Pirate: I Loaded the Game Panel

[The Pirate King! At the Top!]

The sun was warm, gulls wheeled overhead, and the rippling blue sea stretched to the horizon.

More than two days had passed since Adrian left Xilian Island. If nothing went wrong, his little boat would reach its destination tomorrow morning.

That island was the world's most famous haven for archaeologists. It supposedly housed more scholars than anywhere else, along with the library holding the world's largest collection of books: the Tree of Knowledge...

Now that he was in the West Blue, Adrian had no reason to pass up a visit to the legendary scholars' haven, Ohara.

The Tree of Knowledge, with its unmatched collection of books, appealed to Adrian far more than a certain little girl who had only turned five this year!

After all, Adrian could gain Secondary Profession and skills by reading books!

Whenever he imagined the vast sea of books inside the Tree of Knowledge, he could hardly keep from drooling.

Reading books = gaining skills or Secondary Profession = gaining attribute points = getting stronger!

A perfect equation!

Coo, coo!

Just as Adrian lost himself in that fantasy, a distinctive call brought him back to his senses.

"Huh? News Coos?" Adrian looked up, startled by the great flock crossing the sky. "I've never heard of so many together. Did something happen?"

He raised a hand to flag one down and find out, but before he could finish the gesture, several newspapers fluttered out of the sky.

"News Coos are offering a free service? The birds that love money more than life itself? Is this Big News Morgans wants the whole world to hear? Could it be..."

Unable to wait, Adrian sprang upward, used Geppo to climb into the sky, grabbed a newspaper, and dropped back onto his boat.

He spread it open. The front-page headline featured a middle-aged man laughing with abandon. He had black hair and dark eyes, but what stood out most was his thick black mustache, which looked as though it grew straight from his nostrils above his traditional pirate clothes.

Just as I thought!

The Pirate King!!

In the year 1497 of the Sea Circle Calendar, news that could shake the entire seafaring world swept across the seas at an astonishing speed.

The four outer seas, Paradise, the New World, the Red Line, Marineford...

There was nowhere people weren't talking about it.

The legendary pirate Gol D. Roger had completed the final leg of the Grand Line. Beyond Lodestar Island, the last island recorded on maps, he had reached the true final island and named it Laugh Tale!

The world agreed that Gol D. Roger had led his crew to conquer the seas and complete a voyage no one had ever managed before!

Roger's name rang out across every sea. From the East Blue to the Grand Line, marines and pirates alike called him the Pirate King!

"Incredible, Roger!"

Excitement blazed in Adrian's eyes.

Before he could say anything more, the panel chimed in his mind.

"Huh? Roger becoming Pirate King affects the system too?"

Adrian glanced at the message, expecting an announcement much like the newspaper's report. Instead, he froze.

[Pirate King Gol D. Roger's ascent detected... Game closed beta will officially begin in five days. Retrieving relevant data... 3%, 17%, 39%... Data retrieval complete. Closed beta duration: 15 days.]

"A closed beta?!"

Alarm and uncertainty flashed across Adrian's face.

Before he could sort through his thoughts, two more notifications appeared on the system panel.

[Players will soon arrive. NPC template functions unlocked!]

[Player Forum unlocked!]

Adrian waited, but no explanation followed. Only the two bare notices remained before his eyes. Apparently, he would have to work out what they meant himself.

"Five days until the closed beta. No need to rush for now; I'll head to Ohara as planned... As for the NPC template functions, based on my experience playing games before I crossed over, NPC templates probably require interacting with players to work. Issuing quests, selling items, teaching skills, and so on... And finally, the Player Forum!"

Although he couldn't figure out why the Player Forum had unlocked for him, an NPC, being able to access the forum was already great news. He could use it to see what players posted and, while keeping an eye on their movements, gather information along the way.

The forum's entrance sat in a corner of the panel. When he clicked it, a forum interface styled after the age of sailing appeared. With no players in the game yet, it was completely Kong. Not a single post.

Curious, Adrian clicked [Register], and an unexpected notice appeared.

