(Heeheehee… I'm a Brain-Brain Fruit user. Hand over your brain, nice and easy!)
The last thing Kyle remembered was the icy steel front of a hundred-ton truck filling his vision.
Seriously—does anyone understand how unfair this is?
He even thought he heard some kind of Cybertron-style electronic voice… and to make it worse, it sounded like a loli.
"I thought it was just a speed bump."
"Tell that to my insurance."
"We're all trying our best to live."
Damn it… so unwilling to die. His 512GB USB of "study materials" hadn't even been backed up yet…
Then came endless darkness, and a bone-deep tearing sensation.
When he opened his eyes again, the world was completely unfamiliar.
Salty sea wind mixed with the savage scent of a primeval jungle slammed straight into his nose. Towering trees he had never seen before blocked out the sky, while strange bird cries and beastly roars echoed all around. Beneath him was rough, gritty sand that dug painfully into his skin.
"Where the hell did you dump me? Is this even still my country?!"
A thin, childish voice came out of his own mouth.
Kyle jolted upright in panic and began patting himself all over.
Arms—tiny.
Legs—tiny.
Waist—there.
The other critical equipment—still intact.
…Wait, that's not comforting at all! A three-year-old kid stranded alone on a deserted island? That's basically a death flag.
Fragments of memories from his past life floated around like shattered glass, impossible to piece together. The memories of this body were just as chaotic—he only vaguely remembered surviving a shipwreck.
Hunger was the first thing to sound the alarm.
Then came the cold, as the sea wind cut straight through his thin, tattered clothes. And on top of that… the ominous noises coming from the jungle that made his scalp tingle.
Kyle shuddered. Instinct for survival crushed every bit of confusion and resentment.
He scrambled across the sand and found a low cave that the waves had hollowed out halfway. It barely counted as shelter, but it could block wind and rain.
The inside reeked of dampness and a fishy stench, but he didn't have the luxury to complain. Curling up in the deepest part of the cave, he listened to the waves pounding the rocks outside, mixed with the faint sounds of something chewing in the forest.
"…Ring-grandpa?" he called out weakly.
The question was swallowed by the roar of the sea. Kyle finally accepted reality.
Good news: he had transmigrated.
Bad news: this was a hell-tier start.
"I am Kyle Grylls—definitely not—and I'll show you how to survive in the most extreme and dangerous environments!"
Dun~ dun~ dun-dun!
Back in the peaceful modern world, Kyle was the type to talk trash under survival videos, yelling "I could do that too!" Now, though, the only tough thing about him was his mouth.
Using a puddle inside the cave as a mirror, he examined himself. Black hair, golden eyes. His little face was thin and childish, but you could vaguely see the future potential—handsome enough to give readers heart attacks.
To avoid dying young in a bad ending, he had only one goal:
Survive.
Three whole years.
Do you have any idea how he lived through them?
His body grew at a terrifying rate—stronger, faster, tougher. It went far beyond what a normal child should be capable of, which made Kyle realize early on that this world was anything but ordinary.
Years of running, climbing, and fighting had carved his body into something lean and explosive.
"Yo yo yo, got food again, brothers!"
He chatted to himself while skillfully skinning a wild rabbit, occasionally letting out a weird villain-like cackle.
"Lunch today is roasted bunny, some mystery fruits, and Q-pai-lei! Let's eat, bros!"
"Ah—so good… burp!"
After devouring the poor rabbit, Kyle sat on a rock and took out a strange fruit he had picked on the island.
It was pure white, covered in layer after layer of circular spiral patterns.
"…Feels like I've seen this somewhere before. Whatever—good or bad, your boy Kyle will find out!"
The moment he swallowed the first bite, his face turned green, then white, then green again. His stomach churned like ten thousand goblins were throwing a rave inside him.
Even with all the weird things he'd eaten over the past three years, he had never tasted anything this horrifying.
"Ptoo! Ptoo!"
He spat furiously, trying to get rid of that despair-inducing flavor.
"This tastes like one-month-unwashed fermented summer socks mixed with a three-month-dead rat, slow-cooked for forty-nine days. I'll generously rate it… quantum-level stinky."
