"Very expensive?"
The two young boys exchanged a look, their eyes filled with an identical, unyielding stubbornness.
"How much?" Ace asked, his voice low and serious, the freckles on his taut face standing out starkly. "As long as it makes us stronger, we'll pay any price!"
Luffy nodded vigorously beside him. Though he had no real concept of money, he understood the words "get stronger," and that was all that mattered.
"Heh heh." Jack let out a low, ambiguous chuckle. He slowly rose from his rocking chair, stretched out a single finger, and lazily pointed to the broken wooden sign next to him. On the sign, scrawled in crooked, bold letters, were the words—Dungeon Shop. Below that was another line of smaller, but still clear, text.
Beginner Dungeon: One Million Berries.
Jack pointed at that line of text, then gestured with his chin towards the two intense boys. "See that? My introductory course… that's the price." He twitched his lips, a mischievous smile playing on his face, his eyes glinting as if he were teasing two frantic kittens.
"One Million Berries," he repeated slowly. "Do you have it?"
Luffy's mouth instantly formed a perfect "O." He held up his rubbery fingers and tried to count for a long time, but eventually gave up with a frustrated groan. "One million… how much meat is that?" His face was a mask of intense struggle; clearly, the number had far exceeded his computational abilities.
However, Ace, standing beside him, froze the moment he heard the number. His pupils contracted sharply, then suddenly lit up with a brilliant, blazing fire. It was an incredibly burning gaze, like a man lost in darkness who had just seen the first light of dawn.
One million.
That number, like a bolt of lightning, cut through the fog in his mind. He remembered. He and Sabo, over the years, had been saving up a "pirate fund"—a treasure hoard to finance their escape to the sea. It was made of Berries snatched from mountain bandits, dug out of the endless heaps of the junkyard, and stolen from the pockets of arrogant nobles… accumulated one coin at a time. They had long lost count of the total.
They definitely had it. They might even… have a little more.
"Yes!" Ace let out a low roar from deep in his throat, his voice thick with suppressed, explosive excitement. It trembled slightly with emotion, yet it was incredibly firm. "We have it!"
Luffy was startled by Ace's sudden, vehement reaction and started shouting excitedly along with him, "Oh oh oh! We have money!"
Jack's eyebrows twitched, and his usually lazy, detached expression finally showed a genuine hint of surprise. "Oh?" He truly hadn't expected these two scruffy boys from a poor, remote village to be able to produce such a sum.
"The money is in our secret base!" Ace lunged forward and grabbed Jack's pant leg, his grip desperate as if he was afraid the man would vanish in the next second. He looked up, his black eyes burning with fierce flames, filled with an undeniable, desperate plea. "Sabo! My brother! He should be there right now! You come with us! We'll give it to you right now!"
Looking at this stubborn child, whose eyes held a determination fiercer than any adult's, and then at the single-celled organism clinging to his leg, still shouting about getting stronger and eating meat, Jack suddenly felt that this was much more interesting than lying in the sun.
"A secret base, huh…" he drew out the words, the curve of his lips growing wider. "Alright then." Jack lazily straightened up, stretched with a great yawn as his bones cracked with a series of satisfying pops.
"Lead the way," he said, putting his hands back in his pockets and looking down at the two boys. "But I'm warning you. If you dare to trick me, or if the money isn't enough…" Jack's eyes suddenly became playful. "The tuition, you see, will double."
"It's definitely enough!" A brilliant, unprecedented smile bloomed on Ace's face—the joyous ecstasy of a gambler who had bet everything and seen the dawn. "Follow me!"
He no longer hesitated. He turned and ran, pulling the still-dazed Luffy along with him. "Let's go, Luffy! We… are going to get stronger!"
"Oh! Get stronger! Eat meat!" Luffy yelled excitedly as he was dragged along.
Two small figures ran vigorously ahead, as if they were chasing an impossible, unreachable dream.
…
Mt. Colubo, the Gray Terminal.
This was a mountain of garbage, a place where putrid rot and bleak despair festered under the indifferent sky. However, deep within this land, which even the sunlight seemed to shun, inside a giant hollow tree trunk, a shimmering dream was hidden.
*Splash!*
A worn wooden box was opened, revealing a trove of gleaming, sparkling Berries that reflected an intoxicating luster in the dim light of the tree hollow. A blond boy wearing a black top hat and holding a pipe in his mouth was kneeling before the box, carefully pouring Berries, one by one, from a money bag into it.
His name was Sabo.
"Heh heh…" Sabo looked at his "haul" for the day, a worldly, satisfied smile on his face that completely belied his noble origins. "Adding the money 'borrowed' from those idiotic nobles today…" He excitedly rummaged through the treasure chest with his dirt-stained fingers, muttering calculations to himself. "We're only a little bit away from buying that used fishing boat!"
In his eyes, something called "hope" flickered brightly.
"Ace, I wonder what he's up to now," Sabo mumbled as he continued to count the money. "He's probably fighting with that simple-minded Luffy again. One's impulsive, the other's an idiot." He pouted, but a warm, fond smile involuntarily appeared on his face. "They really are two troublesome brothers."
"But…" Sabo's eyes became incredibly determined. "It'll be soon. It really will be soon."
He looked up, through the cracks in the tree hollow, at the small patch of sky fragmented by the towering mountains of garbage. "Just have to bear with it a little longer. Once we save enough money and buy our own ship, we'll set sail immediately! Then, the world will be ours to explore, and no one will be able to control us anymore! No annoying rules, no disgusting nobles, only the boundless sea and absolute freedom!"
Sabo clenched his fists tightly, his whole body trembling slightly from the excessive excitement. Set sail. Become pirates. Gain freedom. This was the unbreakable promise he and Ace had made to each other since the day they met, a vow to be kept until death.
"At most…" Sabo quickly calculated in his mind. "At most, one more month! We'll become the freest pirates on this vast sea!"
By then, he would write all of their adventures, all the interesting stories they experienced, into a book and spread it throughout the entire world.
Just as Sabo was completely immersed in his beautiful fantasy of freedom, almost laughing out loud at the joyous prospect, a voice drifted faintly from outside the tree hollow. It was a cold, emotionless male voice—the most familiar, and the most terrifying, voice he had ever known.
"Sabo."
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