(Sorry the chapter was deleted, re-upload)
Chapter 4 – The Hidden Trail Revealed
The alleys of Loguetown were silent in the pale hour before dawn.
A lone woman walked slowly into what used to be a bar—now little more than a slaughterhouse. The shattered door hung askew, the scent of death clinging to the air like rot.
Aisha Asiri, intelligence officer of CP9, pulled out a delicate white handkerchief and held it to her nose. Even with years of brutal training under the World Government's deadliest covert unit, the stench made her stomach tighten.
She wasn't a frontline operative.
Her strengths had always been subtlety—gathering whispers in the dark, unraveling lies with a glance. Not wading through pools of blood and guts.
And yet, here she was.
The corpses were still fresh. Dozens of them.
Men—pirates, thugs, scum—lay sprawled across the floor, frozen in grotesque shapes. Some with gaping wounds, others with heads cleanly severed. The scent of iron choked the air.
Aisha's sharp eyes swept across the room, expression neutral. But deep down, she felt a flicker of disgust.
Not at the killer.
At the mess.
Even the most savage operations had rules.
But this… this was something else.
She walked deeper into the bar, her boots clicking softly on the blood-slicked floor. Her gloved fingers lightly brushed against bullet holes in the wooden walls, the jagged edges speaking louder than the silence around them.
Then she noticed it.
"…Strange. The firing angles…"
She crouched down, inspecting the patterns with a narrowed gaze. Most of the bullet holes were low—too low. Embedded in the legs of tables, lower parts of the wall, even in the floorboards.
"Were they… aiming at the enemy's legs?" she murmured, brows furrowing.
No. That couldn't be right.
In a fight to the death, no one shoots to wound.
Especially not when facing someone who clearly wasn't holding back.
So why?
Why were all the shots aimed downward, as if they were shooting at something… short?
"Could it be… a dwarf race? A Devil Fruit user with a deformed body?"
Her eyes flicked across the crime scene again, this time tracing not just the corpses—but the empty spaces between them.
The spacing. The motion paths. The blood spatter.
In her mind, a shadowy image of the killer slowly took shape.
Sword user. No wasted movement. Clean, precise kills. No visible trail in or out.
Aisha's lips pressed into a thin line.
"…He used Kenbunshoku Haki."
It was the only explanation that made sense.
No one could dance through this many armed men—guns blazing in a drunken panic—and emerge without so much as a scratch, unless they were seeing everything before it happened.
No footsteps. No stray hairs. Not even a trail of blood out the door.
It was a crime scene so meticulously clean, it practically screamed of advanced Observation Haki.
"Not just Kenbunshoku… This level of battlefield awareness is close to Zanshin," she whispered.
Then something else caught her eye.
The bullet marks.
The trajectory, the angles, the tight grouping of panicked shots…
"They were aiming down," she repeated. "Which means…"
The killer was short.
Or worse—
"…A child?"
She shook the thought away.
No. Impossible.
A child couldn't butcher dozens of grown men like this. No matter how talented. Not unless they had a Devil Fruit that allowed them to alter their appearance.
That was the only logical conclusion.
She stood, her eyes narrowing.
"Whoever you are… you're not normal."
— — —
Meanwhile…
Unaware that one of the World Government's top agents was already tailing his shadow, Tachibana Kyūjō was up with the sun—just like any other day.
Despite having liberated several million Berries from two criminal groups the night before, Kyūjō didn't act any different. He packed up his usual fishing rod and quietly headed down to the coast.
"Spending recklessly after a big score's the fastest way to get stabbed in the back," he muttered to himself with a lazy smile. "Rule number one: live like a poor man. Die rich."
His instincts told him he was in the clear.
The two gangs he'd wiped out were bottom-feeders. No real backers. No Marine ties. No World Government flags.
And just to be sure, he'd left no tracks behind.
Even so… vigilance was second nature to him now.
— — —
Two hours passed.
Kyūjō sat on a wide rock outcropping overlooking the sea, a bucket of bait by his side and a line dangling lazily into the water.
Normally, he'd have caught three or four fat fish by now.
But today…
"…Nothing?"
He leaned forward and squinted into the water.
The sea was strangely… quiet.
Too quiet.
Kyūjō dipped a few fingers into the surf, eyes narrowing. The water was cool. Normal.
But every fish he spotted darted away the moment he cast his line.
Even the bold ones—the dumb ones that usually bit at anything shiny—were gone.
"…They're running away," he muttered. "No… they're afraid."
He closed his eyes and let his breath slow.
Then opened them again—sharper this time.
"There's something out there."
Something big.
He could feel it. A subtle pressure pushing at the edges of his senses. Not quite Haki—but not natural, either.
A sea king?
A giant sea beast?
"…No. The bay's too shallow for that. And monsters don't usually come near port towns unless they're starving."
Whatever it was, it was close. And powerful enough to disturb the entire coastal ecosystem.
Kyūjō stood up slowly, his fishing rod still in hand.
Then, without a shred of fear, he smirked.
"Looks like it's my lucky day."
— — —
Back at his small shack, Kyūjō rummaged through his tools, dragging out a heavy iron pole meant for securing boats and tying lines.
He coiled a thick rope around it like a makeshift harpoon and tied the end to a bait hook big enough to catch a shark.
From last night's dinner, he still had the half-eaten head of a massive reef fish.
Perfect bait.
"If it's a monster… regular bait won't work."
With gear in hand, he slung the improvised weapon over his shoulder and headed out, eyes gleaming with anticipation.
This wasn't just fishing anymore.
This was a hunt.
"Let's see… thousand-kilo monster?" Kyūjō muttered with a grin. "Sounds like fun."
— — —
※ Author's Note:
The world of One Piece operates under very different rules than the world of Kimetsu no Yaiba.
Here, even an average fighter could possess abnormal strength, durability, and healing.
Elite swordsmen like Roronoa Zoro trained with weights heavier than entire oxen, long before they even awakened Haki.
Meaning—
A body from the Kimetsu world? Far too weak for this sea.
So when Kyūjō crossed over, his soul didn't just shift worlds—his body evolved to match it.
He's no longer a demon hunter bound by the limits of flesh.
He's becoming something else entirely.
Something fit for the Grand Line.
A swordsman… worthy of standing at the top.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
The novel has finally reached Volume 2 🎉
Thank you so much for following the journey this far—it truly means a lot!
✨ If you'd like to continue reading ahead, Volume 2 is already fully available on Patreon, and we're getting very close to the end of this volume. That means Volume 3 is just around the corner! ⚔️🔥
👉 Check it out here:
🔗 [patreon.com/FaaanzKun]
Join my Ko-fi here:
🔗 [ko-fi.com/faaanzkun]
Let's keep this adventure alive, together chapter by chapter! 💖
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —