Kid

If this were before his soul transmigrated, Maud could have easily taken a bullet.

But now...

The dark muzzle of the gun hung over him like the scythe of Death itself—once it fell, there would be no escape.

"I mean no harm."

Facing the gun, with no room for thought, Maud quickly declared his stance.

The muzzle had aimed at him the moment it entered the door, meaning the person holding it had sensed his small movements before even pushing it open.

In this situation, Maud had no choice but to prove he was harmless.

At the end of the day, it was because this body's current state couldn't support any of his responses.

Silence reigned outside the door; the gun remained motionless.

After a few breaths, a slightly hoarse female voice sounded from beyond: "Stand in front of me."

"Alright."

Maud moved without hesitation to stand directly before the door, the gun following his every step.

Once in front of the door, Maud finally saw the person holding the gun outside.

It was a thin young girl in coarse cloth clothes.

She had a crop of short, sharp hair, and three scars like claw marks slanted from her left brow to the right corner of her mouth.

If not for the hoarse voice he'd just heard, he might have mistaken her for a man at first glance.

"I mean no harm."

Maud reiterated his stance, then slowly raised his hands to show he was unarmed.

At the same time, he glanced at the burlap sack the girl held in her left hand, his eyelids twitching slightly.

Compared to the steady, practiced grip on the gun, the presence of that sack made Maud far more uneasy.

Sunny stared into Maud's eyes and said flatly, "Behave. If we wanted to harm you, do you think you'd still have the chance to talk here?"

After a mild warning, Sunny smoothly holstered her flintlock.

She also knew that Maud's earlier small movements were more out of self-preservation.

Otherwise, she would have pulled the trigger without a moment's hesitation.

Seeing that the situation wasn't so dire, Maud let out a breath.

"Since you're awake, I won't be needing this."

Before Maud could react, Sunny casually tossed the sack aside.

Counting the return trip, this guy had been unconscious for a full seven days.

According to Saul, if he wasn't going to wake up, they might as well recycle him as waste to recover some of the medical costs spent on Maud.

But who would have thought he'd wake up at the last moment?

Maud glanced at the sack, his lips moving slightly. "If I hadn't woken up... was that sack meant for me?"

"Yeah. If you hadn't woken up, I'd have stuffed you in that sack and sold you to the black market. Then you'd be dismantled into a dozen parts by the 'Undertaker' and turned into a commodity anyone could buy with money."

Sunny bared a cold smile.

Maud said nothing.

Dismantled, parts, sold.

The wording was still euphemistic, but he could roughly guess what kind of shady business it was.

And the gunshots earlier made it clear this place had nothing to do with safety.

He could tell Sunny wasn't joking, but as she said, if they wanted to harm him, he wouldn't have woken up at all.

In other words, though the future was uncertain, for now, he was at least safe.

As long as things weren't bad, he had a chance to use the Hunter's Notebook to grow.

"What should I call you?"

Maud turned to ask the girl's name.

Sunny slowly narrowed her eyes, a smirk tugging at her lips. "You're pretty calm, huh. Just call me Sunny. As for your name, I think I already know it."

Maud froze, confused, but then saw Sunny pull a bronze pocket watch from her pocket.

Seeing that familiar yet unfamiliar watch, Maud raised an eyebrow.

That was his.

No, to be precise, it belonged to his predecessor.

But when his predecessor was being transferred to the Slave Ship, the watch should have been swiped by a man.

Now it was in Sunny's hands.

Did that mean the ones who attacked the Slave Ship were Sunny and her group?

Maud thought silently.

If he remembered correctly, that pocket watch had two photos embedded in it. One was a full-body shot taken on his predecessor's sixteenth birthday, at his coming-of-age ceremony.

In the lower right corner of the photo was his predecessor's handwritten signature, no wonder Sunny had said that.

The other photo was a family portrait of three... Hmm?

Was it a family of three or four?

His head throbbed again.

Maud furrowed his brow.

Sunny was looking down at the pocket watch and didn't see Maud's expression.

"This pocket watch is yours, but it's my 'spoils of war' now. However, since we might become colleagues in the future, I'll reluctantly return it to its rightful owner."

With that, Sunny tossed the pocket watch to Maud.

Maud caught the watch, enduring the stabbing pain as he flipped open the lid, revealing the stopped clock face inside and the two photos embedded in the cover.

His gaze swept past his own full-body photo and then stopped on the family portrait of four, all smiling brilliantly.

Four?

Wasn't it just his predecessor and his predecessor's parents?

Fragments of memory suddenly showed signs of resurfacing, and the stabbing pain in his head intensified.

Maud quickly snapped the lid shut, remaining silent.

He was grateful to this body for giving him a new life, but he didn't want to be influenced by the lingering memories either.

Sunny noticed Maud's odd behavior but had no interest in probing deeper. She warned, "As someone who's been through it, I suggest you destroy that photo with the signature and come up with an alias for yourself."

Maud lifted his gaze to Sunny, not asking why, and said, "Thank you. I'll give it serious thought."

Sunny nodded, then glanced at the bloodstained bandage on Maud's forehead. Without further words, she cut to the chase.

"Come. Follow me to see Saul."

Maud naturally had no right to refuse. He put away the pocket watch and obediently followed Sunny.

The two walked one after the other into the corridor and down the stairs to the first floor.

No sooner had they reached the first floor than a loud crash suddenly came from ahead in the hallway, like a wooden door being violently kicked open and slamming against the wall.

Sunny stopped at the sound. Maud followed suit, halting his steps and looking toward the front of the corridor.

As the noise of the door crashing faded, an old man's voice, raspy like a duck's throat, rang out.

"Kid, you bastard, kicking my shop door again. Believe me, I'll pull out your tendons?"

"Shut up. I brought the money. Hurry up and bring out Keanu's gun."

A distinctly arrogant male voice shot back.

"Get lost. I'd rather dismantle that gun and throw it in a landfill than sell it to you."

"Oh, then go ahead and toss it. I'll find it anyway."

"Scram!"

The exchange came from ahead in the corridor, where the end seemed to be a small shop.

Listening to the conversation from the front store, Sunny let out a rather helpless sigh.

The dialogue continued, the tension growing fiercer.

"Follow me."

Sunny quickened her pace.

Maud followed in silence.

The corridor wasn't long, and they soon reached the front shop.

Without time to observe the shop's layout or type, Maud's attention was immediately drawn to the old man and the youth who seemed on the verge of breaking into a fight at any moment.

Just as their voices had suggested, it was an old man and a young man.

Maud guessed the old man might be the Saul Sunny had mentioned, while the other, unruly youth, was probably a customer.

"Hmm?"

Maud looked at the youth's conspicuous red spiky hair, then his gaze swept past the goggles worn on the youth's forehead, finally stopping on the vaguely familiar face.

Fragments of memory associated with it suddenly flooded in.

"Kid?"

Maud's heart skipped a beat as he recognized the red-haired spiky-headed youth.

When he'd heard the name earlier, he hadn't made the connection. But now, seeing the real person, he was certain this was the world of One Piece.

However, compared to the images deep in his memory, this Kid was noticeably younger and more immature.

Maud instinctively marked Kid as one of his prey.

Because the Hunter's Notebook's ability was inherently designed to target characters whose information was exposed in the original story.