Year 1536.
East Blue.
The peaceful seaside town had been shattered by a thunderous barrage of cannon fire.
Its former tranquility was gone, replaced by screams and chaos.
Amid the terrified cries, figures poured out of houses and courtyards like a flock of startled sheep.
As they fled, they kept looking back through the dim evening light toward the harbor.
A large, multi-masted sailing ship was anchored there, a black pirate flag bearing a skull snapping violently in the wind from the top of its mast.
Wisps of gunpowder smoke still drifted from the cannon ports along its hull.
A broad, dark-brown gangplank had been lowered onto the dock, and several impatient pirates were already leaping from the ship with wild laughter.
Dust billowed into the air.
Squads of excited pirates charged from the harbor toward the town, weapons in hand, howling like wolves.
A quick glance was enough to show that there were well over a hundred of them.
The few able-bodied townsmen who had initially considered resisting immediately abandoned the idea and turned to flee.
Among the charging pirates was a young man being swept along with the crowd.
His expression was indifferent, but vigilance lingered in his eyes as he discreetly glanced at the several men around him who had subtly formed an encirclement.
A few seconds later, the pirates at the front caught up with the fleeing townspeople.
Savage grins spread across their faces as they raised their blades and began hacking wildly.
Blood sprayed through the air.
Amid the shrill screams, the young man, who had already fallen toward the rear of the pirate group, came to a stop.
The moment he did, however, a pirate behind and to his side shoved him forward.
A cold snort followed.
“Rook, listen carefully. Don’t think that just because the first mate has taken a liking to you, you can stop showing us any respect. Remember this—the captain of Squad Six is me.”
The speaker was a young man beside him with a sallow complexion.
He glared viciously at Rook, no longer bothering to conceal the jealousy in his eyes.
By now, the pirates who had stormed into town had already scattered in every direction.
Screams and curses echoed from all around them.
The sallow-faced pirate sneered at Rook and pointed toward an alley deeper inside the town.
“Come on. Our squad is heading that way.”
Rook lowered his eyes.
His left hand rested on the hilt of the sword hanging at his waist.
Without saying a word, he obediently ran toward the alley.
Watching Rook’s back, the sallow-faced man’s lips slowly curled upward.
Mockery and murderous intent flickered in his eyes.
Wasn’t he just a pretty face who happened to catch the eye of a first mate who liked men?
Did he really think that made him somebody important?
Whenever he had tried to mess with Rook on the ship, the brat not only refused to play along but had even dared to curse at him.
As long as he killed Rook somewhere inside the town, he could simply find a few other good-looking boys for the first mate afterward.
The first mate wouldn’t bother investigating whether something suspicious had happened here.
With that thought, he exchanged glances with the four lackeys beside him.
They all grinned coldly.
The faint breeze carried the mingled scents of gunpowder and blood.
Rook suppressed the discomfort rising in his stomach.
Although he had more or less grown accustomed to scenes like this, experiencing them again still made him nauseous.
Listening to the footsteps and breathing close behind him, Rook drew a deep breath.
The look in his eyes turned completely cold.
He kept running.
“Panel.”
He silently spoke the activation command.
A ripple of dim blue light appeared before him, gathering into a translucent screen visible only to himself.
It was the Growth System, which had awakened alongside the memories of his previous life half a month ago.
Name: [Rook Vane]
Race: [Human]
Attributes:
Body: 8.0
(Average Adult: 3)
Strength: 8.0
Agility: 8.0
Spirit: 10.0
Talent: [Learning Pays Off]
Skills: [Swordsmanship — Untrained: 4/10], [Hand-to-Hand Combat — Untrained: 6/10], [Underwater Combat — Untrained: 5/10]
Traits: [None]
…
Talent: [Learning Pays Off]
Effect One: [While learning, you are guaranteed a minimum level of progress.]
Effect Two: [Your concentration is significantly enhanced while learning.]
Effect Three: [Anything you successfully learn will never be forgotten.]
Looking at the translucent blue system panel floating before him, complicated emotions still surfaced in Rook’s eyes.
Although Rook had been born and raised in this world in his current life, in his previous life he had grown up in a peaceful, modern, developed country untouched by war.
Back then, Rook had been a game-development programmer.
