"Am I... still alive?"
Zephyr opened his eyes and bolted upright, startled to find himself lying on a crude wooden bed.
Before he could survey his surroundings, a sudden sharp pain pierced his head.
A carousel of images, etched with fine cracks, whirled through his mind - unfamiliar, distinct, blurred - all jumbled together like they were the very cause of his headache.
"I was clearly hit by..."
The pain left Zephyr's eyes blank with confusion.
He remembered clearly how, during the incident at the Hunter Association hall, he'd been caught in the crossfire of the Zoldyck Family's "Wish-Granting Machine" power.
Not even the protagonist group of the Hunter World, nor the powerful members of the Hunter Association, had escaped unscathed.
Faced with that unreasonable force that seemed capable of breaking through dimensional barriers, he'd done nothing but still gotten hit.
In an instant, without any chance to react, his body had been twisted into a pretzel.
The incident had been swift and sudden, but the intense pain lingered, casting a shadow of death over Zephyr's thoughts.
He could almost still feel the tearing sensation from his skin.
After a long while, the negative feelings brought by the death shadow finally began to fade.
Still alive.
That was enough.
Only then did Zephyr have the presence of mind to survey his surroundings.
The wooden room measured less than ten square meters, its air thick with a faint moldy scent.
Visible cracks marred both the wooden walls and floor.
The room's furnishings were sparse: apart from the single bed where Zephyr lay, there stood only a plain wooden desk and chair devoid of decorations, along with a mirror hanging on the wall.
A low-wattage yellow incandescent bulb hung from the ceiling, casting feeble light throughout the space.
Nothing else occupied the room—not even a window.
His gaze swept past the dusty desk and chair before settling on the mirror covered in a thin layer of dust.
Through the mirror's reflection, Zephyr saw a strange black-haired youth.
The boy in the mirror appeared around fifteen or sixteen years old. His features weren't particularly handsome, but they were pleasant and unremarkable.
Bloodstained bandages wound around his forehead, his face pale as if sickly, as fragile as a gust of wind could blow him away.
Zephyr stared blankly at the "himself" in the mirror, the unfamiliar memories in his mind gradually becoming clearer.
Under the brief influence of these strange memories, Zephyr endured the stabbing pain, the uncertainty in his eyes growing more pronounced.
"So that's how it is..."
He had been transmigrated again.
This time, not through body possession, but soul transmigration.
Thus, he survived in this manner.
Slowly exhaling, Zephyr didn't rush to get out of bed and investigate his surroundings further.
Instead, he closed his eyes, gradually absorbing the residual memories from this body, attempting to extract useful intelligence from them.
After a long while, Zephyr opened his eyes, fine beads of sweat silently forming on his pale face.
"A slave ship and pirate ship, huh..."
Using his index finger to gently wipe away the sweat from his cheek, Zephyr murmured, head bowed.
He had figured out the origin of this body.
The previous owner came from a merchant family. During a cargo transport, they were tragically captured by pirates.
On the merchant ship, all adults were slaughtered by the pirates, including the previous owner's parents. Only young people like the previous owner survived.
Afterward, the previous owner was sold to a slave ship, where they were confined in a room filled with straw alongside other children.
Not long after, the slave ship suddenly came under attack. A cannonball blasted open the room where the previous owner was imprisoned.
The recent memories ended there.
What happened afterward...
Zephyr touched the bandage on his forehead. The wound didn't hurt much.
How he came to be in this room, he had no memory of at all.
Having escaped this calamity through such means, Zephyr felt nothing but relief and joy.
"Pirate... Pirate... Could this be the world of the Pirate King?" Zephyr pondered.
He wasn't entirely certain.
But one thing was clear: everything would have to start anew.
If only my abilities were still intact, Zephyr thought silently.
As the thought took shape, a thin black notebook materialized in his hand without warning.
The notebook's cover bore two Chinese characters rendered in silver calligraphy: "Hunter."
