One Piece: The Legendary Pirate

Bright sunlight.

Laughing audience, eager to see Darvy's downfall.

The commentary—belittling him.

At this moment, here Darvy stood, holding onto a small knife and a shield. The audience and speaker weren't of importance to him. In fact, his surroundings felt ever so quiet to him, indicating just how focused he was on his opponent.

'Life or death.'

Though a loss didn't necessarily mean death, for getting knocked out was sufficient enough to be considered an end condition of a fight, Darvy doubted that he would be capable of surviving the supposed 'punishment' afterward.

This meant that he, no matter what, had to pull out a win. With this weak body of his and nothing else, he had to defeat his opponent whose only flaw was a lack of one eye. Even that, the man seemed to have gotten accustomed to it.

"..."

In Darvy's entire life, he's been nothing but helpless. It wasn't that he didn't try. At every moment, he made the best possible choices. It's just that... having to start at 1 while others start at 10 or more was too taxing. 

Throughout his whole life, he's been losing. He lived through a miserable life that no one at his age would've experienced. But hey, regardless of the situation, he never gave up.

That's right. Darvy—even after all those circumstances that still haunt him today, was yet alive. And through those numerous failures of his, he believes that he's gotten a glimpse—of how to win.

'The two important components of victory are one's strength and one's way of using such strength to his or her advantage.'

...Again, the sunlight was bright.

And at some distance away from him, his opponent stood, holding onto a long sword.

"...A knife?"

The man chuckled, clearly not having expected Darvy's choice of a weapon. The edge of the knife gleamed upon reflecting the ray of light.

"Now, I've seen many people choosing anything but a knife in this arena. Kid, do you lack a common sense?"

He was muscular, but not overly muscular. Rather, it would be more accurate to call his build lean—a balanced build that had both strength and agility. Coupled with his height which seemed to reach almost two meters, he sure did look menacing. Furthermore, his lone eye, revealing its wicked intent, showcased that this man was a hunter, a predator who had killed many in the past.

"Ah, what am I saying. You probably do. You're a kid after all."

In the eye of the man, Darvy appeared to be afraid of him. Hiding his thin body behind the shield which he could barely lift, his eyes peeked from beyond and trembled as they observed the man.

The man, not even for a single second, thought of a possibility that Darvy was acting, for he trusted his experiences. His past memories told him that it is normal for a teenage boy with no strength to fear his eventual doom.

'Well, duh,'

Chuckled the man.

"Unlucky kid, I pity you."

He, while casually swinging his sword, took a step. Then, said step developed into a walk, and he walked leisurely toward Darvy as if taking a stroll.

The speaker was saying something. The comments from the audience didn't cease. However, to Darvy, this moment was completely silent and dark; there was nothing but his opponent and him who existed in his scope of the world.

Then, the man grinned. His mouth twitched as if about to say something, but paused, indicating that that 'something' was a piece of information not meant to be leaked. However, snorting and rolling his eye, the man suddenly dropped,

"Do you know that not all of us are slaves?"

'...What?'

Darvy's eyes narrowed, just as the man suddenly dashed at him with a lethal intent.

Yes, such killing intent, present in the man's eye, would be something that most would feel upon their skin and cower in fear.

However, Darvy was different. In fact, the opposite happened. Within this split second, his fearful demeanor disappeared, revealing the calm and rational persona that his environment shaped him into.

In addition, unknown to the man, Darvy wasn't fooling around during the time the man talked to him. He spent that short time adjusting the shield. This shield, being metallic and stainless, was sufficient to reflect the light, and Darvy was checking how to shift its angle of reflection from the sunlight such that he could redirect the light ray toward where he wanted—

—straight into the lone eye of his dashing opponent.

"Hah?! What even?!"

As the intense light suddenly blinded the man's sight, he covered his eye with his free hand. Knowing that running in this state would be reckless, he came to a stop and got himself into a protective stance.

'The man is lean and well-fed. He is obviously a trained swordsman. The longer the fight goes, the lower my chance of victory. Really, the only way to win is to utilize the element of surprise in my favor.'

Everything will be decided in this single moment, though the man seemed yet to become aware of it.

With all his strength, Darvy threw the shield to the ground near the blinded man. A dull noise rang upon the strike, which was loud enough to reach the man's ears.

