In the dim lower hold at dawn, the low hum of the gravity device had already become a familiar background noise.
Bullet stood in the sixfold gravity field, bare upper body beaded with a fine sheen of sweat. Every muscle under his skin trembled slightly beneath the crushing weight.
His right arm was in partial dragon form, black scales spreading all the way to his shoulder, five fingers turned into hooked claws. At the same time, Armament Haki wrapped the limb in a dark sheen.
But that was not what he wanted.
Ordinary Armament coating was just like putting a suit of armor over his arm. Defense was stronger, yes, but there was still a gap between the Haki layer and the dragon scales themselves. Two separate systems, each doing its own job, failing to fully merge.
"Wrong."
Bullet muttered to himself and let the Armament fade.
He closed his eyes and sank his awareness inward.
Under the constant crush of the gravity field, his sense for the energy inside his body was several times sharper than usual. He could feel the paths along which his Armament flowed. He could also feel the process of those black scales pushing out from under his skin whenever his arm transformed.
The two were fundamentally different.
Armament Haki was the refinement of life energy, born from the fusion of will, body, and spirit.
The scales, though... that was the materialized projection of the Nidhogg legacy, a fragment of some ancient draconic "rule" stamped into reality.
How was he supposed to make these two utterly different forces fuse perfectly?
Bullet thought back to that moment at the brink a few days ago, when he had broken through under tenfold gravity. At that time, the metallic sheen of his scales had been drawn out completely, and the dark gold lines had crawled across his arm like living things.
"Metallic sheen... those lines..."
He opened his eyes and looked at his right arm.
On the dragonized limb, every scale was arranged in diamond shapes, edges sharp as blades. In the dim lamp light, there really was the faintest metallic shine on each surface.
Something stirred in his chest.
This time, instead of coating the whole arm with Armament like before, Bullet tried guiding his Haki into just a single scale.
Under sixfold gravity, the Haki wobbled like a candle in the wind, always on the verge of blowing out.
Bullet held his breath and forced every scrap of focus into that one point.
Shff.
A sound so soft it was almost not there.
The surface of that single scale bloomed with dark gold lines, suddenly glowing to life. It was not reflected light but a glow from within.
At the same time, Bullet could feel it... the hardness of that scale spiked in an instant, at least thirty percent stronger.
Success.
"Interesting."
Rayleigh's voice came from the side.
Bullet had not noticed when he came in. The older man was leaning against the wall with a bottle in hand, watching.
"You are trying to embed your Haki into the scales?"
"Not embed."
Bullet stared at the glowing scale.
"Activate."
"The scales already have terrifying defensive properties. Armament Haki is acting more like a catalyst, forcing them to show their real potential."
He released the Haki. The glow dimmed, but if you looked carefully, the dark gold lines on that scale were still a shade clearer than the ones around it.
"Go on."
Rayleigh took a swig of his drink, his gaze intent.
Bullet moved to the second scale.
With the experience of the first attempt, the second went much more smoothly. He guided Armament into it and the same dark gold gleam flickered to life.
Then a third, a fourth...
The problem arrived quickly.
When he reached the fifth scale, a wave of dizziness washed over him.
Maintaining precise control over five separate threads of Haki at once stretched his concentration to the limit.
He stopped and took a long breath.
"Found the problem?"
Rayleigh asked.
Bullet nodded.
"If I have to activate them one by one, I will never keep up in a real fight."
"I need a systemic method."
He thought for a moment, then something clicked.
"Rayleigh, you said before that Haki has its own 'paths' when it flows."
"If I treat each scale as a node along that path..."
He did not bother finishing the sentence before he began the next attempt.
This time, he did not split his Haki into five separate threads.
Instead, he condensed his Armament into a single "main trunk" and fed it into the dragonized arm from the shoulder.
As that trunk flowed past each scale, he tried to let a tiny side stream peel off and sink into it.
Like a river with tributaries.
The main trunk would be responsible for supply and circulation, while the side streams would activate the individual scales.
The first run failed.
The main trunk rushed straight past the scales without branching at all.
On the second run, Bullet changed the density.
He compressed the Haki in the main trunk even tighter, then relaxed the pressure slightly each time it passed under a scale, allowing part of it to seep naturally into the scale's structure.
That did it.
Along his right arm, twenty scales lit up simultaneously with dark gold light.
The mental cost was only about a quarter of what it had been, and the control felt far easier.
But it still was not enough.
One trunk could only reach the front of his arm. The scales on the back and sides remained untouched.
Bullet shut his eyes again and plotted in his head.
He needed... a mesh.
He pushed a second trunk of Haki in from the opposite side of his arm, running it parallel to the first.
Then, he spun thin strands of Haki between them, weaving cross connections back and forth until a three dimensional energy network wrapped around his entire arm.
The moment the net was complete...
Hum.
A deep resonance thrummed through Bullet's right arm.
That was the sound of energy falling into lockstep.
The whole dragonized limb, hundreds of scales, burst into dark gold light all at once. The glow flowed along the natural lines in the scales like living runes.
The most startling part was how the scales themselves began to change.
What had previously been a layer of armor sitting on top of his skin now felt like it had fused completely with flesh and bone.
The edges where scale met skin blurred. There was no longer a clear boundary, only the sense that these scales had always belonged there.
"What in the world..."
Rayleigh lowered his bottle and stepped in close, studying the arm from every angle.
Bullet raised his right arm and slowly clenched his fist.
He could feel each individual scale "breathing".
Whenever his muscles contracted or relaxed, the scales adjusted their angle and position in response, always shifting back to the most optimal defensive stance.
And the Haki cost was absurdly low.
Coating the whole arm in Armament the usual way took about ten percent of his total Haki reserves.
But this "Blackscale Armament" state... barely used half that, while the defensive power had at least doubled.
"Try the defense."
Rayleigh reached up to a rack on the wall and took down a training hammer.
The head was about the size of an adult's skull and weighed a solid fifty kilos.
Bullet nodded and brought his right arm up across his body.
Rayleigh swung the hammer with about thirty percent of his strength.
CLANG!!!
The crash of metal striking something harder rang through the hold.