Boy of Steel and Iron

[There's a zombie here who ate the Human-Human Fruit, Zombie Form, keeping everyone's brains safe.]

(As before, the timeline, settings, and other aspects will strictly follow the original work. Any additional settings are also expansions based on the original work.

I'll try to make it as logical as possible. Suggestions are welcome, as long as they aren't unreasonable suggestions that treat online rumors and fanfiction settings as original canon. The author will gladly consider them.)

(The original setting never stated that the Dark-Dark Fruit cannot become elemental, so in this book, it will be treated as capable of elemental transformation. I've posted the original Japanese text in the paragraph comment for this section.)

Sea Circle Calendar 1517 (24 years before the original story)

(PS: Some people don't read paragraph comments, so I'll say it here. Oda recently announced that the original timeline is 1541; the previous claims of 1522 or 1520 were incorrect. Please see the paragraph comment above for details.)

First half of the Grand Line, Carnival City.

This world-famous island lived up to its name: a grand city of endless revelry that never slept.

Colorful flags fluttered year-round between spired buildings, cheerful music rang out from dawn until late at night, and the air was forever thick with the sugary sweetness of frosting, the rich aroma of wine, and the uninhibited laughter of the people.

Tourists from all over the world packed its streets shoulder to shoulder. Their purses were like cut-open funnels, pouring countless Beli into the city's veins and making it far more prosperous than the surrounding islands. Only Spring Queen City, renowned as a "medical sanctuary," could barely compare.

In an era when sea trains were still nothing more than blueprints and fantasies, Carnival City had, through its unparalleled appeal, forcibly carved out a golden shipping route amid inconvenient travel routes, maintaining its peak prosperity.

Yet the brighter the light, the deeper the shadow it cast.

Beyond the dazzling neon lights and clamor of the main city lay an area deliberately isolated by high walls and prejudice—the industrial district.

This was the power core of Carnival City. All the fireworks, props, decorations, and food needed for celebrations flowed endlessly from here.

To maximize production efficiency, and to lavish resources upon the "respectable" lives of the main city's residents, the industrial district's inhabitants had, under the unspoken policies of generations of mayors, been forced to become a kind of "consumable."

They labored day and night, yet received only meager pay, dreadful living conditions, and inescapable disease. Poverty and exhaustion were the eternal tones of this place.

Thus, among those who knew the truth, this area had another, more fitting and crueler name—the slums.

At that moment, on a filthy main street in the slums, Dawn strode toward the most imposing three-story building at the end of the street.

He was tall, a full two meters, and even in an area with no shortage of burly men, he stood head and shoulders above the rest.

His sturdy, faded roughspun clothes wrapped around clearly defined muscles. A brilliant mane of long golden hair hung casually over his shoulders, swaying slightly with each step.

His face was exceptionally handsome, with sharp brows, bright eyes, a high nose bridge, and thin lips pressed into a resolute line. Most striking of all were his azure eyes, like a frozen sea at that moment, coldly fixed ahead without the slightest emotion.

Countless gazes came from the shadows of the alleys along the street.

Resentment, curiosity, admiration, disgust, fear... all kinds of emotions tangled together like an invisible web, trying to ensnare him.

Yet not one owner of those gazes dared truly step out of the shadows and stand in his way.

Under that silent "attention," he closed in on the One-Eyed Gang's headquarters at the end of the street.

Inside the headquarters' first-floor hall, Victor, the One-Eyed Gang's leader—a bald, scar-faced middle-aged brute—stood on a wooden platform, waving his thick arms and spitting as he gave a pre-battle speech.

"Boys! Get your spirits up! That brat who doesn't know his place will be here any moment! Today, we'll show him that the One-Eyed Gang didn't become the number one gang in the industrial district through luck! We'll make sure he comes but never leaves!"

"The boss is right!"

"Kill that brat!"

"Chop him up and feed him to the dogs!"

Below the platform, two hundred vicious-looking gang members raised all kinds of weapons and roared their frenzied agreement. The atmosphere had reached its peak.

Boom!

Just as the crowd was worked into a frenzy, the headquarters' heavy wooden doors exploded into countless flying splinters, as though struck head-on by a battering ram.

Sunlight and dust surged in together, outlining the tall figure standing steadfastly amid the shattered doorway.

Dawn stared directly at Victor on the platform, extended a thick, long, not unattractive hand, and crooked a finger.

"Come on. I'd like to see how you're going to make sure I never leave."

"Y-You brat! Don't get too cocky!"

Victor's face instantly flushed red, rage blazing from his one eye.

"Do you really think one man can defeat all of us? There are two hundred people here!"

"Let me see what you're made of first!"

Before Victor could continue issuing orders, a tower-like figure suddenly shot out of the crowd.

He was the One-Eyed Gang's vice leader, a hulking man standing two and a half meters tall, his entire body packed with muscles like piled rock.

He stood half a meter taller than Dawn. When he charged, he resembled a crazed bull, his footsteps pounding thunderously against the ground.

"Hehe, the vice leader once took down a pirate with a bounty as high as one million Beli barehanded. He'll definitely—"

The commentary from one gang lackey had not even finished when a violent blast of air suddenly erupted through the spacious hall.

