The Pirate Who Saw Proficiency Became a Legend

Sailing was tedious, but in a world where the sea covered nearly ninety percent of the surface and land made up only a small fraction, it was unavoidable. If Dongze wanted to surpass himself in battle and realize his ambitions, he had to set sail.

As he steered by the Eternal Pose, he began planning his future.

If he wanted to travel far, he had several options: join the Marines, join a pirate crew, or get a ship of his own.

On the whole, the Marines were decent. They maintained order across the world. Without them, it would have become a truly wicked place.

But the Marines were no one-man operation. Factions were everywhere, and a newcomer like him, with no connections, might be shut out or pushed around. Life there might not be pleasant.

Worse, the government and the Celestial Dragons stood above them. To put it bluntly, the Marines were the Celestial Dragons' lapdogs, and the Celestial Dragons happened to be the very beings he most wanted to wipe out.

The World Government had already begun rotting from within. Unless it could cut out that rot and reform itself, its downfall was only a matter of time. Unfortunately, that would never happen.

So he ruled out the Marines first.

The second option was joining a pirate crew, but that was no better. Crews varied wildly, and most pirates were lawless, vicious criminals. A crew like the Straw Hat Pirates in the original story was rare indeed!

If he joined some crew blindly and ended up among villains, he would be betraying his original purpose. When he weighed it all up, only one path remained for now.

He would get a ship and sail on his own. That was his best choice, and his Golden Finger would let him grow stronger quickly.

That left the question of a crew. He needed a navigator, a cook, a doctor, and a shipwright.

But the more people he took on, the more of a burden they might become. He could unlock those skills one by one with his Golden Finger anyway.

In the end, he would have to judge by the circumstances.

For now, the urgent task was finding a ship that could sail the East Blue.

Dongze spotted a News Coo flying overhead and waved. It flew down to him.

He pointed to its mailbag and handed it a hundred Beli.

He flipped through the paper, glanced at the latest news, then lowered it.

The most prominent story concerned the Iron Wolf Pirates. They had stormed a village called Sunflower in the East Blue and slaughtered everyone there. By the time the Marines arrived, they were long gone. The Marines had placed hefty bounties on every member of the crew.

The second story was about the Devil Child, Nico Robin. It claimed she was a vicious criminal and warned that any person or organization sheltering her would face indiscriminate annihilation by the Marines.

The third concerned Shimotsuki Village. According to the report, vicious pirates appeared to have attacked it, causing heavy casualties.

The rest was hardly worth reading. Most of it praised the World Government and the Marines, singing the praises of Marine victories.

Whether it was fate playing tricks or some sort of luck shining on him, Dongze was surprised to see a ship appear not far ahead.

At a time like this, even a fool could tell it was bad news.

The Marines certainly would not be out here now. They had shifts to work!

Dongze narrowed his eyes, extended his Observation Haki, and fixed on the ship ahead.

It was a massive two-masted sailing ship. A pirate flag flew from its open sails, bearing a huge wolf's head above two crossed blades.

"Pirates!"

The ship looked badly battered, though, its sails riddled with holes of every size.

A large chunk of the port side had been blown away. It looked as though the ship had just come through a battle.

In fact, it had.

This was the Iron Wolf Pirates. After what they had done, there was no way the Marines would let them go.

Across the four seas, the strongest force was neither pirates nor the Revolutionary Army, but the Marines. Their pursuit had nearly wiped out the entire crew in one sweep.

Desperate to escape, the pirates had read in the paper that powerful pirates had appeared near Shimotsuki Village. They decided to try their luck there, hoping to draw the Marines onto someone else and get out of their predicament.

Their luck was not looking good. On the way, they ran into Dongze, who had only recently put to sea.

"Are my practice targets finally here?"

Dongze chuckled and used Geppo to close in on the distant ship.

There were twenty men aboard, with four cannons and twelve guns. No women.

Apart from one man on watch, everyone was fast asleep in the cabin.

As Dongze approached, he got a rough sense of the situation aboard. The men reeked of bloodshed; none of them was innocent.

Before, Dongze would not have boarded so openly. Now that he had mastered Armament Haki, he no longer had the same worries.

No sniper in the East Blue could threaten him now—unless it was some retiree back from the Grand Line who had mastered advanced Armament Haki.

Dongze moved so fast that the pirate on watch failed to notice him until he stepped onto the ship. That was deliberate. Dongze's reason for boarding was hardly innocent.

A shrill bell rang out, jolting everyone aboard from sleep.

"Luji! Have the Marines come back?"

"All we did was kill a few people!"

"Those lunatics have been chasing us for two days and two nights!"

"Damn it! We might as well fight them!"

"We're the Iron Wolf Pirates! Now we're practically dogs on the run!"

Amid the cursing, the remaining twenty-one men—no, twenty—filed out of the cabin. Their captain, wearing a hat, quietly slipped into hiding to watch the scene outside.

