* * *
Months blurred into thresholds.
He did things no creature should have to do and called it "training."
Sitting under the waterfall until his skin went numb and his bones felt like glass, then healing only his torso and letting his limbs suffer for longer. All of this was normal now.
He repeated his iterations and moved to the next. He formed new iterations, recycled them, revised them and then mastered them.
By the time the first full year was done, by the time his limbs had lengthened and the soft, uncontrolled roundness of infancy had burned away to something a bit leaner, he could lie motionless at the bottom for nearly two minutes before his chest's complaints became interesting.
If one were there to notice the difference just a year ago, they would realize he was no longer a lump of red flesh, but now his arms and legs were longer, still thin, but no longer weak. His neck was able to hold his head without immediate shaking and his eyes… eyes too calm and focused for his apparent age.
When one had done nothing but suffer for months on end, it would be a miracle if their eyes remained the same.
* * *
The second year belonged to precision as he had set new iterations for himself;
'Go from rock A to rock B using only six strokes.'
'Reach the stone outcrop near the left cliff with only one breath and four kicks.'
'Surface at the exact spot where a small leaf would be after riding the current for ten heartbeats.'
'Run at the bottom of the water'
The deep pocket became his silent sprint zone.
He would take a breath, dive, and sprint underwater along a line only he knew in his mind, touching a sequence of rocks in order before coming up. The sequence might be;
'Bottom near the left cliff crack,' then 'Middle stone by the pool's center,' then 'Raised hump on the far side.'
He ran sets like this until his limbs moved before his conscious thought even finished giving the order.
'Continue.'
His body began to learn to predict inertia in water, rather than waiting for a response first.
Under the waterfall, he started playing a dangerous kind of game.
He would wedge his fingers into a crack on the basin wall just under the main waterfall, letting the entire weight of the water hammer his shoulders and back.
He called it something along the lines of "load-bearing wall" drill. Lame.
At first, he lasted five heartbeats before his grip tore and he was driven down.
Then ten.
Then twenty.
Then continue…
* * *
In the third year, water stopped being just weight and noise. It started to 'talk', ever so slightly, to him.
He did not mistake this for mysticism, he would have sneered at himself if he did. He could simply feel… more.
For instance, if he closed his eyes near the surface and held still, he could tell, from the way the water pressed at different points on his skin, which way the shallow slope lay, how far the waterfall's main thrust reached, whether a fallen leaf or sometimes even an insect was drifting near.
He knew it had something to do with his Spirit. It should have grown enough to keep that much input sorted.
He trained this new "sense" as brutally as he had used everything else. How? By using it repeatedly of course…
He would float on his back and set himself tasks;
[Without looking, time a roll and a dive so that you intercept a piece of bark as it passes under a certain part of the rim.]
[Close your eyes, count ten heartbeats, then surface where the current would have carried you around one curve of the pool.]
[Sink and spin slowly, tracking where the waterfall's pull is strongest purely by pressure.]
He failed countless times, then adjusted countless times multiplied by ten...
[Spirit: X→ X]
[Agility: X → X]
By the end of the third year, the basin belonged more to him than to water.
By now, he knew every hidden snag, every hollow, every sharp edge, he even had names for them in his head, probably lame too;
'Crack-Deep. Soft-Slope. Hammer-Throat. Left-Flick. Dark-Pocket…'
His body had changed once again, now, he no longer looked like a toddler.
If someone from his old world had seen him, they would have guessed a small child of maybe four or five.
Weirdly slight and still, but with wiry muscle clinging to his bone in a way no child's body should have carried. They would truly wonder.
His chest had more width, his shoulders no longer slumped forward under the weight of his head and his arms and legs, though still short, moved with purpose and without wasted whipping about.
SPLASH
He hung under the waterfall one more time with his fingers wedged in their familiar crack, and water roaring down on his back.
He counted.
'Ten. Twenty. Thirty.'
His shoulders burned and his grip shook.
'Forty. Fifty.'
He could feel fibers in his forearms begin to fray and that peculiar sensation of strength about to give way.
He held on for five more heartbeats longer than usual then let go on purpose. The water drove him down, causing him to hit a rock and bruise his bone. The breath was pounded out of him. Literally…
He lay there at the bottom until every part of his nervous system began to howl.
'My body can handle higher thresholds of pain now…' he thought while looking directly up at the waterfall. The consequence came quick as his eyes got destroyed in their sockets...
He floated and slowly moved his body away from the waterfall.
[HEAL – Full Body]
A capable enough person would be able to see his eyes being threaded back into existence.
'Peak condition. When last?' he floated up slowly and thought with an eerie calm. Like as if the previous incident was nothing but a minor scratch.
When his face broke the surface with not even a single sound, he turned onto his back and let his limbs move in easy, almost lazy strokes. Then he called the panel one more time.
[Haki]
[Trait: Immortality]
Strength: 5.9
Speed: 3.1
Agility: 9.8
Defense: 11.7
Spirit: 7.2
'Hrmmm…' he nodded, as if saying "not-bad", trying his hardest to suppress the ear-splitting grin struggling to get plastered on his face.
He studied each of his stats now.
Strength enough now that, in this small frame, he moved through the water like a small Apex predator.
Speed sufficient to cross the pool in the space between a few heartbeats if he chose to sprint.
Agility nearly at ten. Every part of his body was capable of clean, coordinated changes in direction without flailing.
Defense over eleven, a level where rocks, water, and cold all had to work harder just to sting him a little.
Spirit had gone past seven by now, making his thoughts no longer fight for room in this brain. He had more than enough space now to hold patterns, plan, and analyze even while his body hung at the very edge of suffocation or pain.
If one were to monitor him swimming, they would find that he had become even more graceful and precise than a deer.
He moved through the water like it was made for him, literally an extension of his skin. His strokes weren't frantic, aggressive pulls anymore, they were now… eerily calm and efficient. When he moved, it was like he was gathering the water and pushing it politely behind him.
His turns at the wall were a quick tuck-and-go, he was far, far better than pro athletes in his previous world by all metric standards.
There was no wasted splash and when he pushed off into a glide, it looked smooth and easy.
When he swam, there was silence. He didn't struggle or gasp for breath; he just moved with this quiet and powerful rhythm.
He had done ALL of that, with his feet having never touched dry ground. Not even once.
He let the panel fade.
He floated there with his eyes on the sky-ring as his chest rose and fell in an almost lazy rhythm.
'Three years of water.' three years of drowning and not-dying, three years of turning an accident into mastery.
His fingers flicked in a small, precise movement, sending a ripple across the surface that he watched spread and break against the basin walls.
"Walking can wait," he said softly. The first sound he made had been and ear splitting scream, and now, this was the second, lost in the waterfall's roar…
He turned and took a breath that no longer felt like a 'relief gift' then proceeded to slip under the water once again.
"Continue."