Kyle's face twisted. His taste buds felt like they'd just been brutally trained.
Shaking his head hard, he tried to fling that demonic flavor—and the fruit's bizarre appearance—out of his mind.
Because something more important awaited him.
The sun was still high in the sky. His daily "mandatory class" wasn't over yet.
Six-year-old Kyle, with a tiny body that hid completely unreasonable strength and agility, started another perfect day.
A beautiful morning began with a sprint across the beach.
Barefoot on the damp sand, each step sank in before springing back with explosive force. He ran so fast that his small footprints were quickly erased by the incoming tide.
Next came strength training.
Deep in the jungle was his personal "gym," scattered with rocks of every size. Lifting, carrying, throwing—he repeated these dull movements every day. His muscles, far beyond his age, were already tight and well-defined, long accustomed to the burning soreness.
Sometimes he cursed in the slang of his past life. Sometimes he hummed weird pop songs he barely remembered.
"One day the squid~ the squid stood up!"
With a low shout, veins bulging on his arms, he hoisted a rock twice his own height and hurled it into the sand with a heavy thud.
Agility training relied on the jungle itself.
Kyle leapt across fallen giant trees, swung on thick vines, and dodged small predators that tried to ambush him from the shadows. His senses had become razor-sharp—every rustle of leaves and shift of air turned into instant judgment in his mind.
As for combat… there were no fancy techniques. Everything he knew was learned at the edge of death—simple, direct, and lethal.
He stabbed, chopped, and swept with his homemade spear against thick tree trunks, every strike fast, accurate, and merciless.
"Take this—Monkey Steals the Peach… ah, damn it, what am I even practicing?! Focus, Kyle! You're gonna be the man who beats Bear Grylls and stomps Deon Stalker!"
Sometimes he'd pause, panting, wipe the sweat from his brow, and flash a sly grin completely out of place on a kid's face—before throwing himself back into training.
As the sun dipped toward the sea, Kyle sat on his personal "viewing platform"—a high cliff overlooking the endless blue.
Exhaustion washed over him, mixed with a strange satisfaction.
He had survived another day. He had pushed his limits just a little further.
He flexed his arm, revealing a solid bicep that didn't match his small frame at all.
"These muscles are real, okay? Not like some pointy-headed fraud."
"Homelander? Nah, I don't eat beef. Breaking news: six-year-old superman lifting iron with the power of nine dragons!"
These dumb jokes were his medicine against loneliness. In endless days of survival, you had to entertain yourself somehow.
But beneath the humor lay a deep confusion.
His growth rate. His strength. His recovery.
No matter how you looked at it, this was not how a normal human child should be.
Even with "special" island food and survival-of-the-fittest conditions, this was ridiculous.
Night fell.
Stars flickered into life above the dark sea. Kyle stretched and headed back to his cave.
The waves rolled gently onto the shore. Insects chirped in the darkness.
Lying on layers of dried leaves, Kyle usually passed out the moment his head hit the "pillow." But tonight, sleep wouldn't come.
Thoughts surged like the tide.
The jungle.
The ocean.
The strange creatures.
And that cursed white fruit.
Just thinking about the taste made his stomach twitch.
But what haunted him more was the pattern on its skin.
Spirals.
Perfect, repeating spirals.
He had seen them before.
Like a missing puzzle piece hiding behind fog, just out of reach.
Spirals.
Unbelievable taste.
A bolt of lightning struck through his mind.
Memories exploded back into place.
A world of pirates.
Adventure.
Battles.
Marines and justice.
And a certain kind of fruit.
Fruits with spiral patterns. Fruits that granted miraculous powers. Fruits that made the sea reject you. Fruits that tasted like the worst thing in the universe, compressed a hundred times over.
Kyle shot upright in his cave, eyes wide.
Spirals.
That taste.
His abnormal body.
Everything suddenly made terrifying sense.
The gigantic beasts on the island.
The endless sea.
That subtle wrongness of this world's rules.
The shipwreck.
The scattered memories.
"…Devil Fruit."
The words squeezed out of his teeth, trembling with shock and a strange, rising thrill.
"This place…"
His voice was barely a whisper.
"This place… is the world of One Piece."