Chapter 1: The Beginning
[Sea Calendar 1499]
Half of the year has passed and it marks exactly 1 year from the execution of the Pirate King Gol D. Roger. It also marks an year to the start of The Great Age of Pirates. This an age of greed , lust , dreams , of madness and voyages . People from all over the world are in a frenzy and have embarked on the sea to gain wealth , fame , power and to find the legendary treasure one piece.
At this moment with the sun rising to the horizon , we can see a 10 year old boy with refreshing short black hair , black eyes and tanned skin , running across a small sandy beach littered with coconut trees. We can hear from the panting sound and observing the sweat drenching his body, that the boy should have been exercising for quite some time. He is fully exhausted by the time , the sun rises overhead and finally stops to rest under a coconut tree , drinking coconut water that he has already prepared. After sometime he feels a cooling sensation spread through his body which takes away some of his exhaustion and fill his small body with strength.
After a few minutes of resting and enjoying the sea breeze and the call of seagulls , he slowly starts walking towards the settlement in the distance while thinking about his current situation. His name is Ethan Hunt and currently he located on Dasefilla island which is one of the islands among the 21 islands in Casterilla archipelago in South Blue.
He has been living here since 5 years ago with his uncle and aunt in a remote settlement to the westside of the island. Apart from the small sandy beach he has been practicing on , most of the west side of the island is surrounded by ledges and cliffs connected to the sea. Even the sea area around the beach is surrounded by rocky protrudings which make it difficult for ships to approach. Due to these reasons there is no harbor either artificial or natural on this side of the island and even visiting the sea directly from here is extremely difficult , so the surrounding land is sparsely populated.
Ethan's parents were merchants who often used to travel between the four seas to exchange and sell specialties of the different Blues in the other different Blues to make a living. They sometimes used to take him with them on their voyages or leave him with his uncle and aunt when the thought that the journey was dangerous. 5 years ago his parents made a deal with a merchant to exchange a product of Grand Line which would be highly profitable. Although they would take a route that crosses through Red Line ,controlled by the World Government and the Navy and is deemed fairly safe, but the Grand Line itself is inherently dangerous due to its unpredictable weather and sea area.
So to be on the safe side ,he was left with his uncle and aunt in South Blue. Few months later the merchant ship they were returning on encountered a dangerous and sudden hailstorm and was declared missing. After a few days of rescue and search operations some broken ship fragments were salvaged but there were no signs of any member on board and finally the passengers on board were declared dead or missing.
Ethan has been taken care of by his uncle and aunt ever since. Even though Ethan is an orphan who lives with his uncle and aunt , there is nothing special about such situation in this world , in fact orphans living is much worse conditions are quite common here. What makes Ethan special is a secret which he has been hiding from everyone close to his heart since he was 3 years old.
It all happened when during one of the voyages Ethan contracted brain fever when he was 3 years old. His parents took him to all the best doctors they can find in the four seas during which time he was in a coma for 4 months , the doctors in the four seas were not able to produce a concrete cure for him and some could only treat him to partially relive his condition. At this time a pitch black stone which Ethan didn't know he had in his consciousness came to his rescue.
The black stone released some energy which slowly improved his condition and strengthened his soul. Due to the strengthening of his soul he recalled some memories of his previous life as a man named Hunter Ethaneo who lived on a planet Earth and died in a mountaineering accident at the age of 50. He also recognized the black stone in his consciousness to be the same stone Hunter carried on him for nearly 25 years as his lucky stone. He knew that he was saved this time by the black stone and even though there is no proof but he believed that it was this stone that saved his soul and made him reincarnate again.
After few weeks he completely recovered and with passing time he came to the realization that he travelled to the world of One Piece. Although he was a little nervous and apprehensive at the time but more of it was just excitement and anticipation for the future due to his adventurous spirit , anyway he didn't have much entanglement left for life on Earth after the death of his parents.
When he heard the news of the death of his parents in his new life he was sad for them as they took very good care of him and loved him very much. But slowly he was able come out of his mourning and stabilize his mentality as he had already experienced the loss of his parents in last life. Moreover his uncle and aunt treated him as their own child as they themselves were childless as took very good care of him in the past 5 years.
He knows that having strength is the most basic premise for freedom and safety in this chaotic world where the worldview is entirely different from Earth , so he started some basic exercises such as running and calisthenics to lay a solid foundation for his future physical growth. You know in this world whether it is devil fruit , swordsmanship , haki or physical martial arts all of them are based on a firm physical foundation. If you want to have a high attainment in any of these fields of strength good physique is a must.
Although he doesn't have any golden finger or system with him after his reincarnation , as mentioned in many fanfics but the pitch black stone in his consciousness is no less than one. He found out about the magic of the black stone when he was 7 years old. One day when he tried to test the limits of his body and break them by completely exhausting himself with various exercises, the black stone released a faint energy which moisturized every cell in his body and the overall improvement to his physique was much higher than what it could have been by the exercise alone , even considering his already above average physique of the one piece world.
You know even though it seems like the black stone is only of some help in breaking through the limits of the body which is not much but everybody can only breakthrough the limits of their bodies only a given number of times which is entirely dependent on the quality of physique of the individuals in this world. So even if some one works very hard and breaks through his limits he will eventually encounter a permanent bottleneck when the potential of his physical body is exhausted and it will become very difficult to improve the overall base strength of the body in all aspects. It may still be possible to become more powerful by increasing the attainments of realm in a specific field such as swordsmanship but with all the other aspects similar ,he will still be firmly suppressed by a person with higher body quality and base strength.
With this in mind the problem of exhausted potential is non existent for Ethan and in future he can steadily rise to become or even surpass the top power houses in the world. Hence Ethan has never stopped doing his diligent exercises ever since. In addition to this , the black stone has never strengthened his soul after his recovery from the brain fever , no matter how Ethan experimented with it. Ethan believes that the advantages of the black stone will be far beyond just strengthening his physique and he can only explore and discover its properties when he ventures out to the sea later.
In this way Ethan's days passed in exercising and living peacefully on this island of Dasefilla. Perhaps it is too peaceful or that Ethan is expecting this world to be full of adventures and sunshines as depicted in the manga and anime he has slowly let go of the caution towards the real world he had acquired in the 50 years of his past life. He forgot that there is a huge difference between fantasy and reality and that reality is often much more cruel.
He and his family are about to usher in a great disaster which will make him come face to face with the cruel reality of this world and make him understand that here only strength is supreme and weakness is a sin and that the common people don't even have the right to decide on how they will die.