Chapter 2: The Oppressive Presence of the Arlong Pirates
As expected.
When Nojiko and Nami woke up and couldn't find their beloved possessions, they were both distressed and hurt, crying their little eyes out.
Filled with righteous indignation, Shane joined Belle-mère in cursing the shameless thief. What kind of scum steals from little children? Worse than an animal!
Immediately after, he went to the market, bought a pile of new hairpins and several new headbands, and after a great deal of coaxing and cajoling, finally managed to make the two little ones smile through their tears.
After that whole ordeal, coupled with a few more controlled experiments, Shane finally figured out the judgment logic of the Sacrifice System.
The sacrifice must be an object closely related to a character from the manga. The value of the object is directly proportional to the strength of this connection.
For example, Nami's treasured orange-blossom hairpin was far more valuable than a pair of her smelly, worn-out socks.
The value is also directly proportional to the strength of the person the item came from, as well as their importance and weight in the manga's overall plot.
The connection to strength was obvious—an item with an emotional bond to a powerful character is harder to obtain and thus naturally more valuable. As for character importance, that was also easy to understand. For instance, any sacrifice obtained from Nami was on a whole other level.
At the end of the day, Nami was the main female lead in the manga, while Nojiko was a side character, and Belle-mère only existed in flashbacks.
To confirm this, Shane had even dispatched his top agent, the little cat burglar Nami, to steal the pinwheel from Uncle Genzo's hat while he was napping. He was rewarded with a measly 10 points. Still, every little bit helped. He couldn't complain about the low value; most manga readers probably didn't even remember who Genzo was.
Sacrifices from the same source have a one-year cooldown before they can be offered again.
In other words, there was a long cooldown on farming points. He couldn't just find one fat sheep and fleece it relentlessly.
Looking at his remaining 25 points, Shane sighed sorrowfully. This rule was the reason he was so poor right now.
If it weren't for this restriction...
Shane couldn't even imagine how powerful he would be if he were given a few years to develop quietly before setting out to sea as an adult. He wondered if even the three Marine Admirals combined could take a single punch from him.
"What are you daydreaming about?"
Belle-mère waved a hand in front of his face, shattering his fantasy. "You've changed your clothes. Aren't you going to eat? You worked all afternoon, aren't you hungry?"
Right. Eating was what mattered.
...
The warm light of the kitchen was filled with the rich aroma of meat.
The two little gluttons had already been feasting, but with their small mouths and even smaller stomachs, the table full of dishes still looked as plentiful as if it hadn't been touched.
When he walked in, Nojiko immediately pretended to be a prim lady, sipping her corn chowder. Nami was still focused on cracking the caramelized top of her crème brûlée.
But the moment Shane sat down, clapped his hands together, and said, "Time to eat," the entire atmosphere changed.
The honey-glazed ribs vanished at a rate of one every three seconds. The steamed fish was reduced to a skeleton in the blink of an eye. Staples like mashed potatoes with rice and garlic bread lasted only a few moments before being devoured as if by a black hole.
The number of empty plates grew rapidly, soon forming a small mountain.
Any outsider would have been utterly dumbfounded.
But the family was long used to it.
About a year or two ago, Shane had started shooting up in height, and his appetite had grown with each passing day.
—He's a boy going through puberty, and he does manual labor all day. It's perfectly normal for him to eat a little more than the girls!
Belle-mère propped her chin on her hand, watching Shane eat with a wide, happy smile. She didn't know if she'd saved the entire East Blue in a past life for heaven to have sent her such lovely little angels. Especially Shane, who was so steady, sensible, diligent, and reliable.
If he were a real angel, he'd probably be the most popular one in heaven, right?
Speaking of which, although she had been a Marine for a few years and was physically stronger than an average person, supporting such a large family on her own was still a strain. For a long time, the three children's early years were spent in poverty. At one point, Nami could only wear Nojiko's old hand-me-downs. Belle-mère often felt guilty about it. It was only after Shane grew up and became the main breadwinner that their lives slowly improved.
Especially during the harvest season these past two years. Shane could always harvest the entire orange grove within a week. In the past, it would have taken her a whole month.
