Marine Captain William

In the One Piece World, in the East Blue waters near the Calm Belt, aboard a naval warship, inside a spacious office that was not luxuriously decorated yet still appeared imposing, a young man in uniform was fast asleep, slumped over his desk.

From the office's decor, it was clear that the owner of this office must be the boss of this naval warship, which meant it was the office of the ship's highest-ranking commander.

"Huh? How did I fall asleep?" The young man opened his drowsy eyes, waking up from his daze, and habitually stretched.

"What is this place?" When the young man realized he had appeared in an unfamiliar room, he froze for a moment before instantly and fearfully growing vigilant.

"Could someone be playing a prank on me?" This luxurious room looked like an office no matter how he inspected it, but the doors and windows ahead looked a bit strange. The decor here made the young man feel both familiar and yet completely unfamiliar. In his memory, he shouldn't have ever been here, so what was this strange sense of familiarity? This was definitely abnormal.

Yet the young man could not afford to dwell on that. A sense of unease gripped his heart, and he hurried to the window to see just where he was.

"No way?" The vast ocean was outside? How could he suddenly appear in the middle of an endless sea?

"Could I have been kidnapped?" That didn't make sense; he wasn't any kind of rich second-generation heir, nor was he the child of any official. Besides, shouldn't he be out on the street? How could he be on a ship? If it really was a kidnapping, they should have locked him in a dark room, right?

With no other choice, the young man sat back down in the chair, and at the same time began to take stock of his surroundings. Everything here was far too abnormal, yet he was extremely familiar with everything in this office, feeling as if he had lived here for a very long time.

Huh? Suddenly, the young man's gaze was drawn to a familiar object, though this was his first time seeing the actual item. It was a white coat hanging on a coat rack in the corner of the room, but this coat was not what had caught the young man's attention. What drew his gaze were the two large characters on the back of the coat—Justice.

The young man actually already had a guess in his heart, but he was still unwilling to accept it, thinking that sort of thing was far too absurd and completely sheer nonsense.

Still, he subconsciously checked his own body. The clothes on him were not his original set at all; what he wore now was clearly a uniform.

Yet the young man refused to give up, believing that such a thing could not possibly exist, or at least would not happen to him. Fine, he would assume his clothes had been changed by someone, but his body couldn't possibly be swapped, could it?

Yet the young man was clearly destined to be disappointed once again. His body was now brimming with strength, something that his previous physique could not possibly compare to. The young man could sense that with just a gentle swing of his fist, he could definitely easily smash the desk in front of him into pieces, or even punch right through the opposite wall.

However, the young man didn't dare to test it. If the noise attracted the people outside, he wouldn't know how to face them. Right now, he still didn't know what his situation was, nor even what sort of identity he possessed.

An independent bathroom? A door inside the room caught the young man's eye. Under normal circumstances, that should be an en suite bathroom, though other possibilities existed.

Knock, knock, knock!

The young man prepared to stand up, only to be startled by the sudden knocking on the door and knocked backward into his chair.

Knock, knock, knock!

The knocking continued. Clearly, the person outside was waiting for the person inside the room to answer, but how could the young man dare to act rashly, even though he was the only person in the entire room at the moment?

"Captain William! Your lunch is ready!" After the knocking stopped, the person outside called out.

This wasn't Mandarin? But the most crucial part wasn't that, but rather the fact that the young man found he could actually understand it, and even speak this language. Ah! What was happening to him? The young man shouted inwardly.

Judging by what the person outside the door meant, could they be calling out to him? Could it be that he was supposed to be a captain, and a Marine captain at that? Judging from the attitude of not daring to barge right in, along with the layout of this office, there was a high probability that he was the boss here now. But he couldn't be certain whether the "Captain William" they called out was him, especially since his original name wasn't William. If he was merely Captain William's assistant and impersonated his superior, that would be a grave crime.

"Come in!" Knowing he had to reply, the young man could only manage to masquerade as the Captain William the other person spoke of. He quickly grabbed a newspaper from the desk to try to cover his face and avoid being recognized by whoever entered.

"Captain William, here is your lunch!" said the person delivering the meal.

"Mm!" The young man did not reply, merely offering an acknowledgment.

"Captain William! You're holding the newspaper upside down!" The delivery Marine soldier's words made the young man's face turn instantly pale, and his legs began to shake as he thought: I've been exposed!