[Welcome to the One Piece Forum! This is a public forum. To maintain public order online and social stability, please observe the following terms...]

Damn it!

Adrian scrolled straight to the bottom of the lengthy terms. As if he ever read that stuff!

[Enter username: Eight Trigrams Sea]

[Enter verification code: 1024]

[Enter forum password: ********]

[Congratulations, Eight Trigrams Sea! Registration successful!]

That actually worked?

Adrian felt a strange pang of dismay. It didn't even have the most basic protection against spam accounts. Was this some third-rate game?

And what am I, anyway? A player with an NPC template, or an NPC who crossed over as a player?

Ever since One Piece was announced, it had drawn widespread attention. The claim that it was "the world's first immersive Full-Dive VR Game" was enough to turn heads.

The game company almost never promoted it. Only the occasional scrap of basic information appeared on its official website.

That secrecy only made people more curious.

A glimpse through stockings was different from seeing everything bare, wasn't it?

Interest in One Piece had surged recently, all because the company had suddenly posted a closed beta announcement on its official website.

On a player-made forum:

"Full-Dive VR? I'll contribute a kidney! And a treasured code I've kept for years: sivr—"

"Game time passes five times faster than real time? Doesn't that mean I can live to five hundred if I play?"

"Are you sure you'll make it to a hundred, bro? And the guy above you—did your internet cut out?"

"Five thousand spots, first come, first served! If posting here makes me miss a closed beta spot, or anything else goes wrong, I'm blaming every one of you!"

"That's amateur talk. The announcement says five thousand, but the big guilds and pro clubs have practically bought them all up. There'll barely be any left for small fry like us. We'll probably need a lottery to get in, with odds about as good as winning the actual lottery!"

"Is nobody curious what One Piece is about? I checked the official site. Besides the beta announcement, the company posted a picture of a Pirate King wanted poster."

"What a lousy game. A few pictures to start with, and we have to guess the rest. Play it or don't!"

"Can someone finish the code from the first post? A classmate of mine wants to see what VR works look like before he dies."

"May good fortune follow you!"

[A Chance Encounter with the Pirates' Crew]

Adrian had no idea that the sudden closed beta announcement had set the real world abuzz. With no access to any information about the players, anything he could guess was pointless.

Besides, the panel said the beta would last only fifteen days. On seas this vast, low-level players with weak attributes could accomplish next to nothing. At most, they could lay some groundwork for the public launch.

The public launch a year later, when players arrived en masse, would be the true beginning of the chaos.

Still, an early closed beta had its benefits for Adrian.

For one thing, he could meet players early and test the NPC template functions that had baffled him until now.

If only the Player Forum could open now...

Adrian thought, a little greedily.

After a while, Adrian had calmed down and began leafing through the wanted posters enclosed with the World Economy News Paper.

"Pirate King Gol D. Roger. Bounty: 5,564,800,000 Beli. I could've sworn it was only a little over four billion two days ago. Quite a boost for reaching the top... Either way, that's an incredible figure, especially for this era. Over five billion already. He really is the Pirate King!"

"Whitebeard. Bounty: 4.5 billion Beli... Wasn't his bounty only a little over five billion twenty years from now? It's already this high? Well, Roger and Whitebeard are two of the sea's few undisputed heavyweights. It makes sense for their bounties to be close."

"Kaido of the Beasts. Bounty: one billion Beli... Tsk. Kaido really doesn't have much of a reputation yet. Even years from now, he'll need a sneak attack to beat Kozuki Oden. Hard to imagine how this monster grows into one of the Four Emperors. His natural toughness is terrifying."

"Big Mom when she was young... Well, she isn't exactly young anymore. Her face and body are already changing shape. Scary... Huh, a wanted poster for Monkey D. Dragon? Has Dragon already left the marines by this point? I suppose he must have. He'll be wearing a cloak to avoid attention at Roger's Execution in Loguetown... Captain of the White Pirates..."

