The sumo match was about to begin.
Luffy crouched low in his sumo stance, his inflated belly jiggling as he positioned himself. Across from him, Chopper had transformed into his Muscle Point form, looking buff.
"Ready... FIGHT!" Usopp announced, dropping his hand like a referee.
Without warning, Luffy launched himself forward with a rubber-powered charge, his round body becoming a human cannonball.
The impact sent Chopper flying backward off the ring they'd marked out on the deck.
"Muscle Man Chopper is OUT!" Usopp declared.
"Winner: Yokozuna Luffy!"
Luffy stood victorious in the center of the ring, pounding his chest proudly. "WHO'S NEXT?!"
Marcus stepped forward. "Yokozuna Luffy, your winning streak ends here."
He clapped his hands together, and white powder puffed out, drifting to the deck. The others couldn't quite figure out what he was doing, but it looked intimidating.
"Round Two begins!"
"Shishishishi! Your belly is way too tiny," Luffy boasted. "I'll send you flying in one hit."
"Come on then. Let me show you what real strength looks like."
Without any warning, Luffy launched another meatball charge straight at Marcus.
But Marcus just smirked and shifted slightly to the side at the last possible second.
"Ahhh!"
Luffy couldn't stop his momentum and rocketed straight past Marcus, flying out of the ring completely. But his trajectory didn't end there.
"You cheated!" he yelled as he tumbled across the deck.
Before anyone could react to the match results, Luffy's out-of-control body slammed into Zoro, who'd been napping peacefully against the railing. The impact sent the swordsman flying over the side and into the ocean.
"Ah... sorry, Zoro!" Luffy called out sheepishly.
There was a moment of silence. Then Sanji rushed to the railing.
"Shit, someone pull the moss-head out before he drowns!"
Usopp and Chopper quickly grabbed a rope and hauled the waterlogged swordsman back aboard. When Zoro finally climbed over the railing, water streaming from his clothes and hair, his eyes were blazing with murderous intent.
"You... fucking... idiot!"
Luffy awkwardly avoided eye contact, looking anywhere but at his furious crewmate.
"Um... how about I give you a pack of jerky to make up for it?"
The "jerky" in question was still rotten meat. But after Sanji had worked his culinary magic on it with various seasonings and spices, it had been transformed into something really delicious. Spicy, savory, with a kick that lingered on your tongue.
The only downside was that eating it triggered a persistent hunger buff that couldn't be removed through normal means. That's why Sanji had instituted a strict rationing system, one pack per person every three days.
For Luffy, who always wanted to eat anyway, those jerky rations were like treasure.
Zoro's scowl softened slightly. He clearly wanted to stay angry and refuse, but jerky paired with sake was just too damn good a combination to pass up. The spice enhanced the alcohol's flavor, and made it hit harder.
"Fine. Hand it over."
"Wait... but that's my three-day ration..." Luffy's eyes were already tearing up as he reluctantly pulled the cloth-wrapped package from his pocket.
Zoro didn't care about his captain's emotional crisis. He planted his foot on Luffy's chest for leverage and yanked the twenty-piece pack away.
"I'm going to drink." He walked off.
"No! My jerky!" Luffy collapsed on the deck. "How will I survive without you?!"
"Man, that's pathetic," Usopp said, shaking his head while munching on his own jerky ration.
Chopper, also eating his share, nodded in agreement. "Yeah, really sad."
Marcus leaned against the mast, savoring his jerky slowly. "Mmm, this is the new paprika flavor. Slightly smokey, subtle peppery at the same time. Goes perfectly with fruit wine." He took another bite and sighed with satisfaction.
The three of them were basically rubbing salt in Luffy's wound while eating with enjoyment.
That's when two long rubber arms slowly crept toward them from behind, stretching across the deck like sneaky snakes.
Marcus' Observation Haki picked up the movement instantly, and he twisted his body, dodging the ambush completely.
"Hey! That's mine!"
Since Marcus had dodged, the unfortunate targets became Usopp and Chopper instead. Luffy, now desperate, snatched both their bags and immediately upended them over his mouth.
He shook the bags frantically. Nothing came out.
"Hahaha! We already ate it all while you were crying!" Usopp laughed, pointing at Luffy's shocked face.
Chopper nodded enthusiastically, cheeks still bulging from the last piece he'd stuffed in his mouth.
They'd been traveling with Luffy long enough to predict exactly what he'd try when he got desperate.
