Early the next morning, Sang Wei took Luo Ya to breakfast. Before long, they arrived at a huge, crowded plaza.
The plaza was packed with all kinds of bizarre-looking pirates and a crowd of musclebound men, along with a few pretty young women.
Just then, a loud voice rang out across the plaza.
"Ladies and gentlemen, today marks the first Bare-Hand Fighting Tournament! I can feel your enthusiasm, so without further ado, let's welcome our competitors!"
Once the host finished speaking, the large crowd of registered participants followed his gesture toward a nearby venue.
Inside, it looked like an ancient gladiatorial arena. On the highest platform sat a man with short blond hair and a neatly trimmed beard. He wore a golden short-sleeved shirt, and his tall, powerful build radiated strength.
Once all the competitors and spectators had entered and taken their seats, the blond man picked up a microphone.
"My people, I am your king, Brunen! Show off those muscles to your heart's content!" He raised both arms and clenched his fists, bending them slightly.
He struck a pose that showed off his biceps and flashed a smile with a row of white teeth. The sight prompted countless men in the audience and the competitors' waiting area to imitate him. For a moment, the whole arena was filled with an unmistakable air of manly camaraderie.
"Heh, it's rare to see a king so beloved by his people." Luo Ya lit a cigarette as he listened to the referee explain the rules.
The tournament was divided into preliminary rounds, with the competitors split into eight groups. Each group had a battle royal with more than three hundred participants.
The top eight would then be decided. They'd fight one-on-one, with the loser eliminated each time, until the champion was crowned. The rules were simple and brutal.
After all, only the champion would receive a reward. Everyone else was just there to make up the numbers.
After hearing the rules, the competitors went up onto the platform in batches, under the host and referee's direction.
Luo Ya was assigned to the eighth group. While waiting for the first match to begin, he noticed a cylindrical object slowly approaching King Brunen.
More accurately, it was being helped along by two burly men. It wore a long red dress? It should be a dress, right?
Cough, cough! Luo Ya choked on his cigarette and coughed violently twice.
Was that supposed to be two hundred jin? It had to be at least three hundred. And it must be two meters tall—like a pillar.
Luo Ya thought to himself.
Just then, the referee's shout snapped him back to attention. "The first competitor to make the top eight! Annajia from the Flower Country!"
A mass of competitors lay scattered across the arena, groaning.
"That ended fast. The Flower Country has a famous fighting style called Hasshoken, if I remember right."
Luo Ya watched the beautiful woman standing in the arena, with long black hair falling over her shoulders and a green qipao, and pondered.
In the original story, the Flower Country was a powerful pirate nation. Its martial art, Hasshoken, hadn't been described in much detail.
But considering Chinjao's bounty of 542 million Beli, and how Garp had trained by smashing eight mountains to defeat him, the style clearly had something going for it.
The first match had ended so quickly that Luo Ya sat up and began paying attention to the remaining bouts.
But the next six fights were a great disappointment. Apart from a pirate with a bushy beard in the third match who was halfway decent, none of the other competitors could hold Luo Ya's interest.
At last, it was Luo Ya's turn. He followed the crowd onto the platform.
"If you're knocked off the platform or can't get back up, you're disqualified. Does everyone understand?" the referee asked from the middle of the arena.
"No problem! Got it! Quit yapping!" A scattered chorus of replies rang out. The referee didn't bother responding. He simply jumped down from the platform and announced the start of the match.
The crowd immediately erupted into a brawl. But honestly, the One Piece World didn't have many techniques. Most people just relied on brute force.
Even Hawk-Eye, the World's Greatest Swordsman, sent out sword slashes that were enormous and thick. He didn't seem to use any particularly refined techniques.
That was also why people criticized swordsmen as getting worse and worse. Most viewers in Luo Ya's previous life thought the swordsman profession had become almost entirely unnecessary.
Even the most powerful swordsmen relied on brute force. And when Luo Ya had asked Maynard, he hadn't heard of many especially refined techniques either. Without a strong sword intent to give their attacks real power, the swordsman might long ago have ceased to exist as a distinct profession.
Even the famous iai slash, when you got right down to it, was just a matter of footwork and how you applied your strength.
For some time now, Luo Ya had racked his brains trying to develop a spectacular, powerful move like the ones from his previous life—something like Sword Style: Twenty-Three or Ten Thousand Swords Return to Origin—to prove what swordsmen could do. But he still hadn't come up with anything.
And that was without even considering the pirates in the first half of the Grand Line.
After Luo Ya kicked several competitors off the platform, the remaining ones realized he wasn't someone to mess with. They began avoiding him and fighting one another instead.
Soon, wherever Luo Ya went, the space around him was completely empty.
He sighed helplessly, then knocked everyone else off the platform with one punch apiece to avoid wasting time.
"The final competitor to make the top eight! The Black Flame Swordsman, Luo Ya!" The referee's announcement finally brought the match to a close.
After eight rounds of fighting, dusk had already fallen. King Brunen declared the event over and announced the time of the next day's matches. The crowd gradually began filing out of the venue.
As Luo Ya walked out, pondering what to have for dinner, he failed to notice King Brunen watching him from afar with a meaningful look in his eyes.
Early the next morning, Luo Ya arrived at the venue. Anyone who'd made the top eight wasn't the sort to go down in one punch, so he was looking forward to today's matches.
The other competitors also began arriving one after another.