One piece : Celestial Rose

While waiting for his books to arrive, Mark was slowly and steadily improving his observation haki, not it's range, but it's strength.

If this was a game, notifications of 0.1+ would be coming every minute.

Mark steadily kept this up until he was disturbed from outside.

*Knock knock*

Opening his eyes, he found that his maid had returned with a trolley full of books.

"Come in."

Mark allowed her in gently.

Opening the door without a sound, the maid pushed the trolley into the room.

It was a heavy looking trolley yet she didn't look affected, but Mark knew she was affected, a lot.

He could sense her trembling arm muscles.

'Sigh'

Mark sighed, but so was the was etiquette of nobles, if it's found that she cannot do her job, she'll be replaced with someone who can.

Even he can't change this.

"Is that all of them?"

Mark asked gently once again.

The maid nodded, nervous for the slightest bit of delay she had caused, but breathed a sigh of relief when Mark simply dismissed her.

Mark might be a celestial dragon, but he was not a moron, human makes mistakes, why replace someone who is working hard because of a few seconds of delay.

That's utter horseshit.

"Alright, what do we have here."

Mark started looking through the books, he began arranging them in the order he wanted.

The books themselves did come in a pre-arranged order mind you, the librarian did it, celestial dragon authority was no joke.

But this order was a generally accepted one, Mark wasn't about to follow that route.

"So here's the deal, three separate piles, first is the martial arts pile, from swordsmanship to rokushiki, everything goes there."

Putting all the martial arts books in this pile, Mark nodded to himself.

"The second pile is Haki, wow, there are even uses of conqueror's Haki written here."

"The identity of celestial dragon is like a cheat."

Mark was honestly impressed with the amount of detail they have crammed into these books.

Keeping it away safely, he put his attention on the next pile, although he called it a pile but it was just one book.

"The third, devil fruit encyclopaedia, updated to the latest version, which came out a week ago.."

"They updated the entire thing because some chap in west blue ate an unidentified devil fruit.. talk about overkill. "

But who was Mark to complain about free benifits. So he kept the book again in a seperate 'pile'.

Sitting down on his bed, Mark put his hands behind his head, he was wondering what was the best approach for him.

Taking out the Haki book Mark began to look though the entire thing.

But the more he looked, the more he frowned.

"No way, It's actually at such a primitive level? The best way to increase haki is to fight strong opponents in deadly fights?"

"Please, that's like a modern man saying the best way to gain knowledge is tour the entire world, yeah it's true but you can also just google it or read a book."

"There has to be a better way."

"I remember women of Amazon have techniques which allows everyone to use haki, regardless of their willpower or age."

Mark was very dissatisfied with the techniques written here.

He wasn't a man of science, but even he knew any changes happening to the body during fighting was just stress response.

Things like that could be easily be recreated artificially, like say, can he simulate a stress response with a shot of adrenaline?

'Techniques were definitely lost during the void century.'

'There is no way people who can make such high end technology, didn't have research into Haki. '

Mark thought silently, as to why he thought about this instead of saying it out loud?

There was someone like Im sitting on his head, what if void century is a key word telling Im who to kill next.

Mark wanted nothing to do with that old fossil of a ruler.

"There is no use thinking about this, I am celestial Dragon."

"I am not fighting like some barbarian to get a Haki powerup, not a chance."

Haki was out of consideration until he figured out how to get it without actual danger to his life.

Why would he do something so damn stupid when Wano and Amazon lily existed, one of them must have a better way.

"Without Haki and devil fruits, the only thing remaining is Marital arts."

"Let's start with sword technique."

As Mark continued to flip the pages, he furrowed his brows again.

"Man do they have anything normal, what's with the feeling the breath of metal, can they not make it clear what this breath is?"

"What is this breath supposed to mean? It's vibration? It literally breathing like it grew lungs?"

Mark exclaimed speechlessly, he wasn't used to such vague nonsense, understanding this was impossible for normal people.

Imagine if your high school math was like this.

Comprehend the feeling of a as it adds together with b. People deadass would stop studying that shit.

"No, none of this is good, everything sucks, there is nothing here a regular guy like me can use."

"I really hope Rokushiki can give me something to look forward to."

With an immense disappointment bubbling within him, Mark looked at the last book without hope.

But slowly as time went by, Mark's eyebrows started to rise.

"Oh.. I see.. oh.."

After a while of reading Mark smiled, he saw a particular technique amongst the Rokushiki.

It was something different from them yet the same.

"Hahahaha! This is it, this is what will give me the edge."

"I found it, finally!

Mark laughed loudly, he was thrilled.

It was as if every thing that was troubling him was solved in an instant.

As if none of the concerns about Haki or devil fruit mattered to him anymore.