While working on the character progression system for a new game, he had died suddenly from overwork.
And then he had been reincarnated into this world.
He had been an orphan in his previous life.
Unexpectedly, he had ended up becoming one again in this life.
His parents had been ordinary civilians.
Unable to withstand the crushing burden of excessive taxation, they eventually passed away one after another.
Rook had been only thirteen when he became an orphan.
With his parents gone and no way to support himself, even his family’s house had been seized by the tax collectors to cover the unpaid taxes.
From then on, he survived by hanging around the town’s harbor with the local thugs.
One month ago, the Norton Pirates had arrived in town.
Because the town maintained its own guard force, they hadn’t raided the place.
They had merely stopped to replenish supplies.
And manpower.
Although Rook was only sixteen, he already stood nearly 1.9 meters tall and possessed a physique far stronger than the average person.
That was why the first mate and the others had chosen him.
Tired of living like a stray dog, Rook had joined them as an apprentice pirate sailor.
However, after refusing to cooperate with the first mate’s advances, he had been relegated to the lowest-ranking chores aboard the ship, such as cleaning and sanitation work.
Then, half a month ago, during a raid on another village, Rook had hesitated because he couldn’t bring himself to slaughter civilians.
Ironically, that hesitation had gotten him slashed.
Although he managed to return the favor with his own sword, he was injured in the process.
Soon afterward, he developed a severe fever.
On a pirate ship, illness was always treated with extreme suspicion.
He had nearly been thrown overboard to feed the fish.
It was the first mate who ordered them to keep him alive.
Rook knew perfectly well that the man hadn’t done so out of kindness.
It was during that fever that Rook awakened the memories of his previous life.
For some unknown reason, the system interface he had programmed back then awakened along with them.
Perhaps because the experiences of two lives had given him mental strength far beyond that of an ordinary person, his fever subsided after only two days.
With the recovery of his past-life memories, Rook had also spent the last half month figuring out exactly what kind of world he had been reincarnated into.
It was a dangerous yet magnificent world from a fantasy story in his previous life.
A world known as—
One Piece.
And the era Rook had been born into was precisely that turbulent Great Pirate Era, an age where lives were cheap and countless people fought to carve out a place upon the seas.
Now, looking at the Talent section of his system panel, Rook felt somewhat helpless.
[Learning Pays Off] was a talent he himself had designed for the human race while testing game data in his previous life.
Why hadn’t he made some ridiculously broken, bug-level talent instead?
Over the past half month, Rook had asked himself that question nearly every time he looked at it.
Still, it was precisely because of this talent that the three practical abilities listed under his Skills section had appeared.
The talent’s minimum progress guarantee meant that even though none of those skills had officially reached beginner level yet, Rook was still stronger than the bottom-of-the-barrel pirates who knew absolutely nothing.
Such as the five men currently chasing him.
Rook’s Spirit attribute was far above that of an ordinary person, granting him fairly sharp instincts.
Combined with the fact that he had already spilled blood before, he naturally knew what killing intent felt like.
Over the past several days, the sallow-faced man had repeatedly ordered those four lackeys to make trouble for him aboard the ship.
In fact, the Hand-to-Hand Combat skill on Rook’s panel had appeared precisely because of those encounters.
Fortunately, killing fellow crewmates was forbidden aboard the pirate ship.
But Rook knew perfectly well that now that an opportunity had presented itself, these men had no intention of letting him walk away.
Buildings on both sides of the street flashed past his peripheral vision.
Soon, they approached the alley.
Rook glanced around.
Almost no other pirates had come this way.
He looked back at the men trailing several paces behind him.
Then his legs suddenly erupted with strength.
He turned sharply and sprinted into the alley.
“Fuck! After him!”
“Dammit, how can that bastard run so fast?! Don’t let him get away!”
“Captain Kanis! What do we do? He’s too fast!”
Hearing them, the sallow-faced Kanis’s expression grew even darker.
He gritted his teeth and cursed.
“Keep chasing!”
The alley wasn’t wide.
At most, three people could walk side by side.
But it was long and winding, with the town’s buildings packed tightly together.
He looked up at the walls lining both sides of the alley.
The wall on the left was only a little over two meters high.
Listening to the curses coming from behind him, Rook twisted and turned through the maze-like alleyways.