"THERE!"

In a blinded state, the man was prevented from assessing the sound carefully. With an incredible reflex, hestruck his sword down toward the fallen shield, thinking that it was Darvy.

CLANG!

Upon hitting the shield, the man felt the incredible recoil of his own strength. His sword-holding arm flew up, and as said arm felt numb, a loud metallic noise—enough to make a few Celestial Dragons wince in the audience—rang throughout the arena. From this, the man's guard has gone down.

During this time, Darvy was running at the fastest speed he could muster. With a knife in one hand and a scoop of sand in another, he ran toward the man, sweating profusely due to his body already being stressed from holding and throwing the shield. Such stress, Darvy ignored however, for he was very used to all sorts of pain, enough to tolerate them to an extent that an average person would be left dumbfounded.

Gritting his teeth, Darvy exerted all his energy to leap toward the man. Simultaneously, the blinded man finally uncovered his hand and opened his eye, for the effect of the light was short-lived.

And even this was within Darvy's calculation. Just as the man opened his eye, Darvy sprayed the sand, and the sand entered the man's eye.

"?!!"

Then, just as he was able to register that the sand entered his eye and the numbing sensation of his arm dimmed, Darvy was right in front of him, holding onto the knife with both hands.

"YOU—"

Then, there was a clean stab in the man's throat by Darvy. The blood squirted out from the knife-stabbed area, and as Darvy fell to the ground and rolled uncontrollably due to the momentum, the man, standing still with his reddened eye letting out tears due to the sand and sword dropped out of his hand, choked as he held his knife-stabbed throat.

Nothing but the man's choking noises resounded within the sand pit for the moment. As Darvy wobbly stood up from a fallen position, huffing, the man simultaneously fell to the side, unable to stop the bleeding out of his throat.

"Huff... huff..."

Clearly, the man was dead. Clearly, it was Darvy's victory.

Yet, it was a scene that was simply unbelievable.

A teenage boy with a Doriki of 3 defeated the swordsman with the Doriki of 155.

"...The experts said that an average armed soldier has a Doriki of 10. This meant that while this boy of rank 999 possessed strength weaker than even a soldier, the man of rank 221 possessed strength greater by more than 15 folds! By no means should this boy have won the battle just now, yet look! What a miraculous fight!"

The speaker, after a brief silence, remarked with a genuine shock underlying his tone.

Standing in the middle, Darvy felt the adrenaline in him dying down. As his darkened surroundings cleared, he looked around at the so-called Celestial Dragons—or loads of scums more like.

The supposed Gods' Knights seemed amused by the scene. The Celestial Dragons seemed chattering, making comments about Darvy. They made gestures of having their necks stabbed, obviously mimicking Darvy's opponent on the ground. Darvy felt an urge to frown but managed to suppress it, barely.

And of course, Topman Vallerina.

"..."

She was looking at him with widened eyes. However, they revealed a mischievous gleam after, and seemed to be saying to Darvy that she was pleasantly surprised.

However, those reactions didn't matter to Darvy, at least at the current moment.

"Not all of us are slaves."

Rather, Darvy was reflecting on what his opponent said before his fall. For sure, this information wasn't something that should've been leaked; the man probably said it only because he thought Darvy was as good as dead anyway.

'This is...'

And Darvy, as he looked at the cages containing other slaves around him, came to realize.

'...An ordeal.'

An ordeal that wasn't meant for him or the slaves, but rather,

'The commoners who...'

The images of the armored soldiers in Mary Geoise, the ones who were always dragging him, appeared in Darvy's mind.

As he thought so, the sand below began to swirl, causing him to cease all his thoughts.

Dully, he watched as he was pulled into the unknown, together with the corpse of the man who was bleeding even now.

Eventually, he was submerged in the sand and the sight of the colosseum was no longer existent in front of him.

Though it felt uncomfortable, this state wasn't long-lasting, as he eventually came out into another space below, falling on top of something.

"What is..."

Darvy paused. It was a human body. Frankly speaking, it was someone who died before his fight.

He was on top of the pile of corpses, high enough to consider it a miniature mountain.

If anything, it was one hell of a disgusting experience, one that Darvy will have to get used to for the sake of his survival.