Insistent Assistant 25 (Patreon)

Insistent Assistant

Chapter 25

-VB-

I stared down at Jack’s Compass.

It still pointed toward where it has been pointing since the start. It never wavered even when I saw Robin, who was admittedly beautiful. There was something out there, something toward the north, that I wanted. Since I was in South Blue, this would mean I would have to go over the Red Line, which I wasn’t particularly fond of. I didn’t want to run into the “celestial dragons” of that ridiculous continent.

Well, I knew at the very least that I still wasn’t in the canon timeline if Robin was traveling around in the South Blue instead of the Paradise portion of the Grand Line.

So.

Where was I going with this?

Oh, yeah. I’m hiding in the bathroom because Illaoi’s training was a torturous thing I was trying to avoid at all cost. And, in my stead, my crew suffered.

“Please, no, not like this! Not like this -!” someone squealed before I heard a wet thawk of a tentacle landing on wooden deck and human.

I heard the stampede of feet across the corridors as they all tried to run.

But Illaoi…

‘But that thing…’ I thought to myself as I imagined the brutal training she insisted (read: forced) everyone through. ‘That thing scares me.”

“Mommy!”

“Oh shi-!”

“MY ASS!!!”

I didn’t want to know what was ha-.

Thump.

I froze on top of the wooden toilet.

Because I saw a pair of boots outside the bathroom, and they looked awfully familiar because I would regularly get kicked in the chest by them.

“Well. This bathroom door is locked. Whatever should I do?”

Oh, now, she was just teasing me.

“I better kick it in.”

“Wait, what-?”

She kicked the door open and dragged me out.

-VB-

Illaoi looked at the exhausted crew and nodded to herself.

“You are finally worthy!”

Her Master, Alan, looked up from where he laid on his back. “Ready for what?”

“The ultimate test, of course! Nagakabouros herself shall rise up tomorrow to determine whether you are worthy of her attention. So be ready as I have done as much as I could to prepare you for this!”

He looked at her with gimlet eyes. “... This was your plan all along/ Just train us to fight her without telling us what it was about?”

“Fight the Great Goddess of the Ocean?” Illaoi asked stupendously. “No, no, no. You can’t fight her. That is not what I prepared you for.”

“Then what did you prepare us for?” he growled as he crawled up to his bum and sat. “And why train them, too? Not that they and I don’t feel grateful.”

“We are not grateful!”

“My feet. My feet…!”

“Why the hell does your feet hurt? My ass hurts from all of that pounding…”

“Those suckers fucked up my face! Now, I’ll never get married!”

“Stop whining, all of you sissys…”

“Says the guy with the only ice pack on the ship!”

“I bought this with my own money at the last port!”

Their crew bickered, not that it was actual aggression but more regular, friendly banter, and he stood stock still.

Illaoi proved time and time again that she was a different beast compared to Jack Sparrow and Thorkell. Neither of her first two Servant’s personalities were teachers. They were individualistic people who would have done well in the USA, the country that her Master was originally from and not from this world. Their sports and media would have loved Thorkell, and Jack definitely would have been an “independent contractor” of their military.

But Illaoi herself?

She was a philosopher. She was a prohphetess. She was a true believer. She was also a teacher whose education style reflected the brutal nature of her ideology. ‘The strong survive and the weak perish, everything is in motion, and Goddess Nagakabouros sees to all of the waves.’ If you were weak, then she beat you until you either died or got strong. You better be moving or she was going to rip you apart. And don’t bother jumping into the seat to run away; tentacle will scoop you up and you’ll get a double beating.

She wasn’t the definition of tough love, but it sure felt a lot like it.

Her training also never ended, because, in her words, “life is about training, so training doesn’t end until you do.”

To be fair, she was right about that.

-VB-

Some time later as the sun began to set over the horizon, I was still training. Illaoi wasn’t wrong, which was good enough of a reason to

But … I had a feeling that, just like with Jack, she would disappear too when she finally gave me Nagakabouros’s blessing.

I think that was part of the reason why I wasn’t complaining too much about doing push-ups while I had three of Nagakabouros’s tentacles draped over my back.

“... I think you are ready.”

I looked up.

Illaoi stood in front of me without her icon, and I felt the tentacles disappear.

“... Ready for what?” I asked her as I stood up.

“Why, to find your own kraken to tame!”

“... Huh?”

But I didn’t expect this.

Illaoi hummed. “This is a good reef.”

I looked around us. Our two ships floated gently without … anything around.

“What reef?” I asked her apprehensively.

She smiled.

And then grabbed the front of my shirt.

“Wai-”

She did not wait and promptly hurled me into the ocean.