Bare-Hand Fighting Tournament

The next morning, Sang Wei led Luo Ya to breakfast, and shortly after, they arrived at a plaza packed with a sea of people.

The plaza was filled with a large crowd of bizarre-looking pirates and muscular men, interspersed with a few pretty young ladies.

Just then, a loud voice boomed across the arena.

"Ladies and gentlemen, today is the first Bare-Hand Fighting Tournament. I can already feel everyone's enthusiasm, so without further ado, let us welcome our contestants to the stage."

As the host finished speaking, a large group of registered participants headed toward a stadium he gestured toward.

Entering the stadium, which resembled an ancient colosseum, they saw a man with short blonde hair and a short beard sitting on the highest platform. He wore a gold-colored short-sleeved shirt, his tall, powerful physique exuding a sense of raw strength.

Once all the contestants and spectators had taken their seats, the blonde man picked up the microphone.

"My subjects, I am your King, Brunen. Everyone, show off your muscles to your heart's content!" After saying this, he raised both arms, clenched his fists, and flexed slightly.

He struck a front double-biceps pose, smiling to reveal a mouthful of white teeth, which prompted a large number of men in the audience and the contestants' waiting area to scramble to imitate him. For a moment, the atmosphere inside the stadium became intensely "philosophical."

Heh, it's rare to see a king so beloved by his people. Luo Ya lit a cigarette, listening as the referee in front of him explained the rules of the competition.

The tournament was structured as a preliminary selection, divided into eight rounds. Each round was a chaotic brawl involving over three hundred people.

The final eight would then be determined. They would face off in one-on-one duels, with the losers eliminated until the final champion was crowned. It was a simple and brutal set of rules.

After all, only the champion received a reward; everyone else was just there to make up the numbers.

After hearing the rules, they were divided into batches and climbed onto the ring under the direction of the host and the referee.

Luo Ya was assigned to the eighth round. While waiting for the first round to begin, he noticed a cylindrical object slowly approaching King Brunen.

To be precise, it was being supported by two burly men. Was that... a red dress? It had to be a dress, right?

Cough, cough! Luo Ya choked on his cigarette and coughed violently.

The hell, two hundred pounds? That's at least three hundred, minimum. And that height has to be at least two meters; they're like a pillar.

Luo Ya thought to himself.

Just then, the referee's shout brought Luo Ya back to his senses: "The first of the final eight! Contestant Annajia from the Flower Country!"

The arena was littered with a dense pile of wailing contestants.

It ended that quickly? The Flower Country seems to have a martial art called the Hasshoken that's quite famous.

Luo Ya pondered as he looked at the beautiful woman on the stage, who had long, black, shoulder-length hair and was wearing a green cheongsam.

It was worth noting that in the original story, the Flower Country was a powerful pirate nation. Although the internal martial art, Hasshoken, hadn't been described in much detail, the fact that Chinjao had a bounty of 542 million berries, and that Garp had to flatten eight mountains to train his fists to defeat him, meant it definitely had its own merits.

The fact that this first round ended so swiftly made Luo Ya perk up. He began to pay close attention to the subsequent battles.

However, the following six matches left Luo Ya deeply disappointed. Aside from a bearded pirate in the third round who was decent, the other contestants really couldn't pique his interest.

Finally, it was Luo Ya's turn to take the stage, and he joined the flow of people climbing onto the ring.

"If you are knocked off the ring or fall to the ground and cannot get up, you are disqualified. Is that clear?" the referee asked, standing in the center of the ring.

"No problem! Understood! What a nag!" Scattered responses came back, but the referee didn't care. He simply jumped off the ring and announced the start of the match.

The surrounding crowd instantly descended into a brawl. To be honest, in the world of One Piece, there weren't really many techniques; most people relied on sheer brute force.

Even the world's greatest swordsman, Hawk-Eye, just swung out sword slashes that were thick and massive. He had never seen any truly exquisite techniques.

This was why the profession of "swordsman" was increasingly criticized; most viewers from his past life felt the class had become redundant.

Even the most badass swordsman just followed the path of brute force. When Luo Ya had asked Maynard, he hadn't learned of any particularly sophisticated moves either. If not for the exceptional attack power of Sword Intent, it likely wouldn't have remained a distinct profession for this long.

The only move, the "Draw-and-Slash," when stripped down, was nothing more than a difference in footwork and power generation.

During this time, Luo Ya had been racking his brain, trying to develop a flashy and powerful ultimate move—something like the "Sword Twenty-Three" or "Ten Thousand Swords Return to Origin" from his past life—to prove the worth of a swordsman. But he hadn't made any headway.

Not to mention these pirates in the first half of the Grand Line.

As several contestants were kicked off the ring by Luo Ya, the remaining ones realized he wasn't someone to be trifled with and began to avoid him, fighting among themselves instead.

This directly led to a scene where everywhere Luo Ya walked, the area around him remained empty.

Sighing in resignation, Luo Ya simply took out the others one by one with a single punch each, sending them off the ring to avoid wasting time.

"The final member of the top eight! The Black Flame Swordsman, Luo Ya!" With the referee's shout, the curtain finally fell on the day's events.

By the time the eight rounds were over, the sky had already turned dark. After King Brunen announced the end of the day and informed everyone of the schedule for the next day, the crowd gradually filed out of the stadium.

As Luo Ya walked out, pondering what to have for dinner, he didn't notice the deep, meaningful gaze King Brunen cast in his direction from afar.

The next morning, Luo Ya arrived at the stadium early. Anyone who could make it into the top eight wasn't some weakling who would fall to a single punch, so Luo Ya was actually looking forward to today's matches.

The other contestants arrived one after another as well.