One Piece: Chaos Kong

Chapter 7: Battle Junky

After I finished my morning exercise, and considering I had a large wolf carcass to eat, I took it easy for the rest of the day and let myself fully heal before deciding to enter the forest. Well, although I said, 'Take it easy', I still ended up doing my usual exercises for the day, which all felt easier compared to yesterday.

"If I continue to get stronger at this rate, I will need to find a bigger boulder." Remarked Diddy lightly as he did a few stretches after finishing his last exercise for the day.

'Still, I'm curious, did I really happen to get stronger all because I fought that wolf? I find it hard to believe I got stronger from a simple fight.' Thought Diddy with a thoughtful expression while resting in the hammock.

'No, it couldn't have been the fight; when I fought against that old lion, I didn't notice any improvement in my strength the next day. So, it can't just be from a simple fight, then maybe it's from all the injuries I sustained, and when they healed, I got stronger? No, that wouldn't work either; I've been injured in the past and didn't notice any improvements to my strength.' Pondered Diddy with furrowed brows while shifting about in his hammock.

"Well, I'll figure it out eventually." Muttered Diddy with a yawn as he slowly drifted to sleep.

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Just like that, a few months passed by, and luckily or unluckily, nothing special happened during that time; I did engage in several fights during those few months, mainly because of the battle with the wolf, which was my first fight to the death, was exhilarating. Now, I don't consider myself a psycho or anything, but engaging in such a battle is addictive, especially since my strength improves when I heal from every battle.

Of course, I wasn't just fighting various beasts just for the hell of it; I was also trying to figure out how come, after every battle, I get stronger, and after tens of battles, I believe I've come to a conclusion.

It's not from my injuries, and while my battle IQ and senses may be refined after every single battle, my raw strength doesn't improve all the time; the reason for that is because most of the battles I fight, my opponents aren't capable of forcing me to use everything I have.

For me to improve my raw strength, I need an opponent to push me to my limit, similar to how that wolf did, at least for his last attack. Now it took so long for me to figure this out because whenever I'm against a dangerous opponent, I usually end up injured, so I would mistake my growth in strength for the number of injuries I heal from. Because of that, I decided to do something stupid; I purposely injured myself; it wasn't just a minor injury either; I had allowed a deer to pierce me with one of its sharp antlers.

When I healed from that injury and noticed I hadn't gotten an ounce stronger, I realized my assumption about finding a powerful opponent must've been correct. Though, all that ended up was me ignoring the weaker beasts and hunting the stronger animals, which explains the situation I was just in.

"Haa, haa; that was... very close." Said Diddy, leaning against a broken tree riddled with injuries while breathing heavily as he eyed the dead and mangled lion a few meters before him.

Looking up at the sky, I took a few seconds to catch my breath, and even though I wanted nothing more than just to close my eyes and rest, doing so was akin to signing my death; so, with the help of the broken tree behind me, I stood up, yet even that was a struggle. Unsteadily approaching the dead lion, which was quite hard to do as I'm pretty sure I was hallucinating from the blood loss since I'm currently seeing two dead lions beside one another.

"I told you... Next time we meet... I wouldn't... Let you go." Remarked Diddy with a smirk in between his ragged breathing while wobbly pointing his finger at the ground as the actual lion was to his left.