Chapter 2: The Oppressive Presence of the Arlong Pirates

As expected.

After Nojiko and Nami woke up and couldn't find their beloved items, they grew both anxious and aggrieved, crying until they were little tearful messes.

Siano, filled with righteous indignation, echoed Bell-mère in cursing the unscrupulous thief to high heaven: what kind of scum steals from children? Simply worse than a beast!

Immediately afterward, he went to the market, bought a pile of new hairpins and several new headbands, then spent a long time coaxing and tricking them before finally getting the two little ones to stop crying and start laughing.

After all this trouble, plus some subsequent control experiments.

Siano finally figured out the judgment logic of the Sacrifice System.

1. The Sacrifice must be something closely connected to a manga character, and its value is positively correlated with the closeness of that connection;

For instance, the orange-blossom hairpin Nami cherishes is far more valuable than her smelly socks she just took off.

2. The value is also positively correlated with the strength of the person the Sacrifice comes from, as well as that character's weight within the manga;

The correlation with strength is only natural; items bearing emotional bonds with the powerful are harder to obtain, so their value is naturally higher;

As for character weight, that's easy enough to understand: for example, a Sacrifice obtained from Nami is worth a whole tier more.

After all, in the manga, Nami is the number-one female lead, while Nojiko is merely a peripheral supporting character, and Bell-mère exists only in memories.

To confirm this point, Siano specifically waited until Uncle Genzo dozed off, then dispatched his great general, the little thief-cat student Nami, to steal the small pinwheel atop his head, happily receiving a meager 10 points.

Fortunately, even a mosquito is still meat; there was no helping the low value, since most manga readers don't even remember who this person is.

3. Sacrifices from the same source can only be offered again after one year has passed.

In other words.

Wool-gathering has a cooldown CD, and a very long one at that; you can't just keep shearing the same fat sheep endlessly.

Looking at his remaining 25 points, Siano sighed sorrowfully; this rule was the reason he was so poor right now.

If not for this restriction...

Given a few years to develop in silence, by the time he set sail as an adult, how strong he would become was something Siano dared not even imagine.

He wondered if the three Navy Admirals working together could withstand a single punch from him.

"What are you spacing out about?"

Bell-mère waved her hand in front of him, breaking Siano's fantasy: "You've already changed clothes, so why aren't you going to eat yet? After working hard all afternoon, aren't you hungry?"

Indeed, eating was the priority.

In the kitchen's warm light, a rich aroma of meat drifted through the air.

The two little gluttons had already been eating heartily, but since their mouths and stomach capacities were too small, the table full of dishes still looked abundant, as if untouched.

Upon entering, Nojiko immediately pretended to be a lady, sipping her corn chowder in small mouthfuls, while Nami was still focused on battling the crispy crust atop her caramel pudding.

But once Siano sat down, clapped his hands together, and said, "Let's eat," the scene changed instantly.

Honey-glazed ribs vanished at a rate of one every three seconds, the steamed fish was reduced to bones and spines in the blink of an eye, and staple foods like mashed potatoes with rice and garlic bread couldn't last more than a few seconds, as if swallowed by an endless black hole.

The number of empty plates increased rapidly, piling up into a small mountain before long.

If any outsider were present, they would surely be dumbfounded.

But the family had long grown accustomed to it.

Starting about a year or two ago, Siano began shooting up in height, and his appetite grew day by day.

—Boys entering puberty, plus doing physical labor every day, can eat just a tiny bit more than little girls; it's perfectly normal!

Bell-mère propped her cheek on her elbow, smiling brightly as she watched Siano dig in with great gusto.

She wondered if she had saved the East Blue in her past life, for heaven to send her such several lovely little angels, especially Siano, who was steady, sensible, diligent, and reliable.

If he truly was an angel, he was probably the most popular one in heaven, wasn't he?

Come to think of it.

Although she had served as a marine for a few years and her physical constitution was slightly better than an ordinary person's, supporting such a large family all by herself was ultimately a strenuous task.

For a long stretch of the three children's childhood, they actually lived in considerable poverty and hardship.

There was even a time when Nami could only wear her older sister's hand-me-downs; Bell-mère often felt guilty and blamed herself for this, until Siano grew into the family's primary laborer, after which life slowly became easier.

Especially during the harvest seasons of the past two years, Siano could always finish harvesting the entire orange grove within a week; in the past, she would have needed a whole month.

Completing the harvesting and sorting work earlier meant they could sell everything when the first purchasing cargo ship arrived, fetching a price slightly higher than later on.

Thus, after several years of this virtuous cycle, the family's income had been climbing steadily.

