Opened My Eyes in a Cage

Leave your brains here. Who needs a brain to read One Piece? Just enjoy the mindless thrills.

The biggest gimmick of this book is that even I, the author, won't know in advance what a Devil Fruit sacrifice will yield. After each sacrifice, I'll run a program that outputs three results. If there's something you want, you can put in a request ahead of time.

In volume two, we'll take a trip to the East Blue and wipe out Koby along with Alvida.

"Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!"

"Hammer! Hammer, smash that brat into a meat patty today!"

"I bet three months of food on you! Don't fucking chicken out!"

Gamblers' voices.

Jack's consciousness shifted from confusion to clarity within seconds. He lay inside a cold iron cage, with barbed wire half a meter to his right and a pool of blood that hadn't quite dried to his left.

Unfamiliar memories stabbed into his brain like shards of glass.

A fishing village, flames, cries, Mafia men's leather shoes treading on the beach, his mother's voice as she was dragged away.

The last image in those memories was a burly bald man holding an iron hammer with a head bigger than a human skull, smeared with scraps of flesh and dried blood.

Stand up.

Jack said it to himself inside his head.

Jack propped himself up and leaned against a corner of the iron cage, beginning to scan his surroundings.

A bald man entered the cage from the opposite side.

He was roughly a hundred and ninety centimeters tall and weighed at least a hundred and twenty kilos, his whole body packed with hulking muscle. He dragged an iron hammer in his right hand, its head scraping across the floor with a shrill metallic screech.

The bald man's gaze was calm. He walked to the center of the cage, stopped, and set the hammer down with a dull thud.

Cheers erupted from the stands.

"Hammer! Hammer! Hammer!"

The slave fighter called Hammer tilted his neck, making it crack. He looked at Jack as though he were livestock awaiting slaughter. Then he approached at an unhurried pace, each step firm and solid, his iron boots pounding heavily against the iron-plated floor.

The gamblers' roars suddenly rose in pitch. Hammer was already within five paces, raising his weapon. The black, dried blood on its head had a dull sheen in the dim light filtering down through the cage's roof.

The next second, a cold, mechanical voice burst inside Jack's head.

Sacrifice system bound. Host's life in critical danger. Emergency access granted.

Please select an initial ability from League of Legends:

1. Skill

2. Item

3. Hextech Rune

4. Talent

The text on the panel was cold white, with no further explanation.

One of four. No time to choose.

Jack had no time to hesitate, nor was hesitation his habit. His gaze swept over the four options and paused briefly on "Item." Then he selected it.

Item selected. Random item acquired: Heartsteel.

Heartsteel acquired for the first time. Full-body hardening transformation will commence. The transformation will cause severe pain. Please prepare yourself.

Jack didn't even have time to finish reading the last sentence.

The pain came.

His bones crackled, a series of sharp cracks coming from his joints—not breaking, but growing. His muscle fibers felt as though they were being pulled out one by one and woven back together, every contraction bringing a tearing pain.

It felt as though scalding iron grit had been poured into his veins and pumped from his heart toward his limbs. At every branching blood vessel, a burst of searing heat exploded.

His build was changing.

His shoulders broadened within seconds, his collarbones spreading outward, his chest and back muscles swelling as though inflated. Muscle fibers writhed and reorganized beneath the skin of his arms. His once-scrawny forearms grew thick, veins bulging. His prison clothes stretched taut, the fabric tearing at the shoulder seams under the strain.

The spectators in the stands noticed the change.

"How did that brat... get bigger?"

"Fuck, is he a Devil Fruit user?"

"Doesn't look like it. Nobody saw him eat a fruit!"

Hammer noticed too. He stopped and tilted his head at Jack, a trace of confusion appearing in his eyes for the first time. But he quickly suppressed it. As far as he was concerned, whatever kind of monster stood before him, one blow from his hammer would settle it all the same.

He raised his hammer.

Jack was half-kneeling on the floor, both hands braced against it, his hardening transformation not yet complete. His back muscles spasmed, and large beads of sweat dripped from his forehead onto the iron plates with faint hisses.

But his eyes were raised. He watched Hammer's steps, watched the rhythm of those iron boots striking the floor.

Hammer reached him, gripped the handle with both hands, and raised it high overhead. The hammerhead whistled through the air as it fell, and the cheers from the stands reached their peak.

The hammer slammed into Jack's left shoulder.

The sound of cracking bone was dull, like snapping wet wood. Jack's body lurched to the right under the blow, but his hand braced against the floor, keeping him from falling.

Hammer frowned. That blow could have shattered an ordinary man's shoulder and collarbone together, yet the man before him had merely lurched to one side.

He raised the hammer again, aiming for the ribs this time. Its head fell, smashing into Jack's left side. Another dull crack of bone, but this time Jack didn't even sway. He merely gave a quiet grunt, as though someone had stepped on his foot.

