"Fuck!"
"Fuck!"
"FUCK!"
Marcus ran like his life depended on it, which it absolutely did. His sneakers slapped against the uneven forest floor as he dodged between massive trees, branches whipping at his face. Behind him, the sound of splintering wood and heavy breathing got closer with every second.
The wild boar chasing him was a literal nightmare. Three meters tall, three meters wide, with tusks the size of baseball bats jutting from its foam-covered mouth. Every step it took shook the ground like a mini earthquake.
How the hell had he ended up in this situation?
---
Fifteen minutes ago, he had been sitting in his cramped apartment, surrounded by empty energy drink cans and takeout boxes. He'd just finished an epic twenty-hour Minecraft session, finally taking down the Ender Dragon after weeks of preparation. The satisfaction of returning to the Overworld with his hard-earned experience points had been incredible.
He'd leaned back in his gaming chair, stretching his sore back and thinking about maybe, taking a shower. That's when the world had gone black.
When he'd opened his eyes, he was lying face-down in dirt that definitely wasn't his bedroom carpet.
He'd pushed himself up, spitting out bits of soil, and found himself in what looked like a primeval forest. Trees so massive they could've housed entire families stretched up toward a canopy so thick it blocked out most of the sunlight. The air was humid and filled with sounds he'd only heard in nature documentaries.
"What the fuck?"
His second thought got interrupted by a snort that sounded like a freight train clearing its nose.
That's when he'd turned around and come face to face with the boar from hell.
For a moment, they'd just stared at each other. Marcus, a pale twenty-something who hadn't seen sunlight in months, and this absolute unit of a pig that looked like it could bench press a car.
The boar's beady eyes had narrowed. Its nostrils flared. And it was at this moment, he knew he fucked up.
He was about to become bacon's revenge!
"Shit shit shit!"
The chase had started immediately. He had never been athletic, his idea of cardio was running to the fridge during loading screens. But fear was one hell of a motivator. Pure adrenaline had kicked in, overriding years of sedentary lifestyle and launching him into a sprint that would've made his high school PE teacher weep with joy like a certain Blue Beast with bushy eyebrows.
The boar, unfortunately, was faster.
Now, as he vaulted over a fallen log and nearly face-planted on the other side, he could hear the beast getting closer. Its heavy breathing sounded like a broken air conditioner, and every few seconds he'd hear another tree getting demolished.
"This is not how I wanted to die! I was supposed to die from too much gaming, not get killed by some giant pig!"
A low-hanging branch nearly took his head off. He ducked, stumbled, and somehow kept his feet. Behind him, the boar just plowed through the same branch like it was made of paper.
His vision was starting to blur from exhaustion and terror. His legs felt like jelly, and his chest burned with every breath. He'd been running for what felt like hours but was probably not even a minute.
That's when he saw it, a root jutting up from the ground.
In a video game, he would've jumped over it easily. In real life, with his coordination shot to hell from panic and exhaustion, he went down like a sack of potatoes.
The impact drove all the air from his lungs. He rolled, came to a stop against a tree trunk, and just lay there gasping like a fish out of water. Everything hurt. His ribs, his knees, his pride, especially his pride.
The footsteps behind him should've been getting closer, but weirdly, they seemed to have stopped.
Marcus lay there, too scared to look back, waiting for the inevitable moment when those tusks would turn him into a human kebab. His heart was hammering so hard he could hear it in his ears.
This is it. I'm dead. Some giant pig is gonna kill me and nobody will ever know what happened.
But seconds passed.
Then more seconds.
And nothing happened.
The forest had gone eerily quiet.
He turned his head to look behind him.
The boar was gone. In its place was... well, that was weird. There was a massive crater in the ground, surrounded by fallen trees. And in the middle of it all was a woman who looked like she'd been hit by a truck.
"What the hell?"
He pushed himself up, his whole body protesting. He rubbed his eyes, wondering if the terror had finally made him snap.
The woman was huge, not tall, but wide. Really wide. She had frizzy black hair, a face covered in what looked like acne scars, and was wearing some kind of ridiculous outfit that screamed "pirate wannabe." She was unconscious, lying in a pile of splintered wood.
"Alvida?"
