacular... but against fighters of 'that' level, perhaps it merely brought Logia users back to square one. The only difference was that their "elemental body" had become a whole lot bigger.
Roger. Whitebeard. Which one of them couldn't casually destroy an island? Roger had blasted Kozuki Oden away with a single 'Divine Departure'. When his Haki clashed with Whitebeard's, the very heavens and earth shook. Against monsters like that, even an island-sized elemental body would probably just get cut apart anyway.
As those thoughts settled in his mind, Liam broke into a grin. 'Now things are getting interesting.'
His fists were already itching. He wanted to find someone with an awakened Devil Fruit and have a proper fight. Aokiji and Katakuri had already left. The only person Liam could think of who had awakened their Devil Fruit was Donquixote Doflamingo.
"Not only has he awakened his fruit, he also has Conqueror's Haki..." Liam gazed out over the sea. "I've been hearing his name a lot lately anyway. Going to beat him up sounds perfectly reasonable. The only question is... is our friend Jaxon still in the North Blue? Or has he already dealt with his little brother and gone to the New World to start making moves for Dressrosa's throne?"
That was something he'd have to ask the Mysterious Old Black about.
Thinking of that, Liam tried sensing the location of his Stand. A moment later, he turned toward another stretch of sea.
"Huh? It got that far away?" he muttered to himself in surprise. "I can only sense the general direction. I can't tell exactly where it is or how far away..."
After all, Liam only had a human brain. He wasn't a computer, nor did he have a map of the world implanted in his head. His Observation Haki couldn't cover the entire New World, either. Since his Stand was an autonomous long-range type, once it got too far from its user, all Liam could sense was its rough direction. Only after getting closer could he pinpoint its location.
"So what am I now?" He laughed. "A human Vivre Card?"
---
Liam began stretching by the shore. He bent at the waist, loosened his shoulders, kicked out his legs, and stretched his muscles.
Then he walked backward a hundred paces. Measured the distance. Backed up another hundred. Measured again. Then another two hundred. Only when his back touched the gigantic arched ice bridge Aokiji had left behind did he stop.
He bounced twice in place, took a deep breath, and said, "Let's go!"
'Thud! Thud! Thud!'
Liam exploded into a sprint. He tore across the ground like a hurricane, reaching the shoreline in the blink of an eye. With one tremendous stomp,
'BOOM!'
His body shot into the sky like a cannonball.
"Wooooooohoooooooooooo, !!"
His voice quickly faded into the distance as he soared through the clouds. Using Geppo several times in succession, he disappeared beyond the horizon in the blink of an eye, becoming nothing more than a tiny flickering speck.
---
'A fish can leap across the sea, and a bird can soar through the endless sky.'
This was Liam's first time traveling this way. No ship. No Devil Fruit. No Stand. No tools of any kind. Just his own body crossing the seas, and not just any sea, but the unpredictable waters of the New World. The ever-changing weather, the raging winds, and the towering waves.
Liam's spirits soared. Alone on the endless ocean, he sprinted across the water, covering dozens of kilometers in the blink of an eye as he ran atop the waves.
"Back then, Sun Wukong could circle the whole world on foot. Today, I, Liam, can travel across, " He paused. "...Well, okay. At least a tiny section of the New World's route."
He laughed heartily.
Sometimes he dashed through rain clouds with Geppo. Sometimes he dove beneath the sea, catching fish and playing with Sea Kings. He had never felt so free.
Every now and then, a pirate ship or merchant vessel would pass by in the distance. The lookout, peering through a telescope, would catch sight of a human figure leaping out of the sea and assume his eyes were playing tricks on him.
"...That's weird. Since when are there Sea Beasts that look like people?" The sailor rubbed his eyes and looked again. By then, the figure running across the waves had already disappeared.
Without Aokiji's bicycle to use as a cooking platform this time, even if Liam caught a Sea Beast, it wasn't exactly convenient to start a fire and grill it bare-handed. Fortunately, if this world had one thing in abundance, it was islands.
Whenever he felt like taking a break, Liam would stop at an uninhabited island, hunt a few wild beasts for a meal, and, if he was in a good mood, wander around to enjoy the scenery. After all, his Stand would later copy his memories; it would be a shame to miss beautiful sights. Once he'd seen them himself, Robin could later experience the same view through 'B.I.B.', seeing everything through his eyes.
