"Ah!" With a startled cry, Rosinante jolted awake and sat upright.
He felt as if his head were splitting apart, his mind hazy and disoriented.
Through the fog in his consciousness, he vaguely realized he was in a traditional Japanese-style room.
Then, in the next instant, a massive flood of information surged into his mind.
These memories belonged to a thirteen-year-old boy, containing all of his experiences and recollections.
From them, Rosinante quickly understood where he was now.
The Land of Fire.
A world of ninja and samurai.
Does that sound familiar?
That's right.
This was the world of Naruto.
But not the era of Naruto's main story.
This was far earlier than that... the distant and brutal Warring States Era of the Naruto world.
"So I really was set up this time... I never thought my soul would be driven out of the One Piece world, only to end up in the Naruto world. Fate really loves to toy with people... I wonder what happened to Shaxia and the others?" Rosinante said with a bitter smile, worry flashing across his face.
He still remembered it clearly.
At Marine Headquarters, he had fought Sengoku and Garp in a battle that lasted three days and three nights.
During those three days, Borsalino and Kuzan had repeatedly tried to ambush him from the sidelines. Borsalino in particular was especially troublesome, unleashing his "Light Emperor" bombardments every so often.
But during those same three days, Kuzan and Borsalino were eventually forced to leave Marine Headquarters to reinforce battles breaking out across the seas.
As the Gray Kingdom's uprising spread, Marine branches around the world and the World Government's forces were collapsing one after another. Kong had no choice but to urgently dispatch the only two Admirals still capable of moving, Kuzan and Borsalino, to provide emergency support.
But immediately afterward, new combatants joined the battle.
The Commander-in-Chief of the World Government, Kong.
And several Admiral-level CP0 operatives.
Rosinante had been extremely wary of Kong.
But what he hadn't expected... was that among the CP0 agents he had dismissed as unimportant, one of the Five Elders had been hiding in disguise.
In the end, the sword-wielding Five Elder still couldn't put his mind at ease. He had secretly come in person, disguising himself as a CP0 agent, and launched a sneak attack that left Rosinante gravely wounded.
Under the combined assault of one of the Five Elders, Kong, Fleet Admiral Sengoku, and the Marine Hero Garp, four of the world's absolute peak combatants, Rosinante had no choice but to go all out.
He released both the seal on his life force and the self-limiters on his body.
He tore open a bloody path, trying to escape Marine Headquarters.
But he never expected that Marine Headquarters had long prepared for this.
At some point, they had planted a certain Devil Fruit ability on him, allowing them to track his exact location.
Under wave after wave of relentless pursuit, Rosinante suffered severe injuries. Yet the combatants were also left battered and covered in wounds.
Under normal circumstances, even so, they still wouldn't have been enough to defeat him.
But what Rosinante never imagined... was that among the World Government's CP0, there was actually a hidden user of the Expulsion Fruit.
At the cost of his own life, that man unleashed an exile to another dimension against Rosinante.
Yet even in his heavily wounded state, with his stamina nearly exhausted, the dimensional exile powered by a life sacrifice still failed to truly banish Rosinante.
The Power of Silence within him continuously erased that expelling force.
In the end, when the Expulsion Fruit user realized he couldn't banish Rosinante's body into another dimension, he actually changed targets and directly attacked Rosinante's soul instead.
Although Rosinante, in order to resist that force, had fused part of his Devil Fruit power into his soul, trying to withstand the expulsion...
In the end, he still could not stop it.
He was forcibly expelled from the world of One Piece.
And when Rosinante opened his eyes again...
He had already arrived in this world.
The world of Naruto.
The current Land of Fire was in its most chaotic era.
Not only were the major ninja clans locked in constant war, but the secular world was equally engulfed in endless conflict.
In the Warring States Era, the Land of Fire simultaneously had four daimyo and more than a dozen military lords and generals. They ceaselessly fought and invaded one another, plunging the entire country into misery and leaving the common people in unbearable suffering.
Saito Tsubasa's father, Saito Kagemitsu, was one of those dozen-odd military lords of the Land of Fire.
During a battle with a neighboring warlord, Saito Tsubasa's father had unfortunately died in combat.
As the legitimate eldest son, Saito Tsubasa should originally have been the most rightful heir to inherit his father's position.
But from childhood, Saito Tsubasa had been frail and weak, never cultivating martial skill. The retainers under his father's command were arrogant and difficult to control, and on top of that, his uncles and cousins all coveted the position of general.
Then yesterday, for reasons unknown, Saito Tsubasa had been mysteriously poisoned.
Just as he was on the verge of death, Rosinante's soul, exiled from another world, entered this body.
In the end, he devoured Saito Tsubasa's soul, inherited his body, and became Saito Tsubasa.
Whether it was the poison or the side effects of devouring another soul, Rosinante only felt an unbearable headache. It took a long while before the pain eased somewhat, though the world around him still swayed in a dizzy blur.
And right at that moment...
Ten shuriken suddenly shot in through the window, flying with terrifying precision straight toward Rosinante's position.
At the moment of crisis, Rosinante rolled sharply, tumbling off the bed and narrowly dodging the attack.
The shuriken slammed viciously into the bed behind him.
Clutching his head, Rosinante rose to his feet, his body still slightly unsteady.
"They really couldn't wait, huh?" Rosinante said with a frown.
Even as he spoke, more than a dozen black-clad, masked men wielding long blades burst through the door and surrounded him.
"Can any of you tell me which master sent you? At least let me die knowing the truth!" Rosinante said, his body looking weak and fragile, as if he could collapse at any moment.
But these men clearly seemed like death-sworn assassins.
There was not the slightest intention of answering him.
The instant his words fell, the only response he got... was a blade slashing straight at him.
As if he had already seen through the assassin's move in advance, Rosinante casually shifted aside and effortlessly dodged the strike.
Then, with a simple twist of his hand, he snatched the long blade directly out of the assassin's grip barehanded.
In the same motion, he kicked out.
The assassin was sent flying backward more than a meter.
Holding the seized long blade, Rosinante frowned.
Observation Haki still works. Armament Haki... I know how to use it, but this body is too weak, so I can't bring it out. Conqueror's Haki is reduced to only mental pressure now, and I've lost that higher-level lifeform suppression that could directly knock weaker beings unconscious. The Silent-Silent Fruit ability can actually still be used... most likely because, when I resisted that force trying to expel my soul, I unconsciously fused part of my Devil Fruit power into my soul. And in this world, there's no Seastone, so I won't be restrained by it, and water shouldn't be a weakness either. But this fragile body doesn't have enough stamina to use it properly. This world has chakra as an energy source... perhaps in the future, I can use chakra to activate Devil Fruit abilities.
Rosinante silently assessed the changes in his current strength.
Note: Saito Tsubasa is an OC in Author's world
We will be posting 2 chapters per day for the upcoming few days