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[Engaging In Some Tomfoolery]
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...
"... How long am I supposed to keep doing this?"
Dan lay flat on his bed, staring at the ceiling with a bored expression.
"An entire month, and I haven't made a single move with my system..." he muttered. "Just training and training."
To be fair, that had been his plan from the start. Train, build up strength, and once he felt ready, go out and earn himself a proper bounty.
But when you had a literal cheat of reality in your pocket and had spent a full month doing absolutely nothing with it, impatience was bound to set in.
"Am I really sure there's nothing I can do right now?" He mused, scratching his head in doubt.
He pushed his chin forward in thought and pulled up his system, navigating to the NP section to go over it again.
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▸ How you buy things:
The currency for buying hacks is NP: an acronym for Notoriety Points.
These are earned through acts that generate genuine fear and infamy among the population. The more people who witness or hear of your acts, and the more they fear you, the more NP you earn. However, the stronger the hacks and items, the more expensive they will be.
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...
Basically, he had to make his name known—in the bad sense—and the system would reward him for it with Notoriety points.
With those points, he could buy hacks beyond the handful he currently had.
It wasn't complicated at all.
"Shop," he said.
A new screen appeared.
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[Starter Tier SHOP]
≡ Passive Hacks
▸ Presentable: [10 NP]
▸ WalkingCompass: [25 NP]
▸ SpeedReader: [30 NP]
▸ IronStomach: [30 NP]
▸ Pokerface: [50 NP]
▸ Polyglot: [250 NP]
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≡ Active Hacks
▸ Dry: [10 NP]
▸ Internal Clock: [20 NP]
▸ Clean: [25 NP]
▸ Appraiser: [30 NP]
▸ Tireless: [100 NP]
▸ Coward's Eye: [100 NP]
▸ Sugar Rush: [200 NP]
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≡ Scripts
▸ AutoRest: [75 NP]
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≡ Items
▸ Water Bottle: [5 NP]
▸ Jerky: [5 NP]
▸ Clothes: [10 NP]
▸ Golden Pencil: [15 NP]
▸ Golden Pen: [15 NP]
▸ Golden Quill: [15 NP]
▸ Golden Fork: [15 NP]
▸ Golden Spoon: [15 NP]
▸ Golden Lockpick Set: [15 NP]
...
▸ Music Headset: [25 NP]
▸ Fix-everything Tape: [30 NP]
▸ Bugged Smoke Pellet: [30 NP]
▸ Bottle of Hyper Glue: [50 NP]
▸ Gravity Cuffs: [65 NP]
▸ Very Stable Surfing Board: [75 NP]
▸ Intelligent Dumbbells: [80 NP]
▸ Haki Knot (Weak Level): [300 NP]
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"Hmm..."
He went through each listing with care, eyes slowly going over the function of each hack and item.
Some of it was genuinely interesting. Some of it was not.
Presentable, the cheapest Hack in the entire shop, essentially kept his hair in whatever position he put it in—basically, an invisible and permanent hair gel.
That was the entire skill.
A total waste of NP in his opinion—although if he ever had points to spare, he could maybe see himself caving in out of spite. His bed hair was especially rebellious, so he often found himself eyeing the hack, despite it not being worth it.
Polyglot was on the other end of the spectrum. The ability to read and understand any language wasn't going to be particularly useful right now, stuck in a village on a single island. But the long-term value of it was hard to argue with. Especially since ancient languages actually seemed really important in this world.
The items section caught his eye too. The Golden everything—pencil, pen, quill, fork, spoon—were all listed as indestructible, which already made his heart beat in excitement.
Indestructible. That sounded crazy already!
—Even if the only objects with that characteristic at the moment were pretty mundane, with no weapons anywhere in the long list, just common tools and cutlery with no edge to speak of.
There was a screwdriver somewhere in the list, though. He filed that one away as a maybe. It was the closest thing to a weapon in the list, after all.
The Music Headset had also been on his mind since he first saw it. Not for any tactical reason—he just wanted something to listen to.
Nothing but silence and nature's sounds for an entire month was making him crave the music he used to hear every day.
Next, the Surfing Board listed there was more practical than it sounded. It basically let him stand on its surface without risk of falling or slipping, which in other words meant island travel without a ship—assuming his legs could hold out for however long the crossing took.
... He didn't love that part, but it was there, if he ever felt he might need it.
And then... there was the Haki Knot. A single-use item, purchasable once, that released a weak burst of Conqueror's Haki upon being untied.
A hidden card up the sleeve, essentially.
The instant he saw it, Dan knew he'd want to plan around that one carefully before buying it.
None of it was accessible right now, of course. No NP meant no buying spree, which in turn brought him right back to the source of his frustration—remaining poor in NP, and not getting to try out the other hacks for however long his training would be lasting.
