The streets of Russel bustled with celebration.
Swiss strolled through the crowds of drunks and party-goers singing merrily.
The whole place had a sort of 1700's vibe going on. Many of the local men were in colonial attire that reminded Swiss of portraits he saw of George Washington.
The women wore old-fashioned dresses that complimented their feminine figures. Many of them struggled to breathe due to the tightness of the corsets under their fabric.
'If I didn't know any better I'd probably think I got transported to Port Royal or Tortuga' Swiss thought.
The entire situation almost felt overwhelming to Swiss, who had just come from a town with barely even 300 people and was now amid a fervor of ecstasy.
"Hey, handsome. Want a good time?" A prostitute in her mid-forties called out to Swiss. She had a tooth missing and a mole on her chin.
"Holy fuck!" The sudden offer from this ugly female took Swiss by surprise, "Uhh, no thanks, darling. I'm just going on a nice mole- I mean stroll!"
He smiled awkwardly and continued on his way.
At a small magazine booth, Swiss spied a headline of a newspaper.
'PEACE IN OUR TIMES: THE WAR IS OVER'
At long last after almost a century of fighting, the conflict between nationalistic tribes and pro world government colonial forces had come to an end.
Zealandia: Its people, resources, and land, now flew the world government flag. The nationalistic tribes had failed in their fight for sovereignty. Now a new era was to begin.
Swiss pondered the timeline for a moment. How long had it been since the void century? And was Zealandia an outlier in their refusal to join the WG, or was this reluctance a worldwide phenomenon?
The whole scene before him intrigued Swiss. When reading the manga, he never stopped to consider how the WG managed to get over 170 countries under its banner.
Considering Zealandia's civil war, perhaps the WG's power in the current manga was what resulted after over 800 years of slowly taking over countries rather than everyone bowing down to them after beating JoyBoy.
As Swiss thought about this, he walked past a busy tavern where everyone was singing binks sake.
"YOHOHOHO, YOHOHOHO!"
That's when Swiss chuckled to himself, "Trololol. The winds of change blow must at different speeds depending on where you are."
He walked into that tavern, a smokey room filled with people of all walks of life.
Waitresses hurry along with trays of beer. Fools danced on tables. Swiss even saw men wearing a marine uniform arm wrestling against some natives.
"Some sake, please." Said Swiss, standing at the bar and sliding a coin to the bartender.
"Right away, sir." The bartender said, his beard so long that it's tied in a knot near the end.
Swiss took the sake bottle and downed it in one go, leaning his elbow on the bar bench and looking out at the festivity of the tavern.
It had been some time since he had tasted liquor, so he got drunk and giggly almost immediately
He smiled, his amber eyes gleaming at the sight of a good party. 'Seems like Zealandia and I are both having fresh starts.'
Then a drunkard bumped into him.
"Hey! *hic*. Whats where you goin." He slurred.
"Watch where I'm going? Bruh. I was just standing here." Swiss replied.
"Youu fucking what?!" the drunkard would sway his head to either side whenever he said a word.
Swiss was used to these sorts of confrontations in the real world. Drunk people were easy for him to handle. Never had anything got to the point of getting physical.
Swiss rolled his eyes at the man, he knew the guy heard him and felt it pointless to repeat himself.
"Sorry for my friend, he's gotten a little carried away tonight." The drunkard's companion was trying to hold him back and sincerely apologized to Swiss.
"No! Don't fuckinnc apolgise for me! This asshole giving me lip smervice!"
"Look," Swiss turned around and motioned the bartender, "Sorry pal. It was wrong of me to stand here. I'll watch where I'm going from now on. Let's do some shots and let bygones be bygones, aye?"
The bartender poured three shots of tequila. Swiss picked one of them up and looked at the drunkard with a funny grin, "How about it?"
*HOIK…. PATTU!*
A ball of nasty snot-filled spit hit Swiss right in the eye.
"Trololol…" Swiss coldly laughed, brushing off the spit and drinking the first two shots on the bench. Then he picks up the third and asks "You sure you don't want it? Here." before downing that also.
But he didn't swallow that third shot.
No, instead he spat it right into the drunkard's eyes. The alcohol burned his eyes causing him to scream, "AhhhH!" and wildly throw a punch.
