"Damn it, you client-side bastard, I'll fuck your fucking...!"
Renzo felt like his brain had turned into an overloaded server; the CPU was burning hot, the fan was screaming, yet it still couldn't process the mountain of bugs and demands piling up before him.
Seventy-two straight hours.
Caffeine and energy drinks were the only things keeping his numbed nerves alive.
The dense lines of code before his eyes began to twist and dance, before everything dissolved into a dazzling white light.
"This task... is such a f**king pain in the ass..."
That was his final thought before his consciousness sank into endless darkness.
A textbook programmer's sudden-death scenario, unoriginal, not even enough to make the local news.
He didn't know how long had passed when a soft, indescribable sensation gently lifted him from the darkness.
Not the smell of disinfectant in a hospital.
Not the chill of a hard floor.
But... dry straw with a faint scent of sunshine?
He struggled to lift his eyelids, heavy as if they weighed a thousand pounds, until his blurry vision gradually cleared.
A wooden ceiling.
Rough walls.
A makeshift bed covered in straw.
The air carried the salty tang of sea breeze... and a faint, peculiar sweetness, like fruit.
"I'm not... at my desk?"
Renzo sat up in confusion. A sharp pain stabbed his head, making him suck in a breath, but more than pain, it was an overwhelming wave of drowsy comfort, like every cell in his body was shouting, 'Don't move. Let's just lie here for another five hundred years.'
He looked around.
A simple, shabby wooden hut, the kind a fisherman might live in by the shore.
Outside, he could hear waves crashing and seagulls calling.
"Did I... transmigrate?"
As a hardcore otaku and programmer, this setup was all too familiar.
He just didn't expect this "blessing" to fall upon someone who only ever wanted to be a lazy salaryman.
"Well... could be worse," Renzo sighed, strangely calm.
"At least I don't have to fix bugs or work overtime anymore..."
What was his ultimate dream anyway?
To live without pressure, eat, sleep, do nothing, and enjoy life.
Writing code? That was just for survival.
What he truly longed for was a carefree life of sunbathing, reading novels, and playing games if this world even had those.
He'd even once written a half-finished One Piece fanfic online, starring his dream self.
A guy with invincible powers whose only goal was to avoid trouble and live as the ultimate slacker.
He'd poured a lot of... creative passion into that character.
Including a perfectly designed Devil Fruit, a paramecia one called the "Sloth Fruit."
He still remembered every detail of its powers clearly:
Passive "trouble negation," active "sleep inducement," and at awakening, "domain of universal sloth," where everyone within range simply lies down.
Its strength wasn't in destruction, but in denial, denial of anything troublesome.
It was, quite literally, every lazy man's dream come true.
"Sigh... what am I even thinking..."
Renzo gave a self-deprecating laugh.
"Crossing worlds is already ridiculous enough, no way I'd actually get the fruit I imagined."
He instinctively reached up to rub his throbbing temples, but stopped when he noticed something by the bedside.
A wooden tray lined with soft, clean cloth.
And on it, a fruit.
A bizarre-looking fruit, as if several twisted spirals had been forcefully woven together.
Its whole body was a sleepy grayish-lavender, covered with curling patterns shaped like tiny "Z" symbols, exuding a lazy, almost drowsy aura, like it was silently saying, "I'm tired... don't bother me."
A strange fragrance emanated from it, faint, but powerful enough to make his very soul tremble.
Renzo's eyes widened.
"That shape... those patterns... that sleepy energy that made you want to nap after one look..."
"Impossible. Absolutely impossible!"
He lunged forward, trembling as he picked it up, staring at every curve and detail.
Every part of it, the swirl, the aura, matched perfectly with the Sloth Fruit he had once written about and imagined countless times.
"The... Sloth Fruit?"
His voice was dry, trembling with disbelief.
Why was the Devil Fruit he created in his imagination here?
In front of him, a freshly transmigrated programmer?
Coincidence?
Or...
A crazy yet only logical idea struck him like lightning.
Could it be... he hadn't just transmigrated, he'd become the lazy main character from his own unfinished novel?
Was this world actually following his setting?
After the initial shock, an indescribable joy and calm washed over him like warm sunlight.
His programmer instincts kicked in. Time to analyze:
Known facts: He has transmigrated into what seems like the One Piece world.
Known facts: The Sloth Fruit, identical to his design, is right before him.
Objective: Live a carefree, lazy life.
Conclusion: Eat it. Immediately.
With this fruit, what trouble couldn't he simply "can't be bothered" away?
What danger couldn't he dismiss with a sleepy, "Too much hassle, goodnight"?
This was it, his VIP ticket to the ultimate life of blissful idleness!
As for the infamous "taste that could kill a chef"?
"Compared to 72 hours of overtime and dealing with insane client requests? That's nothing!"
For the first time since his transmigration, Renzo smiled, a genuine, liberated, and excited smile.
"Better to suffer once than suffer forever, down the hatch!"
Without hesitation, he raised the fruit and bit into it.
"Uuurrgh!!"
The next second, an indescribable wave of horror hit his tongue, as if every misery and annoyance in the world had been condensed into flavor form.
His face twisted violently as nausea tore through him, but amid the agony, a strange, warm, and lazy power spread through his body, seeping into every limb, every vein, until it reached his brain.
His body grew light, and an overwhelming feeling of sloth flooded his soul.
It was as if the world had slowed to a crawl, and only he could choose when to press pause.
New understanding surfaced in his mind, about how to define "trouble," how to issue "sloth" commands.
He'd done it...
The taste was torture beyond words, but...
"Worth it..." he muttered, collapsing back onto the straw bed, too lazy to move even a finger.
"From today on... no matter what trouble comes... I'm not getting up..."
Sunlight poured lazily through the window, brushing over his body.
The sea breeze carried distant whispers of the waves.
Renzo, no, the new Renzo, wielder of the Sloth Fruit, yawned, eyes watering slightly.
"First goal..."
"Sleep for three days and three nights straight... Everything else... can wait... too much effort..."
His voice faded, replaced by the steady rhythm of his breathing, in harmony with the sea outside.
Thus, the legend of the world's laziest man quietly began.