Age of Seacircles 1525. North Blue. Flevance, the "White Town."
6:00 PM.
Bang! Bang! BOOM—!!
The oppressive, suffocating atmosphere that usually hung over the White Town was instantly ignited by the sudden roar of gunfire and artillery.
Panic erupted. Residents from every stratum of society—from beggars in the gutters to nobles in their towers—were fleeing desperately through the streets.
Screams of terror and wails of agony mingled with the cold, merciless crack of gunshots, echoing through the crowded avenues.
"Dammit, how did it come to this?"
A black-haired boy, about fourteen or fifteen years old, his face smeared with grime, huddled in a deserted, clutter-filled alleyway.
His dark eyes, webbed with bloodshots, were filled with panic.
Laplace clutched his head with both hands, gritting his teeth as he hissed in a low voice, "Doctor Trafalgar said Amber Lead Syndrome isn't contagious... Ugh... my head!"
The chronic migraines, which had plagued him for years without a known cause, flared up violently alongside his surging emotions.
As a tearing pain seared through his lungs, a series of blurry images began to surface in his mind, snapping into crystal-clear focus:
"Laplace... Mei Mumu... Pirates... Flevance... Earth... The cement truck barreling down the street..."
BOOM!
A deafening explosion erupted from the main street nearby.
The boy named Laplace shuddered violently. When he snapped back to reality, his bloodshot eyes held a look of helpless confusion—somewhere between laughing and crying.
The corner of his thin lips twitched unconsciously.
"Mei Mumu? Did I survive one disaster just to land smack in the middle of another?"
His heart pounded furiously against his ribs. He gasped for air, his mind a chaotic mess as fragments of memory from a previous life constantly shuffled and merged with the present.
His mouth hung slightly open, taking in ragged breaths, while his legs trembled uncontrollably.
Suddenly, the vacant look in his eyes sharpened into clarity amidst the thunder of another explosion.
His body gave an involuntary jerk.
"Talk about a nightmare start!" The panic in his eyes hardened into a fierce resolve. He became instantly alert, using a pile of junk to steady himself as he slowly crouched down.
Taking slow, deep breaths, he listened intently and scanned his surroundings. He realized that in his blind panic earlier, he had run into a dead-end alley piled high with debris. Hidden behind rotting wooden crates, he was actually quite well-concealed.
He pressed his hands firmly against his throbbing temples.
A few minutes later, as his breathing leveled out and the panic in his eyes receded, he noticed something strange. Rows of garbled, azure-blue code were flashing in the corner of his left eye.
He blinked. It wasn't a hallucination.
"What is this?" He froze.
Amidst his subtle anticipation, the garbled blue code faded away.
In its place, a hyper-futuristic, holographic interface—like a dialogue box—appeared in his vision. In the center of this interface was a dim, square slot.
At that moment, a piece of information flowed naturally into his consciousness.
His jaw dropped slightly.
After a moment, he closed his mouth, his expression complicated as he realized exactly what this thing was.
In his past life...
He had read online that a once-in-a-millennium total solar eclipse was happening in an hour, so he had gone out to the streets to watch.
Not knowing if the hype was real, he sat on a roadside bench, grinding League of Legends: Wild Rift on his phone while waiting for the main event.
Eventually, the eclipse arrived as promised. In broad daylight, the sky turned dark, and a mysterious aurora flared around the rim of the sun.
It was mysterious and breathtakingly beautiful.
Heart pounding, hands trembling, he switched his phone to camera mode. But perhaps due to the sudden darkness, a cement truck driver lost control. The next thing he knew, the massive vehicle was barreling straight toward him.
The screech of brakes was ear-piercing.
The smell of burnt rubber flooded his nose.
Thanks to his eighteen-year-old reflexes, he managed to dodge the truck easily.
But as he leaped aside, his phone flew out of his hand. Instinctively distressed about his phone, he turned to grab it, tripped, lost his footing, and planted face-first into the ground.
As luck would have it, the phone had landed vertically on its corner. He slammed his head right onto it.
He felt a sharp pain and darkness in his left eye...
Thinking back, he wanted to weep without tears.
"Logically, shouldn't I have respawned in Valoran? Why did I end up in this horror show of a world?"
Reincarnation!
He was certain of it. The memories were his, vivid and undeniable.
As the memories of two lifetimes merged, he fully understood where he was.
[ONE PIECE]
A fantasy world from his previous life, a world of islands and oceans loosely resembling the Age of Discovery, yet distinctly different.
The world was divided into the four outer seas—East, West, North, and South—and the Grand Line circling the center.
And right now, he was in a country called Flevance in the North Blue.
A country currently facing total annihilation.
As vague intelligence reports from his memory surfaced, the look in his eyes grew increasingly anxious.
"I may have been an older chunibyo with an active imagination, but you didn't have to actually send me here!"
The thought made his heart race faster—panic, excitement, and fear swirling together. The intensifying gunfire in the distance dragged his attention back to the present.
A bone-chilling coldness gripped his heart. Having lived in this world for fourteen years, he knew exactly how chaotic this era was.
The Great Pirate Era had been raging for nearly eight years.
Even in Flevance, a nation built on a facade of prosperity, gang violence and ruffians were common beneath the glittering surface.
As for his identity...
His father had come here from another country sixteen years ago to strike it rich. With his handsome looks and smooth talking, he wooed a fallen noblewoman who had been stripped of her title. They married, and he was born.
Tragically, his father was buried forever in a mining accident five years ago.
With the pillar of the family gone, his mother fell into a deep depression. Combined with the expenses of treating his unexplained migraines that started at age five, the family fortune was drained. She died of a broken heart a year later.
He became an orphan, taken in by a nun at a church that had ties to his family.
Another year later, the nun passed away unexpectedly. That same year, the church "graduated" him, claiming he was too old to stay.
Owning nothing but a single property and lacking income, yet refusing to sit around and starve, he found work.
He became an assistant at a large newspaper publisher.
He looked down at his left index finger, which had turned completely white at the base. A shadow crossed his eyes.
"Amber Lead Syndrome!"
Although the disease hadn't fully flared up yet, he had seen the patients in the hospital five days ago—their conditions were gruesome.
"Twenty years? That's my lifespan?"
The light in his eyes dimmed, but a moment later, a spark reignited.
"I have a cheat."
With a thought, the square blue interface appeared before him again, the empty slot sitting in the center.
[Equipment Slot]
The interface blurred for a second, and the display changed.
Three lines of neat text appeared:
Name: [ ]
Skill Perks: [ ]
Special Traits: [ ]
Looking at the blank profile, the boy—was he Laplace? Or Mei Mumu?—fell into deep thought.
"Laplace is the name my parents gave me in this life. Mumu was just a nickname my parents used in my last life.
"In that case..."
[Laplace Merlin]
He combined them. Merlin was his formal name in his past life.
The interface shimmered, and the name was registered.
Looking at the empty [Perks] section, Merlin smiled bitterly, but quickly cheered up.
He had basically figured out how his "cheat" worked.
For some reason, the [Equipment Slot] from League of Legends: Wild Rift had become his innate talent after reincarnation.
The talent allowed him to convert physical objects into [Equipment] and equip them, thereby gaining the object's inherent effects.
Equipping an item would initiate a [Synchronization Rate]. At different stages of synchronization, there was a probability of acquiring specific [Perks] related to the equipped item.
Thinking of this, a bright light shone in Merlin's eyes.
A surge of confidence rose from the bottom of his heart.