"Damn it!" Luffy clutched the empty bags to his chest and brought them to his nose, sniffing deeply like he could somehow extract flavor from the cloth. But smelling it only made his craving worse.
He slumped against the deck, tears streaming down his face. Then his eyes shifted toward the kitchen, and he slowly got to his feet with a new mission in mind.
---
Inside the galley, Sanji was humming cheerfully while preparing desserts and other treats.
These were specifically for the women's training group to help restore their energy after their afternoon workout sessions. The ladies went hard during training these days, burning through calories at an impressive rate.
And this particular task had an added benefit, it was the only time he could legitimately observe the women in their sweaty, exhausted post-workout state without getting smacked for being a pervert.
Just thinking about it made him giddy.
"I wonder what expression Shira will make when she tastes the Hiyashi Chuka I made with all my love," he murmured to himself. "Ah~ just imagining it..."
He turned around to grab more ingredients and froze. His prepared tray of cold ramen was completely empty.
A moment later, he heard slurping sounds. Four sets of slurping sounds, to be exact.
He turned slowly and silently approached the four idiots huddled outside the kitchen door, desperately slurping down stolen ramen.
"Huh? Why's my back feel so cold all of a sudden?" Chopper whispered between bites, looking confused.
"Idiot, cold ramen are supposed to make you feel cold when you eat them," Usopp shot back, still focused on his bowl.
Chopper nodded seriously like this made perfect sense. "Oh... good point."
Slurp.
"Mmm!" Marcus couldn't help making an appreciative noise. "Sour and sweet but perfectly refreshing. The sauce has so much flavor, did Sanji use sesame and vinegar for this? It's incredible!"
Sanji's cooking really was on another level compared to anything he had eaten in his previous life.
"Aw, thanks so much for the compliment!" Sanji's voice came from directly behind them.
All four ramen thieves froze mid-slurp.
The sound of Sanji cracking his knuckles was somehow louder than it should've been, ringing out like gunshots.
They slowly turned to face the clearly irritated cook, bowls still in hand.
"Honestly, if you wanted to eat, you could've just asked," he sighed. "I would've made you your own portions."
Despite being a massive pervert, he took his role as the crew's cook seriously. When it came to food, everyone was treated equally. The presentation and effort might vary depending on who he was cooking for, the women obviously got more attention, but everyone got fed.
Slurp...
Luffy, who'd been hiding behind the others, sucked up a stray ramen that had somehow ended up hanging from his nose.
"Can I have another bowl?"
"Get it yourself. There's plenty left in the pot over there."
Sanji let out another sigh and went back to his dessert preparations. The galley had turned into chaos, but at least everyone was eating.
The four thieves immediately perked up and rushed to refill their bowls.
Later, after he had finished delivering food to the women's training room, he returned to find only Zoro and Bon Kurei still in the men's area. One member of the usual group was absent.
"Hey, where's Goliath?" he asked.
"He's down in the hold, testing his abilities," Zoro replied, not even looking up from sharpening one of his swords.
"Testing his abilities in the hold? What, is he trying to eat the ship?" Sanji joked. "And speaking of which, that pot I asked him to upgrade still isn't finished?"
Ever since Goliath's Munch-Munch Fruit abilities had been properly developed, the iron golem had been swamped with work. Everyone on the crew wanted something upgraded or customized.
It wasn't that he didn't want to fulfill the requests. The problem was that producing quality results required technical knowledge, especially for specialized equipment.
To put it simply, when working with Minecraft-based items and materials, it wasn't enough to just fuse things together randomly. The process required understanding and integrating specific properties.
The simplest example was Nami's Clima-Tact. The heat-producing component had special effects, but the other two didn't work nearly as well. That wasn't just about materials or craftsmanship, it was because he had a weak understanding of thermodynamics, almost no grasp of electrical principles, and only a fuzzy comprehension of mechanical engineering in general.
The truth was, his head was full of robots and cool mechanical designs, but when it came to electrical engineering and physics, he was basically clueless.
When he'd tried to create a missile system for himself, what he'd ended up launching was just a metal rod with no explosive payload. The effect had been pathetic.
So he had started training seriously, studying technical manuals and experimenting constantly. Part of it was driven by the competitive atmosphere that had infected the entire crew, nobody wanted to be left behind.
"By the way," Sanji said, "Goliath should count as human, right? Or at least human enough? Does he need to eat?"
As the crew's cook, nothing brought him more satisfaction than hearing people say "This is delicious!" after eating his food. The idea that one of his crewmates couldn't experience that pleasure bothered him a bit.
