Many years later, when Rain stood at the very top of Marine Headquarters, looking down at the ocean he had personally "pacified,"
he would still clearly remember that distant afternoon in Loguetown, and the icy sound of the bolt being pulled back the first time he squeezed a trigger.
That was the day he learned how to kill.
Click.
The cold, crisp sound of a gun being loaded snapped in his ears out of nowhere.
Rain's consciousness was yanked out of chaos by a tearing, splitting pain.
My head… hurts…
Last night… how late did I work overtime again? I was rushing that damned PPT, did I pull an all-nighter?
After drinking with the client it was already, what, two in the morning, and I still had to go back to the office to finish the proposal…
He shook his heavy head. His nose was full of that unique salty, fishy smell of sea wind.
"Wait… that's not right…"
Rain's eyes flew open.
What filled his vision wasn't the ceiling of his ten-square-meter room in a shared apartment that cost him three thousand a month, but a blinding blue sky.
Under his feet was a rough stone platform. All around him, a black mass of people; the roar of the crowd pounded against his eardrums like crashing waves.
He lowered his head and saw a slightly too-big blue-and-white striped uniform on his body, with a giant "MARINE" printed across his chest.
And in his hands, he was holding an old long-barreled rifle almost as tall as he was. The cold metal against his palms felt so real it made his scalp tingle.
"What… the hell is going on?"
Rain's pupils shrank.
Directly in front of the platform, a burly man with a vicious face and a blue shark tattoo across his body was tied to a stake, his arms forced behind him, spewing curses at the top of his lungs.
"Are we… shooting a movie? Some kind of prank show?"
The absurd thought had just appeared when a cold voice beside him shattered it completely.
"Executioner, it's time. Carry out the sentence."
A Marine officer with a scar on his face gave the order in a completely emotionless tone.
Executioner?
Rain's brain went buzz—blank.
Shouldn't he be in the office, typing code in front of a computer screen? Just another ordinary corporate drone so broke from paying his mortgage he didn't even dare order decent takeout?!
What the hell? I transmigrated? Are you kidding me? I've never even killed a chicken and you want me to start by executing a living person with a gun?!
His thoughts were spamming like a broken chat window. Cold sweat instantly soaked his back, and his heart was pounding so fast it felt like it was about to jump out of his throat.
"What are you dawdling for? Follow orders!" The scar-faced officer's voice now held a trace of impatience and disgust.
Rain could feel it—every Marine soldier around them was looking at him without the slightest hint of sympathy. Their eyes were full of disdain and distance.
His brain was frantically trying to process this absurd scene in front of him. The information overload made him feel utterly powerless, like his body's control panel was still back in that cramped little room in the 21st century.
Just as Rain's mind was about to completely collapse, a flood of icy memories that didn't belong to him suddenly crashed into his head without warning!
Images flashed by at high speed—
"A hometown devoured by fire… contemptuous looks from other soldiers in the mess hall… a piece of bread snatched away… the suffocating feeling the first time that cold executioner's mask was forced onto his face…"
The numb pain and despair of this body's short life overlapped—bizarrely, perfectly—with the hopelessness of his past life, where he couldn't see any future at all.
A fate called "oppression" clenched his heart in a death grip.
The scar-faced officer's urging, the crowd's roar below, the prisoner's cursing in front of him… all of it surged into Rain's brain like a tidal wave, smashing what was left of his reason to pieces.
Panic, confusion, helplessness… countless emotions tangled together into a piercing, buzzing noise.
Rain felt like his soul had left his body, like he was just a spectator watching some absurd movie.
He watched the "him" in that movie—that fifteen-year-old boy—tremble under the crushing pressure, his body moving on pure muscle memory as his finger spasmed and pulled the trigger…
Bang—!
The gunshot was so loud it stabbed into his eardrums.
The massive recoil slammed into Rain's shoulder, almost knocking him over. The thick stench of gunpowder smoke choked him into a fit of coughing.
Rain blinked in a daze and saw that the big man tied to the stake was already silent.
It was over…
He dropped the rifle and stumbled down from the scaffold. The Marines around him scattered like he was carrying the plague. One veteran even spat on the ground and muttered, "What bad luck."
Only then did that wave of memories finally finish settling in his mind. A few ice-cold keywords floated up, clear as day:
"Marine." "Grand Line." "Loguetown."
Rain's face instantly went paper white.
"Are you freaking kidding me? The One Piece world?!"
He could feel his depression about to explode.
He'd actually been thrown into this world that looked like hot-blooded adventure on the surface but was really a brutal hellscape where the weak are meat and the strong eat, where life was cheaper than dirt!
All that hot-blooded friendship in the manga couldn't cover up the nonstop slaughter, arson, and looting on these seas.
In terms of sheer oppression, this world really did deserve the nickname "All Blue."
His internal screams were louder than the gunshot from just now. "And other people transmigrate into another world as princes, nobles, or at least someone with connections. I cross over and end up a teenage executioner with no human rights?!"
Staggering, he walked past the bulletin board in the plaza and glanced at the newspapers pasted up on it.
The headlines were all over the place—scandals about some kingdom's princess, an ad for a new type of cannon, a long-winded editorial.
His eyes, like a drowning man clutching for driftwood, desperately scanned the pages for anything that could tell him where—and when—he was.
Finally, his gaze locked onto a line of tiny print in the top right corner of one paper—the publication date: [Sea Circle Calendar 1498].
1498…
Rain's pupils shrank again. "1498… that's more than twenty years before Luffy sets sail and the main story even starts!"
The biggest advantage a transmigrator has—foreknowledge—gone.
He was being ostracized by everyone, his future completely bleak.
His job could send him into a mental breakdown at any moment.
It's over… this life is completely over…
A crushing sense of despair swallowed him. His stomach churned violently.
He couldn't hold it back anymore. He bolted into a deserted alley behind the scaffold, yanked off that heavy mask, braced himself against a moss-covered wall, and threw up until the sky spun.
In the muddy puddle at his feet, Rain finally saw his new face clearly for the first time.
A delicate, still boyish face that should've been bright and sunny at this age was now drained of all color, his eyes full of terror and exhaustion that didn't belong on someone so young.
Just as Rain was heaving so hard he was almost bringing up bile, his whole body on the verge of collapsing and his mind and body both at rock bottom—
a cold, mechanical voice with no trace of emotion rang out from the deepest part of his mind.
[Detected: host's soul has suffered severe mental trauma. Initial synchronization complete…]
[Detected: host has completed first "Sin Judgment"…]
[Sin Judgment System—binding successful!]
Kneeling on the ground, Rain jerked his head up. His bloodshot eyes stared at the empty mouth of the alley, and his gaze shifted from despair to shock, finally blazing with a kind of desperate, almost crazed joy, as if he'd just grabbed onto his last straw of hope.