Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk—
The rhythmic sound of a knife on a cutting board.
The cat dozing on the edge of the stove rolled over. One leg had nearly stretched all the way onto the board; every chop of the knife landed less than five centimeters from her.
"Congratulations, Host, for unlocking the achievement [Death Is Like the Wind, Always by My Side]. Reward: Teleportation Gate energy +5%."
Sometimes she unlocked achievements just from sleeping. She hadn't done anything at all.
Mihawk made simple preparations—a small pouch of food that could fit in the boat's seat compartment, plus a Log Pose to track the magnetic field. That was the full extent of their supplies.
Had the man sitting in that small boat been anyone other than the World's Greatest Swordsman, nobody would believe it could make a long voyage.
"WAAK! WAAK! WAAK! WAAK!"
While he worked, the cat had not been idle.
By the time Mihawk noticed, a small girl was already sitting on top of a newsboy-dressed bird that had been pinned down for quite some time. The frantic squawking was coming from the bird.
Catching his eye, Yimi grabbed the bird by the leg and trotted over to him, bouncing happily.
She looked at the bird. Then at the small blade hanging around Mihawk's neck. Then at the provisions he'd packed. Then she wiped the corner of her mouth.
The News Coo's face crumpled into a very human-looking tearful expression.
"Let it go." Mihawk grabbed her by the back of the collar, lifted her into the boat, and produced a coin for the bird.
"What are you doing?" She stamped a shoe print onto his shin.
That was my prey. You're throwing away what this cat caught.
Mihawk glanced at her. "You've never seen a News Coo?"
A News Coo—the newspaper-delivery birds. They were the single faction on the entire sea that neither pirates nor the World Government would lightly antagonize.
For one thing, they controlled the flow of information, and nobody wanted strange stories written about them in the next edition. More importantly, in a world where newspapers were the only way to receive news from the outside, getting blacklisted by the News Coo meant losing all delivery service permanently.
For pirates who spent most of their lives at sea, it wasn't exactly practical to knock on a neighbor's door and ask to borrow their paper.
Newspaper in hand, Mihawk noticed the News Coo hadn't left. It narrowed its small eyes and stared—completely still—at Yimi, the one who had just manhandled it.
He fished out a few more coins and offered them.
The bird didn't take them. Instead, it reached into its satchel with a wing, produced a small snail-like creature, made a deliberate picture-taking gesture in the direction of Yimi and Mihawk, then flapped away.
"..."
"What was it doing?" Yimi tugged at Mihawk's sleeve.
"Taking a photo."
Hard to say what the next edition of the paper would look like.
"Taking a photo?" Yimi turned the phrase over in her mind, then snatched the newspaper Mihawk had bought and started reading it herself.
In any other world, she wouldn't have been able to read it at all—but in a world built on strength rather than scholarship, the language issue wasn't a problem. The best part of those language-knowledge rewards was that even in a completely foreign world with a new writing system, the system synced her up to the local average literacy level of a seven-year-old.
And in this world, the average literacy level of a seven-year-old was actually higher than in other worlds.
Why? Because many marines and pirates had dedicated their childhoods to physical training, which drastically cut into language study time. Some had literally been born on ships. Some had been too poor for school. Yet how many of those pirates couldn't read a newspaper?
The answer was: not many.
Anyway—the language itself wasn't all that different from her previous world, but since it was simpler to learn, the average level ended up slightly higher. This cat could read about half of it.
Mihawk untied the rope mooring the boat to shore. "Try reading it aloud."
"'Big Mom takes a new husband'… what's a husband?" She'd hit an unfamiliar word and tilted her head back, waiting for the adult to explain.
"You don't need to know." He snatched the paper back.
Morgans really would print anything.
No major news, for the most part. The only interesting item was a brief note suggesting that Marshall D. Teach—known as Blackbeard, a member of the Whitebeard Pirates—had possibly defected.
Shanks had mentioned this man to him once. The three scars on Shanks' face had been left by none other than Blackbeard.
"Beat a Yonko, beat a Yonko, beat a Yonko…"
"Be quiet."
He folded the paper away, settled back against the mast, and closed his eyes to rest. He made no move to steer.
In truth, most of his voyages had no fixed destination. He drifted wherever the wind took him.
There was one person he wouldn't mind running into, though—Red Hair Shanks, one of the Yonko and one of his few genuine friends. A few years back, Shanks had lost an arm in the weakest of the Four Blues, the East Blue. Mihawk was curious what kind of person would make that worth it.
When he paid her no attention, the little cat sprawled out and started trailing her fingers in the water out of boredom.
Without a ship large enough to have an entertainment deck, ocean travel was genuinely tedious. The environment alone was miserable: relentless humidity and merciless sun, the constant swaying that turned your stomach. Sailors who spent months at sea often wobbled on land for days after stepping ashore.
Not that Yimi's skin cared about the sun, no matter how delicate it looked. It was the Warlord Crocodile—the Sand Croc, sunbaked somewhere in a desert nation far away—who was actually having a rough time.
"Are you asleep?"
Some indeterminate amount of time passed. Mihawk, resting with his eyes closed, was dimly aware of the small cat rummaging twice through the provisions and helping herself to snacks. Then the mischievous little creature reached over and tugged on his beard, forcing his eyes open.
He tossed her an apple. "Can't you sit still for five minutes?"
"The boat stopped moving." She hopped off the side, landed on the ocean's surface, and tried to push the hull.
It didn't budge. She was very weak.
"Is that so." Mihawk recognized exactly where they were.
The Calm Belt. Also known, among sailors, as the Rookies' Nightmare.
Literally: no wind. Not even the current moved here. And it was a favorite resting ground for Sea Kings.
Set aside that last part—just the absence of wind and waves was enough to kill more than half of all newcomers in a world that ran almost entirely on sail power.
"Hold on."
He glanced down at his most prized possession, the black blade, and drew it toward the water's surface. His plan: send out a burst of sword energy to manually churn up a wave and ride it out of here.
He'd just begun the preparatory motion when his Observation Haki picked up something—a large fleet of ships had also blundered into the Calm Belt.
Don Krieg. Bounty: 17,000,000 Berries. Nickname: Overlord of the East Blue.
Imposing title. But that bounty—and Krieg himself—wouldn't even register as a footnote outside the East Blue, let alone in the New World. Mihawk had never heard of him.
What Mihawk didn't know about Krieg didn't change what Krieg knew about Mihawk.
So what exactly did Mihawk look like from Krieg's perspective at this particular moment?
The World's Greatest Swordsman. A child in tow. Utterly undignified, using his legendary black blade as a paddle in the middle of the Calm Belt.
"Pfft."
Sprawled on his flagship's deck, Krieg laughed out loud.
He was very far away. But Mihawk's vision was extraordinary, and his Observation Haki was sharper still.
He saw it. He definitely laughed.
"..."
Mihawk pulled the blade from the water and turned it toward Krieg.
Krieg: Oh no.