Swiss effortlessly dodged… too effortlessly. 'Nani? Is it because this asshole is just a drunk amateur?'
The drunkard recovered his eyesight and saw Swiss lost in thought. "Yur dead! BOYS!"
Suddenly two tables of men stood up and ganked Swiss. The tavern got rowdy at the spectacle of a good fight.
"Wha-?" Swiss tensed briefly. If it were up to him, his first taste of real combat would have been at a moment of his choosing.
"Fuck it!" He resolved his inner yolo.
He would not have dived headfirst into a fight before his grueling week against Mayah.
Call it confidence in his new skills. Call it the liquor. Whatever you think, this narrator is going to chop it up to be a bit of both.
But perhaps the confidence was warranted. These men had slow and wasted movements. Swiss dodged and countered with elbows and knees.
"Trololol! You guys must be noobs!" he taunted at them, with three unconscious bodies at his feet.
*SMASH!* A man from behind Swiss shattered a bottle against his head, causing Swiss to lose balance.
Then someone swung and broke a bar stool against Swiss' body, causing him to go plunging into a table, breaking that also.
'Errr..' Swiss got to his feet and brushed off the splintered bits of wood.
His face then hardened as if he activated battle mode, striving forward.
The brawl continued. The men were more trained than Swiss initially thought. His training served him well- now with the muscle memory allowing him to counter with relative ease.
Even so, hits still managed to land themselves firmly on Swiss' face. But surprisingly, these did not hurt. Swiss was doing a good job at rolling with the punches.
The more they fought, the more Swiss started to outclass them. His movements were but sloppy attempts at those Lockett showed him, yet for some reason, they were more effective than his time in training.
The alcohol made his movements hard to read. Perhaps more crucially, it had stopped Swiss from thinking and allowed him to be present at the moment. It was almost like a drunken ultra instinct.
'Nani?! I guess this country is just a bunch of fodder?' Swiss marveled at his skills but ultimately chalked it up to Zealandia having a bunch of trash fighters that would get knocked out by a pre-time skip Luffy's conquerors haki.
By the time the fight was over, many of the tavern's patrons had moved their way outside. The fighting had managed to take place in the entire establishment.
As such, the whole place was absolutely trashed. Swiss stood alone amidst a dozen men at his feet, the tavern looking like a twister had just passed through.
"Hah…Hah…" Swiss panted, gathering himself and catching his breath. "GG NO RE BITCHES!" he said triumphantly, with his body battered and bruised.
He was about to jump up and down in celebration, but then a voice hollered his way.
"Hey, you! I don't know who you are, but you're going to pay for this!"
Swiss looked back and forward at the mess he made and the bartender, feeling the weight in his pockets of the Belli that Lockett had given him, before opening his mouth
"Shit…"
The bartender surmised that the damages done to the tavern could be covered by all the money Swiss had.
He wanted to complain, but deep down Swiss felt responsible for what just transpired.
Perhaps if he was like Shanks when that bandit tried to fight him, perhaps then could that confrontation be avoided.
But Swiss was not like that. Not after the week he just had. Not after the alcohol he had consumed.
["Whatever old man, take the money! Just hand be that bottle of sake over there!"]
So now Swiss was bloody, his body aching and with a fat lip, dragging his sorry ass through Russel with no money in his pocket. A single bottle of sake in his hands.
"Crap. How am I going to face the Stacy family now?" Swiss cursed at himself, "Fuck. I just want to sit for a bit…"
Swiss then saw a small church sitting on a cliff that overlooked Russell and the Bay of Islands. He decided he would hike up there to enjoy his sake in peace.
Up there, he circled the church and made his way to the cliff, sitting at its edge with his feet dangling. He sat there and enjoyed one of the best views of the whole bay.
The Bay of Islands was a large bay that had countless small islands, each with its own village or town.
Russell was the largest of them all, but this was probably because it was the only town in the bay that was actually on the mainland of Zealandia.
It was beautiful. The lights from the towns twinkled like nearby stars, which alongside the moonlight would dance on the shimmering water. The muffled drums of the music below almost being mistaken with the beat of his heart.
