Summary: Luffy gets used to the System and starts trying to plan out who he wants to become...

Chapter 3: System Exploration

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You have Gained +1 Strength as a result of strenuous exercise!

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Luffy groaned as he flopped back onto the grass of the small clearing just outside town. It had been exactly one month since he 'arrived' in this world, and he'd discovered quite a bit about it, himself, and the Gamer System since then. One of the most important was that the Gamer system was not a guarantee of easy power. Of power in general? Yes, he had little doubt about that. But not easy power. Unlike some stories he'd read online with Gamer systems, he did not gain stats for doing twenty easy pushups a day. He had to push his current limits to gain anything, and he had to do it repeatedly, not just once. That point of Strength was, in fact, only the third one in that stat that he'd gained after a month of hard work. Worse, it had noticeably slowed each time. He hoped that was merely the limitations of his childish body at work. It made sense that there would be some sort of cap to how far you could take a still growing body, after all. He couldn't be sure that was the case, however. Only time would tell. Sighing, he brought up his Status screen with a thought.

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Status

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Name: Monkey D. Luffy

Age: 7

Level: 4

Devil Fruit: N/A

Money: 7000 Belli

Shop Points: 450

Perk Points: 2

Stats:

Strength: 13

Dexterity: 17

Endurance: 26

Intelligence: 43

Wisdom: 24

Charisma: 12

Luck: 25

Free Stat Points: 15

Perks

Gamer's Body: Grants a body that allows for the user to live the real world like a game. Wounds healed on rest. Status Effects removed on Rest.

Gamer's Mind: Allows the user to calmly and logically think things through. Gamer can suppress negative emotions at will.

The Will of D: Bearer holds the inherited will of the Family of D. Effect: Live in Interesting Times, ?, ?

Outsider's Perspective: Imported save data increases relevant stats, as well as relevant skills when acquired.

Training Expert: Get the most out of training! Not just for yourself, but for your crew too! Gain instinctive knowledge of the best ways to tweak your training for those GAINS BRO! +15% XP for Training your own skills, or for Training others in skills in which you outrank your trainee by at least 10 points.

Skills

Brawling: 8

Carpentry(Ships): 12

Guns: 3

Haki(Conquerors): 1

Haki(Observation): 3

Meditation: 12

Observe: 11

Free Running: 7

Sailing: 14

Sciences: 27

Sword Mastery: 3

Spear Mastery: 3

Staff Mastery: 4

More…

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Despite the amount of time he'd put into the physical side of things, it was his Wisdom score that had increased the most. It both made sense and gave him hope that he really was just running into an age issue with the physical bits. Mentally, despite a loss of attention span he also attributed mostly to his age, he seemed mostly able to handle the mental load of an adult…or the teenager his former life had been, at least. He also found his emotions whipsawing more easily, which actually made it easier to act his physical age. But his mental capacity seemed unaffected, for which he was extremely grateful.

It also, he thought or hoped, served as a better baseline for Stat gains. Those five wisdom points had come from two sources. The first was increasing his understanding of the System or the World of One Piece. The former had been the result of a month of experimentation, the latter from managing to liberate a number of old newspapers and a few books. The reading had been a very frustrating reveal, that had also gotten him his sole intelligence point…as apparently the original Luffy could only sort of read the local language. A month of effort had corrected that much at least, along with getting him an admittedly heavily propaganda-filtered view of what the world was like. Reading between the lines, a lot, had resulted in three of his wisdom points. Another had come from the experimentation, and the last from one of his new skill. Meditate had, aside from Observe, been the prize of his efforts with skills.

He'd been a bit disappointed to discover he didn't get magic and his Gamer's Body didn't give him HP. He got injured just like anyone else, but recovered much faster and more completely. Meditate was such a prize because it allowed him to do that same recovery fairly fast without needing to sleep. It had also, almost accidently as he tried to figure out the skill from nothing but vague ideas, resulted in him unlocking Observation Haki. That had been a shock, but a pleasant one, particularly as it apparently synergized quite well with Observe, allowing him to take in a lot more information than he suspected normal Observation Haki was supposed to. Observation was also, honestly, the one type of Haki he'd been most interested in unlocking…as it was the only one that could be effectively hidden. A full-blown user of all three Haki types popping up in the East Blue, of all places, would probably be bad in the amount of attention it would bring. He still intended to unlock them, even use them if he needed to, but he'd already decided to try keeping the more obvious Armament and Conquerors under wraps until he hit the Grand Line, at least.

