A Hellish Beginning

Years later, when Rayne stood at the highest point of Marine Headquarters, looking down upon the sea he had personally "suppressed,"

he would still clearly remember that distant afternoon in Loguetown, the cold sound of a bolt sliding into place when he pulled the trigger for the first time.

That was the day he learned to kill.

Click.

The cold, crisp sound of a firearm being cocked suddenly rang beside his ear.

Rayne's consciousness was forcibly dragged out of chaos by a tearing, agonizing pain.

My head hurts...

Last night... how late did I work again? I think I pulled an all-nighter to finish that damn PPT?

After drinking with the client last night, it had already been two in the morning, and I still had to go back to the office to rush the proposal.

He shook his heavy head, his nostrils filled with the salty, fishy scent unique to the sea breeze.

"Something's wrong..."

Rayne abruptly opened his eyes.

What entered his sight was not the ceiling of his ten-square-meter shared rental apartment, for which he paid three thousand a month, but a blindingly blue sky.

Beneath his feet was a rough stone platform. A dense crowd surrounded him, their roaring voices crashing against his eardrums like waves.

He lowered his head and saw a slightly oversized blue-and-white striped uniform, with the huge word "Marine" emblazoned across the chest.

In his hands was an old-fashioned long-barreled rifle taller than he was. Its icy touch against his palms was so real that his scalp went numb.

"What... is going on?"

Rayne's pupils abruptly contracted. Right in front of the platform, a burly man with a vicious face and blue shark tattoos was tied backward to a wooden post, frantically cursing.

"A movie? Some kind of prank show?"

The absurd thought had barely surfaced when an icy voice beside him utterly shattered it.

"Executioner, the time has come. Carry out the sentence!"

A Marine officer with a scar across his face gave him the order in a completely emotionless tone.

Executioner?

Rayne's mind buzzed, turning completely blank.

Shouldn't he have been in an office, typing code in front of a computer screen? Wasn't he just an ordinary office drone who, to pay off his mortgage, did not even dare order a decent meal delivery?!

"Holy shit? I got transmigrated? What kind of joke is this?! I've never even killed a chicken, and this opening wants me to shoot a living person?!"

His thoughts flew wildly through his mind. Cold sweat instantly soaked his back, and his heart pounded so fast it seemed ready to leap from his throat.

"What are you dawdling for?! Execute the order!" Irritation and disgust entered the scar-faced officer's voice.

Rayne could feel it. The gazes cast his way by the surrounding Marine soldiers held not a shred of sympathy, only contempt and alienation.

His brain frantically processed the absurd scene before him. The overloaded stream of information filled him with helplessness, as though control of his body had remained in that cramped shared apartment in the twenty-first century.

Just as Rayne was on the verge of a mental breakdown, a flood of cold memories that did not belong to him surged into his mind without warning!

Images flashed past rapidly—

"A hometown swallowed by flames, the contemptuous looks of other soldiers in the mess hall, stolen bread, the suffocating feeling of being forcibly fitted with a cold executioner's mask for the first time..."

The numb pain and despair of this body's brief life overlapped strangely, across time and space, with the helplessness from his previous life, where he could see no future.

A sense of fate called "oppression" clenched his heart in a death grip.

The scar-faced officer's urging, the clamor of the crowd below, the prisoner's curses before him... all the sounds poured into Rayne's mind like a tidal wave, completely washing away his reason.

Panic, confusion, helplessness... all kinds of emotions intertwined into a piercing buzz.

Rayne felt as though his soul had left his body, like an audience member watching an absurd movie.

He saw the "himself" in the movie, that fifteen-year-old boy, whose body trembled faintly under immense pressure through muscle memory, his fingers spasming as they curled around the trigger...

Bang—!

The deafening blast made his eardrums ache.

The immense recoil slammed viciously into Rayne's shoulder, nearly knocking him down. The thick smell of gunpowder made him cough violently.

Rayne opened his eyes in a daze and saw that the burly man on the wooden post had fallen silent.

It was over...

Rayne dropped the rifle and stumbled down from the execution platform in a trance. The surrounding Marines parted as though avoiding a plague. One veteran even spat on the ground and muttered, "Bad luck."

Only then did the memories in his mind finish properly settling. Several keywords that made him feel as if he had fallen into an ice cellar emerged clearly:

"Marines," "Grand Line," "Loguetown."

Rayne's face instantly turned deathly pale.

"What kind of international joke is this? The world of One Piece?!" Rayne felt his depression was about to kick in.

He had actually been thrown into this chaotic world that looked like a passionate adventure, but was in truth one where the strong preyed on the weak, lawlessness reigned, and human lives were as worthless as grass!

The passionate bonds of friendship and all that in the manga could not cover up the murder, arson, looting, and plunder found everywhere across these seas!

In terms of oppression, people called the pirate world "Little Terra."

His inner wail was louder than the gunshot just now. And other people transmigrate to another world as princes, nobles, or someone with backing, but I transmigrated here as a teenage executioner with no human rights?!

He staggered past the notice board in the square and caught sight of the newspapers posted there.

The newspaper headlines were a mixed bag—some covered a scandal involving a kingdom's princess, some advertised new artillery, and there was also a lengthy editorial.

Like a drowning man searching for driftwood, his gaze frantically scanned the newspapers for information that could pinpoint his location in time.

At last, his eyes locked onto the publication date printed in small letters in the upper-right corner of the paper—[Sea Circle Calendar: 1498]

1498...

Rayne's pupils tightened sharply. "1498... there are still more than twenty years before Luffy sets sail and the main story begins?!"

The greatest advantage of a transmigrator—foreknowledge—was gone.

He was being ostracized by everyone, with no hope for the future.

He was doing a job that could drive him insane at any moment.

It was over... his whole life was completely over...

Overwhelming despair drowned Rayne, and his stomach churned violently.

Unable to endure it any longer, he rushed into an empty alley behind the execution platform, removed the heavy mask, braced himself against a moss-covered wall, and vomited until the world spun.

In the reflection of the murky sewage on the ground, Rayne saw his current appearance clearly for the first time.

He had a delicate face that still carried the innocence of youth. He should have been at an age of sunshine and cheerfulness, yet now he was so pale that not a trace of blood remained in his face, his eyes filled with terror and exhaustion that did not belong to someone his age.

Just as Rayne vomited so hard that he was nearly bringing up bile, his entire body weakened to the point that he was almost about to faint, and both his mind and body fell to their lowest point,

an emotionless, icy mechanical voice rang directly in the deepest depths of his mind.

[Detected that the host's soul has suffered a severe mental shock. Initial synchronization complete...]

[Detected that the host has completed the first "Sin Judgment"...]

[Sin Judgment System binding successful!]

Rayne knelt on the ground and abruptly raised his head. His bloodshot eyes stared fixedly at the empty mouth of the alley, his expression shifting from despair to shock, then finally into near-mad ecstasy, like a drowning man clutching at a lifeline.