Chapter 3: Transactions
A small figure moved through the depths of the forest like a white ghost.
The mountain path was rough, littered with roots, loose stones, and patches of uneven earth, yet none of it seemed able to slow him down. He slipped between the trees with astonishing speed, light on his feet and precise in every step, as though the land itself had already been memorized beneath his soles.
At last, the figure came to a stop by a river.
The water ran clear and cold, reflecting the pale face leaning over it.
Axel looked down and let out a quiet sigh.
The face in the water was delicate to an almost absurd degree. Soft features, skin as pale as fresh snow, and long white hair that fell behind him like scattered silk. His eyes, faintly tinged with red, looked strange and captivating even in the dim forest light. Combined with that slender frame and the oversized, tattered shirt hanging loosely over his body, the result was almost offensively misleading.
Anyone who saw him would think he was a girl.
That fact had annoyed him for the past three months.
His face was becoming more and more similar to Accelerator's. Unfortunately, Accelerator's appearance was not the sort that inspired masculine confidence. Setting aside his terrifying ability, his most iconic physical trait was that sharp, almost androgynous beauty. Without that cold, demonic expression that usually clung to his face in the original story, people would absolutely mistake him for a girl at first glance.
And Axel was very much a man.
In body and mind.
That made the whole thing deeply irritating.
Still, compared to the struggle of his first days in this world, appearance was a fairly luxurious problem to have.
Three months.
He had only been here for three months, yet his body had changed dramatically.
For the first month, his growth had been absurdly fast. He had gone from a helpless infant to a child who looked roughly five or six years old. After that, the explosive growth had slowed and gradually returned to something closer to normal.
Axel had considered several explanations for it.
The first was tied to his power.
Vector manipulation.
If his body had some connection to Accelerator on a deeper level, then perhaps it had been artificially modified in some way, similar to the Misaka Sisters. That could explain the abnormal growth rate. At the same time, perhaps some condition similar to Last Order's had kicked in and caused his body to stabilize afterward.
The second possibility was that the world itself operated under different rules.
But that idea had already been disproven.
Because after spending these three months surviving, observing, and gathering fragments of information, Axel had finally confirmed two things.
First, this world was the world of One Piece.
Second, the place he had arrived in was Mount Colubo.
That information had not come easily. He had pieced it together through repeated trips, careful listening, and guarded exchanges at the Gray Terminal near the mountain. Once he understood where he was, the rest had fallen into place quickly.
If this was Mount Colubo, then the nearby kingdom had to be Goa Kingdom.
And if this was Goa Kingdom, then the refuse heap known as Gray Terminal was exactly the sort of place where useful information and human filth gathered in equal measure.
Axel lifted his gaze from the river and turned toward a nearby tree.
It looked ordinary at first glance. Not especially tall, not especially old, and no different from the countless others surrounding it.
Except for one thing.
At the base of its trunk was a palm print, deeply pressed into the bark.
That was his mark.
With a light jump, Axel sprang upward and landed in the branches. His movements were smooth and silent. Hidden among the dense leaves near the top, a bundle of animal hide had been carefully stashed away, tied down with twisted vines so it would not slip.
This was his harvest from the past several days.
A valuable one.
He had skinned and prepared the hides himself with vector manipulation, preserving them far more cleanly than any ordinary hunter could have managed. To him, these hides were not just trade goods. They were food, money, and leverage.
He untied the bundle, slung it over himself, then wrapped it inside a black cloth sack before climbing back down.
The route ahead was already fixed in his mind.
He did not need to think about where to go.
The forest paths around Mount Colubo had long been engraved into his memory. With Accelerator's brain and computational ability, memorizing terrain like this was almost effortless. Even the mountain's winding trails and shifting undergrowth could not confuse him now.
As Axel moved forward again, the forest remained strangely quiet.
Not because there were no animals nearby.
But because none of them could sense him.
The sound of his footsteps never spread beyond his immediate vicinity. The heat radiating from his body was redirected as well. By altering the vectors of vibration and thermal flow, Axel had effectively hidden himself from creatures that hunted by hearing or body heat.
To them, he simply was not there.
Before long, the trees thinned, and the air changed.
The scent of damp earth gave way to smoke, rot, and burning refuse.
Gray Terminal.
Before stepping fully into that lawless dump, Axel pulled the black cloth over his face, covering everything below his eyes.
It was a necessary precaution.
Gray Terminal was no place for the weak.
It was a nest of thugs, smugglers, human traffickers, scavengers, and other creatures that only barely qualified as people. Entering such a place with the face of a pretty child, especially one that could easily be mistaken for a little girl, was the same as hanging a sign around his neck that read easy target.
He had learned that lesson the hard way.
The first time he came here, someone had tried to seize him almost immediately.
Children were worthless in Gray Terminal.
But a pretty child was a product.
Especially in a place close enough to noble circles for the truly filthy trades to exist.
The heaps of garbage towered on every side. Broken furniture, rusted metal, rotting cloth, cracked bottles, splintered wood, spoiled food, and all manner of nameless waste had been piled together into grotesque mountains. The stench was enough to make an ordinary person gag.