Finishing the harvesting and sorting work earlier meant they could sell all their produce to the very first merchant ship that arrived, and the price was always slightly higher than later on.
Thanks to this virtuous cycle, the family's income had been rising steadily for several years. Belle-mère had counted on her fingers; after selling this year's batch of oranges, her savings would exceed three hundred thousand Belli!
Wow, seriously? Is my childhood dream coming true? Who would have thought a few years ago that I'd become a millionaire one day!
"Did this arrive today?"
This time it was Shane's voice that broke her happy daydream.
"Eh?"
Belle-mère snapped back to reality and saw that Shane had already finished eating and was picking up a newspaper she had left on the corner of the table.
"Yeah, the News Coo only came by at noon," Belle-mère complained. "I don't know what the World Economy News Paper is up to. The price went up again. It was 40 Belli last week, and now it's 50. When I was your age, it was only 20 Belli a copy..."
She didn't used to have the habit, or the money, to subscribe to a daily newspaper. It was only after their finances eased up these past two years that she started subscribing at Shane's strong insistence. He would read it carefully every single day.
Belle-mère couldn't understand why her adopted son was so interested in the news. The major events happening out on the seas always felt so distant from their lives of growing oranges in the countryside.
Her rambling went in one of Shane's ears and out the other. He just hummed in acknowledgment as he scanned the paper.
—He hadn't read more than a few lines before his eyes were drawn to a report at the bottom of the front page.
Next to it was a photo. Accompanied by several Marine officers, a fat, blue fish-man wearing a yukata and wooden clogs stared calmly at the camera.
Shane stared at the photo for a long time without looking away.
His hand, holding the edge of the newspaper, unconsciously tightened its grip.
"Is it... coming?" he murmured in a low voice.
"What?" Belle-mère tilted her head in confusion.
"Nothing."
Shane shook his head slightly and quickly finished scanning the rest of the paper.
After confirming there was no other information worth noting, he glanced out the window, pushed back his chair, and stood up.
"Looks like the rain has stopped. I'm going out to the grove to practice my sword for a bit. If it gets late, you guys can go to sleep first. Don't wait up for me."
He smiled, grabbed the wooden sword leaning against the wall, and pushed the door open, leaving behind a silhouette that gradually receded past the glass window.
"Hmm..."
Belle-mère retracted her gaze, pinching her chin in thought.
She wasn't a particularly intuitive person. As a child, the elders in her hometown had always called her a stubborn, empty-headed fool. But after living with Shane day and night for so many years, she knew him too well. She had a feeling that his reaction meant he was hiding something from her.
She suddenly had a vague recollection.
When the boy was ten, he had a long and vivid nightmare during an afternoon nap. He woke up abruptly, covered in sweat, and ran to her, telling her that a group of terrifying, monstrous pirates would come to occupy the island in the future. He begged her to move away, to go far away and start a new life on another island.
Of course, that was impossible. This was her home. You couldn't just pack up and leave because of a child's inexplicable nightmare. Besides, the Marine Base 16, where she used to serve, was very close by. If any pirates were really coming, the Marines from the 16th Branch wouldn't just stand by and do nothing, would they?
At the time, Belle-mère had been at a loss for whether to laugh or cry. She spent a long time comforting the little guy before he finally calmed down.
It was also after that day that the boy's temperament grew steadier day by day. He never mentioned moving again, and as time passed, he gradually became the pillar of the family.
All this time, she had just assumed that Shane was growing up and that because of his difficult origins, he was simply far more mature than his peers. She had only felt proud of it.
Could it be... that the shock of that nightmare was far more intense than I imagined, and it has lasted to this day?
————
"Hah!"
On a night between autumn and winter, the temperature had already dropped to around zero degrees Celsius. The white mist from his breath was visible to the naked eye.
Shane first jogged a dozen laps around the orange grove, digesting his dinner and warming up at the same time. Then, he went to an open area, took off his shirt, and revealed a lean, muscular chest.
He settled into a firm horse stance, placed his wooden sword to the side, and began to practice his Breathing Fist style.
This set of fist techniques was something he had purchased from the trading market last year for a whopping seven hundred points, which he had saved up for a long time. The core of it seemed to have some connection to the breathing styles from the world of Demon Slayer, but there were also clear differences.