Below the word "Hunter," four parallel silver lines lay blank. A feather quill without ink was clipped to the spine.
Zephyr stared wide-eyed at the manifested notebook and quill.
He hadn't used Nen, yet his ability had activated.
Moreover...
Zephyr's gaze fell upon the empty spaces on the silver lines.
These lines should have displayed four words reflecting his "needs," but now they stood completely blank.
Zephyr opened the notebook.
What greeted him was pure emptiness.
Rustle.
He flipped to the second page, then the third...
Still blank!
The original pages had recorded four years of his discreet "hunting" in the Hunter World, but now everything was gone.
"Reset?" Zephyr muttered. "No wonder I can't sense any 'buffs'."
Though his hunting achievements had been wiped clean by the reset, the remaining ability was enough to make Zephyr ecstatic.
The Hunter's Notebook was a growth-type ability Zephyr had painstakingly developed while in the Full-Time Hunter world. Its purpose was to maximize the conversion of intelligence into strength, leveraging the Transmigrator's unique knowledge advantage.
To activate the ability, five steps had to be completed:
Define Hunting Requirements
Locate Hunting Targets
Prepare for the Hunt
Execute the Hunting Action
Harvest the Hunting Results
In the first step, four different requirements were recorded on the silver thread according to personal needs. Initially, Zephyr had recorded these four requirements: Nen manipulation techniques, Heart Drop Fist Listening, latent Qi capacity, and manifest Qi capacity.
However, these requirements would clearly be ineffective in the Pirate King world.
However, some needs can be universal.
For example, martial arts, swordsmanship, physical strength, Devil Fruit ability experience, and Haki experience...
After recording these needs in the Needs section, simply write the target's name on the notebook page while visualizing their appearance in your mind. This completes the second step of finding a hunting target.
The third step in hunting preparation is to document the target's accurate ability intelligence across all aspects.
The more detailed the recorded intelligence, the richer the rewards after personally eliminating the target.
As long as the abilities remain intact, even if starting over, one could grow at the fastest pace possible.
Zephyr was initially excited but quickly regained his composure.
He realized a problem.
Although the Hunter's Notebook remained, he wasn't certain if it was applicable to this current world.
If it wasn't, his excitement would have been for nothing.
Slowly closing the Hunter's Notebook, Zephyr murmured, "This is still a good start, but for now, I need to quickly understand the current situation."
The moment the words left his lips, a gunshot suddenly echoed from outside.
Zephyr's eyes narrowed. Acting on reflex, he rolled off the bed and eyed the tightly shut door with caution.
More shots followed in quick succession, resembling the crackling of distant fireworks. Though the sounds came from a distance, they grew increasingly urgent.
Though the gunfire originated outside, Zephyr remained on high alert. His fingers unconsciously tightened around the Hunter's Notebook.
With his current frail body, any sudden confrontation would leave him as helpless as fish meat on a butcher's block.
The gunfire persisted for five full minutes before gradually subsiding. Zephyr kept his eyes fixed on the door for five minutes longer.
The barrage of shots had given him a stark taste of this world's chaos.
He clutched the Hunter's Notebook, but it offered no comfort. The notebook was essentially useless now; only by successfully completing a hunt could he obtain real Buffs.
Thump-thump—
Just as the gunfire faded, Zephyr heard footsteps approaching outside. His pupils contracted as he withdrew the Hunter's Notebook.
He sprang to his feet, treading lightly as he pressed his back against the wall to the right of the door.
In this uncertain situation, positioning himself near the entrance proved more advantageous than crouching by the empty wooden bed.
Soon, footsteps approached.
Zephyr tilted his head, eyes fixed on the right side as he held his breath.
Creak—
The wooden door swung open with an ear-piercing screech.
Yet no one entered the room. Instead, a black gun barrel emerged, its barrel trained on Zephyr at a peculiar angle.
In that instant, Zephyr's heart skipped a beat.
With his current frail body, a single bullet would mean certain doom.