Chapter 2: Mysterious Power
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The Great Pirate Era.
It was dressed up in pretty words like dreams and romance, but in truth, it was a living hell where the weak were devoured first.
Perched on the tavern railing, I looked down at a crumpled sheet of paper. It was the wanted poster of Buggy the Clown, a man with a round red nose and a vicious grin. Bounty: 15 million Berries. In the seas of East Blue, it was commonplace for a single third-rate villain like that to turn an entire village to ashes.
"Of all places to end up, it had to be here."
I roughly crumpled the paper and shoved it into my pocket.
A bitter sigh escaped me. In my previous life, I had worked without rest, always watching everyone else’s mood, then died pointlessly before I even reached thirty. I couldn’t let this life I had finally been given end just as pathetically, trembling in fear until some pirate bastard’s blade cut me down.
I would never bow and scrape beneath anyone again. I would live as I pleased, without caring what others thought, guzzling harsh rum until the day I died.
To do that, there was one thing I needed before anything else.
‘Strength.’
This was a world where fists were law and blades were rules. Without strength, freedom or anything else meant nothing—you would only be dragged onto a slave ship or turned into fish food.
"First, I have to survive if I want to drink."
I picked up an old cutlass and a rusty pistol that had been lying in the corner of a warehouse. Then I headed into the deep forest behind the village, where no one ever went.
The days that followed were less training than a desperate struggle for survival.
There was no master to teach me swordsmanship, so I simply swung my blade and rolled through the dirt against the savage boars and wild dogs in the forest.
For the first few months, there wasn’t a day when my entire body was intact. Beasts tore chunks of flesh from me with their teeth, leaving me bleeding, and after rolling around on the muddy ground until my joints ached, I groaned in pain every night. I caught rainwater to drink and chewed tough meat as I endured one day at a time.
Then, one day, a strange change began to occur in my body.
After fighting every day under the extreme tension of never knowing when death might come, my senses had become unnaturally sharp.
Swoosh!
It was a foggy dawn.
A huge predator sprang from the brush without a sound, aiming for the back of my head.
I hadn’t seen it, nor had I heard so much as a rustle. It was completely outside my field of vision. Under normal circumstances, it would have torn out the back of my neck.
Yet in that instant, a chill raced up my spine.
‘...Right!’
No one had told me, but the direction from which the killing intent was descending upon me formed vividly in my mind.
Swish.
My body twisted before I could think. As I staggered and leaned my upper body slightly back, sharp claws narrowly grazed the feathers of my tricorn hat and missed.
Thud!
I casually kicked the backside of the creature as it slammed its head into a tree and flailed uselessly.
"You’re far too impatient, friend. At least exchange greetings before you attack."
Watching the beast snort and flee into the forest, I clenched and unclenched my hand.
It was a bizarre sensation.
Even without seeing them, I could vividly sense the killing intent and movements emanating from within three or four steps of me, as though I could grasp them in my hand.
"What in the world is this?"
I had no idea how it had happened. What mattered was that, thanks to these sharp senses, the chances of being struck from behind and dying an unjust death had certainly decreased.
But the truly strange thing happened around two months later.
Gaining the ability to sense danger was not the end of it. I still wasn’t strong enough. Compared to those monsters from the anime, I was still woefully lacking.
Then, one evening at sunset—
I was about to relentlessly bring my blade down upon a huge boulder in the center of the forest.
Thump, thump!
Something hot and heavy surged up from the depths of my heart.
That force raced down my arm in an instant, dyeing the hilt of the sword in my grip black.
Sizzle.
I staggered and stopped my hand.
A faint smoke was rising from the tip of the blade. A black aura rippled over its chipped edge, then swiftly engulfed the entire sword in pitch-black darkness.
A heavy, solid feeling traveled through my palm. It felt as though the blade had become an extension of my own body.
As if possessed, I swallowed hard and swung the blackened blade at the massive boulder before me.
Slice.
There was no thunderous sound, no burst of sparks.
The boulder, so large that five or six people would have needed to link arms around it, slid apart as helplessly as tofu.
Thud.
The severed chunk of rock fell to the ground. Its cut surface was as smooth as a mirror.
A heavy silence settled over the forest.
When I raised the sword with trembling hands, the black aura around its blade scattered like smoke, returning it to its original state of worn old steel.
I tapped the blade with my finger. Though it had cut through a boulder, it was completely intact, without a single new chip.
"Huh..."
A hollow laugh slipped out.
As far as I remembered from casually skimming through the original story, I had never even heard of a power like this. But it didn’t matter what it was.
The result was this undeniable.
An incredible sense that could read killing intent, and a sturdy black blade that could cleave even boulders.
"Good."
I lightly flipped the hilt on my palm and tilted the corner of my mouth into a crooked grin.
"With capital like this... I reckon I’ve earned the right to stop running in this vicious world and sail around as I please, guzzling rum to my heart’s content."
Clang.
Jack Sparrow sheathed his sword in its worn scabbard, brushed the dirt from his coat, and walked out of the forest.
It was the moment the most cunning and self-willed pirate in the world took his first step toward the bloody seas of the Great Pirate Era.
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