A Youth of Steel and Bone

[There is a zombie here who ate the Human-Human Fruit, Zombie Form, helping everyone look after their brains.]

(Sticking to the previous style, the timeline, settings, and other aspects will strictly follow the original work, and original fan-made settings will also be based on extensions of the original work.

I will try to write logically, and suggestions are welcome as long as they aren't unreasonable advice like treating internet rumors and fanon settings as canon. The author will carefully accept them.)

Year 1517 of the Sea Circle Calendar (24 years before the original work)

The first half of the Grand Line, Carnival City.

This world-renowned island, true to its name, was a grand city of endless revelry.

Colorful flags fluttered year-round among the spire-topped buildings, joyous music rang from dawn until late into the night, and the air was forever mixed with the cloying sweetness of frosting, the mellow aroma of fine wine, and people's uninhibited laughter.

Tourists from all over the world rubbed shoulders, their money bags acting like opened funnels, pouring countless Berries into the city's bloodstream and making its prosperity far surpass surrounding islands. Only the City of Queen Spring, known as a "medical sacred land," could barely compare to it.

In an era when the Sea Train was still a blueprint in people's imaginations, Carnival City relied on its incomparable appeal to carve out a golden route on inconvenient waters, maintaining its peak.

However, the more dazzling the light, the deeper the shadows it cast.

Beyond the dazzling neon and hustle and bustle of the main urban area lay a district deliberately segregated by high walls and prejudice—the industrial zone.

This was the power core of Carnival City. All the fireworks, props, decorations, and food required for celebrations were continuously produced here.

To maximize production efficiency, and to pour resources without stinting into the "decent" lives of the main city's residents, the residents of the industrial zone were forced to degenerate into "consumables" of a sort under the tacit policies of successive mayors.

They labored day and night, trading for meager incomes, poor living environments, and inescapable illnesses. Poverty and exhaustion were the eternal theme here.

Therefore, in the mouths of those in the know, this area had another more fitting and cruel name—the slum.

Right now, on a filthy main street in the slum, Dawn was striding toward the most luxurious three-story building at the end of the street.

He was very tall, a full two meters, and even in this area lacking no stout men, he stood out like a crane among chickens.

A set of coarse cloth clothes, washed to a pale white yet failing to hide his solid build, wrapped around his well-defined muscle groups, and a mane of bright golden long hair fell loosely over his shoulders, swaying slightly with his movements.

His face was quite handsome, with sword-like brows, starry eyes, a high nose bridge, and thin lips pressed into a determined straight line. Most eye-catching were his aquamarine pupils, which right now resembled an ocean frozen by Ice, looking straight ahead coldly without the slightest emotion.

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

Resentful, curious, admiring, disgusted, fearful... Various emotions intertwined like an invisible spiderweb, trying to wrap around him.

Yet, not the owner of a single gaze dared to truly step out of the shadows and block his path.

Thus, amidst the silent "courtesy of attention," he approached the One-Eyed Gang's stronghold at the end of the street.

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

"Lads! Get your heads in the game! That arrogant little brat is about to get here! Today, we're going to make him see that the One-Eyed Gang didn't become the number one gang in the industrial zone through luck! We're going to make sure he doesn't leave alive!"

"The boss is right!"

"Kill that brat!"

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

Down below, two hundred fierce gang members raised various weapons and roared in fanatical response, the momentum peaking to the extreme.

Boom!

Right at this moment of boiling emotions, the heavy wooden door of the stronghold exploded into countless flying wood chips and fragments as if struck squarely by a battering ram.

Sunlight and dust poured in together, outlining the towering, steadfast figure amidst the door fragments.

Dawn looked straight at Victor on the platform, stretched out a thick, long-fingered hand that wasn't hard to look at, and crooked his finger.

"Come on. I want to see how you're going to make sure I don't leave alive."

"L... Little brat! Don't get too cocky!"

Victor's face instantly flushed red, rage surging in his single eye.

"Do you really think a mere individual can defeat all of us? There are two hundred people here!"

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

Before Victor could continue giving orders, a figure like an iron tower suddenly lunged out from the crowd.

It was the vice-leader of the One-Eyed Gang, a hulking brute two and a half meters tall, with muscles knotted all over his body like piled-up rocks.

He was half a meter taller than Dawn, and when he charged, he looked like a maddened wild bull, making the ground thump loudly with every step.

"Heheh, the vice-leader once took down a pirate with a bounty as high as one million berries with his bare hands, he'll definitely..."

The commentary from some gang lackey hadn't finished when a violent wave of air suddenly erupted inside the spacious lobby.

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

Bang!

Accompanied by a muffled heavy sound, the vice-leader's massive body left the ground and flew backward faster than he had charged, directly smashing through the thick brick and stone wall behind, opening a huge human-shaped hole in the wall, and finally crashing onto the street outside, his bones twisted, blood gushing from his mouth and nose, with no further movement.