He'd seen that face before, in manga panels and anime episodes. This was Alvida, one of the first villains from One Piece. Which meant...
"No way. I'm actually in One Piece?"
The thought should've been exciting. After all, how many anime fans dreamed of getting transported to their favorite fictional universe? But right now, all he felt was a cold dread in his stomach.
The One Piece world wasn't exactly known for being safe. Pirates, Marines, sea monsters, Devil Fruit users who could level islands... it was basically a death trap wrapped in an adventure story.
"Okay, don't panic. Well, you're already panicking, just... think."
He looked around more carefully, trying to process what had happened. If that was really Alvida, then something had sent her flying hard enough to take out a bunch of trees and knock her unconscious. Something that had happened right when the boar was about to turn him into mincemeat.
As if summoned by his thoughts, something bonked him on the head.
"Ow! What the—"
A fruit had fallen from the tree above him. Not just any fruit, though. This one was perfectly cube-shaped, with swirling patterns covering its surface. The coloring was unmistakable, green on top, brown on the bottom.
It looked exactly like a grass block from Minecraft.
He stared at it, his brain trying to process what he was seeing. In the One Piece world, weirdly-shaped fruits with strange patterns could only mean one thing.
"A Devil Fruit? Just... falling on me?"
He looked up at the tree, then around the forest floor. And there, not far from where Alvida was lying, he spotted another fruit. This one was pink and heart-shaped.
"The Slip-Slip Fruit," he whispered. "That's Alvida's Devil Fruit from the series."
Which meant the cube-shaped one in his hands was something else entirely.
He had read enough isekai stories to know how this worked. Random transportation to another world? Check.
Mysterious power-up opportunity? Check.
Unconscious future ally/enemy nearby? Double check.
The smart thing would be to carefully consider his options. Maybe do some research. Figure out the pros and cons of eating a mysterious Devil Fruit.
Instead, he looked at the unconscious Alvida, thought about the three-meter boar that had nearly turned him into paste, and made a decision that would've made his gaming buddies proud.
"Fuck it. I need all the help I can get."
He bit into the cube-shaped fruit.
The texture was crispy at first bite, but soon an indescribably horrible taste filled his mouth. It was as if someone had mixed expired milk, rotten eggs, gym socks, and despair into the world's worst smoothie. Every taste bud on his tongue screamed in protest.
"Oh god that's disgusting!" Tears streamed down his face as he forced himself to swallow. "Why does it have to taste like death? Maybe this is a dream, and I'm in hell?"
But he kept eating. In for a penny, in for a pound. If he was going to get Devil Fruit powers, he was going to do it right.
By the time he finished the last bite, he felt like he was going to puke. He doubled over, trying not to throw up. His vision grew blurry.
"That was the worst thing I've ever tasted. And I've eaten some nasty shit."
He waited for something to happen. Some dramatic transformation, or at least a notification screen like in the games he'd played. Instead, he just felt nauseous and vaguely disappointed.
Still the same skinny, bony body with barely any meat on it.
"Fucking hell... did that do anything at all?"
That's when he felt it, a strange tingling sensation starting in his toes and spreading upward. It wasn't painful, just... weird. Like his body was suddenly aware of something it had never had before.
Without really thinking about it, he walked over to one of the massive trees and placed his hand against the bark. He gave it a light tap, more out of curiosity than any real intent.
Crack.
A perfect cube of wood popped out of the tree trunk and fell to the ground. As it hit the earth, something incredible happened, the block seemed to compress into itself, becoming smaller and lighter, before zipping through the air and disappearing.
He felt a familiar weight in his... inventory?
He looked down and, sure enough, there was a small icon floating at the edge of his vision. When he focused on it, a grid appeared in front of him.
A 3x9 inventory grid, exactly like the one from Minecraft.
"Holy shit!"
Without hesitation, he pulled the wood block from his inventory and placed it in what he instinctively knew was a 2x2 crafting grid. Four wooden planks materialized in the result slot.
"Holy shit! This is nuts."
He made a crafting table and placed it on the ground. The familiar brown block appeared in front of him. Using it, he crafted a wooden pickaxe and held it up to admire his work.
"Holy shit! This thing actually works."
