Sea Voyage

The West Blue's storms came quickly and left just as fast.

When the first ray of morning sunlight struggled through the heavy lead-gray clouds, a small single-masted sailboat bearing no pirate flag cleaved through the raging waves like a lone leaf.

Rain sat cross-legged in the center of the deck, bare-chested. The frigid, damp morning wind lashed his lean, sharply defined muscles, yet it could not draw even the slightest shiver from him.

There was no traditional wooden rudder at the stern. Instead, rock extended from beside Rain's legs, fusing completely with the deck into a layer of grayish-white stone. The rock pierced through the cabin and connected directly to the underwater rudder blade beneath the hull. He did not even need his hands; with only his will and the minute contractions of his leg muscles, he could transmit force through the stone and perfectly control the ship's course.

Logia: Rock-Rock Fruit.

Rain opened his eyes and raised his right hand. With a thought, his long fingers instantly lost their flesh-and-blood color and became rough yellow-brown sandstone. Then, the sandstone began vibrating and compressing at high frequency, its color steadily deepening until it became blackish-gray granite with a metallic gleam.

Looking at that inhuman hand, Rain's thoughts drifted back to the slaughterhouse of three years ago.

That was the day he had first opened his eyes in this world as a transmigrator.

There was no so-called system, no old mentor, and no notification chime for some cheat ability. He had awakened in an unnamed village in the West Blue that was burning to the ground.

It was the closest thing to hell Rain had ever seen across both his lives.

Broken houses collapsed amid roaring flames, while thick black smoke blotted out the sky. The air was filled with the scorched stench of burning wood and the nauseating smell of roasted flesh from the villagers' charred corpses. Dozens of vicious-looking pirates laughed wildly as they waved bloodstained scimitars, herding desperate women and children before casually cutting them down like livestock.

Back then, Rain had merely been an ordinary young man with the soul of a modern person and no strength to defend himself. Extreme terror and a physical urge to vomit had nearly left him unable to breathe.

He had watched a grinning pirate drive a rusty spear through the chest of a mother trying to protect her child. In that instant, the values of civilized society engraved in Rain's bones had been utterly shattered. In this great age of piracy, without law or moral boundaries, weakness itself was an original sin.

To survive, Rain had crawled and hidden through the ruins like a sewer rat. Holding his breath against the stench of corpses around him, he squeezed himself into a half-collapsed cellar.

Perhaps it was fate mocking him. Perhaps it was a gift from the will of the world.

In the corner of that cellar, covered in dust and dried bloodstains, Rain—starving, dizzy, and on the verge of collapse—had felt something strange.

It was a fruit that looked remarkably like a rough geode ore. Its skin was covered in grayish-brown spiral patterns, and it gave off a faint scent like earth after rain.

As a transmigrator who had read the original One Piece, Rain's heart had nearly leaped out of his throat the instant his fingers touched those spiral patterns.

A Devil Fruit!

He had had no time to consider whether it was a Paramecia, Zoan, or Logia. Nor had he had time to hesitate. The footsteps and wild laughter of searching pirates above him sounded like a death knell.

Rain bit into it without hesitation.

"Bleurgh—!"

Rain swore he never wanted to remember that taste again for the rest of his life. It felt like chewing through an entire bucket of moldy sewer sludge mixed with rusty iron and dry lime powder. The violent nausea nearly made him vomit up his stomach acid, but he clamped a hand over his mouth and forced himself to swallow the fruit, skin and all.

The very next second after he swallowed, the wooden boards above the cellar were brutally split apart by a battle axe.

"Ha ha ha! There's a little rat hiding in here!" A vicious-looking pirate carrying a torch jumped into the cellar. Seeing Rain trembling in the corner, he flashed a cruel smile. "Die, you filthy commoner!"

The cold scimitar came crashing down at Rain's neck.

Rain shut his eyes in despair. Yet the searing pain of his head being severed never came.

Clang!

A crisp collision rang through the cellar. Rain opened his eyes in shock and saw that the pirate's scimitar had struck his neck as though it had hit the hardest fortress wall, its blade chipped and curled.

His neck, arms, and even his entire body had somehow turned into grayish-white rock!

In that moment, power awakened inside him like a dormant volcano. Without any training, driven only by the instinct to survive, he threw his rock-transformed right fist.

Bang!

The pirate's head exploded beneath the hard, stone-heavy punch.

That was the first person Rain had killed, and the first step he had taken upon this sea as a Logia: Rock-Rock Fruit user.