Two minutes later, he suddenly leaped sideways.
Both hands caught the top of the wall.
His arms pushed.
His right leg hooked over the edge.
And with ease, he pulled himself on top.
His field of vision immediately opened up.
Beyond the wall was the courtyard of a house.
Rook looked back at Kanis, who was leading the pursuit.
The corners of his mouth lifted slightly into a mocking smile.
Under Kanis’s furious glare, Rook disappeared over the other side.
But he didn’t run.
Instead, he pressed his body tightly against the wall.
His right hand wrapped around the hilt of his sword.
Slowly and steadily, he drew it.
A barely audible scrape rang out.
The double-edged sword was one meter long and three fingers wide.
Rook held it firmly in his hand.
Rapid footsteps approached.
Then came the sound of hands grabbing the top of the wall.
Kanis was the first to climb over.
Rook looked up.
The first thing he saw was a leg dangling over the wall.
He didn’t hesitate.
Rook sprang upward.
His left hand seized the hem of Kanis’s shirt.
Using his own descending momentum against him, Rook violently yanked.
Kanis was ripped straight off the wall.
The sudden change caught him completely off guard.
Panic flashed across his face as his hands flailed uselessly through the air.
Then—
Bang!
He crashed hard onto the ground.
Rook stepped forward.
His foot slammed heavily into Kanis’s abdomen.
The crushing impact forced a scream from his throat.
A cold flash followed.
Rook drove the sword into his stomach.
Leaning forward, he pressed his palm against the pommel and threw his body weight behind it.
Puchi!
The blade punched completely through Kanis’s body and sank into the dirt beneath him.
Rook’s lowered eyes were utterly cold.
Still gripping the sword, he suddenly wrenched it sideways.
Shhk!
The wound tore open.
Kanis’s eyes bulged.
A wet, choking sound escaped his throat as blood poured from his mouth.
It was unquestionably fatal.
And perhaps it was only his imagination, but at that exact moment, Rook felt a strange yet somehow familiar trace of warmth emerge from deep within his body.
This wasn’t the time to investigate it.
He violently pulled his sword free.
Only then did Rook raise his head.
Two pirates were sitting atop the wall, staring blankly at him and at Kanis, who was already beyond saving.
They froze.
Rook didn’t.
Now that he had done this, there was no turning back.
Captain Norton had an iron rule forbidding members of the pirate crew from killing one another.
At least openly, everyone obeyed it.
That rule was also the reason the first mate hadn’t simply forced Rook into doing what he wanted.
Rook charged forward.
He jumped and thrust his sword straight into one pirate’s abdomen.
The man screamed and toppled backward off the wall.
Rook landed.
Fear flooded the eyes of the remaining pirate.
He knew Rook could be vicious.
He just hadn’t expected him to be this vicious.
Naturally, with a brain barely larger than a goldfish’s, it never occurred to him that they had been the ones planning to kill Rook first.
The instant Rook looked his way, the pirate shuddered.
He hurriedly turned around and tried to jump down the other side.
Rook was faster.
He rushed forward and leaped.
Just as the pirate turned and jumped, Rook thrust his sword.
The blade pierced into the man’s lower back.
The pirate managed only a single scream before his body dropped.
At the same time came a sharp ripping sound as the sword tore through flesh and clothing.
“What the hell happened?!”
“Kaz! What’s going on?!”
Two panicked voices came from the other side of the wall.
The last two pirates.
Rook took a deep breath and jumped upward, bracing himself against the wall with his left arm and right leg.
But he only raised half his body above the top.
He had no intention of falling victim to the same ambush he’d just used himself.
Rook quickly peeked into the alley.
The final two pirates stood there, visibly flustered.
Neither of them had noticed him yet.
Rook immediately pulled himself onto the wall and crouched on top.
The moment his footing was secure, he raised his sword and leaped.
A cold flash descended from above.
The sharp blade slashed from one pirate’s shoulder all the way down toward his waist.
The unexpected heavy blow sent him crashing straight to the ground.
The final pirate stared at the scene in horror.
With a terrified shout, he turned and ran.
Five seconds later, Rook caught him.
A sword pierced straight through his lower back.
Half a minute later, after making sure the last pirate was dead, Rook leaned against the wall and gasped heavily for breath.