East Blue, an unnamed island.
A peaceful beach stretched beneath towering cliffs.
Dense jungle covered the cliffs.
Sunlight brushed the leaves, tracing natural patterns across the forest floor.
A clearly man-made path wound through the forest toward the edge of the cliffs.
A handsome man stood there, tall and powerfully built, with black hair and dark eyes. He wore a short-sleeved shirt and loose trousers.
He was steadily walking forward, holding a fishing boat aloft with one arm.
The boat looked several times wider than the man, yet in his hands it seemed as light as air, as though it weighed nothing.
Will reached a sturdy tree and slowly set the boat down beside it.
He looked at the three characters carved into the trunk—"Aster"—and the fresh grave beneath the tree.
A complicated look crossed Will's face.
He turned, bent his knees, and slowly sat down with his back against the trunk.
Will picked up the bottle of wine resting before the grave, opened it, and poured some onto the ground. Then he quietly drank from it.
"Old man, I found a pretty good place for you, didn't I?"
"You won't be out in the blazing sun, and the sea isn't too far away. You can even enjoy the view from up here whenever you like."
"I even brought over the boat you spent half your life fishing with."
"You can rest easy now."
Will rested his hands on his knees, holding the bottle as he murmured to himself.
He seemed to want his words to reach the grave. He didn't even care whether the old man could still hear him.
When he finished, a flicker of remembrance crossed his eyes. He took another long drink.
More than two years had passed since he arrived in the world of One Piece.
Originally, he had been nothing more than a martial arts enthusiast and fighter.
The first time he competed in Muay Thai in Southeast Asia, he won the championship.
Later, he gradually became the strongest fighter in Southeast Asia's underground fighting scene.
But now, by some twist of fate, he had become a fisherman who caught fish at sea—a stinking fishmonger in the eyes of many.
Will couldn't help recalling how he had been competing in an iron-cage death match at the time.
To test his limits, he had chosen to fight ten top fighters at once.
After giving it everything he had and taking down every opponent,
he had barely left the underground arena, with no time to celebrate, when he ran straight into a truck.
They had trucks like that in Southeast Asia, too?
That was the only thought in his mind before he hit the ground and lost consciousness.
But when Will opened his eyes again, he found himself inexplicably on a deserted island.
Before he could make sense of what had happened,
a system with no intelligence appeared in his mind, making him realize that things were far more complicated than he had imagined.
Thinking of that, Will instinctively checked the skill section of the system panel.
[Skill: Language Mastery] [Language Mastery: Master the common language of the One Piece world]
Language Mastery was one of the system's initial rewards.
Thanks to this skill, he had immediately realized that he had been transported straight into the world of One Piece.
Will loved fighting strong opponents.
But in his free time, he also watched movies and shows related to combat.
That included hot-blooded anime, of course.
In his understanding, the world of One Piece was exceptionally dangerous.
Not only did the jungles on land hold all kinds of enormous beasts,
the sea was also home to countless Sea Beasts of many different kinds, as well as Sea Kings of unimaginable size.
And the oceans were filled with countless vicious, brutal pirates.
There were also the Marines, who called themselves defenders of Justice but turned a blind eye to the crimes of their Celestial Dragons masters and chose to enable them.
Then there was the Revolutionary Army, a group with no clear principles whose actions seemed to contradict one another.
All of this made the world of One Piece seem twisted and chaotic.
Ordinary people in that world already struggled to survive.
And Will was a foreigner who had arrived from another world.
Physically, he was probably weaker than even an ordinary person there.
Fortunately, the system's initial rewards had also included one chance to remake his body.
It could increase his physical strength and innate talents proportionally, bringing them closer in line with the world of One Piece.
So Will didn't hesitate for a moment. He immediately chose to remake his body.
His body then underwent an enormous transformation.
He became far more muscular and powerfully built, and his height shot up to nearly three meters.
His muscles didn't look bulky. Instead, they appeared lean and defined.
His physique was as perfect as a sculpture.
His legs weren't thin and underdeveloped like those of some people in One Piece, either. His proportions were perfectly balanced.
On top of that,
the two innate talents the system had detected in him also grew much stronger after his body was remade.
[Unyielding Will → Iron Will: Your will is extremely difficult to sway through external forces. You possess powerful resistance to effects on your spirit, thoughts, desires, memories, sense of self, personality, mind, and emotions.] [Master Fighter → Born for Battle: You possess exceptional learning and comprehension abilities in combat, as well as unusually abundant energy and stamina.]
After his body was remade, Will's overall strength increased tremendously.
A casual strike could easily snap a thick tree trunk or shatter a hard rock.
Even the enormous beasts on the island were no match for him, becoming a steady source of food.
Full of confidence, Will began cutting down trees and building a boat on the sixth day after arriving on the deserted island, preparing to sail off in search of another inhabited island.
Unfortunately, he hadn't yet fully understood how frightening and merciless the sea in this world could be.
So after he sailed out on a raft,
he was swept up in a sudden storm without mercy.
The flimsy raft couldn't withstand the onslaught and was almost instantly destroyed by the storm.
Will could only cling desperately to the thickest piece of wood on instinct before the raging sea swallowed him whole.
After that,
if not for an old fisherman named Aster, who pulled him from the sea after he had already lost consciousness and fallen into a coma,
he might well have died in that shipwreck.
Although Aster had no intention of asking him to repay the favor,
Will still chose to quietly stay by the old man's side.
First, he wanted to repay the man for saving his life.
Second, staying with him gave Will a chance to gradually adapt to this dangerous world, both familiar and strange.
After that shipwreck,
Will's confidence, which had grown a little too inflated after his strength increased so dramatically, settled down once more.
Over the next two years, aside from going fishing and selling the catch with Aster,
Will learned from Aster that he was in the East Blue.
He also began using his free time to draw on what he remembered about fighting,
as well as his own ideas about combat from the anime and movies he had seen.
He began studying and experimenting with various forms of martial arts.
In the end, he made quite a bit of progress.
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