"Whew..."

The howl of the sea wind pulled Rain back from his memories. He withdrew his rock-transformed hand, braced himself against the deck with both hands, and took a deep breath.

"The fruit's power may be strong... but in the New World, it's far from enough."

Rain rose to his feet and walked beside the cabin. Three massive solid iron blocks bound in chains were piled there, each weighing several tons. He bent down, gripped the chains with both hands, hoisted the terrifying weight onto his back, and began doing weighted squats.

"One... two... three..."

Beads of sweat the size of beans slid down his forehead and struck the wooden deck. His muscles groaned under the crushing weight, yet he gritted his teeth and kept going.

For three years, Rain had not missed a single day of this nearly self-destructive physical training.

Because he knew better than anyone that before Haki, a Logia's elemental transformation was not absolute invincibility. In the first half of the Grand Line, a Logia user might be able to walk all over everyone. But once he entered the New World, those monsters who wielded advanced Armament Haki could punch him back into human form with a single blow—or even shatter his internal organs.

"Armament... Observation..." Rain silently turned the two words over in his heart, deep resentment and frustration flashing through his eyes.

Knowing the plot did not mean possessing talent.

Rain knew Armament Haki was an "invisible armor," and that Observation Haki meant "sensing presence." Over the past three years, he had tested himself countless times on the brink of death and meditated through countless silent nights, trying to seize that elusive "energy" within his body.

He had blindfolded himself at the edge of cliffs to dodge falling rocks, and deliberately fought savage beasts barehanded without using elemental transformation.

But there was nothing. Absolutely nothing.

His body was like a true, lifeless stone. No matter how hard he tried to sense it, the thin barrier called "Haki" remained before him like a wall of sighs, impossible to pierce.

Was it because he was a transmigrator, and his soul was not fully compatible with this body? Or had his excessive reliance on the Rock-Rock Fruit's absolute defense deprived his body of the instinctive awakening that only came from being driven into a corner?

Rain slammed the several-ton iron blocks from his back onto the deck with a dull boom.

He panted heavily and wiped the sweat from the corner of his mouth. Though frustrated, he was not despairing. Since Haki refused to awaken, then he would develop his Devil Fruit ability to the absolute limit!

He compressed rock until its density rivaled diamond, learned how to assimilate minerals from the environment, and even tried crushing rock into nanoscale dust to create a "petrifying sandstorm" even more terrifying than Crocodile's.

As long as he developed his fruit deeply enough, even without Haki, he could carve a bloody path across these seas!

"And besides... perhaps all I lack is a sufficiently hard 'whetstone.'"

Rain raised his head, his gaze crossing the rolling sea toward the horizon.

There, the sea mist was gradually dispersing. A massive island, dark red from end to end and covered in jagged rocks and steep cliffs, slowly revealed its ferocious outline.

Kars Mine Island.

There were no beaches, no vegetation—only endless rock, abandoned mining tunnels, and... a Zoan user from the Grand Line with a bounty of 35 million Berries.

"The perfect home ground."

A cold, bloodthirsty curve touched Rain's lips. He walked to the bow, and the stone roots beneath his feet instantly contracted. The ship lost its power and slowly drifted toward a concealed reef at the island's edge on the lingering waves.

Click.

Rain flipped onto the reef, his black boots landing on the hard basalt. The instant his feet touched the rocky island, he closed his eyes.

Logia: Rock-Rock Fruit Development, Rock Vein Sense.

This was a reconnaissance technique derived from his fruit ability, meant to make up for his lack of Observation Haki.

He established a faint resonance between his fruit ability and the island's rocky veins. Though he could not sense people's breathing or emotions like true Observation Haki, he could detect the island's weight distribution and movements through the incredibly subtle physical vibrations transmitted through the rock.

"One, two, three... There are fifteen sentries around the perimeter, stationed at the high points along the cliffs."

"Deep in the mines, there are dozens of faint, weak footsteps... the civilians who were captured."

"And..."

Rain's eyes snapped open, locking onto the tallest abandoned mine in the center of the island. There was an unusually heavy, oppressive source of vibration there. Every footfall sent faint tremors through the surrounding rock walls.

"Found you, 35-million prey."

Rain gripped the cloth-wrapped hilt at his waist in reverse. The next second, his body melted into the hard basalt beneath his feet like wax, sinking into it without resistance and completely merging with the mine island.

The hunt had begun.