As Adrian flipped through the stack of wanted posters, some familiar and others not, his thoughts rose and fell with each one.

"Gecko Moria, from the West Blue! Bounty: fifteen million Beli! It's strange seeing Moria so lean and sharp. He's cuter as a chubby shut-in."

Adrian reached the end of the thick stack without finding his own name.

"It's been two days, and there's still no wanted poster for me. Kumadori Yamamba, Dawson, and the others really didn't report that I left of my own accord. I like people who keep their word."

A smile touched Adrian's lips. He had no interest in becoming a pirate. The thought of living day and night under pursuit by marines stationed all over the world made his skin crawl.

Of course, Adrian had no intention of joining the marines for now, either. He hadn't had nearly enough of the freedom he'd longed for, and he had no desire to put a few more superiors above him to bark orders!

Adrian was considering his next steps when a fierce burst of cannon fire broke his train of thought.

"Did something happen?"

He checked the panel, but no message had appeared. Apparently, it wasn't enough to trigger a quest.

Adrian looked toward the sound. Far out at sea, a pirate ship flying a black flag marked with crossed blades was bombarding a sizable merchant vessel without restraint.

Faint screams carried across the water on the breeze, mingling with the roar of the cannons.

"That flag looks familiar. The Blade Pirates. Captain's bounty: three million Beli..." Adrian thought back to the West Blue wanted posters he had just read.

He shook his head and sighed. "And that's one reason I can't stand pirates. Ordinary people have a hard enough time surviving on a sea full of monsters, and you insist on making their lives harder!"

A few moments earlier, aboard the merchant ship.

"Captain Clivatt! Pirates! Pirates are attacking us!"

Two young sailors, sweat pouring down their faces, shoved open the doors to the ship's banquet hall.

"What?"

The middle-aged captain, dressed in a crisp suit and black top hat, stared in shock. Before he could give an order, the ship shook violently.

After years at sea, the captain recognized the cause at once: someone was firing cannons at his ship!

The banquet hall descended into chaos. Carefully arranged food and wine spilled across the floor. Shrill screams filled the air, and several timid passengers trembled so badly they collapsed where they stood.

At the critical moment, the experienced Captain Clivatt steadied himself and showed the composure his position demanded.

"Everyone, stay calm! Stay calm! Listen to the ship's security crew and follow their instructions!"

Captain Clivatt shouted to the passengers, but the hall was already in an uproar. They couldn't make out a word. Driven by instinct, they surged toward the doors as if getting out of the banquet hall would put them beyond danger.

The two young sailors struggled against the crowd before finally reaching the captain.

"What do we do, Captain Clivatt?"

"They've completely suppressed our cannon fire!"

Captain Clivatt drew a deep breath and asked in a cool voice, "How far away is the pirate ship?"

"Only half a nautical mile!" the sailor on his right answered at once.

"How did they get that close before anyone noticed? Was the lookout asleep?"

A vein stood out on Captain Clivatt's forehead as he grabbed the sailor by the collar.

At a greater distance, his years of experience at sea might have given them a chance to escape. At half a nautical mile, there was nothing he could do!

Before they could reach safety, pirate cannonballs would likely smash his merchant ship to pieces!

"We didn't know they were pirates! They only opened fire once they'd closed the distance!" the other sailor explained quickly.

"Did you show them our merchant company's insignia? No, forget it. That was a stupid question. If they feared the company's name, they wouldn't be Pirates, and they wouldn't have attacked us." Captain Clivatt sighed, his shoulders sagging. "What about our gunners?"

"They're fighting back, but they've been pinned down! The Pirates' firepower is too strong!"

"Then we have no choice. Prepare to repel boarders!" Captain Clivatt clenched his fist and issued orders in quick succession. "Gather the fighters on deck. Don't disturb the passengers unless necessary, but tell any able-bodied young volunteers where to assemble!"

"Yes, Captain Clivatt!"

The sailors answered as one.

[A Fair Reward]

Before long, the Pirates destroyed the merchant ship's gun crews, raised their sails, and headed straight for it.