Bell-mère counted on her fingers: once this year's batch of oranges was sold, the money she had saved would break the 300,000 Beli mark!

"Waaah, really, is my childhood dream about to come true? A few years ago, who could have predicted that I would one day become a millionaire!"

"Was this delivered today?"

This time, it was Siano's voice that broke her pleasant daydream.

"Eh?"

Bell-mère came back to her senses, only to see that Siano had somehow already finished eating and picked up a newspaper she had left on the corner of the table.

"Yes, the News Coo only arrived at noon," Bell-mère complained. "Who knows what the World Economic News Agency is up to; they raised the price again. Last week it was 40 Beli, now one copy is 50 Beli. When I was your age, it was only 20 Beli per copy..."

She hadn't had the habit of subscribing to a newspaper every day before, nor could she afford it.

It was only in the past two years, after things became more comfortable and under Siano's strong insistence, that she started subscribing, and the latter would read it carefully every single day.

Bell-mère couldn't understand why her adopted son paid such close attention to the newspaper; she always felt those major events at sea were far removed from them, who were just growing oranges in the countryside.

Her nagging went in one ear and out the other; Siano murmured "mm-hmm" a couple of times as he scanned the paper.

—He hadn't read a few lines before his gaze was instantly captured by the report at the bottom of the front page.

"Agreement Reached! Jinbe, Captain of the Sun Pirates, Has Become the New Warlord of the Sea!"

Beside it was an accompanying photo: accompanied by several Navy officers, a blue, chubby fish-man wore a yukata and wooden clogs, gazing calmly at the camera.

Siano stared at this photograph, his gaze unmoving for a long time.

The hand gripping the edge of the newspaper tightened unconsciously until the knuckles turned white.

"Is it coming...?" he murmured softly.

"What?" Bell-mère tilted her head in confusion.

"Nothing."

Siano shook his head slightly and quickly flipped through the remaining pages.

After confirming there was no other noteworthy information, he glanced out the window, pushed back his dining chair, and stood up.

"The rain seems to have stopped; I'm going to the orchard to practice swordplay for a while. If it gets late, you two go to sleep first; don't wait for me."

He smiled, grabbed the wooden sword from the corner, pushed open the door, and stepped out, leaving behind a silhouette that grew increasingly distant beyond the glass pane.

"Hmm..."

Bell-mère withdrew her gaze, pinched her chin, and sank into deep thought.

She was not someone with sharp intuition; in her childhood, elders in her hometown often called her a stubborn, empty-headed fool.

But after living together day and night for so many years, she knew Siano too well; she felt that this reaction of his definitely meant he was hiding something from her.

Suddenly, a hazy memory surfaced in her mind.

When this child was ten years old, one afternoon during a nap, it seemed he had a nightmare that felt both very long and incredibly vivid.

He then jolted awake, covered in sweat, and came to find her, claiming that in the future, a group of pirates with hideous and terrifying appearances would come to occupy this island.

He urged her to move early, far away, to find a place on another island to start life anew.

That was naturally impossible; this was her hometown, after all—how could one move away just because of a child's inexplicable nightmare?

Moreover, the East Sea 16th Branch, where she had once served, was very close to here.

If there really were pirates coming, wouldn't the Marines of the 16th Branch take care of it?

At the time, Bell-mère had spent a long time comforting him with a mix of helplessness and amusement before finally calming the little one down.

It was also from that day onward that the child's temperament became steadier day by day; he never mentioned moving again, and as time passed and circumstances changed, he gradually became the pillar of the household.

All along.

She had only assumed Siano had simply grown older and, having been born out of suffering, was far more mature than his peers, feeling nothing but gratification about it.

Could it be...

... that the shock of that nightmare was far more intense than she imagined, and has persisted until now?

————

"Hoo!"

On this night marking the transition from autumn to winter, the temperature had plummeted to around zero degrees, making the white breath exhaled from nostrils visible to the naked eye.

Siano jogged slowly around the tangerine orchard for over ten laps, digesting dinner while warming up.

He then moved to an open space, stripped off his clothes, and exposed his lean, muscular chest.

He planted his feet firmly in a horse stance, set the wooden sword aside, and began practicing the Breathing Fist Style.

This Set of Fist Styles was something he had saved up for a long time last year, spending a huge sum of exactly seven hundred points to purchase from the trading market.

Its core seemed to share some connection with the Breathing Styles of the Demon Slayer world, yet the differences were obvious.

At the edge of the tangerine grove, there was a circular clearing specially cleared out.