The survival instincts that had been drilled into him through hundreds of hours of gameplay kicked in immediately. Rule number one of Minecraft: punch trees until you have enough resources to not die.
But first, he should probably do some mining. Get some stone, maybe find some coal or iron.
Just basic resource gathering.
He found a suitable spot and started digging straight down, a cardinal sin in regular Minecraft, but what were the odds of hitting lava in the real world?
The digging process was weird. Not as instant as in the game, but not as slow as it should be in reality either. Each swing of his pickaxe loosened chunks of earth that then compressed into neat blocks and flew into his inventory.
After digging through what felt like way too much dirt, he finally hit stone. The satisfying click of his pickaxe against rock was music to his ears.
"Finally! Time to get some actual materials."
He mined exactly three blocks before his wooden pickaxe gave up the ghost.
Tools break here too.
Using his newly acquired cobblestone, he crafted a stone pickaxe and got back to work. He employed the tried-and-true fishbone mining pattern, digging a main tunnel with smaller branches extending out at regular intervals.
It was meditative work, in a way. The rhythmic thunk of pickaxe against stone, the steady accumulation of resources, the gradual expansion of his underground domain. For a while, he could almost forget that he was in a world where people regularly got into fights that could level islands.
When his inventory started getting full of stone and dirt, he decided it was time to head back to the surface. He'd been underground for... actually, how long had he been down there? There was no day/night cycle indicator like in the game.
The climb back up his crude ladder of dirt blocks gave him time to think. He had Minecraft powers in the One Piece world. That was huge. But what exactly did that mean for his survival prospects?
On the plus side, he could build fortifications, craft weapons and tools, and theoretically dig his way out of most problems. On the minus side, this was still a world where people could punch through mountains and survive being blasted by cannons.
When he emerged from his mine, the first thing he noticed was that Alvida was still unconscious but definitely alive. Her chest was rising and falling steadily, and she'd shifted position slightly.
The second thing he noticed was the pink Devil Fruit, still sitting where he'd left it.
He picked it up and examined it carefully. In the series, this was what had transformed Alvida from a crude, ugly pirate into a beautiful woman. It had also, according to the story, made her less violent and more reasonable.
"Do I wake her up? Or just leave the fruit here?"
Before he could decide, the choice was made for him. Alvida groaned and started to stir.
He quickly pocketed the Slip-Slip Fruit and stepped back to what he hoped was a safe distance. Even unconscious, she looked like she could bench press a small car like the boar.
Alvida's eyes fluttered open, immediately locking onto Marcus with a look of confusion that quickly shifted to suspicion.
"What're you staring at? Never seen a gorgeous woman before?!"
Marcus couldn't help himself, he rolled his eyes.
"I have. But right now, you're definitely not one."
"WHAT did you say?!"
You could almost see Alvida's frizzy hair start to float from rage, and Marcus suddenly remembered that insulting a pirate captain, even an unconscious one who'd just been tree-slammed, probably wasn't the smartest move.
She tried to lunge at him but immediately doubled over in pain, clutching her stomach where she'd taken the brunt of whatever had sent her flying.
That's when he realized he had an opportunity. In the original story, her obsession with beauty was her defining characteristic. And he happened to have the solution to her problem in his pocket.
"I'll make you a deal," he said, pulling out the pink Devil Fruit. "Follow me, and I'll give you beauty that rivals the Pirate Empress herself."
Alvida's eyes went wide, all thoughts of violence temporarily forgotten.
"What did you say?! You can really give me the looks of the Pirate Empress?"
"You heard me. Equal to the Pirate Empress, maybe not identical, but definitely in the same league. Beauty comes in different forms, but I can promise you this: if you stick with me, every man you meet will genuinely call you beautiful."
Alvida stared at him, then at the fruit in his hand, her expression cycling rapidly between hope, suspicion, and desperate hunger.
Marcus was laying it on thick, but he could see it was working. She was practically drooling at the prospect.
Before she could demand proof or start asking difficult questions, he held up the Devil Fruit.
"Recognize this? It's a Devil Fruit. The same kind that gave Straw Hat Luffy his powers. The same kind that sent you flying. You eat this, and not only can you get revenge... you can become beautiful."