Inside the lobby, dead silence reigned. Only the wind blowing in from the hole in the wall rustled the dust.

The lackey who had been shouting just a moment ago opened his mouth wide, the rest of his words stuck firmly in his throat.

"O... One punch?"

"The vice-leader he..."

Someone looked blank, seemingly unable to understand everything happening before their eyes.

Gulp. Someone swallowed hard, and someone's legs shook like a sieve, barely able to stand steady, with the faint smell of urine drifting from their crotch.

With a single punch, Dawn had broken almost all the courage of this mob.

Victor's eye twitched violently, a chill rising in the depths of his heart, but he knew very well he could not show cowardice now.

His gaze, cold as Ice, swept over his terrified subordinates, and he roared,

"A bunch of trash! Are you scared by just this? We have swords and guns in our hands! Our numbers are two hundred times his! Do you still need to fear an unarmed little brat? All together now! Hack him to death!"

The leader's roar barely boosted morale a sliver.

After a brief silence, greed and savagery overcame fear, and the gang members in the lobby let out beast-like howls, wielding cutlasses, iron rods, and flails as they swarmed toward Dawn from all directions.

"Go to hell, li—"

The scar-faced man running at the very front hadn't finished his harsh words when his vision was occupied by an ever-enlarging fist.

Dawn's fist, like an iron hammer, accurately drove into his abdomen.

"Ugh—!"

The scar-faced man's eyes instantly bulged, his body bending into the shape of a cooked shrimp, and the clothes on his back bulging out a clear imprint of his spine with a crisp ripping sound.

What he spat from his mouth and nose was no longer filth, but a slurry mixed with stomach acid and blood.

The cutlass in his hand flew out of his grip, spinning deeply into the adjacent floorboards, while he himself flew backward frantically as if thrown by a catapult.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The flying scar-faced man consecutively knocked down three, four, five people behind him... The crisp sounds of shattering bones rang out like firecrackers, and those affected suffered ruptured internal organs without exception, vomiting blood and instantly losing the ability to fight.

With a single blow, the surging tide of people was cleared of a bloody vacuum zone!

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

The punches Dawn threw relied entirely on pure physical strength. In a place like the slums with scarce resources and closed-off knowledge, he simply had no channels to systematically learn any school of martial arts.

Everyone here accumulated the most primitive and savage combat experience with blood and pain amidst despair.

Dawn entered the flock like a tiger, waving his fists without any pattern. Every swing was inevitably accompanied by the spine-chilling sound of cracking bones and a figure flying backward as if thrown by a catapult.

Amidst the chaos, the Ice-cold blades slashed his ragged clothes several times, leaving dozens of tiny bloody gasps on his skin.

The oozing beads of blood quickly dyed his already mottled clothes with more dark red spots.

Yet, that was all.

Not a single blow could truly penetrate his muscles or cause him substantial harm. The toughness of his skin far exceeded ordinary people's imagination!

To him, the slashes of these ordinary gang members were mere scrapes from thorns.

Seeing his subordinates falling in patches like harvested wheat at a despairingly fast speed, Victor, sitting in the master seat, could no longer sit still.

He abruptly pulled out the meticulously maintained flintlock pistol at his waist, ignoring the possibility of accidentally hitting his subordinates in front, aimed at the conspicuous golden head in the crowd, a ferocious and twisted smile on his face, and heavily pulled the trigger!

"Bang!"

The gunshot roared, drowning out the shouts of battle and miserable wails at the scene!

The moment the gun fired, the deadly crisis captured by Dawn's intuition forged from life-or-death combat kicked in. He didn't even look back, stretching out his hands with lightning speed to grab two big men lunging at him, pulling them fiercely in front of him to serve as the most primitive human shields.

"Pfft! Pfft!"

The muffled thuds of lead bullets embedding deeply into flesh sounded. The bodies of the two unlucky fellows used as human shields suddenly stiffened, their eyes widened, and two dazzling flowers of blood burst on their chests, killing them instantly on the spot.

Victor was stunned by this bizarre maneuver, and subconsciously started clumsily reloading his ammo.

Yet Dawn did not give him a second chance.

The muscles on his arms bulged as he exerted fierce force, hurling the two heavy "shields" that still retained some warmth like two sacks of sand directly toward Victor on the platform!

Victor didn't even manage to emit a complete scream before he was solidly struck by the two hundred-odd-pound corpses.

The immense impact sent him and the chair he sat on, which symbolized power, crashing heavily into the wall behind.

The brick-and-stone wall instantly cracked with spiderweb-like traces, and Victor himself was embedded in the wall like an abstract flesh-and-blood mural, spitting thick blood mixed with visceral fragments from his mouth. With only outgoing breath and no incoming breath, he clearly wasn't going to make it.

TO BE CONTINUED