"Pirate" from Another World

Zoro's nonsensical answer plunged the entire guild hall into another eerie silence.

A guy who could open doors?

A strange door?

What kind of explanation was that?

Lucy was the first to lose patience and complain. "What is that supposed to mean?! That makes no sense at all! Who are you? Where did you come from? You have to at least have a name and an identity, right?!"

Zoro glanced at her, thinking the blonde woman was a little noisy. Still, since she was also a member of this guild, he answered impatiently, "Roronoa Zoro. As for my identity... I guess I'm a swordsman."

"Roronoa Zoro..." Levy quietly repeated the name while rapidly searching her memories for information on every renowned swordsman in the Fiore Kingdom, or even the entire Ishgar Continent. Naturally, she found nothing. Like the man himself, that name seemed to have appeared out of nowhere.

"Then... was that guy who could open doors your enemy? Why were you fighting?" Erza seized on a key point and pressed him for an answer.

"Oh, that," Zoro said after thinking for a moment, as if it were perfectly obvious. "They were pirates. They wanted to capture me for the bounty. I cut them all down, but before their captain died, he used some strange ability."

"Pirates?!"

The instant that word was spoken, the atmosphere in the guild turned tense again. Lucy even hid behind Erza in fright and said fearfully, "P-Pirates?! Then are you a pirate too? Are you some bad guy here to rob our guild?"

In Earth Land, the word pirate was usually synonymous with desperate criminals who burned, killed, looted, and committed every kind of evil. They were even more hated than dark guilds.

"I'm not a pirate." Zoro immediately denied it, then added something that even he found a little awkward to say. "I'm a 'Pirate Hunter.'"

"A Pirate Hunter?" Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

"Still... I'm currently on a ship belonging to the 'Straw Hat Pirates.'"

Everyone: "???"

Now everyone was confused by his contradictory statement. Why would a "Pirate Hunter" be part of a "pirate crew"? Wasn't that as absurd as a holy cleric running off to become a demon's underling?

Levy, whose logic was the most meticulous, felt like her little brain was about to crash. Rubbing her forehead, she tried to sort out the chaotic relationship. "Wait, wait! You mean you used to catch pirates, but now you're a member of a pirate crew called the 'Straw Hats'? Th-That makes absolutely no sense!"

"What doesn't make sense?" Zoro felt these people had a problem with their comprehension. "My captain's an idiot named Luffy. He wants to become the Pirate King, so I follow him and help him become the Pirate King. Once he becomes the Pirate King, I'll naturally become the world's greatest swordsman. Isn't that simple?"

Pirate King?

World's greatest swordsman?

Those grand yet utterly unfamiliar terms landed in the mages' hearts like heavy bombs, leaving them staring at one another, completely unable to understand their meaning.

"Then... that door-opening ability, and your captain's... um, ability?" Guild Master Makarov sharply seized on another key point.

"That guy's ability was probably called the Space-Time Door Fruit. As for Luffy, he's a Rubber Fruit user. He's a Rubber Man," Zoro explained.

"A Rubber Man?!" Natsu had somehow woken up. The moment he heard those words, he eagerly crowded forward. "Does that mean his body can stretch and shrink like rubber? That's awesome! Is he afraid of fire?"

Zoro glanced at him. "Yes. He's also afraid of being cut."

"Then... what are 'Devil Fruits'?" Erza asked, feeling as though she were listening to an incomprehensible book.

"They're treasures of the sea. Eat one, and you gain all kinds of strange abilities, but the price is becoming a landlubber hated by the sea."

Treasures of the sea, granting abilities when eaten, hated by the sea...

Those fragmented pieces of information, filled with unbelievable details, gradually formed a vague yet shocking picture in Makarov's wise mind.

A world completely different from Earth Land.

A world where the "sea" was the stage, filled with "pirates" and "adventure."

A world with a power system called "Devil Fruits" and Haki, entirely different from magic.

The man before them, named Roronoa Zoro, was not an enemy. He was not even a resident of this world.

He was an accidental, powerful, otherworldly...

"Lost traveler."