On the side of one deserted island, Liam carved into the cliff with a stone: '"Liam Was Here."'
Laughing loudly, he leaped back into the sky and continued on his way.
---
There was one other thing the seas of this world produced in abundance: pirates. Whenever Liam happened to run into a pirate ship, if he was hungry or simply wanted to rest for a while, he'd happily go over to "say hello."
"...Why did we have to run into a monster like this...?" Aboard a pirate ship captained by someone with a '92 million Beli' bounty, broken swords, smoking guns, and spent bullets littered the deck.
The pirates beneath Liam's feet looked ready to cry. One moment they'd been happily eating meat and drinking wine... the next, a humanoid monster had dropped onto their ship. 'This isn't fair!'
After eating and drinking his fill, Liam got ready to leave. With his mastery of Life Return, the instant he finished eating, the food had already been digested, converted into energy, and used to fully restore his stamina.
"That terrifying bastard's finally gone..." The pirates all breathed sighs of relief, only to fall into despair again.
The moment Liam jumped off the ship, he casually swung his leg, sending several Rankyaku flying back toward them.
"Giorno! You son of a…"
Before they could finish cursing him, the razor-sharp air blades sliced the pirate ship into pieces. The shattered vessel slowly sank beneath the waves, and along with it disappeared the pirates' furious shouting.
---
Liam naturally knew that there were pirate crews like the Straw Hat Pirates, people who simply sailed the seas to chase their dreams and enjoy adventures.
"But if they're really that kind of pirate..." He shrugged. "...they probably won't have the bad luck to run into me."
Luck really did exist in this world.
'Tap!'
He kicked off the air and continued onward. Each Geppo carried him several kilometers through the sky. From a distance, his path looked like a series of graceful arcs drawn across the heavens above the sea.
---
Even with Liam's monstrous stamina, there was no way he could use Geppo nonstop across the vast New World. Whenever he wanted to rest, he'd dive into the sea and continue by swimming.
With the absolute connection between himself and his Stand, Liam never had to worry about losing his direction. He could even swim with his eyes closed. Even Jinbe had once praised his swimming speed. Traveling underwater wasn't much slower than flying through the air with Geppo.
---
"Almost there." Liam burst out of the dark sea as waves crashed around him. "It should only be another few dozen kilometers... definitely less than a hundred."
He looked up at the brilliant night sky. Quite some time had passed since he'd left the deserted island where Aokiji and Katakuri fought. As for exactly how many days, Liam had no idea. He'd been having too much fun on the journey to bother keeping track of time.
He only vaguely remembered the sky brightening several times, the sea falling into darkness several more, and this certainly wasn't the first star-filled night he'd seen. Then again, the New World's weather was so bizarre that who knew how many actual days had passed?
As he continued swimming forward, he spotted a sailing ship gliding across the moonlit sea in the distance.
'A pirate ship?' Liam wasn't particularly hungry, and his stamina was still fine, so he hadn't planned on bothering with it. But after swimming a little farther, he noticed the ship was heading in almost exactly the same direction he was.
As he got closer, a familiar feeling reached him from aboard the vessel. "...This... soul fragments? Homies?"
The feeling wasn't coming from a single source but from many scattered ones. That matched his previous experiences perfectly; the ship was probably one of the Big Mom Pirates' Homie ships.
"Why do I keep running into them?" Liam dove beneath the surface.
In the dark water, he shot forward like a shadow, rapidly closing the distance to the singing Homie ship. Breaking through the surface beside it, he grabbed hold of the hull in one smooth motion.
While climbing, he casually spread out his Observation Haki, sweeping both the inside and outside of the ship. His eyebrows rose. There was an impressively strong presence aboard. Not on the level of himself or Katakuri... but definitely a first-rate fighter.
'Which one of Big Mom's children is it?'
Just then, a human-like face emerged from the wooden planks of the hull. The Homie ship had noticed him. Their eyes met, and the Homie looked startled and opened its mouth, about to sing out a warning to everyone on board.
Still clinging to the hull, Liam raised a finger. "Shhh."
A wisp of black Stand energy appeared at his fingertip, something only soul-based beings like Homies could see. The Homie frozen, and its human features quietly melted back into the wood.
A moment later, Liam heard the Homie at the bow continue humming as if nothing had happened.
"Good." Patting the ship's side, Liam moved like a nimble water ghost. In just a few effortless motions, he silently slipped aboard.
'(End of Chapter)'
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