(A/N: New Fanfic, one that took me a while to balance so its premise wouldn't make the protagonist overly OP from the start.
Don't worry, though, once things start to kick off for him, his power creeping will become pretty noticeable, and hopefully, feel rewarding for you readers.
Before that, however, the protagonist will have to earn it.
I like my characters to suffer.
Anyway, enough rant, enjoy—or not.)
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[Reincarnation]
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| ???'s POV: |
…
"... So, in summary, I'm getting reincarnated into the One Piece world with a wish of my choice."
"Yes."
... Huh.
I guess the dreams of many guys out there were true, then.
Though, the fact that it was happening to me only made me more suspicious.
I wasn't particularly important, nor did I have any special set of abilities. My biggest accomplishment was not getting mugged in a city famous for it happening to almost everyone.
Maybe I had a scary face. Maybe I was just a fast walker. Or maybe I simply looked poor.
Either way, there wasn't any real reason for me to be chosen for something like this—as much as I appreciated it.
So I couldn't help but feel a little apprehensive.
"Why?" I asked, not looking all that convinced.
The ROB—as I'd labelled him since he said his name was unpronounceable for a human like me—gave a faint nod, as if he had expected the question.
"I'm part of a company that collects stories. My job is to plant 'seeds' like you in worlds so they can have their own adventure and 'blossom' into a proper story. Once these stories reach a balanced state —with no further major obstacles or foreseeable problems—or die, I harvest the story, sell it to our customers, and profit."
I stared at him speechless, "...There's a customer base for that?"
"Higher-dimensional stuff. You wouldn't understand." He said as he waved me off.
"... Alright bro." I muttered, massaging my eyes—half exasperated at the dismissal, and half aware he was probably telling the truth about me not understanding.
Nothing about the situation made sense to me, to be honest. But I was already dead, and not exactly in the mood to question the logic of cosmic publishing nor the machinations of afterlife too hard.
"But why me?" I glanced at him again, more exasperated than suspicious. Like I said—I wasn't exactly the most outstanding guy out there.
To my dismay, he actually went and shrugged.
"Our algorithm handles that. As far as I know, the basic requirements are knowing about the story of the world you're being sent into, and not having a boring personality... Beyond that, what the algorithm searches for in the people to be selected is unknown even to me."
"I see..."
Whatever it had seen in me, I had no idea.
But that was as far as my curiosity and suspicion were willing to go.
It was time to surrender to the fantasy.
"Alright, so... about my wish?" I asked, my eyes growing hopeful.
The ROB waved his hand side to side. "Nothing outrageous that might make the story boring."
"...That's a bit ambiguous."
"I'll warn you when something isn't allowed."
I nodded.
'Guess it's time to make the most important decision of my future life.'
My feet involuntarily began carrying me back and forth as I sank into thought, my mind wandering through references of wishes people had made in similar situations—whether in original stories or fanfics—not wanting to bother coming up with something too complex on my own.
And the first thing that came to mind—
"Mahoraga adaptation?" I asked, looking at the ROB hopefully.
I was a JJK fan who didn't know how to read. But I was pretty sure Mahoraga's adaptation ability was busted. Don't ask me for the specifics, though—like I said, I don't know how to read.
"Hmm..." He paused to actually consider it for a moment—before shaking his head.
"While it may be fairly interesting... in that world, with an ability like that, if you find yourself a good mentor, your power level will skyrocket. I want a regularly long product, not a one-shot where you get taken in by Garp and become the strongest in the sea within a single day."
I briefly considered pointing out that not having a good wish would make his product even shorter when I died powerlessly—but judging by his whole extra-dimensional energy, I thought better of it.
"I could give you a weakened version, like—"
"Forget it. Let me think of something else." I waved him off.
Adaptation only worked for me if it was as fast and thorough as Mahoraga's. I wasn't a masochist, and I had an entire wish—settling for a watered-down version just because I couldn't think of anything better felt stupid.
So, adaptation on a pin for now. I could always circle back.
'So... what else?'
My eyes drifted aimlessly as I thought, feet carrying me back and forth again. Countless ideas passed through my head, most of them rejected immediately.
Then—I paused.
'A lustful system, maybe?'