Marcus, who'd been quietly finishing his ramen in the corner, finally spoke up, "Technically, it should be fine. The Munch-Munch Fruit lets him digest anything. But are you sure you want to start feeding him? If it's the Munch-Munch Fruit we're talking about, his appetite might be even bigger than Luffy's."
Sanji felt a bit troubled after hearing that.
Luffy's eating habits were already borderline insane. He could put away enough food for ten people in a single sitting without breaking a sweat. But at least with the Minecraft-style food providing constant sustenance, managing his hunger wasn't impossible. The key was simply preventing him from eating without any self-control.
But if they were talking about the Munch-Munch Fruit? That would be a bottomless pit. An iron golem that could literally digest anything and everything would have an appetite that made Luffy look restrained by comparison.
Sanji tried to imagine his future: spending every hour in the kitchen, cooking meal after meal after meal just to keep one crew member fed. The image made him shudder involuntarily.
"On second thought," he muttered, "maybe Goliath's fine just eating scrap metal and random debris."
Marcus just grinned, shaking his head. Smart man, that cook.
That's when the temperature in the corridor suddenly spiked.
An iron golem emerged from the Nether Portal, his body glowing like freshly forged steel. Steam rose from his surface.
The ship immediately lurched and slowed noticeably, as if something heavy had just been added to the deck.
Marcus felt the change in momentum immediately. He headed down to the hold to investigate and found Goliath in his current state.
"Did you jump into lava or something?"
Goliath collapsed onto the floor. He nodded weakly, then reached out toward a nearby chest.
Marcus grabbed a stack of iron ingots and tossed them over.
Goliath's furnace-mouth opened wide, and he devoured the iron ingots in seconds. As the metal was processed and absorbed, he gradually returned to his usual T-800 form.
"What happened down there?"
"When I was testing missile capabilities, I accidentally blew up some netherrack blocks that had lava source blocks above them. I didn't notice right away, and suddenly I had lava flowing down on me from all directions."
He paused, seeming embarrassed. "I used up all my iron reserves just trying to repair the damage fast enough to stay alive. Eventually, I ran out and had no choice but to eat lava blocks directly to survive."
Marcus stared at him. "That form just now, was that because of the lava blocks?"
"Yeah." Goliath shifted one of his hands back into that glowing red-hot state to demonstrate. "It gives me immunity to fire and lava, but my body becomes very fragile."
He reached out and lightly touched a wood block sitting nearby.
Fwoosh.
The wood caught fire instantly.
Marcus reacted quickly, grabbing a water bucket and dousing the flames before they could spread. "Alright, that's enough demonstration. Don't burn down the ship."
He pulled out a full set of diamond armor from his inventory. "I never thought about this before, but can you actually wear armor?"
Goliath froze for a moment, then he nodded slowly. "I never thought about it either. I mean, iron golems don't exactly need protection normally."
The result surprised both of them. The diamond armor fit perfectly, resizing and adjusting to Goliath's T-800 humanoid form.
"Huh. This works."
Marcus nodded thoughtfully. The reason he'd never tried giving Goliath armor before was simple, it had never seemed necessary. Iron golems were already incredibly durable by nature. Their bodies were made of iron blocks. Hurting one took serious effort. And with the stockpile of iron ingots they'd accumulated, repairing damage was trivial. Armor had seemed redundant.
But now that Goliath's magma form made him more fragile, the armor was worth testing.
"Try changing back to your original iron golem form," Marcus suggested.
The moment Goliath reverted to his standard iron golem body, the diamond armor immediately fell off, clattering to the floor.
He stared at the fallen armor pieces. "It's still my body. Why does it only work in one form?"
"Same issue Chopper has," Marcus explained. "When he's in his regular hybrid form or Heavy Point, basically any humanoid shape, he can wear equipment just fine. But the moment he transforms back into his full reindeer form, everything just falls off. You're the same. As long as you maintain a humanoid shape with proper proportions, the armor will work."
"I see..." This was the first time Goliath had even considered these limitations of how equipment worked.
"Just stick with your T-800 form for now," Marcus said, already heading toward the stairs. "At least until you figure out how to balance defense and offense better."
After Marcus left, Goliath put the diamond armor back on and quietly shifted back into his magma form.
Looking down at the scorch marks his feet were leaving on the wooden floor, he immediately reverted to normal.
This wasn't the first time he'd consumed Minecraft property blocks to alter his abilities. He'd eaten dirt blocks, stone, even tried wood, which tasted terrible and did nothing useful.
