"Good to hear. The longer you live the more trades I can make with you." I said with a grin.
"Greedy brat. After this I am curious what else you might have to trade given enough time to grow?" Whitebeard said with grin of his own.
After that I ended the connection and eagerly took out two of the three stones I had just received.
{Ability stone detected, acquire ability Y/N?}
{Skill stone detected, acquire skill Y/N?}
I agreed and first the glowing rainbow ability stone broke apart into motes of light that sank into my chest. I felt a strange sensation when it did like my magic had grown denser somehow. Next the Skill stone broke apart into light and flowed into my head as knowledge I didn't have before rooted itself there. I closed my eyes as I let the knowledge of how to use my new ability sink in. About five minutes later I opened my eyes and held up my hand in front of my face. To anyone else nothing seemed to happen but for those spiritually sensitive they'd notice an invisible layer of something flickering along my skin.-
'This is harder than expected and has an unexpected side effect.' I thought both disappointed and pleasantly surprised.
While I knew I could gain mastery over my new ability with time, practice and exercise the side effect of even trying to use it caught me off guard. As I discovered trying to rile up my haki caused my magic to eagerly follow it as though haki were the missing component to wandless casting. Thinking over my experience with wandless casting so far as well as how haki worked I easily figured out why this was. Haki was an expression of ones willpower through spiritual energy. Wandless magic on the same hand seemed to require a firm will to pull it forward and direct it. -
Now that sounds easy but actually controlling ones willpower effectively was definitely NOT easy, normally that is. By using both an ability stone and skill stone for haki however I effectively jumped this hurtle in one smooth motion as I had the knowledge of the abilities usage that came from someone who could be considered a master at all of it's aspects. Controlling my willpower was consequently an effortless affair now.-
It was bittersweet if i'm being honestly. Bitter because all of my effort in trying to master pulling up my magic seemed pointless. But sweet at the same time because now I just needed to understand how to direct the magic into a stable magical effect. In this regard wand magic was superior as spells were structured and followed an certain level of predictability. Like if you cast the unlocking charm then there was no chance it would lock something instead. Wandless magic wasn't like that unless you tried to cast a wand spell without a wand but at that point the entire reason you were not using a wand kinda fell through in my opinion.-
Like obviously the exception here was if you were trying to show off or simply didn't have a wand for whatever reason but that was it. As far as I was concerned wandless magic was supposed to represent true magical freedom, the ability to do whatever you wanted with but a thought. Something likened to a divine feat because that was what magic was to me, divine. How many wizards ever really stopped and considered how ridiculous magic was? You were literally exerting change on reality with barely more than a single word and a flick of your wrist. -
I'm not saying that magic was unnatural or outside the rules of the universe or anything like that. But that doesn't change the fact it gave a skilled user the sort of power any muggle would consider miraculous. Wizards don't seem to realize this for some reason, not even the muggle born ones. It was frankly confusing why there weren't more figures like Voldemort or Dumbledore to be honest. The same power was there just outside of reach if you'd only make the effort of finding and claiming it.-
There was danger to experimenting or trying to reach for more power but when has anything grand ever been easy to do? Regardless of anything else I was incredibly happy with discovering the effect haki had on my magic. Even better thanks to getting the ability from Whitebeard I got all three kinds of haki. Observation and conquerors haki would have more passive effects unless I managed to refine my conquerors to an advanced stage but armament was much more active. In fact with enough refinement I imagined I might even be able to deflect or block magic barehanded thanks to it.-
There was a rather glaring downside to haki that there was no avoiding unfortunately however. See haki relied on the body as well as the spirit to function and that meant a weak body couldn't withstand using the stuff for long. In other words I need to train my body into a stronger state. Ideally it would be done with the one piece physique but I didn't need such an extreme body personally. Simply getting my body to peak physical fitness would be enough to supply what I needed for my haki I think.-
As an added bonus of my body being trained to that level my magic should also be stronger as magic was based on the three aspects of existence according to my textbooks, mind, body and soul. My mind will grow from my studying and practice while my body and soul will grow both from maturing as well as through training my haki. In theory this should allow me to reach the same level as Dumbledore or Voldemort in a relatively short time. I wasn't certain on that however so best not to quote me on that later.-
With these new understandings I adjusted my schedule to exercising and haki practice in the morning after waking up followed by breakfast. Then practice magic from the standard book of spells, eat lunch and then study my textbooks until dinner before going to bed. I unfortunately needed to go shopping again before that however which I chose to do tomorrow. I needed both a couple living creatures to practice my conquerors haki on as well as hopefully body development potions, not maturation potions mind you since I didn't want to forcefully age my body but simply speed up the effects of my exercises.
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