Nine thick wooden posts buried in the earth formed an array, varying in height and distance, with iron hoops tightly binding both their tops and bottoms.

This was something Siano had commissioned the village carpenter to construct using old varieties of tangerine trees eliminated last year.

If not for the fact that Nami had covered every single post with crayon doodles of clouds, moons, and little rabbits, the place would truly possess the imposing atmosphere of a grandmaster's training hall.

Inside the wooden post array, there was also half a basket of tangerines.

Most had wormholes or were rotting, all being defective products eliminated during harvesting in recent days.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

Three rotten tangerines were tossed into the air, and the moment they hit the ground, the black-haired youth moved.

His right foot slammed forcefully onto the growth rings of a wooden post, his waist and hips twisting to create a sound of splitting air, while his elbow precisely struck the first falling fruit.

The airflow driven by the seventh form of the Breathing Fist Style surged wildly beneath his skin, exploding the tangerine with a "pop" into eight even segments.

Before the juice could splash onto his eyelashes, his left knee had already crushed the seed sac of the second tangerine.

And when the third tangerine was still thirty centimeters off the ground, Siano suddenly halted his momentum; his right foot, which had been inches away and poised to shatter the peel, stepped firmly onto the ground instead.

Drip.

A bead of sweat slid down his chin onto a withered leaf, rising as a wisp of white steam.

Suddenly relaxing the muscles just as they expanded to their limit, repeatedly tempering the capillaries—this was precisely the secret technique recorded in the Breathing Fist Style manual.

Siano did not pause; he took three more tangerines from the bamboo basket nearby and repeated the previous process, over and over again.

It was not until the half-basket of tangerines was nearly empty that he finally stopped, walking over to the faucet to cup water and wash his face.

Swish—

Kicking the empty basket aside, the black-haired youth, after a brief rest, shifted his target to several tangerine trees nearby.

These were all varieties Bell-mère had purchased in the early years; whether in yield or fruit taste, they fell far short of the several batches planted subsequently.

Once this winter passed, they were destined to be eliminated.

Just like certain fish-men of base nature, who deserve to be torn into sashimi!

Breathing Fist Style, Eighth Form!

"Heh!"

Siano let out a low roar; the instant his left foot crushed the withered leaves beneath it, his right fist struck the tree trunk with the arc of a diving seagull.

Where his knuckles passed, the joints of his five fingers burst forth with crisp sounds like frying beans.

Boom! Boom! Punch after punch, like a violent storm; at the points where his fist bones collided with the tree trunks, an iron-gray color unknowingly began to spread.

This coloration is a characteristic of the Breathing Fist Style stimulating the subcutaneous tissues to harden, bearing similarities to the wrapping of Armament Haki.

However, the coverage area is extremely small, and the strength is somewhat inferior; for now, it can only be considered a low-spec version.

After completing a full set of punches, a faint "crack" sound emanated from the center of the tangerine tree, yet its surface bore only a few fist marks several knuckles deep.

Continue!

After a brief rest, merely a few seconds of pause, the old tangerine tree once again emitted a painful groan.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Under the originally silent night, the muffled and rapid sounds of striking rang out incessantly throughout the tangerine grove.

"One thousand nine hundred ninety-six, one thousand nine hundred ninety-seven, two thousand!"

Stop!

Siano stepped back to a distance, firmly rooted his lower stance, and exhaled a long breath.

From both shoulders and the top of his head, nearly transparent white vapor curled upward, vanishing into the night.

Meanwhile, from the shoulders down, his torso trembled violently, lasting for several seconds before gradually subsiding.

Every inch of muscle surged in rhythm with his heartbeat, pores blasting forth rolling waves of heat that steamed the frost clinging to the withered branches and fallen leaves at his feet into twisted whirls.

"Progress is quite excellent!"

Feeling the clear sense of power transmitting through every part of his body despite extreme weakness and exhaustion, Siano twisted his neck as if reborn, unable to suppress a grin of satisfaction.

It had to be said.

He truly possessed some talent in the cultivation of body techniques.

Practicing the Breathing Fist Style, counting strictly, had taken only a year and a half.

From the clumsy beginnings to the current increasing proficiency, the speed of progress seemed to have activated an acceleration cheat, growing faster and faster.

It took him a year to go from uninitiated to initiated, and then another three-plus months; only in late summer and early autumn did he finally achieve minor success.

And now, before winter had fully set in, he could already sense the barrier marking the breakthrough of his limits.

At this rate.

He was confident that with no more than ten-odd days of such bitter cultivation, he would achieve major success in the Fist Style.

(End of Chapter)