Hammer finally realized something was wrong. He glanced down at the hammerhead, then at Jack's shoulder. There was only a bruise there. The bone hadn't shattered; there wasn't even a visible dent.

He froze. In that fraction of a second, he saw Jack move.

Jack lifted his right hand from the floor, spread his fingers, and seized the hammer's handle.

Hammer tried to pull his weapon back, but the handle didn't budge, as though welded to Jack's hand. His eyes widened, his pupils contracted, and his mouth opened as if to say something. He heard the handle creak. It was the sound of metal giving under strain. A single hand was squeezing finger marks into the handle of a twenty-odd-kilo iron hammer.

Jack stood up.

He stood half a head taller than Hammer, his shoulders broader, his hardened skin carrying a dull metallic sheen under the dim yellow light. His left shoulder and ribs still hurt, but those wounds weren't fatal. They didn't even qualify as serious injuries.

He looked into Hammer's eyes. There was no anger in Jack's gaze, no killing intent, not even any emotion. He simply looked.

Then he smashed the man's nose with his forehead.

The headbutt was powerful enough to snap Hammer's nasal bone down the middle. Blood sprayed onto the cage's wire mesh, onto Jack's face and prison clothes. Hammer reeled backward, his hands releasing the handle. He staggered two steps, tripped over his own feet, and landed on his backside.

Hardening stacks +1. Current stacks: 1/30.

He clutched his face, blood pouring between his fingers, muffled screams coming from his mouth.

Jack approached the burly man, clamped his left hand around the back of his neck, and clenched his right fist.

One punch. His jaw cracked.

Two punches. The burly man was knocked from his knees onto his side, his back slamming into the wire mesh and bowing it outward.

Jack walked over and looked down at the man who had just tried to bludgeon him to death. He lifted his right foot and planted it on Hammer's chest, applying just enough pressure to keep him from getting up.

Then he kicked him in the neck.

Jack turned to look outside the cage.

The guard stood outside the cage door holding an iron rod, his mouth hanging open. He didn't even notice when the cigarette butt fell from the corner of his mouth onto his boot. He looked down at the betting slip in his hand. The name on it was still "Hammer," with odds of 1.5.

The stands fell silent for a single breath. Then even wilder roars erupted.

"Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck! Hammer got taken down?!"

"What kind of monster is that brat?!"

"My money! I bet thirty thousand Beli!"

Jack ignored the voices. He returned to the corner of the cage and sat down, leaning against the wire mesh. Dried blood rubbed off onto his prison clothes, but he paid it no mind. He began examining the system's functions.

Simply put, sacrificing Devil Fruits earned him rewards.

The Heartsteel he had obtained had also been adjusted by the power of this world. Its effect had been changed: equipping it for the first time massively strengthened his body. After that, he could trigger its hardening effect once a day, each activation strengthening his body a little further.

Initially, he could only build up thirty stacks. Each Devil Fruit sacrifice after that would increase the cap by ten. The higher the stack count, the more damage its passive, Colossal Consumption, dealt after charging.

He looked down at his hand. His knuckles were thicker. The skin on the back of his hand looked unchanged, but there was an invisible extra layer beneath it.

Outside the cage, the guard rattled the chain, preparing to open the door. His hands shook so badly that the chain clanged against the iron door for ages while he struggled to line up the key with the lock. Jack turned and looked at him through the mesh. The guard's hands shook even harder.

The Arena Master came down from the stands. His short whip struck the cage, the clang of metal against metal silencing the clamor for a few seconds. Through the wire mesh, he studied the boy before him.

"You," the Arena Master said. "What's your name?"

Jack looked at him. He didn't answer.

The Arena Master waited a few seconds without receiving a reply. His mouth stretched into something that might have been a smile. He tapped the cage with his short whip, then turned to the guard behind him. "Move him to a private cell. Winning-streak privileges."

Then he turned back and gave Jack another look through the mesh. "You fight again tomorrow. Win, and you live."

Jack lifted his head, his gaze passing through the wire mesh. Outside the cage, the guard was tallying the losses from that night's betting, cursing as he kicked over a wooden bucket. In another direction, at the entrance to the basement passage, an old slave fighter was being dragged in chains toward the "Scrap Cage"—where those too sick or injured to fight were thrown to wait for death. The chains rubbed bloody marks into the old fighter's ankles, but nobody stopped working to spare him another glance.

There were dozens of cages in the fighting arena. Some held slave fighters waiting for their turn, while others held newly captured "fresh stock"—huddled in corners, afraid to look at anyone. There were more cages underground. Iron Cage City was only one of Banaro Island's underground businesses, a lower-tier outpost of the Capone Bege Mafia Alliance.