Yet the young man was clearly overthinking it. The delivering Marine soldier had merely offered a subconscious reminder. When that Marine soldier realized he had actually made his superior look foolish, his expression soured as well, and he hurriedly offered an apology before retreating from the room in a rush, terrified that lingering a moment longer would bring down punishment.

"Phew! I finally bluffed my way through!" Seeing the meal deliverer close the door and leave, the young man let out a breath as if granted a reprieve. It seemed this Captain William was not the kind of amiable superior.

He quickly opened the door, and sure enough, it was an en suite bathroom. Where there was a bathroom, there would naturally be something like a mirror. Entering the bathroom and looking at the figure reflected in the mirror, the young man first froze, and then his face turned somewhat pale with fright, nearly causing him to scream out loud.

"How is this possible?" The young man grabbed wildly at his hair, finding that the figure in the mirror mimicked his movements down to the smallest detail. He then foolishly touched his face and tapped the mirror to confirm that this was indeed a reflection and not someone playing a trick on him.

Yet the figure reflected in the mirror was no terrifying monster; instead, it was a handsome young man. But this was clearly not the young man's original appearance, or he wouldn't have been startled to this degree. The young man in the mirror had a somewhat brown-yellow skin tone, caused by long-term exposure to sea winds and blazing sun, rather than his original complexion. Still, such a skin tone looked healthier and more vibrant, and didn't give off the impression of a pale weakling.

"This must be a dream! Right, I just haven't woken up yet!" The young man's heart still stubbornly refused to accept this reality, but the truth was that he had transmigrated, and furthermore transmigrated into another person's body. The important thing was that he actually lacked any memories of this body's past.

Yet not everyone welcomed transmigration. At this moment, the young man's mood was somewhat low, despairing, and helpless. He had originally been just an utterly ordinary human being, the kind of ordinary person nobody would ever pick out in a crowd on the street, so why had such a thing happened to him?

Although this fact was deeply shocking, when the young man discovered that none of the items here belonged to his original world—especially things like the Den Den Mushi—he ultimately had to accept reality.

Through the Den Den Mushi on the desk and that Marine coat, the young man guessed that he had transmigrated into the One Piece World, and apparently as a Marine captain commanding this warship.

"This is?" The young man picked up a framed group photo of three people set against the background of the Marine Headquarters building. Flipping it over, the three names written on the back of the photo nearly stopped the young man's breath. Both William's own name and his relationship with those two famous Marine figures left the young man utterly astounded.

"William, is it?" The young man swallowed a mouthful of saliva and muttered to himself. Clearly, this was the original name of this body, and thus his own name from now on. Feeling utterly helpless, he knew he could only continue living on under the identity of William.

(William, named after the fifteenth-century English pirate and scholar William Dampier, the discoverer of Australia, who once joined the Royal Navy and later joined pirate groups around the West Indies.)

Unlike other transmigrators, William had not retained any of the original memories belonging to this body, meaning it was no exaggeration to say he had amnesia. Therefore, he could not be certain of his relationship with the two Marine officers in the photograph with him, but he could be certain the three of them were extraordinary.

Even so, what kind of status did this William hold? To actually be able to pose in a photo with these two Marine figures! However, what William needed to do right now was not study the relationship between these three, but rather figure out a way to recover this body's strength.

One had to know that in the One Piece World, human life was the least valuable thing, and aside from pirates, the profession with the highest mortality rate was the Marines, who stood in opposition to them.

Still, he was at least a Marine captain. After all, anyone who could claw their way up to such a level shouldn't have weak strength, but William possessed zero memories of this body's past. Right now, he was no different from an amnesiac.

Even if the original owner of this body had been a Marine Admiral or even the Fleet Admiral, it was useless. Aside from raw brute force, he couldn't unleash any corresponding abilities at all.

Yet after seeing that group photo, William believed that his body possessed strength. Until he recovered that strength, however, he remained in a state of constant mortal peril.

Pirate Knowledge: William Dampier (1651–1715), Englishman, pirate and scholar, discoverer of Australia. In 1697, he wrote A New Voyage Round the World based on his experiences, and in 1709 he published Discourse on Winds, in which he summarized a vast amount of meteorological patterns, making it an immortal masterpiece in the history of marine meteorology.