Getting his ass handed by Zoro a few weeks back hadn't helped his mood either.
Rationally, he understood it—the moss head was already fighting adults, there was no way he, a kid who'd barely been there two months, would beat him.
But knowing he had a literal cheat of reality at his disposal, and yet still ending up losing that badly, left a sting that reason didn't fully soften.
He knew it was just the impatient side of him talking. He had the system, and he wanted the benefits of it immediately. Sadly, that wasn't how it worked—or at least, not how it had been designed to work.
While he would love to just go and build up his infamy right now by making something crazy that would surely yield him NP and maybe raise his bounty—like going to the nearest marine base and punching every marine soldier there—the ROB had made sure this story he was supposed to produce wouldn't end prematurely.
How?
With damn rules.
They could be summed up in this: without real strength behind him, raising his bounty was risky at best and catastrophic at worst.
The ROB had put thought into making sure he couldn't just rush through the tiers without consequences.
The rules had been laid out clearly on a page he took a week to notice, because the ROB appeared to like hiding such notes on barely noticeable "?" icons spread across the system screen.
It all started with the first one, obviously. This rule stated that the moment he crossed into the Rookie tier—the one after his current Starter tier—the system would personally guarantee that an opponent of appropriate strength would come his way in due time, to make sure he was up to level.
—And that would happen at every tier, without exception, like a constant examination of his worthiness.
Of course, that wasn't all that worrying on its own. Sure, it was a problem to deal with each time he leveled up, but in the end it was only one person he had to beat to prove his worthiness.
The real problem came from the rule also adding as a bonus that, unlike in the show, a bounty on his head wouldn't just be a creeping number with no teeth—it would actually fulfill its purpose.
Make him be hunted.
Depending on the tier he was at, the system would make sure an appropriate number of people came knocking to claim it, drawn in by fate and the system working together.
Marines. Bounty hunters. The whole thing.
Not like Luffy, who at worst had a few encounters with bounty hunters and marines after getting his first bounty, but didn't get chased around much.
No. In his case, the moment he gained a proper bounty, bounty hunters and marines would be on the look out, sniffing every corner to get a hold of him to the best of their ability.
And what was worse, the rule also decided that the backlash from bounties wouldn't necessarily be capped at his current tier's level. The opponents the system sent as tier milestones would match roughly the required level—but the hunters drawn in by the bounty itself had a chance to be considerably stronger. That part was essentially a matter of luck.
Maybe even an Admiral would show up because he woke up on Lady Luck's bad side one day.
So basically, it all amounted to: raise your bounty however much you want—but you have to answer for the consequences.
Then there was the second rule, which tried to account for any possible attempt at exploiting the currency system without becoming a proper criminal as intended.
It stipulated that manufactured infamy counted for nothing. He couldn't make up stories about himself and hope they would terrify the world and send a rush of NP his way.
The system rewarded actions, not speculation.
The third rule moderated this mechanic further. It stated that grinding NP by picking on the weak and avoiding anyone stronger would yield diminishing returns over time. Basically, it was telling him not to be lazy and to go seek trouble against those stronger than him constantly.
Second to last was the fourth rule, another moderation to the NP mechanic. This one addressed that using strong allies to cause infamy-worthy acts, then mooching off them, wouldn't work either. Only deeds with the credit verifiably belonging to him alone would generate NP.
He had to be the big bad. He couldn't just be the "mysterious guy" whose entire infamy came from allegedly being stronger than allies who actually did the act.
When he first learned how NP worked, he had been concocting a plan like that. So it was a real shame when he found these rules and had to give it up.
And then, there was the fifth and last rule—the one that felt like it was there to plug any loophole that the ROB hadn't noticed while designing the thing.
Why did he think so?
Because the rule stated that if he found a loophole in any of the above and tried to exploit it despite the eventual warnings the system would give him, the ROB would come down and deal with him directly. No further explanation given.
So, in short: don't fuck around, and you won't find out.
All in all, this was the ROB telling him to prepare properly or suffer for being constantly underleveled—and also that there was no clever shortcut that hadn't already been accounted for.
Coming to terms with the fact that he didn't have much of a choice, Dan exhaled slowly through his nose and closed his eyes in thought.
All that brought him once again to the question that was currently bothering him the most.
Was training all he could do right now?
With such a question in mind, he stayed like that for a few minutes more, thinking it over.
...
Then, at some point, his eyes snapped open. A gleam of realization passing by them.
... Actually, there was something he could do right now. He just hadn't thought about it from the right angle.
Judging from his status screen, his current tier wouldn't advance until he hit 500K beli in bounty. That meant as long as his acts stayed below what would prompt the Marines to put a formal number on his head—or at least to put a bounty lower than 500K on him—he had room to maneuver.
If he managed that, he could quietly farm NP and have something worth equipping by the time he was actually ready to kick everything off.
