"Goodbye, Kena. Work hard and become a full Marine soon."
"Colonel Karo, Doctor Ter, and everyone else on the ship... thank you for taking care of me these past few days."
It had been three days since Kurogane Ren was rescued by the Marines.
During those three days, under their careful treatment, his condition had improved rapidly. To begin with, he hadn't been seriously injured—he had just been malnourished for too long.
After a few days of rest, he had fully recovered.
So the Marines dropped him off on a small island and even gave him one thousand beli before sending him on his way.
A lot of people might ask what one thousand beli could even do.
But after spending several days with the Marines aboard the ship, Ren had already figured out that one thousand beli really wasn't a small amount.
According to Oda's early setting, beli was roughly comparable to Japanese yen in the real world.
But there was one thing to consider—
One Piece had been running for decades.
So if you wanted to estimate the value properly, you couldn't compare it to modern money from Ren's old world before he transmigrated. You had to compare it to the value of money from over twenty years ago.
And what could one unit of currency buy twenty years ago?
The answer spoke for itself.
Of course, some people would argue that prices in the One Piece world were obviously high.
Take newspapers, for example. A single issue cost a hundred beli.
And that was true.
On Earth, a newspaper might only cost a few cents.
But you couldn't measure the One Piece world by Earth's standards.
What kind of world was One Piece?
Sure, they had Den Den Mushi that allowed long-distance communication and even video calls.
But first, their range was limited.
And second, they were nowhere near common enough for everyone to have one.
For most people, the main way they understood the wider world was still through newspapers.
So in the One Piece world, newspapers weren't just newspapers.
They were information.
They were intelligence.
Take pirates, for example.
Most pirates only had a single ship and a crew that lived together day and night at sea.
They drifted for years without a fixed home.
For people like them, newspapers were often the only way to learn what was happening in the world.
That meant a newspaper wasn't merely a paper full of headlines.
It was information.
And paying one hundred beli for that really wasn't expensive.
Because of that, as long as newspapers had enough readers, there was almost no need to worry about sales. Pirates needed them. Ordinary civilians needed them. It was a product that would always sell.
Another example was cotton candy in the One Piece world.
Before later updates, one serving only cost fifty beli—about the price of a Chopper.
But people often forgot something important.
Different islands in One Piece had wildly different climates and environments due to geography.
Some islands were naturally poor for agriculture.
And that meant basic goods could cost far more there than elsewhere.
For example, sugar might cost only ten beli per unit in Totto Land.
But in Alabasta, the exact same amount could cost one hundred beli—or even two hundred.
Why?
Because Alabasta didn't produce sugar.
If they wanted it, they had to transport it in from somewhere else. Add in shipping costs and scarcity, and naturally the price would soar.
So using the price of one random product to prove that the One Piece world's currency had low value was simply wrong.
After putting away the thousand beli the Marines had given him, Ren turned and headed toward the town on the island.
The Marines had rescued him, yes, but with his identity—or rather, lack of one—there was no way he could stay aboard a Marine warship for long.
He had considered joining the Marines for a moment.
But in the end, he gave up on the idea.
He had a system.
And that meant strange things would keep appearing around him.
Some of those things were so impactful that they could change the world itself.
Take the 98k rifle, for example.
Among his lottery rewards, it didn't even qualify as a transcendent item.
But in the hands of the Marines?
It would absolutely be a god-tier weapon.
Because it could completely revolutionize the firearms of this world.
It could turn muzzle-loading muskets into bolt-action rifles, dramatically raising the combat strength of Marine foot soldiers.
And someone like Ren, who possessed those things, would undoubtedly end up turned into a lab rat.
Because sooner or later, he would be forced to explain where all those items came from.
That was why he had decided not to join the Marines.
Right now, what Ren needed most was to find out the date.
Back on the Marine ship, they had naturally questioned him.
He had told them he was an orphan who had worked since childhood aboard a passenger ship called the Titanic. Not long ago, the ship had been caught in a storm and sunk, and he had survived by drifting for more than half a month in a small boat.
The Marines hadn't investigated too deeply.
There were simply too many ships in the world. The Marines couldn't possibly keep records of every single one.
Besides, Ren had acted carefully.
During his time with them, he never exposed the fact that he was a Devil Fruit user, and he also never used any of the Six Powers.
So up until the moment he disembarked, the Marines still believed he was just an ordinary civilian who had survived a shipwreck.
Even though they had found him near the Calm Belt, none of them found his story suspicious.
In their eyes, it was impossible for an ordinary person to sail a tiny boat only a few meters long out of the Calm Belt by himself.
So no one doubted him.
After entering town, Ren started looking for a place that sold newspapers.
Before long, he spotted a newsstand tucked into the corner of a street.
He paid fifty beli for a paper. In his opinion, newspapers sold at a stand should naturally be cheaper than the ones delivered by news birds, otherwise the business logic didn't make sense.
Then he immediately began searching the paper for the date.
Back on the Marine ship, he had deliberately avoided asking what year it was.
After all, if an ordinary person couldn't even state the current date properly, that would be suspicious as hell.
The first thing he saw was the printed date.
Sea Circle Calendar, Year 1506.
The moment he saw it, Ren fell into thought.
He had watched the One Piece anime in the past, but he had never paid much attention to the exact timeline.
He thought about it for a while, but still couldn't remember what major point in history this year matched.
Still, he was certain of one thing—
Luffy definitely hadn't gone to sea yet.
Because if Ren remembered correctly, Luffy set out sometime around the 1520s in the Sea Circle Calendar.
So he kept reading, hoping that some major news event in the paper would help him figure out the exact period.
And very quickly, he saw a familiar name.
"Fish-Man Who Caused Chaos in the Holy Land Mary Geoise, Fisher Tiger, Escapes Marine Pursuit Again with the Sun Pirates and Sinks Multiple Marine Warships."
Another headline read:
"Large Numbers of Slaves Who Escaped from the Holy Land Mary Geoise Captured by the Marines Two Days Ago."
The moment he saw those two stories, Ren could confirm it.
This was shortly after Fisher Tiger had stormed Mary Geoise and freed a massive number of slaves.
Otherwise, the Marines wouldn't still be conducting such large-scale slave hunts.
And from what he remembered of the anime, that meant there were still more than ten years left before the protagonist, Luffy, would set sail.
Realizing that, Ren let out a long breath of relief.
Good.
Even though he had landed more than a decade before the main storyline, he was actually quite satisfied with that timing.
Because with over ten years before the protagonist's era truly began, he had enough time to grow stronger.
Yes, he had a system.
But Ren didn't believe he could become someone capable of matching the Four Emperors in just two or three years the way Luffy did.
After all, protagonist buffs were the kind of thing that couldn't be explained.
So even with the system's help, Ren fully intended to spend a long time building up his strength.