Chapter 85: A Life of Hardship
Hearing that, Issho looked a little dejected.
Axel let out a breath and said, "Alright, no use dwelling on it now. First, we need to find a navigator on this island. Otherwise, even if the Log Pose points us in the right direction, we will still drift who knows where."
Issho nodded. Worrying about it would not solve anything.
The three of them brought the ship closer to shore, furled the sails, dropped anchor, and made landfall.
Beyond the narrow stretch of naturally formed beach, the island was covered in dense forest. Thick vegetation stretched dozens of meters inward, completely blocking any view of what lay deeper inside. From the shore alone, there was no way to tell whether the island held a village, ruins, or nothing at all.
The moment Adelaide's feet touched the ground, he bolted.
For an old man, he moved with surprising speed, darting straight into the jungle as though youth had returned to his limbs. In just a few breaths, he had crossed dozens of meters, clearly intending to use the dense forest as cover and make his escape.
Unfortunately for him, his joy had only just begun to surface when an invisible pressure crashed down onto his body.
With a muffled thud, Adelaide was slammed flat into the sand.
His face and chest sank deep into the wet shore, and he swallowed a mouthful of grit before he could even cry out.
"You have not yet paid for your crimes," Issho said as he stepped off the gangplank, tapping the ground with his cane sword. "I cannot allow you to run."
Axel glanced at the old man writhing in the sand and said lazily, "Honestly, if we just snapped his legs, we would not have to worry about him escaping anymore."
Adelaide immediately broke into a cold sweat.
Were children these days all this vicious? Had basic virtues like respecting the elderly and caring for the young completely vanished from the world?
In that moment, he conveniently forgot everything he himself had done, along with the fate that had awaited the people he once sold.
Spitting out sand, he hurriedly forced out an explanation. "I was not running! I just wanted to scout ahead and help search the island!"
Because he was panicking, he inhaled another mouthful of sand halfway through and coughed violently.
Issho clearly did not believe him, but he still withdrew the pressure.
The weight vanished.
Adelaide scrambled upright at once and spat repeatedly, trying to get the sand out of his mouth. Then he cast a cautious glance at Issho, no longer daring to make any sudden moves.
He had just realized something important.
Running blindly while that terrifying blind man was watching him was pure idiocy.
Now that Issho was on guard, escaping would only become harder.
At the same time, Adelaide cursed himself inwardly for acting too fast.
After that, the three of them searched the island.
What they found was disappointment.
The place was a genuine deserted island.
There were no villages, no roads, no traces of cultivation, no smoke from cooking fires, no docks, and no signs that anyone had lived there within recent memory. It was nothing but thick jungle, wild vegetation, and the sounds of nature.
The greater the hope, the greater the disappointment.
That saying had never felt more true to Adelaide.
At first, he had thought this island might become his chance to escape. But now it turned out to be a wasteland. Even if he managed to flee, he would just starve to death here or spend the rest of his life trapped on a deserted island.
That outcome was somehow even worse.
In the end, they returned to the beach and gathered what food they could find on the island before hauling it back onto the ship.
Just as they were preparing to set sail again, a small boat appeared in the distance.
The three of them paused.
It was not large. In fact, it was so small that it looked more like a fishing boat than a proper vessel for traveling the open sea.
Still, it meant people.
And where there were people, there was hope.
At the very least, perhaps there would be a navigator aboard.
They waited until the small boat drew close enough for them to make out the figure standing on it.
A young man stepped ashore.
Adelaide's first thought was that this man felt dangerous.
He had long blond hair and a slender build. If not for the fierce expression on his face, he might have looked like the sort of handsome prince countless girls dreamed about. But there was nothing gentle or warm about him. Six distinct vertical lines marked his forehead. His left arm was covered in armor, and a black cross tattoo sat just below his Adam's apple.
His entire presence carried a sinister chill, gloomy and oppressive.
He stepped off the boat and walked toward them in silence.
Adelaide instinctively shrank back behind Issho, avoiding the man's gaze.
The newcomer did not even look at Adelaide.
He walked straight up to the group and said in a low, steady voice, "I am Basil Hawkins. Fate led me here."
Issho tilted his head slightly.
He looked a little puzzled. "Fate led you here?"
Hawkins nodded.
"Literally."
Axel, on the other hand, had already begun to think.
Basil Hawkins.
One of the future Supernovas at Sabaody.
The man known as "the Magician," though fortune teller would have been more accurate. He was obsessed with divination and liked to let the cards decide everything.
That much made this strange entrance feel oddly believable.
Even so, Axel still asked, "You came all the way here in that tiny boat?"
He pointed at Hawkins' vessel.
The thing could barely hold a few people.
Anyone with half a brain knew the seas of the One Piece world were not the kind of place you crossed in a glorified fishing dinghy. Even their much larger pirate ship had nearly been battered to pieces by the waves. Hawkins' boat should have overturned from a single strong swell.
Hawkins remained calm.
"Before setting out, I divined my fortune," he said. "It showed no sign of death."
Adelaide nearly lost his mind on the spot.
Mad.
This man was completely mad.
No, worse than mad. Dangerous and insane.
One strange thing after another.
First Stoby had dragged back two seemingly harmless captives who suddenly turned out to be monsters.
Then those two set sail with no navigator and drifted across the sea like lunatics.
And now this man had shown up in a tiny boat because his cards had told him he would not die.
Had the whole world gone insane?
Axel ignored Adelaide's mental breakdown and got straight to the point.
"What do you want from us?"
"I want to join you," Hawkins said.
Adelaide's heart nearly stopped.
No.
Absolutely not.
Two of them were already hard enough to deal with. Add another one, especially one who looked like he walked around talking to fate itself, and his chances of escaping would shrink even further.
Axel frowned.
"Join us? Just because fate told you to?"
Hawkins did not elaborate.
But somehow, Axel felt that was probably the full truth.
So he turned and looked at Issho. "What do you think?"
Issho considered it for a moment, then smiled.
"I do not think it would cause any problems," he said. "One more person on the journey is not a bad thing."
Since Issho did not object, Axel naturally had no reason to refuse.
"Then welcome aboard," he said.
Hawkins merely gave a slight nod.
Then, after a brief pause, Axel asked, "Since you are supposedly so good at divination, can you read my future?"
"Of course."
Hawkins pulled out a deck of cards from his pocket.
The backs were marked with a peculiar design, dots spreading outward like thorns. With practiced motions, he shuffled them, cut the deck, and began laying the cards out one by one in the air, stringing the result together into a fortune.
After a while, he began to read.
"Smooth sailing, ten percent."
He drew another.
"Turbulence, eighty five percent."
Another card.
"Unexpected hardship... frequent."
Another.
"Separation... possible."
And another.
"Bloodshed... unavoidable."
He continued like that, calmly listing result after result while Axel stood there listening with an increasingly blank expression.
In short, the overall meaning was painfully clear.
Your life is full of hardship.
Axel fell silent.
Was that not a little too brutal?
He had thought a transmigrator's fate should be impossible to predict, or at the very least strange enough to confuse ordinary divination. After all, he was not even originally from this world.
So why had Hawkins managed to read it so cleanly?
And worse, why did it sound completely believable?
.....
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