A glint of mischief passed through his eyes as that thought settled.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of sunglasses.
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≡[Hacked Item: Sunglasses of Anonymity]
▸ Sunglasses that hide your identity perfectly, somehow. No matter if you're standing right in front of them, wearing the same clothes—so long as you have these sunglasses on, no one will recognize you.
▸ Warning: The identity you take on whenever you put on the sunglasses remains the same even if you take them off and put them on again. Meaning that whatever criminal charges or relationships you have with people while wearing them persist until you remove them.
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He held them up for a moment, turning them over once as if expecting them to look supernatural in some way.
They didn't. They appeared to be completely normal sunglasses.
Regardless, after a quick shrug, he put them on with a grin.
"Alright. It's evil time."
...
°
°
°
| Half an hour later... |
...
Shimotsuki Village was, usually, a peaceful place.
The strength its people had built over generations—tradition brought from a distant land and maintained with quiet pride—meant pirates rarely gave it a second look. And when they did, they didn't leave in good shape.
The last pirate attack had been roughly three years ago, and incidents of that nature had been pretty uncommon since.
This particular evening, however, something happened that disrupted the village's peace.
"My animals—they're all loose! Someone opened the gate to my pen!"
"The pie I left to cool on the windowsill... someone took a piece out of it!"
"Who kept knocking on the stall door?! I shouted five times that it was occupied and they just kept going!"
"Who left a pile of cow dung on my doorstep?!"
"WHO MOVED MY TOOLS?! THEY WERE IN A SPECIFIC ORDER! AAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!"
Furious voices erupted from all corners of the village, overlapping and building on each other until the whole place felt like a pot about to boil over. Doors swung open. People poured out into the street, red-faced and searching for the culprit.
They didn't have to look for long.
"It was I!"
The voice came from above. Heads turned upward in unison, eyes locking onto a small figure perched on top of one of the rooftops, arms crossed, wearing a smug grin that only made the villagers more angry.
"You did all of this?!" one of the villagers shouted, jaw tight.
The figure tilted his chin up. "Yeah. What about it?"
That was all it took.
"Get him!"
The shout went up like a signal flare, and the mob surged forward.
"Oh shit—!" The figure's composure cracked immediately.
He scrambled back from the edge and jumped sideways onto the tree growing close to the rooftop—almost certainly how he'd gotten up there in the first place.
He grabbed a branch, swung himself down, hit the ground running, and dove into the village streets with an angry mob roaring behind him.
The chase went on through alleyways and between houses, neither party showing even a sliver of giving up. The figure was quick for his size, ducking under obstacles, cutting corners, slipping away even when someone cut him off and tried to block his path.
But eventually the streets gave way to the outskirts, and the outskirts gave way to the treeline, and the figure plunged into the forest without hesitation.
The mob followed him in, ducking under branches, slapping leaves away, crunching the soil beneath them—until their assassination objective slipped through a particularly dense bush and the foliage swallowed him up.
Regardless, they pushed through after him, not about to give up now.
But as they emerged from the other side... he was gone.
And instead, leaning against a nearby tree with a remarkably "innocent" face and his arms crossed, even going as far as to whistle, was a kid several of them recognized.
"Little Dan?" One of the older men raised an eyebrow. "What are you doing out here?"
The kid shifted his weight slightly. "I was, uh... passing by."
Several eyes narrowed at the same time.
Then one of the villagers, a farmer, spoke up, squinting. "Right. Either way—kid, did you happen to see a runt about your size come through here just now?"
Dan's eyebrows shot up dramatically, and his mouth made an "o" for a second before he asked. "What did he look like?"
The farmer opened his mouth. Then stopped. His eyebrows pulled together as he realized he actually didn't remember much about the punk they were after.
"He had sunglasses!" someone else from the crowd suddenly offered.
"Like those!" Another pointed.
All eyes followed the direction of the finger, landing right on Dan's shirt—specifically, the slightly suspicious sunglasses-shaped bulge near the collar.
-Clack-
A pair of sunglasses slipped out from under the fabric and dropped straight to the ground.
"..."
"..."
Dan looked down at them, then back up at the crowd... then he slowly raised one arm and pointed into the forest behind him.
"He went that way."
"After him!"
""OOOH!""
For some reason, the crowd didn't hesitate even a second, and lurched back into motion, streaming past Dan and crashing deeper into the trees.
"..."
Dan stood very still until the last of the footsteps faded.
Then he let out a long breath and bent down to pick up the sunglasses, pocketing them right away.
"Five points for all that..." he muttered, massaging his temples. "This is going to be a real pain."
...
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-To Be Continued...-
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(A/N: The grammar was a mess in this chapter. when I reread it. Luckily the next ones weren't such a pain.
Also, sorry for the info-dump again. This is supposed to be the last one for real.)