At the edge of the orange grove, there was a specially cleared circular area. Nine thick wooden stakes, bound with iron hoops, were buried in the ground in a formation of varying heights and distances. Shane had commissioned the village carpenter to make them from the old variety of orange trees that had been culled last year. If it weren't for Nami's crayon doodles of clouds, moons, and little rabbits all over each stake, it would have had the imposing aura of a grandmaster's dojo.
Inside the circle of stakes was half a basket of oranges. Most of them had wormholes or were rotting; they were the rejects from the past few days of harvesting.
Thump! Thump! Thump!
Three rotten oranges were tossed into the air. The moment they were about to land, the black-haired boy moved.
His right foot slammed onto the growth rings of a stake, his waist twisting to create a sound of breaking air as his elbow precisely struck the first falling fruit.
The airflow generated by the seventh form of the Breathing Fist surged madly under his skin, causing the orange to explode into eight perfect segments with a pop.
Before the juice could even splash onto his eyelashes, his left knee had already shattered the seed sac of the second orange.
But as the third orange was still thirty centimeters from the ground, Shane suddenly stopped his momentum. His right foot, which had been inches away from smashing the orange peel, landed firmly on the ground.
Drip.
A bead of sweat trickled down his chin and landed on a dry leaf, sending up a wisp of steam.
To suddenly relax his muscles when they were tensed to their limit, repeatedly tempering his capillaries—this was the secret technique recorded in the Breathing Fist manual.
Shane didn't stop. He took another three oranges from the basket and repeated the process, over and over again.
He only stopped when the half-basket of oranges was nearly empty. He went to the tap and splashed water on his face.
Screech—
After kicking the empty basket aside, the black-haired boy, after a brief rest, turned his attention to the nearby orange trees. These were also old varieties that Belle-mère had purchased years ago. Both their yield and the taste of their fruit were far inferior to the later batches. They were scheduled to be culled after this winter.
Just like certain inherently inferior fish-men who deserve to be torn into sashimi!
Breathing Fist, Eighth Form!
"Hah!"
Shane let out a low growl. The moment his left foot crushed the dry leaves beneath it, his right fist struck the tree trunk in the arc of a swooping seagull.
As his fist flew, his knuckles cracked like popping soybeans.
BAM! BAM! One punch after another, like a violent storm. Where his knuckles collided with the trunk, a faint iron-grey color began to appear. This color was a characteristic of the Breathing Fist hardening the subcutaneous tissue, similar to being coated in Armament Haki, but its coverage was minimal and its intensity was inferior. For now, it could only be considered a low-spec version.
After a full set of punches, a faint "crack" sound came from the center of the orange tree, but the exterior only showed several knuckle-deep indentations.
Continue!
After a brief rest of only a few seconds, the old orange tree began to groan in pain again.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
The once-silent orange grove was now filled with the continuous, muffled sounds of rapid strikes.
"One thousand nine hundred ninety-six, one thousand nine hundred ninety-seven... two thousand!"
Stop!
Shane stood back again, stabilized his stance, and let out a long breath.
From his shoulders and the top of his head, almost transparent white steam curled up, disappearing into the night.
Below his shoulders, his torso trembled violently, the shaking lasting for several seconds before gradually subsiding. Every twitch of his muscles was in sync with his heartbeat. Pores spewed out waves of heat, turning the frost on the dead leaves at his feet into swirling vortexes of steam.
"The progress is excellent!"
Feeling the clear sense of power that remained in his body despite the extreme exhaustion, Shane twisted his neck, feeling as if he had been reborn. He couldn't help but grin with satisfaction.
He had to admit, he really did have some talent for martial arts.
He had been practicing the Breathing Fist for a year and a half, all told. From a clumsy beginning, he was now becoming more and more proficient, and his rate of progress seemed to be accelerating as if he had a cheat enabled.
It took him a year to go from a complete novice to the Beginner level. It took another three-plus months to finally reach the Adept level in late summer.
And now, before winter had even fully set in, he could already feel the barrier to his next breakthrough.
At this rate, he was confident that with at most another ten days of such intense training, he would achieve the Master level in his fist technique.