Ross looked at his two talents: Firearms Shooting and Close-Combat Fighting, and quickly made the decision. He looked towards his newly acquired 45-point in the proficiency and decided to put 20 points on Close-Combat Fighting talent.

Whoosh!

When the proficiency of Close-Combat Fighting talent reached 100 points, a golden light flashed and the label on the right side of the tree changed from Proficiency level to Control Level.

At the same time, Ross felt that his body suddenly became a lot more flexible and a lot of fighting skills seemed to directly brand themselves into his brains.

“The remaining 25 points can be put into the Distortion Fruit.”

Ross looked at his third talent Distortion Fruit while pondering.

Distortion Fruit is not the ability activated by the Talent System but he accidentally got it in an extremely dangerous encounter. Due to the crisis at that time he could only gamble and eat it, without knowing what type of devil fruit it was.

But after eating the said fruit, the Talent System activated and the battle type talent tree got a huge branch labeled as ‘Distortion Fruit’.

The basic ability of this devil fruit is to distort everything that the owner’s body touches. Even materials as hard as steel can be easily twisted into a fried dough twist.

It seems to be ordinary at first but in the Talent System, it has an extremely powerful evolutionary direction!

On this huge branch, there are multiple smaller branches which are the evolutionary direction of the devil fruit such as Light Distortion, Gravity Distortion, and Space distortion. Even with all these cheat abilities, there is also an extremely powerful ability, Time Distortion!

To fully fill the Distortion Fruit talent, it requires a lot of proficiency points.

Light Distortion: 100

Gravity Distortion: 300

Space Distortion: 600

Time Distortion: 1000

Unlike Firearms Shooting and Close-Combat Fighting these extended abilities are additional branches in the tree so, in order to activate them, it not only requires sufficient proficiency points but also free Talent points.

Because of this situation, he was surprised to get a Free Talent Point after hunting Rhodes.

Counting the 1 Free Talent Point that he didn’t use for a long time and now 1 point for hunting Rhodes, Ross now has 2 Free Talent Points.

Ross still had 25 proficiency points and he quickly used them on the Distortion Fruit. For the promotion of any talent on the talent tree will require proficiency points and if any talent managed to reach up to 50 or 100 points, then his overall strength will be greatly improved.

“After hunting a pirate of this level I can finally put a point in the first talent branch of Distortion Fruit.”

After putting proficiency points in his fruit he felt that his control over the devil’s fruit has improved a lot. Ross nodded and there was a hint of anticipation in his eyes.

Light Distortion.

This branch of talent seems to be useless but it has great growth features such as Light Distortion to create an illusionary image, doppelgangers and so on. It can even distort light and directly deprive any enemy of his vision making it a very strong and useful talent.

Unless someone has mastered the Observation Haki, they will be greatly constrained and limited under Light Distortion ability.

“Observation Haki….”

As soon as he thought of the Observation Haki Ross couldn’t help but look up.

At the top of the talent tree, there were three talents: Observation Haki (Kenbunshoku Haki), Armament Haki (Busoshoku Haki) and Conqueror’s Haki (Haoshoku Haki)

But these three talents were now grayed out, indicating that he has not yet reached the conditions to activate these talents and what those conditions are he doesn’t know, it may be that his Free Talent Points are not enough, it may be that his physical strength is still not up to the level of practicing all three types of Haki.

“Eh?”

Just as Ross’ eyes glanced at the talent tree and planned to go out, he accidentally discovered that there was a region in which a talent changed from gray to green.

Green color means that a talent can be activated.

“Marine’s Rokushiki… Is this talent unlocked?”

There are six talents in this area of Marine’s Rokushiki which are Shave(Soru), Moon Steps(Geppou), Strom Leg(Rankyaku), Iron Blocks(Tekkai), Paper Drawing(Kami-e) and Finger gun(Shigan).

Among them, Paper Arts(Kami-e) and Shave(Soru) have become emerald green and other talents Moon Steps(Geppou), Strom Leg(Rankyaku), Iron Blocks(Tekkai), and Finger gun(Shigan) were still gray.

“Should I raise the points of Closed-Combat Fighting to the Control Level which will satisfy the activation conditions for Paper Drawing(Kami-e) and Shave(Soru). It seems like my speculation was correct, I will need to have a certain physical strength to meet certain conditions or activate certain specific talents to unlock Other talents.”

Ross secretly nodded and looked at the Paper Drawing(Kami-e) and Shave(Soru) while thinking.

To activate Paper Drawing(Kami-e) and Shave(Soru), I will need 1 Free Talent Point.

He now has two Free Talent Points and can activate both talents at the same time.

The problem is that the Free Talent Points are not something that can be obtained by hunting pirates. He had hunted four or five Pirates who had a bounty of about 10 million berries in half a year before he got 2 Free Talent Points.

Finally, Ross decided to activate the ability ‘Shave(Soru)’, one of the six-technique of Marine’s Rokushiki.

Shave(Soru) is a kind of high-speed moving body technique whereas Paper Drawing(Kami-e) is a kind of dodging technique. If a situation is really dangerous he can escape with Shave(Soru). It is impossible to activate Paper Drawing(Kami-e) in the process of running away.

He has left behind a Free Talent Point as a reserve so that if the Distortion Fruit’s proficiency ever reaches the limit, and if he isn’t able to activate Light Distortion ability, it would be a very embarrassing situation.

Whoosh!

After adding one Free Talent Point to the emerald green colored branches of Shave(Soru), the branch quickly flashed and suddenly turned into a golden color while at the same time a force was quickly poured into Ross’s body.

Ross closed his eyes and his eyeballs continued to rotate. Only a few seconds have passed but for Ross, it seemed like he had trained continuously for three whole months.

When he opened his eyes, Soru’s Steps were already deeply imprinted into his bones and memories.

Ross breathed a sigh of relief and immediately tried it.

“Soru!”

Ross’s entire body seems to disappear suddenly. With very fast and outrageous speed, he rushed out. He was so fast that ordinary people can’t even see him!

After practicing Shave(Soru) for a few more times, Ross returned to his original position while breathing slightly harder and in his eyes, there was a little hesitation.

‘While in the state of Shave(Soru), the speed at which I can move is at least two or three times more than my normal speed, but the physical exertion required is also several times more than then in his normal speed.”

But the overall performance is quite good and satisfying.

In Agility Enhancement in the General type talent point, his speed is very fast. With the help of Shave(Soru), pirates with less than 20 million bounty would not be able to do anything to him, they could wait to be killed, and would not know how to respond to his speed.

“I guess, it’s time to go now.”

Ross breath became steady and he grabbed Rhodes head which is worth 16 million Berries, left the street and soon came to the shore.

Two boats were docked on the shore. One was slightly larger, with a pirate flag hanging, and the other was a little smaller. It was Ross’s boat.

The pirate ship was naturally the ship of the Machete Pirates. There were two pirates left from the original crew on the ship but Ross had already cleaned them up when he arrived.

Paa!

Ross threw Rhodes’s head on his boat, jumped on it with a light leap. He then skillfully untied the rope, hoisted up the sail and paddled away.

In the Living type talent branch, the only thing he has is sailing. After all, this is the world of One Piece, he would in a very difficult situation if he doesn’t know sailing.