Starting Out with a Knife

Faced with the wilderness, full of all kinds of unknowns, Dawn, an ordinary person raised in the city, truly had no idea what to do.

Survival in the wild was fine when it was just something you read about in books, but once you had to actually do it yourself, you were screwed.

If he had not inherited this kid's memories of two years spent wandering, Dawn would have already felt that his death was near. After all, surface-level knowledge and practical experience were vastly different.

Even if, perhaps because of transmigration, his memories from his previous life were as clear as if they had been carved into his mind, so what?

Even if he had read Pirate Chronicle and One Piece and knew the course of history, what did it matter?

None of it was of any use. The first thing he had to consider was surviving.

The thought of an adult having to rely on a little brat's memories just to stay alive...

Dawn found it so ironic that he could not even laugh, because only after truly coming to this world could one understand how bitter and cruel it was beneath the surface.

Yet this vast world was simply like that.

Cruelty and splendor shone side by side; whether good or bad, everything was mixed together.

And because of that, this world was so wonderfully vibrant. Battle and power, ambition and dreams—all of it came together in one word: freedom!

Lawless freedom!!

When Dawn confirmed the current year from those Marines, his memories told him something.

The era of great upheaval was about to arrive.

Sea Year 1493.

The future Pirate King, Gol D. Roger, had most likely already contracted an incurable illness.

After that, the Roger Pirates would seek the help of the greatest doctor of this era—Crocus—and have him join their crew, beginning their final voyage.

And Crocus, wanting to find the whereabouts of the Rumbar Pirates, would join the Roger Pirates as their ship's doctor.

Sea Year 1498.

A year after the Roger Pirates announced their disbandment, Gol D. Roger would turn himself in to the World Government, which would publicly claim that he had been captured.

Roger would be executed in Loguetown, the place where he had been born.

But what the Marines had not expected was that Roger would use his own death to raise the curtain on the Great Pirate Era.

The era began to run wild.

Countless tyrants and heroes set sail for the seas. Before the tide of the age, anyone who stood in its way would be ruthlessly crushed.

In the coming era of upheaval, only three names would resound throughout the world:

The future Pirate King—Gol D. Roger.

A man whom even songs called "more terrifying than a monster," known as the strongest man in the world—Whitebeard.

The captain of the Flying Pirate crew, known as the "Sky Pirate," who commanded a massive airborne fleet—Golden Lion.

In this era on the verge of running wild, Shanks, one of the future Four Emperors, was merely an apprentice aboard Roger's ship.

Kaido of the Beasts was only a great pirate as well, but his reputation was nowhere near the title of a future Emperor, let alone anything like the Calamities.

As for the future female Emperor, Charlotte Linlin of the Big Mom Pirates, she had not put on weight yet and was still a woman decent enough to look at.

It was only after marrying countless husbands and producing children like a sow that her figure became distorted...

As for the future Shichibukai, they too were each roaming the seas, though some had yet to mature and still had no trace of themselves in the world.

For example, Crocodile, still young and in his twenties, was currently brimming with ambition to take Whitebeard's head.

Hawk Eyes had not yet become the world's greatest swordsman either. He was roaming the world, advancing toward that very goal.

These young Shichibukai, who would become famous across the seas in the future, were still on the path of growth.

The Marines, meanwhile, had three Logia users known as "monsters."

And among the older generation, Admiral Zephyr, Fleet Admiral Kong, Sengoku, and Garp—who among them was not a figure who awed the seas?

In an era like this, Abraham Dawn knew that absolute peace was impossible.

At first, when he came to this world, all he wanted was to return home.

This place was too dangerous. Countless unfamiliar things made people instinctively wary and yearn to find somewhere familiar.

But after accepting the truth, he realized that his longing for the tranquility of his previous life was not as strong as he had thought.

In his previous life, he had been a doctor. Through his own hard work and the arrangements of his adoptive parents, he had become a young, wealthy surgeon.

Because he had been adopted, his adoptive parents had been much older than Dawn. Though they regretted not seeing him marry and have children, the two of them had passed away peacefully, content with the filial Dawn.

Afterward, alone in the world, Dawn spent every day living that same mechanical life.

Every day, he numbly performed surgeries on patient after patient.

Wearing a mask and unable to sincerely feel that he was alive, Dawn might have been called someone who did not know how good he had it, but he truly could not feel alive.

Only when he saw battles that made his blood boil did the fighting instinct seemingly born within him burn, stirring him with restless excitement.

But without exception, his professional discipline and willpower suppressed it.

For someone who longed for battle, living in a world full of "shackles" meant being destined for mediocrity in this life.

When the brightest light within you was utterly useless in this world, how could you possibly compare with those who could display their talents in times of peace?

Like a general whose horse had been returned to the mountains, he would grieve that he would never again have the chance to charge into battle and kill enemies. Yet more than that, he would rejoice at the arrival of peace, knowing that no more soldiers under his command would die.

Just like Zhang Dawn, who longed for an extraordinary life yet had blended into a peaceful world and lived ordinarily.

As a battlefield doctor who had taken part in humanitarian relief efforts, he knew that war brought nothing but sorrow, so he had no complaints about that.

But if there truly had been a world war, perhaps the solitary Zhang Dawn might have become a hero who fought for his country and people.

But obviously, that was impossible.

What Zhang Dawn had not expected was that one night, while rewatching One Piece for the third time, he had drifted off in a daze. There was no infinite-transmigration scenario, but when he woke up, he had become the current Abraham Dawn.

Even if his previous mechanical life had left him numb, the indifference toward life and the difficulty of survival in this world represented far too drastic a leap.

It had even made Dawn want, more than once, to return to that peaceful and warm world.

Unfortunately, Dawn could only accept reality in the end, and he discovered that this world was the one he wanted!

But as someone with sound social values, Zhang Dawn in his previous life and Abraham Dawn in this life both had proper morals. He did not want to become a pirate in this lifetime.

It was not only because of the values from his previous life. He had personally seen the pain those pirates who burned, killed, and plundered inflicted upon people along the way—even he himself was a victim of pirates.

He could originally have reached Marine Headquarters safely and started with a golden hand, but now, even a silver start would be a struggle.

Becoming a pirate was impossible. There was no way he would be a pirate in this life! He would not burn, kill, or plunder, only to wear a pirate's skin for no reason and get hunted down by the Marines.

If he had to put it into words, Dawn belonged to the neutral good camp. But there was no denying one thing.

In One Piece, although the Marines were treated as villains, the ones who maintained order on the seas had always been the Marines.

But unfortunately, this world was not a story told from a pirate's perspective.

Arms dealing, assassinations, slavery, even the destruction of nations—such darkness existed everywhere.

So Dawn felt that joining the Marines to uphold justice was also a good choice.

He would grow strong enough to ignore threats, fight the powerful figures of this world, taste its food, and experience the different charms this different world had to offer.

Then he would find a beautiful young girl. When he grew old, he could choose an island, become its protector, and peacefully live out the rest of his life. That would be quite wonderful too.

But the premise of all that was that he could survive.