That, however, was very much putting the cart before the horse at the moment, though. Right now he was weak and he knew it. Not by normal people standards, maybe, but certainly by those of any serious fighter in One Piece. Which brought him back around to two points he had been carefully considering. Well, three points really, but one he'd already decided on. Specifically…Devil Fruits, weapons, and the butterfly effect.

That last had been the easiest to sort out his stance on. Namely, that he didn't care about fucking up what he knew about the future. He'd come into One Piece early enough that there was simply no way to prevent the Butterfly Effect from messing with things anyway. Oh, the isolated nature of every island would likely dampen how much his changes spread. He probably could have kept his presence and extra memories from influencing things too much if he'd really set out to. But…he didn't want to. First, because he didn't know what was already different. There was no telling how closely this world followed what he remembered of the show. Assuming he knew anything was bound to get him burned badly, one way or another. Second, the adventurers he did know about were…sort of fucked. Luffy's luck had run wildly hot and cold, getting him into deep shit regularly, even if it sometimes also helped get him out. Worse, not all of his experiences had been even remotely positive. He wasn't eager to repeat some of them and knew full well he'd never make the same choices Luffy had in many situations. Lastly on the topic, there were many people who had suffered when they didn't absolutely need to. He, knowing those things could be going on, couldn't ignore them. Nami's situation, in particular, coming to mind. So…fuck the Butterfly Effect. He'd do what he wanted and deal with the consequences as they came.

Devil Fruits were another topic he'd wrestled with. A lot. He suspected he'd have a chance at Luffy's Gomu Gomu no Mi within less than a year…but he didn't really want the thing. Oh, Luffy had turned that simple power into something monstrously strong, no question. But it was uttely underwhelming to the part of him that was Alex. It just didn't appeal to him at all. Worse, he'd had to debate hard with himself over whether any Devil Fruit was actually worth having or not. After all, some of the strongest people in history hadn't had them. They provided a massive front-end power boost, but actually arguably produced more weaknesses than advantages in the long term. Gol D. Rodger hadn't had one and neither did Monkey D. Garp, arguably the two most powerful men of their generation. Whitebeard did, as did all of the Admirals and many of the Warlords. But having one was, objectively, a balancing act. If he was going to get one at all, it needed to be good and provide serious benefits beyond merely the initial boost. Which made the Gomu Gomu no Mi extra unattractive.

The result of thinking that all through had caused him to spend a lot of time looking over the options in the Devil Fruit Shop. Unfortunately, that had complicated matters, not simplified them. Mostly because it had brought up the fact that the Yami Yami no Mi wasn't currently in use. Blackbeard wouldn't find it for years…and apparently right now it was actually out of circulation. Different Fruits cost different numbers of SF Coupons, and the Yami Yami no Mi was the single most expensive Logia Fruit in the shop. It was a full three SF Coupons instead of the two most Logia were. The only others that cost that much were all Mythic Zoans, which were all frankly broken as heck in one way or another. Both what he remembered of them and the little descriptions of their effects provided by the system were firm indications of that.

All of which meant he could short-circuit Blackbeard's fuckery. Assuming he could get the points for it. Unfortunately…it also didn't really fit his criteria of a fruit he would want. Its inability to disperse into an element like other Logias could was a serious downside, it didn't fit the one thing he wanted most either, which was a mobility enhancement of some variety. Frankly, it just didn't fit a fighting style he thought he'd ever be comfortable with, either. It was much too…tank oriented. He'd prefer not to get hit, over deliberately taking hits to absorb them into the Darkness. Worse yet, it would make him an instant target of Blackbeard himself, if it showed up on his eventual bounty and Blackbeard had been a strong New World veteran even before he'd gotten his hands on it. Luffy sighed and shook off that train of thought. There was a fruit he'd really prefer to have, if it was still available when he managed to get enough coupons for it, anyway.

