[Marine Base G-8, Supply Depot 4, 1520 Sea Circle Calendar, 03:00]
Kael leaned against the crate — rough wood, splintering in places — and let his shoulders drop. He breathed. Just breathed for a while, doing nothing else.
His ledger was closed. The numbers were done. And for the first time in hours, his mind went quiet.
The darkness around him was thick, almost tangible. The whole warehouse smelled like pine and rust and old salt, the kind that gets into your lungs and stays there. It was silent. Completely silent. Peaceful, even.
Like standing in the center of some infinite, empty vault.
He let himself drift in that numb stillness, knowing — from the way the guards' boots weren't echoing on the cobblestone outside — that no one was coming. The inspections were over. His body needed rest. His brain needed it more.
It made sense. He'd been running on fumes for weeks now, ever since they stuck him with managing logistics in the most corrupt sector of the East Blue.
These past few weeks had been... different. Kael had seen some genuinely horrifying shit since waking up in this world. Pirate raids where people got gutted like fish. Sea Kings the size of apartment buildings. Marines — men with the word Justice stitched on their backs — beating civilians half to death because they could.
But nothing had been quite as suffocating as the bureaucracy.
Not on this scale.
It had taken three Vice Admirals just to get a fraction of the funding needed to keep the forward bases running, and even then the supply lines were held together with spit and prayer. There wasn't a single night where the quartermasters didn't end up in the red. Not a single shipment where some corrupt captain didn't skim off the top.
"How the hell does the Navy even function?"
His voice sounded strange in all that silence.
He knew the Admirals were monsters. He also knew their enemies were just as bad. But he still couldn't wrap his head around how this bloated, ancient military machine hadn't collapsed under its own weight decades ago. They fought on islands that were literally crumbling, and somehow never seemed to worry about the thousands of tons of hardtack and black powder it took to keep a siege going.
After a while, Kael decided there wasn't much point in comparing himself to people like Garp or Akainu. Their power existed on a completely different axis. A different reality, really.
It wasn't about who could punch harder. It was about the foundation of that strength. Where it came from. What it could do.
Kael didn't know exactly when the timeline would break — when that straw-hat-wearing idiot would set sail and turn the world upside down. What he did know was that his Devil Fruit was different.
The Hokan Hokan no Mi. The Vault-Vault Fruit.
It was a sanctuary for someone weak. A power where a reincarnated accountant could actually use his brain instead of getting one-shot by some Haki monster or Logia user.
An infinite dimensional inventory. A space where no one — not even the Fleet Admiral — could dictate what he kept and what he threw away.
Even if the Grand Line was a bloodbath waiting to happen, the World Government had resources. Mountains of them. Stockpiles that made pirate hoards look pathetic.
And Kael had his hands on the ledger.
Unlike the local Marines, who just blindly trusted whatever requisition forms got handed to them, Kael knew exactly what every item in this warehouse was worth.
Appraise. Store. Reroute.
They think power is shooting fire, Kael thought, smiling faintly in the dark. Power is controlling the food supply of a hundred thousand men with the flick of a wrist.
He started with the inventory.
The inventory wasn't accurate. It was complete bullshit, actually.
Six of the seven shipments bound for Captain Nezumi were supposed to be filled with high-grade steel cutlasses. Kael walked over to the nearest crate, pressed his palm against the cold iron bands. The smell of gun oil and sawdust hit him hard.
His power activated.
In an instant, three hundred masterwork blades vanished into his vault. In their place, he swapped in three hundred brittle pig-iron swords he'd confiscated from some no-name pirate crew last week.
The seals on the crates stayed perfectly intact.
His vault was growing. Slowly filling with the best weapons, the strongest medicine, the highest-grade ammunition the Navy had to offer.
All things considered, he'd gotten through the inspection in pretty good shape. Despite how rotten the system was, nothing was actually lost. Everything could be appraised, stolen, hoarded. Eventually.
Which brought him to the next item on the agenda.
Figuring out what the hell was going on in the world around him.
Kael slipped the brass-bound ledger into the inner pocket of his coat and stepped away from the crates. His boots hit stone. He walked toward the heavy iron doors, ready to face whatever dawn had waiting for him.