Marine Calendar 1499
Maple Leaf Island, in the first half of the Grand Line.
The island had gotten its name from its shape, which resembled a maple leaf, and from the trees that grew there, whose leaves were red.
The people of Maple Leaf Island were simple and honest. Nearly half of them were professional lumberjacks or gardeners who tended Red Leaf Trees.
Thanks to the climate, this unusual plant seemed to thrive on the island.
Once they reached a certain age, Red Leaf Trees became excellent lumber for shipbuilding, so most of the island's residents made their living from them.
In a stretch of Red Leaf forest by the coast, a black-haired boy swung his axe with all his might, hacking furiously at the thick trunk in front of him.
But perhaps his technique was lacking, or perhaps the axe in his hands simply refused to cooperate. Each time he brought it down, he failed to strike the same spot.
For someone born and raised on Maple Leaf Island, you could be bad at drinking and bragging, or at wielding weapons, but your tree-felling skills had to be at least proficient.
If anyone had been around to see Wood's chopping, the islanders would probably have laughed at him for being worse than a child. Fortunately, there was no one nearby.
Wood was already fifteen, which counted as an adult in this world.
Yet his lumberjacking skills were worse than those of some little kids, despite being a skill nearly every resident of Maple Leaf Island had mastered.
Still, that wasn't his fault. Wood wasn't originally from this world.
His body was indeed that of Wood, a native of Maple Leaf Island, but his soul had changed.
"Ding! You have completed one thousand chops and felled five Red Leaf Trees. Your result is below average. Mission complete.
Congratulations! You have received one opportunity to use the Life Simulator."
That's right. Wood was a transmigrator, and he had the "cheat" that came with the territory. It was a small program game that had been popular shortly before his transmigration, called the Life Simulator.
The reason Wood had been chopping trees so desperately wasn't because he hoped to make a fortune doing it. He wasn't Logger Qiang, the bald guy chased and run over every day by two bears in the forest.
He was doing it because the system had assigned him a mission.
Mission Name: Lumberjack of Maple Leaf Island
Mission Requirements: Use the designated axe to strike Red Leaf Trees one thousand times. The more trees you fell, the higher your rating.
Completion Criteria: Receive a rating of at least average. No time limit.
Mission Reward: One opportunity to use the Life Simulator.
(ps: Be grateful, you little weakling. This is the well-known beginner-friendly bonus mission. Don't expect future missions to be this easy.)
Seeing the mission-complete notice, Wood finally lowered his axe and let out a long breath.
His still-tender hands had been gripping the axe for so long that they were weak with exhaustion and covered in blisters.
The system kept calling this mission easy, a beginner's bonus round, but Wood couldn't disagree more.
Who knew how many days he'd already spent felling trees in this forest?
From barely knowing how to hold an axe to finally completing the mission, Wood had spent more than three months chopping down Red Leaf Trees!
At first, his physical strength was so poor he couldn't even swing the axe with force a thousand times in one day. It took him more than a month just to barely meet that target.
During the two months that followed, he managed to swing the axe a thousand times each day, but he either felled only one tree or none at all.
He couldn't get an average rating, so the mission remained incomplete. After that, Wood could do little but numb himself with the same daily routine of chopping trees.
Fortunately, thanks to the peculiar nature of this world—or, more precisely, the fact that people here were generally stronger and recovered faster than those in his old world—even when Wood was exhausted to the point of collapse, he was full of energy again the next day.
And since the mission had no time limit, that seemingly simple tree-felling task would otherwise have been an outright death mission for him.
Wood had actually been in this world for more than a year, but the system had only activated six months ago.
When he first transmigrated, Wood had no idea what kind of world he'd landed in. But the people of Maple Leaf Island were simple and honest, and there didn't seem to be anyone powerful around, so for a while he thought he'd ended up in an ordinary, peaceful world.
The technology here was perhaps far behind that of his old world, but the natural way of life and unpolluted air made Wood feel quite relaxed.
Just as Wood thought he could use some of the advanced knowledge from his previous life to scrape by and live out his days in peace, news that rang across the entire sea shattered his plans for a bright future.
"Do you want my treasure? You can have it! Go find it! I left everything I own in one place."
On the newspaper delivered by a News Coo, a black-haired man kneeling at the Execution Platform yet wearing a calm expression occupied the front page. His story was so long it took up nearly half the paper.
In Marine Calendar 1498, Gol D. Roger, the King of the Pirates, was executed. But his final words stirred the entire sea, sending countless people rushing out onto the waves. This world had entered what people called the Great Pirate Era!
It was only after reading that report that Wood finally realized what kind of world he'd ended up in.
This wasn't some peaceful world at all! And it wasn't that there were no powerful people here; he'd just been born in a place full of weaklings!
Roger's death heralded the beginning of the Great Pirate Era. Only a few months had passed, but the tide of the age had already reached Maple Leaf Island.
The reason was simple: the Great Pirate Era had begun, and people who wanted to go out to sea needed ships.
Building ships required not only shipwrights but also excellent lumber.
Unfortunately, the Red Leaf Trees on Maple Leaf Island were among the finest materials for shipbuilding. So, caught up in the tide of the age, pirates flooded the island.
The people of Maple Leaf Island had lived peaceful lives for generations. What chance did they have against vicious pirates?
Three waves of pirates came in a single month, and most of the fine lumber stored in the residents' homes was looted.
Wood had no skill at chopping trees back then, so his home was spared.
The pirates didn't just rob the island of its resources. They'd kill people at the slightest provocation. Wood had finally activated his system after witnessing a little girl about to die before his eyes and, unable to stand by, mustering the courage to stab a pirate underling in the back.
(favorited this new book, and please follow it—thank you, everyone (▽｀)
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