Fun, enjoyable... and depending on the type of dynamic it had, it might even let me grow stronger through it.
—But then I remembered that my game was horrendous, and I'd probably be terrible at using it.
Of course, there was a chance the system would come with a hypnosis function to make things easier—but I wasn't into that sort of thing.
'...Still, let's put a pin on it, just in case.'
I don't know how that even came to mind—I was dead. My soul wasn't supposed to have carnal desires.
Was it?
Shrugging the matter off, I kept brainstorming.
As I did, I presented some of the ideas to the ROB, testing the waters.
A Gamer system? No issues with the power level, but he said it was overused. Other fictional abilities—the Sharingan and whatnot? Too many were Adaptation-tier, so he offered to nerf them, or dismissed them for the same "overused" reason.
Eventually, frustrated, I couldn't help but vent at him.
"Do you even want a fun product?! You keep blocking everything I suggest!"
He sighed—apparently not even angry at the outburst and appearing understanding.
"Listen, there's a fine line between what's overpowered but fun, and what's just broken and ultimately boring. Sorry, but this is my source of income. I can't afford a faulty product."
I groaned.
"Then what kind of cheat ability would even fit your taste? Suggest something yourself and I'll tell you whether I like it." I said, pointing at him daringly.
He didn't look very enthusiastic about that—probably used to having the reincarnators do the thinking—but then his eyes widened slightly, eyebrows drawing together.
"Cheat ability, huh...?" he muttered, glancing down in thought, before snapping his gaze back up to me. "I got it! How about this...?"
He waited for a second, likely to increase the dramatic effect or something.
Then, he spoke again.
"How about... a hacker system!"
Both arms shot up, extending wide as if making a grand revelation.
I, on contrast to his excitement, blinked slowly.
"...Like, with commands and stuff?" I asked, wincing slightly as I wasn't exactly a fan of informatics.
He shook his head vigorously. "I mean the X-ray, Kill Aura, Aimbot, Wallhack—that kind of hacks!"
My unenthusiasm faltered at that.
I wasn't exactly proud of it, but in my younger years I had been a user of such game "aiders." And I remembered it being fun as hell.
For me, not for the other people.
I apologize for that.
But anyway—if that were brought into reality... wouldn't it be absolutely absurd?
"Hmm..."
I thought about it for a moment, tilting my head left and right as I weighed it against the other option still sitting on the pin board.
Ultimately, for the sake of my own dignity—and because I refused to seem desperate—I decided to go for it.
My game was trainable to an extent.
Hacks, were not.
"Let's go with that, then."
He gave me a firm nod and pointed a hand at me. "This will be good."
A portal opened beneath me without warning, and it began pulling me in before I could react.
"H-hold on...!"
I called out as I tumbled into it, but the pull didn't slow even slightly.
Was he seriously already done with me?!
"AT LEAST LET ME SKIP THE INFANT PHASE, I DON'T WANT TO HAVE MY ASS WIPEEEEEED!"
My voice echoed desperately as the ROB's figure shrank away into the distance.
Please let him have heard me.
...
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| Years later, Shimotsuki Village, Isshin Dojo: |
...
"Sei! Sei! Sei! Sei!"
The cries of dozens of children swinging bamboo swords filled the dojo in a steady rhythm.
At the front, a man with slit eyes and a low ponytail watched them with a calm, unreadable expression, occasionally giving a faint nod.
The constant shouts and repetitive motions blended together into something strangely soothing.
Until something broke it.
"...?"
One of the kids abruptly stopped swinging, lowering his bamboo sword as he blinked several times—like someone snapping out of a trance.
The man—Koushirou, the owner of the dojo—called out to him. "What's wrong, Dan?"
"Uh... nothing, sensei."
The boy shook his head and went back to swinging.
Koushirou watched him a moment longer. Seeing nothing overtly wrong though, he eventually returned his attention to the group.
Meanwhile, Dan sweatdropped as he rejoined the rhythm of the class.
'Talk about an inconvenient moment to regain my memories.'
The sudden influx of another life's worth of memories was making his head spin. But being in the middle of class, surrounded by Koushirou's sharp instructions and the endless "Sei! Sei!" around him, he decided to ignore it and keep swinging.
"Sei! Sei! Sei! Sei!"