He did not know that Dongze's Observation Haki had already picked up every movement aboard the ship.

"What's going on, Luji?"

"Yeah! You woke us all up over one little brat?"

"Luji?"

"Luji?"

"Luji, where the hell are you?"

Still half asleep, the pirates called out a few times. When no answer came, they began to curse.

Expressionless, Dongze pointed at the body on the deck. "Is this the man you're looking for?"

At the sight of Luji's headless corpse, a chill shot up the spines of the men who had emerged from the cabin.

Their panic soon turned to rage. After all, the person before them was only a boy, a wet-behind-the-ears kid compared to grown men like them.

One pirate with a gun stared coldly at Dongze. "Did you kill him?"

The others drew their weapons and glared at him with murderous intent.

One wrong answer, and they would attack.

Dongze's expression did not change. Their hostility could not shake him; he had overcome that discomfort when he slaughtered the bandits in their hideout.

"Which of you is the navigator?"

"Brat, I asked if you killed Luji!"

The gunman's eyes widened as he leveled his weapon, clearly on the verge of firing.

"Which of you is the navigator?"

Dongze remained calm. His strength gave him the confidence to stand unmoved.

Bang!

The gunshot broke the silence. The pirate had fired.

But the shot missed. In that same instant, Dongze vanished from everyone's sight.

Slash!

Before they could react, a head flew into the air. It belonged to the pirate who had fired.

"Killer!"

As Killer's body collapsed, they saw Dongze standing behind him.

"What the hell?"

"Impossible!"

"Which of you is the navigator?"

The same question came again, but this time it bore down on the pirates like a crushing weight. They knew now that they could not match the man before them.

A man a little shorter than the rest stepped forward. The hand holding his gun had begun to tremble.

Dongze had just used Shave. In the East Blue, a technique like that was enough to make someone a trump card. In the original story, Hundred Plans Locke had used that very move to slaughter a Marine ship's crew with ease.

Pirates as lowly as these had never had a chance to encounter such techniques. People instinctively feared what they did not understand.

"Sword-Draw Technique!"

"Kill him!"

Knowing they would not survive, the pirates chose to take him down with them. A string of gunshots rang out, leaving ten bullet holes in the deck.

Then a bright, round moon became their final memory.

Apart from the navigator, the pirates' lives came to an end.

The navigator stared at the ruined gun in his hands. His legs gave way, and he slumped onto the deck, looking at Dongze, who had somehow appeared among them, as though he were a demon.

"You killed them?"

"You saw it, didn't you?"

"Still not coming out?"

Dongze paid him no more attention. He turned toward the corner of the upper deck.

"Brat! Don't push your luck!"

The captain of the Iron Wolf Pirates was no fool. He had been watching from above for a while, and he knew he could not deal with Dongze's mysterious abilities. That was why he had stayed hidden.

He had hoped Dongze did not know he was there and would simply leave. But Dongze had called him out, plainly intent on leaving no one alive.

"Let's hope you're worth a few points."

Dongze sprang forward. A swift Slashing attack tore through the air. It did not have Koshiro's destructive power, but it was more than enough for a wooden sailing ship.

He had thought the Iron Wolf Pirates might bring him some gains. But after killing the first pirate on watch, he had found that the Proficient value on his panel had not increased at all.

Only then had he remembered that small fry like these no longer helped him build proficiency.

So he had wasted no more words and sent the remaining nineteen to their graves.

From the start, he had sensed something different about the captain. Rather than kill him straightaway, Dongze had decided to see how many points he was worth.

"You arrogant brat! Now you've made me angry!"

As the dust cleared, a huge monster appeared before Dongze. It looked like a wolf, but not quite.

"I ate the Hyena Wolf Fruit! I'm a Hyena Wolf-Man! An attack like that wouldn't even scratch me!"

Dongze chuckled.

"Is that so? The last person who said my attacks barely scratched him probably has grass ten feet high on his grave by now."

With that, Dongze used Shave and flashed behind him.

"Sword-Draw Technique!"

A round moon of swordlight shot through the air, carrying a Slashing attack.

Hard head, hard brow, soft waist!

If he remembered right, a wolf's weak point was its waist.

Before the blow even reached him, a chill pierced the Hyena Wolf-Man to the core. The fear of death flooded his heart.

Swordlight flashed. Dongze had infused this strike with Armament Haki. The Hyena Wolf-Man was only a Zoan user, not invincible. The Slashing attack sent him down the same path as the rest of the Iron Wolf Pirates.

He did not even have time to beg for mercy.

His death was gruesome: Dongze cut him clean in half at the waist.

"Captain!"

From the moment Dongze boarded until the battle ended, less than ten minutes had passed. Of the infamous Iron Wolf Pirates, only the navigator remained alive.