Sakazuki

North Blue.

The Blood Ox Pirates.

Aboard their ship.

Boom!

Boom!

A figure with a bull's head and a human body went flying once again, crashing into the cabin.

Blood Ox Johnny, captain of the Blood Ox Pirates, struggled to his feet.

He looked at his dead crewmates scattered around him, and at his younger brother beside him, who had died taking a blade meant for him.

Remembering the happy times they had shared over their years at sea, he could not stop his tears. His eyes turned bloodshot.

"You damned bastard! What did I ever do to you?!"

"Why?!"

"Why?!"

"You damned demon! Aaaah!!"

Rage overwhelmed his reason. He transformed into a bison and charged madly at Sakazuki.

Watching the three-meter-tall bison charge at him, Sakazuki said coldly:

"Why? Because every last one of you deserves to die."

Sakazuki's right arm turned into blood-red magma, holding its shape without dripping.

A closer look would have revealed magma faintly flowing within his arm.

As Johnny reached him, he leaped up and brought his fist crashing down onto the bull's head.

The instant his fist struck, torrents of magma erupted from it.

Boom!

The three-meter-tall bison was smashed straight into the deck and engulfed in magma.

The blow knocked Johnny unconscious, undoing his bison transformation and returning him to human form.

But the magma covering him burned him awake almost instantly.

He was barely alive, with no strength left to resist.

All he could do was howl in agony:

"Aaaaaah!!!!"

Sakazuki walked up to Johnny and seized him by the throat with one hand.

He lifted him up.

Controlling the magma as it gradually engulfed Johnny, he said:

"Three years. More than ten villages massacred."

"Go repent in hell."

"Trash."

After the magma enveloped Johnny from the feet up,

his movements gradually ceased, leaving a massive magma cocoon.

Sakazuki turned and entered the cabin. After gathering some treasure, he tossed it into his own small boat alongside the ship.

He took out an Eternal Pose, raised the sail, and set off.

When Sakazuki was barely a hundred meters from the Blood Ox Pirates' ship,

the huge magma cocoon enclosing Blood Ox Johnny began pulsing like a heart, swelling and shrinking faster and faster.

Suddenly,

Bang!

It exploded!

Countless streams of magma erupted, covering the entire ship.

As the magma burned and ate away at it,

the ship gradually sank beneath the sea, finally vanishing from sight.

All its sins were buried beneath the waves.

Aboard his boat, Sakazuki ignored the explosion behind him.

He took out a stack of bounty posters, each marked with a large X.

Flipping to the last one, he picked up a pen, drew an X across Blood Ox Johnny's bounty poster, and casually tossed it onto the deck.

"None left, huh? Time to join the Marines."

Sakazuki stood at the bow, gazing out over the sea as he thought.

He was no longer the scrawny boy he had been when he first transmigrated five years ago.

With his Devil Fruit Ability, he could easily hunt wild beasts.

With enough nourishment, in just five short years,

he had grown taller and sturdier than the average adult, despite being only twelve.

He wore a red coat, his features resolute and his build muscular.

A long sword hung across his back, a trophy taken while hunting down a Pirates Crew.

Sakazuki had spent three years in Goa Town.

He had trained while gathering information, and those bounty posters were what he had collected during those years.

This was a real world, after all, not the sanitized scenes of the anime from his previous life.

Every pirate on those bounty posters thought nothing of slaughtering villages and wiping out towns.

He could have picked any one of them and killed them eight times over without satisfying his hatred.

What he had witnessed over the years had only strengthened his conviction.

The only good pirate was a dead pirate.

Since setting out to sea two years earlier, he had killed his way through the bounty posters.

In just two years, he had earned the name "Demon."

The Great Pirate Era had yet to begin.

Roger had not yet shouted those words before his death.

But signs of chaos were already emerging. Judging by the bounty posters Sakazuki had collected over the past few years,

the number of new pirates was rising every year. One man could only do so much.

With the ideas from his previous life, he could develop his Devil Fruit abilities on his own.

But he had already reached the limits of what he could achieve by training his physical combat skills alone.

Although he knew some martial arts moves and the principles behind the Six Powers,

he had no way to practice them without someone to guide him.

Take Shave, for instance. He knew that, within an instant-0.36 seconds-

he had to stamp the ground dozens of times at high speed, generating an explosive reaction force to propel himself.

To an enemy watching, he would seem to vanish.

But that was all theory, without even getting into how to apply force or how much strength was needed.

Then there were Armament Haki, Observation Haki, and the rest. Without even the basics, how could he possibly master them?

Figuring everything out alone was the worst option.

So... I'll join the Marines first and set myself a modest goal.

How about leaving not a single pirate alive?

Half a month later.

The recruitment office of Marine Branch 194, Windflower Island, North Blue.

"Next."

"Name?"

"Sakazuki."

"Age?"

"Twelve."

At that, the Marine clerk recording his details looked up at Sakazuki, who was taller and sturdier than he was. His mouth twitched before he continued:

"Why do you want to join the Marines?"

A faint killing intent seeped from Sakazuki.

"To eradicate every pirate in the world."

The Marine clerk nodded in understanding.

"Any special abilities?"

Sakazuki answered:

"I'm a Logia user-the Magma-Magma Fruit."

The Marine clerk froze.

"Mm... huh?"

"WHAT!!!!!"

He shot to his feet...

(Don't be fooled by made-up nonsense. The Three Admirals definitely weren't given their Devil Fruits by the Marines. There's an explanation in point 16 of chapter 42.)

(This is my first book... The early chapters may have some issues and take a while to get going. Some parts of the God Valley section aren't quite sound. I recommend starting from chapter 48.)

(I strongly recommend, strongly recommend, strongly recommend starting from chapter 48.)