On a stormy night, the monitor's glow lit a young, focused face.
"Triple Kill!"
"Quadra Kill!"
The system's rousing announcements blasted through his headphones, and a confident smile curled Lorne's lips. On the screen, Sett, the Boss, stood unbowed before the enemy nexus under his control. His health bar was nearly empty, but his fearless ferocity let him withstand all five enemies' firepower alone.
"One more... I'll sleep once I get the pentakill!"
He licked his dry lips, precisely calculating his cooldowns. Just as he was about to unleash the Haymaker that would end it all, a deathly white ball of lightning shot through the window and struck his computer tower dead-on.
"Mother-"
Before he could finish the curse, Lorne's vision went black, and he lost all sensation.
When his consciousness came together again, there was only endless cold and suffocation.
Seawater, bitterly salty and bone-chilling, kept crashing over him and pouring into his mouth and nose.
He wanted to call for help, but only faint, infant-like babbling came from his throat.
He had become a baby, abandoned on a freezing beach.
Despair surged over him like the tide. His instinct to survive drove him to muster his last ounce of strength and let out a loud wail.
A tall woman in a worn trench coat stopped in her tracks.
She had neat, short black hair and resolute features that looked carved by a blade. Only deep in her eyes lingered a trace of weariness that would not fade.
The woman approached and crouched down. A flicker of surprise crossed her eyes as she watched the baby still waving his tiny fists beneath the pounding waves. She reached out with calloused fingers and gently touched his little face, purple from the cold.
"What a tenacious little thing..." she murmured, as though seeing a shadow of something from her past. After a moment's silence, she opened her coat and carefully bundled the shivering baby into her arms, driving away his chill with her own body heat. "From now on, your name is Lorne."
The woman's name was Masha.
She took Lorne back to a little wooden house not far from the shore and became his adoptive mother.
More than a decade passed in the blink of an eye.
Lorne's life was filled with an intensely regimented routine. He had to get up before dawn and run ten kilometers around the island carrying weights, then undergo a series of training sessions under Masha's supervision-combat, taking hits, strength, and more-that could only be called brutal.
Masha never held back. Her seemingly ordinary punches and kicks always struck Lorne's most vulnerable spots with precision.
Lorne spent every day bruised, swollen, and aching all over. Strangely, however, no matter how badly he was injured, a night's sleep would leave him as good as new the next day.
As he grew older, Lorne's body also underwent changes unlike those of ordinary people. A pair of furry, feline-like ears grew on top of his head.
For a time, this made him an object of ridicule and rejection among the village children. Only Masha would gently rub his animal ears with her rough palm and tell him, "These are proof of strength."
During one training session, Masha had him stand beneath a waterfall to test his limits, using his body to withstand the battering current. The pounding left Lorne dizzy, every bone in his body feeling as though it would fall apart.
Just as his consciousness was about to blur, he "saw" it.
Deep within his mind, a gray energy gauge appeared. With every impact from the waterfall, every bit of pain he felt turned into a strange energy, filling that gray gauge little by little.
When the gauge turned a brilliant white, a warm current instantly spread through his entire body, dispelling all fatigue and pain.
Grit...
A familiar term surfaced naturally in his mind.
From that day on, Lorne no longer merely endured Masha's training; he even began to enjoy it. He relished the feeling of turning pain into power, and the strength that came when his Grit filled to the brim.
Their peaceful life went on day after day, like the island's tides that had remained unchanged for countless years.
Until today.
Masha returned from town with a newspaper and a brand-new wanted poster.
Lorne wiped the sweat from his forehead and leaned closer. The newspaper's headline read in startling bold black letters: "Following the public execution of 'Pirate King' Gol D. Roger, the Great Pirate Era has spiraled completely out of control, with shipping routes across the Four Seas growing ever more chaotic!"
His heart gave a sudden jolt.
His gaze shifted down to the wanted poster. The man in the photograph was built like a mountain and held an enormous naginata. A white, crescent-shaped mustache curved above his mouth, and his eyes looked down upon the world.
["Whitebeard" Edward Newgate. Bounty: 5,046,000,000 Beli]
"The World's Strongest Man..." Lorne's breathing quickened.
Pirate King, Whitebeard, the Great Pirate Era... Those key words split open his memories, sealed away for over a decade, like a bolt of lightning.
This was... the world of One Piece! And it was the most chaotic, most spectacular era after Roger's death, when every story was about to begin!
After his brief shock, Lorne felt not a trace of panic. Instead, unprecedented excitement and bold ambition blazed in his chest.
In this world, strength was the passport to everything!
"Ha... Hahahaha!" Unable to help himself, he threw his head back and laughed, clenched his right fist, and swung it hard at a reef rock half a person's height beside him!
"Bang!"
Without any technique, just an eruption of brute force, the hard rock shattered at the blow, sending fragments flying!
Looking at the destruction he had caused, feeling the power surging through his body and the distinct presence of Grit in his mind, Lorne felt more assured than ever.
The Boss's bloodline-in this world where the strong ruled supreme, it was practically the perfect cheat, tailor-made for him!
Just then-
"Clang! Clang! Clang!!"
An urgent, piercing alarm bell suddenly rang out from the village entrance! It was the highest alarm, sounded only when pirates invaded!
The smile on Lorne's face froze instantly.
He whipped his head around and saw Masha's expression turn utterly grave in an instant. A terrifying sharpness blazed from her weary eyes.
Without the slightest hesitation, she dashed back into the house and took a long sword, tightly wrapped in strips of cloth, down from the wall.
As the cloth came undone, a gleaming standard-issue military saber engraved with the Marine insignia left its sheath again for the first time in over a decade!
At almost the same moment, an enormous pirate ship flying a menacing skull flag smashed through the crude wooden pier and roughly beached itself on the island's sand.
Over a hundred pirates armed with blades and guns charged toward the peaceful village with savage grins, like jackals catching the scent of blood.
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