But lava blocks had changed his core attributes. They'd even given the ability to use fire-based attacks offensively.
The weakness, of course, was fragility. His body became brittle in magma form, nowhere near as durable as his standard iron construction.
But with diamond armor protecting him? That problem wasn't really a problem anymore, right?
He glanced toward the Nether Portal, considering. Time to head back down and properly test his combat capabilities in this new form.
---
While Goliath went back to experimenting with his powers, Marcus headed to the floating workshop space he'd created inside the ship's expanded interior.
The room had been set up with bookshelves lining the walls and an enchantment table positioned in the center, surrounded by the required fifteen bookshelves for maximum enchantment levels.
Enchanting was one of Minecraft's core progression mechanics.
But he was conflicted. He'd been avoiding this decision for a long time.
The problem was simple: enchanting cost experience points. And the enchantments you got were randomized, which meant you could waste levels on garbage you didn't want.
In the game, losing a few levels wasn't a big deal. You could always kill more mobs, breed more animals, or trade with villagers to get the XP back.
But here? In this world?
Experience only came from defeating people in combat or significantly changing someone's fate. He'd worked his ass off to reach Level 55, and every single point had been hard-earned.
And worse, he wasn't even sure how to continue gaining XP efficiently going forward.
The Asuka Island situation had proven problematic. He'd spent days there, building farms, constructing the Nether Portal, helping the villagers defend themselves. He'd even defeated Saga when the guy had been possessed by the Shichiseiken. But none of the island's residents had dropped experience when he'd changed their lives for the better. Even beating Saga hadn't given him any XP.
That had pissed him off at first.
But after thinking about it, he'd figured out the likely explanation. He hadn't really defeated Saga, he'd been fighting the Shichiseiken itself. And in that situation, the sword hadn't truly lost. It had just been limited by its wielder's insufficient strength.
Afterward, when he'd taken the Shichiseiken and modified it into his own weapon, still no experience had been awarded.
Which suggested that inanimate objects like the Shichiseiken didn't have "fate" to change in the conventional sense. Or perhaps their destinies were already fixed and couldn't be altered.
And technically, he hadn't really "defeated" the sword anyway. More like... recruited it.
He let out a sigh.
If only he could use EMC instead of XP. He had millions of EMC just sitting there unused.
He pulled out the Shichiseiken and placed it on the enchantment table.
The interface showed it would cost three levels to enchant.
Ghostly energy rippled out from the sword, and he could sense the weapon's consciousness reacting to his emotions. The Shichiseiken was curious about what he was feeling.
"Don't worry about it," he muttered. "I was just thinking."
He removed the sword from the enchantment table. He wasn't ready to enchant the Shichiseiken yet, not with random, low-level enchantments anyway.
This was a legendary weapon with a conscious spirit. It deserved only the best possible enchantments. At minimum, he wanted a full suite of max-level enchantments before committing.
Randomly enchanting it with three levels and potentially getting Bane of Arthropods or Smite? Those were garbage enchantments, completely useless for most combat situations.
Sure, he could use a grindstone to remove bad enchantments, but wasting experience like that was painful to even consider.
He stood there for a long moment, internally debating, before finally making his decision.
"I'll wait for better options. I really hope we find a mod related to enchanting soon," he muttered, almost like a prayer.
He left the enchanting room and headed next door.
This room was simply decorated, just a few storage chests and a grindstone positioned in the center.
The chests were filled with enchanted gear that had dropped from monsters over their journey: iron swords with Sharpness I, golden helmets with Protection II, random pieces of leather armor with Fire Protection.
The grindstone had a useful function that he had been theorizing about but never tested: it could remove enchantments from items and return a small amount of XP in the process.
The enchanted gold swords he'd been collecting were perfect test subjects.
He'd been hesitant to try this before, mostly because if it didn't work, those enchanted items would only be good for smelting down into base materials. Gold swords would become gold nuggets, barely worth the effort.
And the alternative, combining multiple enchanted items at an anvil to create one god-tier weapon with Sharpness V, Fire Aspect II, Knockback II, Unbreaking III, and Looting III, would also cost experience. Lots of it.
He picked up a gold sword with Sharpness I and placed it on the grindstone.
His heart was actually pounding slightly, nervous about whether this would work. He activated the grindstone's function.
Ding!
The enchantment was removed from the sword, leaving behind a plain, unenchanted gold sword.
And his experience bar increased slightly.
"It actually worked!"