"I'll be damned." Swiss took a moment to absorb the sights, uncorking the sake bottle using his mouth. The soreness of the fight before now started to creep in.
But then something remarkable happened.
Upon the first swallowing of Sake, his body started to feel warm as if being embraced lovingly.
Then he felt his wounds starting to heal. Not completely, but the difference in pain he felt was significant.
"Nani? Did the bartender accidentally give me some kind of healing tonic or something?" Swiss took more sips of sake, each one making him feel better than the last.
"No, this is definitely sake.." He said before a shot of comprehension took hold of him and a message he saw in his days of One Piece Online flashed in his head.
[CONGRATULATIONS!… YOU ARE THE FIRST PLAYER TO HAVE BOUGHT ENOUGH SAKE TO FILL THE ENTIRE OCEAN.]
Swiss was the leading buyer of alcohol-related items in the world of OPO.
During his career as a pirate that started from nothing and becoming one of the greatest to ever do it, there was nothing he spent his money on more than sake.
Why you might ask? The reason was simple. Swiss learned early on about the power of sake.
You see, in the game of One Piece Online, food items could be consumed to restore health.
More specifically, they were consumed to fill a hunger bar. With the hunger bar full only then would your health regenerate.
Of course, there was an exception to this. That exception was alcohol. Items such as rum, brew, or sake would restore hunger while also restoring health at the same time.
As such, Swiss abused this game mechanic to the extreme.
Instead of idiotically fighting on when his health got red and meeting an early grave, Swiss would calmly back up and spam consume a bunch of alcoholic items, thus restoring his health for the next round.
This tactic was practically only used by Swiss.
Players did not care to divert their course to an island where they could purchase sake. They would always prefer to go directly to an island that was a hot spot for PVP and get straight into the action.
Swiss would roll up to islands with thousands of bottles of Sake and solo many unsuspecting noobs. Whenever he left a server he would drop all his alcohol items, causing islands to be littered to the point where the bottles overflowed off the beach and into the ocean.
After blowing multiple fortunes worth of currency buying sake, eventually, the server piped up and congratulated him. The game's creator, later admitted he never thought a player would see that message. He added it purely for the meme.
[Narutoworl: I just added it for the lols]
"Huh? Do I have some sort of passive skill to do with alcohol because of my actions in OPO?"
Swiss tried to weigh up the odds but he was too drunk, so he opted to forget about it and just be grateful to not be in any more pain.
He gazed out. The stillness of being alone set him at ease. He began brainstorming his next course of action.
'I suppose the natural thing for me to do is to make my way to the Grand Line.'
That was his first thought. Regardless of what he did next- be it finding the one piece, figuring out the mystery of why he got transported into the verse, or simply having fun… It only made sense to go to the Grand Line where things were relevant.
From there he could gather information. Besides, if he wasn't going to stay in the South Blue, the best place to camp would be the Grand Line. It was the perfect strategic point from which to make a move, able to flexibly go to whatever sea he wanted.
'I should prioritize trying to find potential other OPO players that might have come to this world alongside me.'
Although he was in the fictional world he adored most, Swiss felt lonely.
He would never see his family or friends from his old life ever again. Having a fellow OPO player would help alleviate this pain.
And so it was decided. For now, Swiss would go to the Grand Line and call it from there.
"Hmmm, I guess I should find a ship to board. The first step is leaving Zealandia."
Swiss was deep in contemplation about how the journey would go. A lonesome path having to hitchhike himself through the seas did not seem appealing, but it would have to do.
He sighed, content with the broad plan he came up with.
That's when a small figure caught his eye.
There at the cliff, some few odd meters away from where Swiss was sitting, stood a gloomy young man with pale skin. He looked out beyond the cliff with cloudy eyes.
The youth looked the same age as Swiss. A short man that did not exceed 170cm, stood with his toes hanging off the cliff edge. His white hair flowed in the evening breeze.
"Evening." Swiss broke the silence and called out to him. The youth turned his head as if he was unaware of his presence.
"Oh. Hello." He said, his voice soft and soothing.
"Trolol. Whatcha doing?" Swiss asked.
The youth looked down in shame, grasping at the katana strapped to his waist. "I…" Then he looked at the long fall off the cliff.
"I'm going to jump."