The East Blue, somewhere on the open sea.
A teenage boy stood quietly on the deck of a small ship, gazing out at the boundless ocean. It was a world painted in shades of blue. A thin, transparent mist drifted over the water, and the breeze that brushed against his face carried the scent of the sea.
His name was Kurou, sixteen years old, a high school student. Just over a month ago, while watching One Piece, he had somehow been inexplicably transported into this world.
In his previous life, Kurou was the definition of average. Average family background, average height, average everything. The only thing that stood out was that his looks weren't too bad, decent enough to catch attention, but not enough to call him striking.
He had dreamed that being transmigrated into this world meant grand adventures and rising to greatness. But what greeted him instead was a stroke of fate so cruel it left him utterly dazed.
Unlike those lucky protagonists in other transmigration stories, those who landed in powerful lineages like being Admiral Sengoku's long-lost heir, or Garp's prodigy grandson, or even the sworn brother of Gol D. Roger, Kurou's fate was far less glamorous.
He had been captured.
Worse yet, he'd ended up on a pirate ship.
Even worse, he wasn't a combatant, officer, or even a lookout. He was the lowest-ranking deckhand on board, forced to do back-breaking grunt work: patching the hull, hauling anchors, raising sails, moving crates. Whatever menial job no one wanted, he was stuck with it.
Pathetic didn't even begin to cover it.
To add insult to injury, the ship's captain was none other than Buggy the Clown, a little-known pirate at the time, with a bounty of just six million berries and a Split-Split Fruit user. That whole "Undying Emperor of the East Blue with a bounty of fifteen million"? That would come much later...
"Smack!"
A sharp slap landed on Kurou's head.
Clutching his scalp, he turned around, only to find a large, brutish man with a scraggly beard glaring down at him with an angry snarl.
The man's name was Tom, a regular crewman in Buggy's Pirate Crew. Built like an ox and twice as cruel, Tom had a bad habit of bullying anyone weaker than himself.
"What are you looking at, brat?" Tom barked. "You think you've got time to daydream and watch the sea? Did you finish loading the cannon shells like Lord Buggy ordered?!"
Kurou stayed silent.
He turned without a word and trudged below deck to continue filling barrels with ammunition for Buggy's cannons.
It wasn't that Kurou didn't want to fight back, it's that he couldn't. He vividly remembered what had happened just a day after he was first caught. Tom had tried to bully him, and Kurou, fed up, swung a punch in retaliation. The result? Tom pinned him down and beat him to a pulp. His wounds had only just begun to heal last week.
Kurou wasn't afraid of pain, nor did he fear authority, but he wasn't stupid either. As the saying goes, "A true man doesn't suffer losses he can avoid."
With no strength to resist and no skills to defend himself, all he could do was endure. Picking a fight now would just mean more bruises and cracked ribs.
But one day... when I become strong... I'll make you pay for every blow, Kurou thought coldly.
But strength, how was he supposed to get it?
Power didn't just fall out of the sky like some heavenly meat bun.
In this world, strength could generally be divided into three types: Devil Fruits, Martial Arts, and Swordsmanship.
Getting a Devil Fruit required either extraordinary luck, like randomly stumbling upon one on some island, only to realize too late it's the Human-Human Fruit and now you're just a glorified talking duck, or obscene amounts of money, since even a basic Zoan or Paramecia Fruit could fetch a market price upwards of a hundred million berries. And if neither applied, you'd have to be strong enough to take one by force.
Kurou had none of the above.
He couldn't afford one. He couldn't find one. And he definitely couldn't take one.
That left martial arts and swordsmanship. Even if he trained in pushups and squats every day, the best he could hope for was a tougher body and slightly better pain tolerance. There was no way he could fight off Buggy's crew with that alone.
And training to the level of mastering something like Rokushiki (Six Powers)? Out of the question. He didn't even know how to begin. If he knew even one move, say, Shigan (Finger Gun), he'd poke so many holes in Tom's ugly mug that the guy would look like a pincushion.
But reality had no mercy for pipe dreams.
At this rate, what future did he have? Would he spend the rest of his life trapped on this clown's ship, bullied, cursed, beaten, ordered around, until he was old and useless, tossed away like trash, and left to die alone and forgotten?
Why am I so damn unlucky...?
The thought struck him hard. His expression dimmed. What began as frustration sank quickly into despair.
Eventually, his hopeless thoughts overtook him, and Kurou collapsed in exhaustion on the freezing lower deck, drifting into unconsciousness...
The next morning, faint traces of dawn painted the sky.
Just as the first light touched the horizon, heavy footsteps pounded down the lower-deck stairs. A familiar shadow loomed over Kurou's sleeping body.
Tom.
With no regard for decency, he began kicking Kurou repeatedly to wake him up.
Kurou's eyes shot open, and a sharp fury lit within them.
But Tom wasn't the least bit afraid. In fact, he looked amused.
That glare, it reminded him of a kitten baring its fangs. Cute, pointless, and entirely powerless.
"Aww, what's that look? Not happy to see me?" Tom sneered, grabbing Kurou by the hair and shaking his head roughly.
Kurou's fury boiled over. He threw a punch at Tom's chest,
But with Kurou's skinny frame, the punch landed with all the force of a feather. No, scratch that, even a mosquito bite might've been more impressive.
Tom caught his wrist effortlessly.
"You want to die, huh? Think you can fight back now?" With a cruel grin, Tom's fist smashed into Kurou's face.
Kurou hit the floor hard, a swollen red fist mark forming across his cheek. One of his teeth felt loose.
Tom wasn't finished. With a grunt, he kicked Kurou in the gut, sending him crashing into the wall with a dull thud.
Pain erupted all over his body, but Kurou didn't make a sound.
"I told you, brat. Mess with me, and I'll beat you three times a day until you beg for mercy!" Tom spat. "Now get up and get to work! Stop acting like some whiny girl!"
With a mocking hum, Tom strutted away like a conquering warlord, proudly ascending back to the main deck.
Kurou lay there on the cold floor, his body aching from head to toe.
Slowly, painfully, he pushed himself upright.
This is what it means to be weak...
Not only was dignity meaningless, he didn't even have the right to survive.
He couldn't help but recall a line from the infamous Warlord of the Sea, Crocodile:
"To be weak... is a sin."
I have to get stronger, Kurou thought.
Stronger...
The word itself sounded ridiculous. What hope did he have of ever becoming strong in a world like this?
Was it even possible?
And yet, one idea began to form in his mind.
A dangerous one.
Kill Tom.
Go down fighting. Take that bastard with him. Better to die than keep crawling in the dirt.
When you're trapped in a corner with no escape... sometimes the only way forward is through blood.
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150 P.S = 1 Extra Chapter