Class continued without a hitch.
Sweat poured down the kids' faces as they gasped for breath, forced to repeat the same motion over and over without rest. Dan was no better—his breathing grew rougher with every passing minute.
But as the training wore on, his eyes regained a little clarity. The unrelenting rhythm was helping shove the matter of 'oh, I suddenly regained past-life memories' into the background, sparing him the worst of it.
By the time Koushirou finally dismissed them, Dan's arms were shaking so violently that he dropped the bamboo sword the instant the command was given.
He stood there a moment, chest heaving—then picked the sword back up and placed it neatly where it belonged. After giving Koushirou the appropriate bow, he walked out of the dojo without joining the chatter of the other apprentices.
A few minutes later, he wandered to the outskirts of a nearby forest, found a tree with a decent patch of shade, and collapsed against it—letting his head fall back against the trunk.
'Well... now it's better.'
He stared up at the canopy of leaves and light filtering through them, looking relieved.
The intense focus from the lesson had helped settle the dizziness that had come from two sets of memories—this body's and the reincarnator's—colliding and mixing together. Now, both seemed to have properly arranged themselves in his mind, their order clear.
'Though... what the hell is this?'
Even with the memories sorted, the problem hadn't fully resolved itself.
A crisis of identity had risen in their place—a quiet conflict between two perspectives, each vying to be the dominant one.
On one side: a nine-year-old orphaned kid taken in by fishermen, trained in a dojo, who had just awoken to memories of a distant, otherworldly life and the promise of power beyond anything he could have imagined.
On the other: a grown man who had died, met a strange story-collecting being, been promised extraordinary abilities—only to wake up inside a child's body with an entirely new set of memories layered over his own.
Even though it would be easy to assume the man's perspective would win out through sheer experience, the child's raw sense of self—his ownership of this body and this life—made the convergence of both personalities more like oil and water than a simple takeover.
Was he the man who had been reincarnated into a fictional world, only to end up as a child?
Or was he the kid who had just received a flood of foreign memories threatening to overtake who he was?
His mind wandered over the question for a while, searching through both sets of memories for some kind of answer.
He looked at the child's memories—full of wonder, excitement, and a simplicity that made the whole world feel manageable.
Then he looked at the man's—experienced, guarded, and far more complex, carrying an awareness of intricacies that had never once crossed the child's mind.
The more he thought, the more both sides seemed to push against each other.
At least—
—Thud —
—Until he lightly knocked the back of his head against the tree. Not hard. He wasn't trying to die.
That small jolt of pain seemed to cut through the noise.
"I'm both," he said at last.
And as if those words had triggered something, everything began to settle.
They were foreign to each other, yes. But the ROB had said it himself—this was a reincarnation, which meant both were the same person.
And with that, the question of dominance dissolved.
The man's eyes opened to the world anew, seeing it through the lens of a child for the first time. His sense of adventure—long dulled by reason and cold logic—flickered back to life, burning a little brighter than before.
The kid, meanwhile, began to grow. The older set of memories reached out to him, showing him the world beyond the village: the remarkable people who waited out there, and the countless things he had never even known existed.
And slowly—just like he'd said—he became both.
Not the man. Not the kid. But something new, forged from both.
The new Dan.
Clarity returned to his eyes. He let out a long, annoyed sigh.
"I suppose it's my own fault for asking him to skip the infancy years..." he muttered, rubbing his face. "But he could have at least warned me something like this was going to happen."
Groaning, he shook his head and moved on. No point in dwelling on it.
With the identity crisis behind him and his breathing finally back to normal, he turned to the next most important thing.
"System?" he called.
And sure enough, the moment the word left his mouth—
[Ding!]
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Current Infamy Tier: Starter
▸[Current Bounty: 0 / 500K]
▸[NP: 0]
Equipped Passive Hacks [0/1]
▸None
Equipped Active Hacks [0/1]
▸None
Equipped Script
▸None
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≡[LIST OF AVAILABLE HACKS]
[Passive]
▸None
[Active]
▸None
[Items]
▸None
[Scripts]
▸None
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Dan smiled pleasantly as he looked over everything displayed before him.
Until—
"What do you mean I don't have any hacks?!"
...
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-To Be Continued...-
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