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I Was ¥1.8 Million in Debt When the Legacy System Chose Me — a grounded rags-to-riches journey featuring business, romance, self-improvement and empire-building.
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50 Powerstones on my system novel equals 3 extra chapters. While 100 Powerstones here equals 3 extra chapters.
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The silence that fell over the ruined central plaza felt heavier than the subterranean stone that had collapsed beneath it.
At the centre of the destruction stood Giovanni.
His Observation Haki stretched across the village, while Future Sight opened the next three seconds before him in rapid fragments. He saw every tightening muscle, every desperate turn, and every path the maddened beasts would take through the fleeing crowds.
There was no great release of Conqueror's Haki. No roaring shockwave tore through the wooden homes, and no overwhelming pressure crushed the civilians scrambling for safety.
There was only Gaban's lesson made real: terrifying violence contained within exact movements.
The white cave wolf lunged first.
Its pale fur was streaked with blood and dust, while its jaws opened wide enough to swallow several human adults at once. Three young giant children stood frozen in its path, too frightened to move as the beast bounded toward them.
Giovanni did not draw Ace.
He stepped inside the wolf's reach before its eyes could follow him. One hand closed around the sheath at his waist, and the heavy golden hilt of the Supreme Grade blade struck the soft point beneath the creature's jaw.
THUMP!
The impact travelled cleanly through the nerve cluster and into the base of its skull. The wolf's eyes rolled back, its legs giving way beneath it as the enormous predator collapsed across the stone.
It was unconscious before its chest touched the ground.
Giovanni was already moving.
The ironhide boar thundered through the eastern path toward Gerd's clinic, its metallic scales gleaming beneath the morning sun. Several young recruits stabbed at its side as it passed, but their spearheads either bent or shattered against armor formed by years in Elbaf's underground depths.
Inside the clinic, wounded civilians filled nearly every available space.
Giovanni dropped into the boar's path.
He did not brace his full body against the charge. He simply lowered his stance and extended one open palm.
The boar's armored snout struck his hand.
A tightly controlled pulse of Advanced Armament passed beneath the scales. Instead of trying to break through the creature's hide, Giovanni drove the force into the softer tissue and nerves beneath its front shoulder.
The boar's legs buckled.
Its momentum carried it forward another thirty feet, but Giovanni stepped aside and guided its falling head away from the clinic wall. The beast slid across the flagstones in a cloud of dust before coming to rest, breathing heavily but unable to rise.
A shrill cry sounded overhead.
The winged serpent beat its leathery wings above the marketplace, scattering roof tiles and loose timber with every sweep. Its head turned toward a crowded residential terrace where several families were trapped behind a collapsed bridge.
Giovanni's thumb pushed against Ace's guard.
The blade left its sheath by only a few inches.
A narrow flying slash crossed the plaza.
It passed through the serpent's left wing, severing only the thin outer membrane while leaving its flesh and bones untouched. The creature lost its lift and tumbled from the air, but Giovanni had already judged the direction of its fall.
It crashed into an abandoned hay wagon rather than the occupied terrace. The wagon shattered beneath its weight, cushioning the impact enough to leave the serpent stunned instead of broken.
"Behind you!" a recruit shouted.
The stone-backed ape dropped from a high arch with both granite-covered fists raised above its head. The creature's shadow swallowed Giovanni as it prepared to drive him into the plaza floor.
Giovanni did not turn.
He bent his knees and launched himself upward. His body twisted in the air as a narrow strand of black lightning wrapped around his heel, the Conqueror's coating compressed so tightly that it did not spread beyond the strike.
His kick drove upward into the ape's chest.
BOOM!
The force emptied the creature's lungs and folded its massive body around the blow. Its raised fists fell harmlessly to either side of Giovanni before the ape crashed onto its back.
The surrounding terrace shook from the impact.
The ape did not move again, but its chest continued to rise and fall.
Only one beast remained in Giovanni's immediate path.
