A Pirate's Spring Awakening

In a somewhat dilapidated room, Bellamy sat at a wooden table, meticulously poring over a manual. This was the fourth time he was carefully reading the "King Punch" manuscript; he had already studied it thoroughly three times.

Bellamy was now mostly certain that the energy-storing techniques recorded within were achievable. With every page he turned, he pondered relentlessly on how to integrate these techniques with his own Devil Fruit abilities. If the King Punch couldn't be combined with the properties of the Spring-Spring Fruit, its value to him would be drastically diminished.

The principle behind the King Punch was to continuously gather the body's energy, concentrate it in one area (like a fist), and then unleash it in a single, explosive blow. It was a very simple and straightforward principle; anyone who had learned a few fist-fighting techniques could easily execute such a charged attack, even without knowing the King Punch specifically.

The true value of the King Punch lay in its ability to significantly extend the charging time and vastly increase the stored power. As for how "vastly," Bellamy calculated that if an ordinary person's charging time was one minute, the King Punch could increase it at least tenfold. More specifically, it would depend on the individual's physique. Someone like Elizabello II, born with divine strength and an astonishing physique, could extend the charging time and stored energy to about an hour when using the King Punch.

The figure of one hour was already incredibly impressive, but Bellamy clearly wanted more. He was a Spring-Man; his body could naturally store power. Elizabello II still needed to continuously throw punches to accumulate his vital energy. Bellamy, on the other hand, merely needed a thought, and his internal organs could transform into spring shapes. Powered by the beating of his heart, these springs would continuously compress and release, repeating the cycle endlessly. This method of charging was simple, efficient, and very discreet. Moreover, it could be maintained 24/7 without any special effort.

In terms of charging duration, the King Punch couldn't hold a candle to the Spring-Spring Fruit.

The techniques recorded in the King Punch manual could be broadly categorized into three types: energy absorption, energy storage, and energy release. The energy absorption part was very crude and could be skipped entirely. The energy release part was simply unleashing a full-power punch, holding no particular value. Therefore, what Bellamy needed was solely the King Punch's technique for storing energy.

The special power he currently possessed – elasticity – was naturally present in his body after eating the Devil Fruit. This power was like an innate human instinct, such as breathing or walking; it hadn't undergone refined development and couldn't unleash its full potential.

For Bellamy, the King Punch's technique of storing large amounts of energy in specific parts of the body was akin to taking water from a large reservoir and distributing it into several smaller pools. And as long as he wasn't dead, the water in this large reservoir would never run dry. In other words, this technique was equivalent to opening up additional energy storage areas within his body. It was like an internal martial arts practitioner gaining several smaller, time-limited "Dantians" (energy centers).

Furthermore, this technique held another significance for Bellamy. He had previously theorized whether conceptual forces like a person's life force, mental energy, and physical stamina could be collected and stored in the form of coiled springs, then withdrawn for use at a designated time. However, due to the scarcity of relevant knowledge and information, his initial theorizing had ended in failure.

Now, the appearance of the King Punch filled this gap. Perhaps this technique, which he had tentatively named "Life Essence Apertures," could soon be put on the development agenda.

Two-thirds of this manual was useless to Bellamy. He attempted to extract the essence of the parts he needed, combined it with some of his own understanding, and began to rewrite a new manual: On How to Store Energy Within the Body.

As he delved deeper into studying this technique, Bellamy slowly discovered that these concepts involved a substantial amount of obscure medical knowledge. If he hadn't studied medicine, he might not have been able to discern this at all. The martial artist who created this fighting style must have possessed a very high level of medical expertise.

Bellamy's medical skills were barely at an elementary level, so the deeper he delved, the more strenuous he found it. Some of the highly esoteric anatomical knowledge left him completely bewildered.

He stumbled through writing this manual, working on it for an entire night. After completing it, he reread it and found that some of the logic was incoherent. He tried throwing a few punches, only to find that his modified King Punch technique failed; energy could not be stored in his body.

Bellamy then tried another method, strictly following the techniques recorded in the original manual, and surprisingly, it worked again. It seemed his personal understanding of the technique contained significant errors.

"This is harder than I thought."

If he merely wanted to learn the set of punches, there was no need to delve so deeply; the manual already described the techniques very clearly. But what Bellamy wanted was obviously much more than just a fighting style. The main issue was actually his poor medical knowledge; his interpretation of many concepts was too superficial. If he could truly understand that obscure anatomical knowledge, then with his comprehension of fist and foot combat, deconstructing a martial art wouldn't be a difficult task.

"I didn't expect it to ultimately circle back to medicine."

Actually, upon careful consideration, it made sense. Wanting to store a large amount of energy in a specific part of the body naturally required a very detailed understanding of the human body. If one didn't even know which organ was in which part of the body, then such an energy storage technique would be entirely reliant on luck.

Bellamy tore up his manuscript and threw it into the trash can.

"Fortunately, I have two crewmates with decent medical skills. Hopefully, they can analyze all these techniques."

He also needed to address his shortcomings in medicine. This skill was extremely important to him; no amount of effort spent on medicine would be wasted.