Axel calmly redirected the airflow in front of him, pushing the foul smell aside before it could reach his nose.
Then he headed straight toward his destination.
He avoided the busier routes and slipped around groups of scavengers with practiced ease. Soon, he arrived at a decaying shack tucked away deeper inside the refuse settlement.
Without hesitation, he stepped inside.
A few rough looking men were already there.
At the center sat a man in ragged clothes with a narrow face and a greasy smile that never reached his eyes. His body was not especially strong, but there was a certain slyness in the way he sat, the sort of look common to rats who survived by clinging to larger beasts.
Terao Kazu.
One of Bluejam's underlings.
The moment he saw Axel, recognition flashed across his face, followed by immediate delight.
That smile, however, did not inspire any goodwill.
It was the smile of a man looking at a profitable fool.
Axel ignored it completely.
He had no illusions about the relationship between them.
He could earn more by taking his hides somewhere cleaner, perhaps even to proper merchants closer to town. But he still chose to trade here, and the reason was simple.
Information.
Terao, as one of Bluejam's subordinates, had access to news that ordinary traders did not. In Gray Terminal, information about fugitives, movements, conflicts, gangs, and hidden opportunities was often more valuable than money. That was why Axel tolerated being cheated on the goods. The real transaction was never just the hides.
And thanks to earlier exchanges, he had already learned several crucial details.
The current year was 1510 in the Sea Circle Calendar.
Monkey D. Luffy was seven years old.
And recently, Luffy and Ace had provoked Bluejam by robbing him.
That alone made this place worth watching.
When Axel approached, Terao spread his hands with exaggerated enthusiasm.
"You came again. Business must be good for you, kid."
Axel did not respond to the casual tone. He walked up to the table, opened the black cloth sack, and dropped the prepared animal hides onto it.
"Same deal as before," he said coldly. "Information, valuables, and food."
Terao's eyes lit up when he saw the hides.
He reached out and began examining them, his expression growing greedier by the second.
These were better than the previous batch.
Much better.
The fur had been preserved almost perfectly, the leather clean and undamaged, with none of the crude tearing or amateurish cuts common to ordinary hunters. Terao did not understand how a child could produce something of this quality, but he understood profit well enough.
After a moment, he clicked his tongue and pretended to look troubled.
"Good stuff," he said slowly. "But the market's been bad lately. I'll do you a favor. Twenty thousand Berries."
Axel's eyes narrowed behind the cloth.
Twenty thousand again.
The same price as before.
If this had been ordinary leather, that would already be low. But this batch had been processed with precise vector control. The prey had been killed cleanly, the hides removed with minimal damage, and the finished quality was leagues above the first shipment he had sold.
Comparable price.
Better product.
Same offer.
So the rat really is trying to skin me alive.
Axel's voice became even colder.
"Then I'm not selling."
He reached forward as if to take the hides back.
"Return the goods. I'll sell them elsewhere."
Terao's expression changed slightly.
Axel's stance was simple, direct, and without hesitation.
That was intentional.
In a place like Gray Terminal, bargaining too meekly was just another way of showing weakness. If he started haggling nervously, Terao would only push harder. Here, either the deal was fair enough to accept, or the goods were taken back. Nothing in between.
Terao quickly raised a hand.
"Wait, wait. No need to be so impatient." He gave a dry laugh, then leaned forward. "You know nobody around here has a better information network than I do."
Before Axel could respond, hurried footsteps sounded outside.
A man burst through the doorway.
"Boss Terao, we found those brats Captain Bluejam's looking for!"
The air in the room shifted at once.
Terao turned his head sharply. "Then what are you standing around for? Go notify the others. You lot go too. I still have another deal to finish here."
The underlings immediately moved.
But Axel's eyes flashed.
He spoke before they could leave.
"I want that information."
Everyone in the shack paused.
Terao slowly turned back to him.
"Oh?" His eyes became more probing. "And why would you want that? You haven't even shown me your face, and you're built like a child. Don't tell me you're one of their friends."
Axel remained perfectly calm.
Inside, however, his thoughts were racing.
If his memory was correct, the children Bluejam's men were chasing had to be Luffy, Ace, and Sabo.
And if that was true, then this was not some trivial scrap of news.
This was opportunity.
A fleeting one.
He could not afford to miss it.
So Axel lied without changing expression.
"I heard Captain Bluejam is hunting them. Whoever helps catch them can get in his good graces, right?" He let his tone harden slightly, as if trying to sound more ambitious than he really was. "I want in too. Give me that information, and I'll let the leather go at your price."
Terao studied him for a moment.
Then he smiled.
From his perspective, the explanation made perfect sense.
Gray Terminal was not a place where people challenged Bluejam lightly. Most sane people either avoided his wrath or tried to profit from it. A masked child trying to curry favor with a local boss was not unusual at all. On top of that, the leather in front of him was valuable enough that even after paying twenty thousand Berries, he could resell it for at least double.
Greed quickly won over caution.
Terao shoved a small sack of food across the table, then pushed out the money.
"Twenty thousand Berries," he said. "And the information you want."
His grin widened.
"Come with my men."