The last thing was potentially easier to resolve…possibly. Maybe. If he did things right.

Weapons.

Fuck fighting bare fisted.

Seriously, original Luffy…why?! There were so many things that could have helped you! Even just getting some knuckle dusters tipped in seastone that didn't touch you but would touch whoever you hit! Like half of canon Luffy's fights would have ended so much easier if he'd done that! Better yet, if the Red Hair Pirates stopped by Dawn Island and stayed for a while like he thought they would…he could probably talk at least some of the lower level members into teaching him the basics of nearly any weapon. He vaguely remembered several of them carrying guns, even aside from Yasopp. Shanks was, at this point, in contention for the World's Greatest Swordsman still, too. And he was pretty sure several other crewmembers had been shown with various melee weapons, including some sort of electric staff thingy.

Well he wasn't going to repeat those mistakes. Particularly given he suspected his Inventory would likely protect him from any seastone items he managed to…acquire. Having a few seastone bullets for emergency use against Logias that relied too much on their powers was a must as far as he was concerned. Which also meant at least some basic firearms training. He remembered the North Blue having produced revolvers already, and he knew enough of the basics of how they worked (thank you History channel!) that he should be able to produce one with a fair bit of experimentation. A revolver loaded with seastone-tipped bullets sounded like an excellent holdout weapon to him, thank you very much. It didn't, however, help him settle on a primary weapon. Despite managing to wring a few tips on swords and spears out of some locals that humored his 'playing Marine,' he just didn't know enough about what would suit him.

Sighing as his mind ended up retreading old ground yet again, Luffy sat back up. He'd recovered from his physical exertion by now, and he had other things to do still. Stretching as he stood, he grinned as he headed back into town. He'd discovered early on that there was one person in Foosha that Luffy had almost entirely ignored before, who turned out to be a gold mine for the rough plans that he now had…

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"Back again, kid? I admit, I really didn't think you had the attention span for this. Haven't ever seen someone your age with as good an eye for it, either, though. If you want to help, I'll keep showing you a bit."

Luffy grinned, the expression just as huge and cheerful as it had always been. That, at least, was something of the old Luffy that he could get behind. A positive attitude was amazingly easy to maintain when the world was so full of possibilities! Like the opportunity before him.

"If I'm going to trust my life to ships someday, I want to know how they work, Mr. Minatomo! And how to fix them when they stop working!"

The short, stocky man's face twitched from its usual stern look into a small smile at Luffy's enthusiasm. The man wasn't just a regular carpenter, as child-Luffy had thought. He was, in fact, a retired shipwright. One whose body wasn't up to traveling the seas any longer, but who still wielded a mean hammer. The man had been thrown for a hell of a loop when Luffy had started asking about his repairs to one of the village's fishing boats. But, as Luffy had proven to have an eye for engineering curtesy of Alex's memories, he'd quickly taken a liking to Luffy and was more than willing to teach him all about ships. Luffy was picking it up quickly, much to the elder man's delight. Particularly given that Luffy had absolutely no qualms about doing the grunt work in exchange for the teaching, saving the man a lot of pain on old and sea-worn joints.

"Well then, kid…I do have something I think you'll be interested in. Turns out that the last boat to come in after the storm last week is just too damaged to risk a patch. Which means we need to build a new one from scratch! Normally, I'd just reuse a standard design, but I figured this is too good a chance to show you how to draft a plan from the ground up. Pull up the stool kid and I'll show you a thing or two."

Luffy eagerly complied. Not only did he still like engineering a fair bit, but he also had plans for the ship he wanted. Since he fully intended to recruit more heavily than Luffy had in the story Alex had known, the Going Merry wasn't going to cut it. Besides, there was a very specific design that he wanted to reproduce. One he felt would give his crew a serious edge, even on the Grand Line. Pulling up the stool the elder shipwright had motioned towards, he started soaking up every bit of knowledge he could. He needed to know this, if he was going to build the ship he wanted…

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A/N: I know these first chapters are exposition heavy, but that's mostly because Luffy is basically alone and stuck with his own thoughts. Don't worry, as the story progresses and he interacts with others, there will be more dialogue and action to break up the internal thoughts ;-).