The six-horned elk tore through a narrow alley, its jagged antlers stained with blood from the buildings and bridges it had already destroyed. Behind Giovanni, three elderly giants struggled to lift a collapsed beam from a trapped child.
Giovanni held his ground.
The elk lowered its head and charged.
A bloodied antler caught Giovanni across the left shoulder, tearing through his coat and opening a shallow line across his chest. The impact pushed him back half a step, but he refused to leave the beast a path toward the trapped child.
His hands closed around the antlers.
The elk fought against him, its hooves carving trenches through the stone as it tried to force its head upward. Giovanni twisted his hips and used the creature's own momentum against it.
Then he drove its head into the earth.
CRACK!
The plaza floor split beneath the impact. The elk's body flipped forward, its hind legs rising into the air before falling heavily to the side.
Its horns remained buried in the ground.
The beast went still.
Silence spread across the plaza.
Giovanni stood among the immense bodies of the six escaped creatures, his breathing slow and controlled. Blood from the elk's antler soaked through the torn shoulder of his coat, while dirt and flecks of animal blood covered his face and chest.
His eyes moved across the fallen beasts, confirming that each one was still breathing. Only after he had counted every heartbeat did his attention shift toward the civilians around him.
The surviving villagers stared from behind broken walls and improvised shields.
Young recruits who had been unable to slow even one of the creatures now stood surrounded by the results of six precise strikes. Retired warriors who understood exactly what they had witnessed gripped their weapons without raising them.
They knew Giovanni had saved them.
They also knew that he could have killed every beast just as easily.
The calm on his face made that truth more frightening than open rage would have. He looked like a man who had measured exactly how much violence each enemy required and refused to use even a fraction more.
Gerd emerged from her clinic carrying a heavy chest of medical supplies. She hurried first to the ironhide boar and pressed one hand against its armored side, feeling the steady movement of its breathing.
She checked its eyes and limbs before running toward the white cave wolf. From there, she moved between the serpent, ape, elk, and mammoth, inspecting each animal with increasing disbelief.
"They're alive," Gerd called out.
A low murmur moved through the gathered giants.
These creatures had been raised in the ancient depths beneath Elbaf. They had been frightened by smoke, maddened by drums, and forced toward the village through trails of blood. They were dangerous, but they had not chosen to attack.
Even with Hiyori nearly crushed beneath one of them, Giovanni had understood that.
He had spared them all.
Across the plaza, Ida stepped over the remains of a shattered market stall and approached the fissure leading toward the lower pens. Smoke continued to drift from the tunnel, carrying the bitter scent of the herbs used to drive the beasts upward.
Something metallic gleamed beneath a broken lever.
Ida bent down and pulled a scorched brass seal from the wreckage.
The symbol stamped across its surface belonged to the royal household.
More specifically, it belonged to its youngest prince.
Ida stared at the seal in silence.
The relief on her face disappeared.
What replaced it was not loud anger. It was colder and far more dangerous. A mother's fury sharpened by the knowledge that her own step-child had endangered the people she was responsible for protecting.
Several retired warriors noticed the change in her expression and quietly stepped away from her. These were giants who had survived storms, wars, and decades of battle on the Grand Line.
None of them wanted to be standing nearby when Ida decided what came next.
She crossed the plaza and reached for the object leaning against a cracked pillar near the communal kitchens. It was an enormous wooden ladle reinforced with thick iron bands, large enough to stir a cauldron the size of a ship.
In Ida's hands, it looked like a war club.
She lifted it onto one shoulder.
"Gerd," Ida said, her voice carrying across the plaza. "Continue treating the wounded. Have the recruits keep everyone away from the animals until they wake."
Gerd glanced at the seal in Ida's hand and immediately understood.
"Ida—"
"I know whose seal this is."
Ida turned toward the stone stairways leading down through Yggdrasil's roots and into the neon-lit Underworld.
A nearby guard swallowed nervously.
"Lady Ida, where are you going?"
Ida did not look back. Her grip tightened around the ladle until the iron bands creaked against the wood.
"I am going to the Underworld," she declared, "to correct a prince."
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