Then, under everyone's dumbfounded stares, the two-and-a-half-meter-tall vice leader was struck squarely in the chest by Dawn's iron fist.

Bang!

With a dull, thunderous impact, the vice leader's massive body was launched off the ground at an even greater speed than his charge. He smashed straight through the thick brick wall behind him, blasting a huge human-shaped hole through it before crashing onto the street outside. His bones twisted grotesquely, blood streaming from his nose and mouth, and he made no further sound.

The hall fell deathly silent. Only the wind blowing through the hole in the wall stirred the dust.

The lackey who had been shouting moments earlier stood with his mouth wide open, the rest of his words lodged in his throat.

"O-One punch?"

"The vice leader..."

Someone wore a blank expression, seemingly unable to comprehend what had just happened.

Gulp. Some swallowed with difficulty. Others shook like sieves, barely able to remain standing, while the faint stench of urine drifted from their crotches.

With just one punch, Dawn had nearly shattered more than half this rabble's courage.

Victor's eye twitched violently, a chill rising in his heart, but he knew he absolutely could not show weakness now.

He swept a cold gaze over his silent, trembling subordinates and roared:

"You useless trash! That's enough to scare you? We have knives and guns! We outnumber him two hundred to one! Do we need to fear an unarmed brat? Get him! Hack him to death!"

The leader's roar barely lifted their spirits a little.

After a brief silence, greed and savagery overwhelmed fear. The gang members in the hall let out beast-like howls, brandishing machetes, iron rods, and flails as they surged toward Dawn from every direction like a tide.

"Die, you little—"

Before the scar-faced man charging at the front could finish his threat, his vision was filled by a fist rapidly growing larger.

Dawn's fist was like an iron hammer, driving precisely into his abdomen.

"Ugh—!"

The scar-faced man's eyes bulged instantly. His body folded into the shape of a cooked shrimp, and with a ripping sound, his shirt stretched over the clear imprint of his spine.

What burst from his nose and mouth was no longer vomit, but slurry mixed with stomach fluid and blood.

The machete in his hand flew away, spinning as it sank deep into the floor beside him, while he himself was hurled crazily backward as though launched from a catapult.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The flying scar-faced man slammed into three, four, five people behind him in succession... The crisp cracks of shattering bones rang out one after another like popping beans. Without exception, the people caught in his path suffered ruptured organs, vomited blood, and instantly lost all ability to fight.

With a single strike, the surging crowd was cleared into a bloody vacuum!

There were no flashy moves, no exquisite martial arts techniques.

Dawn's punches relied entirely on pure physical strength. In a place like the slums, where resources were scarce and knowledge was closed off, he had no way to systematically learn any school of martial arts.

Everyone here had accumulated only the most primitive, brutal experience of killing through blood and pain amid despair.

Dawn was like a tiger among sheep, swinging both fists without any form or pattern. Every strike was accompanied by the chilling sound of bones breaking and a figure flying away as though hurled from a catapult.

Amid the chaos, cold blades sliced through his ragged clothes several times, leaving dozens of tiny bloody cuts across his skin.

The seeping blood quickly stained his already mottled clothes with even more dark red spots.

But that was all.

Not a single blow could truly penetrate his muscles or cause him any substantial injury. His skin's toughness far exceeded ordinary imagination!

To him, the slashes of these ordinary gang members were no more than minor scrapes from thorns.

Watching his subordinates fall in swathes like harvested wheat, at a speed so fast it inspired despair, Victor could no longer sit still in the seat of honor.

He abruptly drew the gleaming flintlock pistol at his waist. No longer caring whether he might accidentally hit his men in front of him, he aimed at the conspicuous golden head in the crowd, a savage, twisted grin appearing on his face as he viciously pulled the trigger!

Bang!

The gunshot roared, drowning out the shouts and screams!

At the instant the gun fired, Dawn's instincts, honed through life-and-death battles, caught the deadly danger. Without even turning around, he flashed out both hands, grabbed the two burly men lunging at him nearby, and violently pulled them in front of himself as the most primitive human shields.

Splat! Splat!

The dull sound of lead bullets embedding deeply into flesh rang out. The two unlucky men used as shields stiffened violently, their eyes opening wide as two glaring sprays of blood burst from their chests. They died on the spot.

Victor was stunned by that inconceivable move and instinctively began fumbling to reload his weapon.

But Dawn gave him no second chance.

The muscles in his arms bulged as he exerted force, hurling the two heavy "shields," whose bodies still retained warmth, viciously toward Victor on the platform as though tossing two sacks of sand!

Victor did not even manage a full scream before the two corpses, each weighing over a hundred pounds, slammed solidly into him.

The tremendous impact sent both him and the chair beneath him—the chair symbolizing his authority—crashing viciously into the wall behind him.

The brick wall instantly split with spiderweb-like cracks. Victor was embedded in it like an abstract mural of flesh and blood, thick blood mixed with chunks of internal organs spraying from his mouth. He could only exhale, not inhale. He clearly would not survive.

TO BE CONTINUED