A Gamer's Guide to Piracy - The Horror
Summary :
In the ominous realm of the Grand Line, Auguste Luvneel's life takes a chilling detour when a mad scientist's experiment goes wrong (or right ?) bestows upon him eldritch powers. However, the newfound abilities prove to be a double-edged sword, pushing Auguste to the brink of madness. As his sanity unravels, so does the tranquility of the Grand Line, plunging its terrified denizens into a harrowing nightmare. Brace yourself for a twisted tale where reality and nightmare converge, and the Grand Line becomes a macabre theater for the unraveling of both minds and reality.
In less cryptic words : a guy awakens eldritch powers. It fucks with his mind, while he fucks with the marines, he fucks with reality, and he (may) fucks (vampiric and sorcerous) chicks.
Introduction
Within the desolate halls of an ancient and accursed castle, the queen, a spectral figure clad in robes woven from the very shadows that clung to the walls, cradled her newborn child. The infant, a mere day into the world, lay unwittingly at the epicenter of a malevolent ritual. The air itself seemed to teem with eldritch whispers, echoing the unseen horrors that lurked beyond the veil of reality.
The queen's fingers, gnarled and cold, traced arcane symbols through the air, inscribing sigils that pulsed with an unholy resonance. The shadows seemed alive, twisting and writhing in response to her forbidden incantations. Eyes, unseen and malevolent, peered from the darkness, their gazes fixated upon the infant's tender form. The atmosphere thickened with an otherworldly malice as the ritual unfolded, each whispered syllable echoing through the haunted corridors.
The newborn, bathed in an unnatural glow, emitted a celestial radiance that attracted the attention of entities beyond mortal comprehension. Eldritch energies coalesced, their unseen tendrils encircling the child like ethereal serpents. The queen's chant, a symphony of madness, reverberated through the castle, unsettling the very foundations of reality.
As the ritual reached its zenith, the queen, eyes glazed with a madness born of forbidden knowledge, bestowed upon the child a name that seemed to claw at the sanity of all who heard it. "Auguste," she intoned with a spectral voice that seemed to resonate from the very abyss. The shadows deepened, and unseen eyeballs, their gaze filled with an insatiable hunger, emerged from the darkness. The air itself seemed to constrict with an unspoken terror as she completed the naming, "Auguste Luvneel."
"Auguste," she breathed with spectral resonance, the name slithering through the haunted corridors of the forsaken castle. The shadows, like serpentine apparitions, coiled and undulated in sinister anticipation, acknowledging the birth of a malevolent legacy.
As the final syllable lingered in the air, the queen, her voice a venomous caress, added an unsettling twist to the newborn's destiny. "Auguste Luvneel, in the name of the mortal that will adopt you." The unseen entities, drawn by the eldritch spectacle, seemed to stir with an ancient hunger, their spectral forms whispering secrets that transcended the boundaries of mortal understanding.
In an unsettling and foreboding proclamation, the queen hissed with chilling certainty, "One day, you shall embody the very essence of the crawling chaos, a harbinger of cosmic malevolence. You will become a True Von Carstein" The name resonated through the desolate halls like a distant, encroaching doom. The shadows, now imbued with the eldritch knowledge of the queen's proclamation, took on a life of their own, becoming tendrils of inky malevolence that cast an eerie pallor over the newborn's radiant form, as if foretelling the shadowed path ahead.
Auguste - 20 years later
Auguste - or "Subject 53" as his captors called him - had had another shitty day. Apparently, it wasn't enough that hooded men had snatched him from his room while he was recovering from a hangover, or that he had become a test subject for a mad scientist who was forcing him to swallow potion after potion for some unknown purpose. No, his cellmate also needed to steal his snack. At the very least, he could accept that a mad scientist with overtrained soldiers at his disposal fed him stuff that erased most of his memory and caused him to lose all his hair and an arm ("Wake up your inner stoic," his big brother used to say every time he beat him - one of the few shreds of memory he had left). But for a twelve-year-old brat to take advantage of his handicap to steal his snack (an old piece of bread that served as his only meal of the day, but - perhaps to keep from going crazy - he preferred to call it a snack. It gave his shitty life a semblance of normalcy)...That some brat would steal his snack, he couldn't accept that. He had dignity, damn it!
"Shut up and stop whining!"
The boy kicked him. If only he wasn't tied up... Ah, he wasn't tied up. Just too weak to move. If only he had one hand left! Augustus imagined doing creative things with this child.
"Shut up and stop screaming!"
Sweet, sweet justice! One of the guards, a large man in a hood, had just swung his club at the boy. Too weak to lift his head, Auguste couldn't see the door open, though he heard it. He clenched his teeth. Would he be the one taken away for another test? And above all, if it was him, what would he suffer? Another one of those tortures that the other madman called an experiment?
He wanted to cry when he felt a hand around his leg. The well-muscled guy had grabbed him and started to drag him across the floor.
"Let me go, you pervert! When I get out of here, I'm going to fuck you so hard that whoever gets my dick out of your ass will be called King Arthur!" he managed to gasp out in pain.
Doctor Fritz
Dr. Fritz would have given anything to strangle the bastard. Diamante. The red and orange stripes under the mysterious figure's eyes, his enigmatic, piercing smile, and his long blond hair horrified him. The feathered bicorne, the enchanting cape, and the six-foot-tall stature added to his unpleasant aura, making the scientist want to pierce Diamante's secrets-and his eyes.
« Joker won't tolerate another failure, Fritz. Caesar Clown's results so far are much more promising than yours ».
Caesar, always Caesar, still Caesar, glory to Caesar! How this failed lab technician, who dared to compare himself to Vegapunk, could be more advanced than him, the great Fritz, was impossible! He, who had learned alone, who had made himself! If he hadn't needed the Joker's money - and if he hadn't been so afraid of the Joker - he would have shot down this idiot who came to teach him. Didn't he understand anything about time-consuming research and science? He wanted to make him swallow his teeth, ah, when he finally managed to make the first artificial demon fruit! He, Fritz, the great Fritz, the smartest, most humble scientist, would show him! But in the meantime...
« I deeply regret the delay in delivering my research findings, which I acknowledge is inexcusable. Due to the unforeseen complexities and unanticipated obstacles encountered during the experimentation process, the timeline originally set became untenable. Additionally, the intricacies of the subject matter necessitated a more thorough and exhaustive analysis, which inevitably extended the project's duration. I understand the frustration this delay may have caused and assure you of my unwavering commitment to ensure the highest quality of research outcomes in the future ».
Diamante, that fat bastard, couldn't help but snort in disdain.
"As for the results, how is this Ultimate Experiment you've been telling us about? You know the considerable amount of money we've invested in this project over the past three years, and yet there's been no sign of success on your part."
Fritz couldn't help but shiver. Diamante was smiling too much. He'd never seen her smile like that.
"Ah... Yes, exactly, I've just ordered the injection of artificial demon fruit juice into one of my most promising subjects. Enormous mental strength, this one. I've never seen anyone endure so many atrocities and still smile! My lab assistants should have sent him the texture by now, and in a few hours we'll be able to see..."
He hadn't finished the sentence when a blade pierced his belly. Blood trickled down his lips (why, he didn't know. It was his stomach that was pierced. Cinematography and a taste for the symbolic, perhaps? With his obscure powers, Diamante was capable of it...)
"For..."
His head rolled to the ground.
"Collect anything that looks useful and leave the rest."
Faced with Diamante's bellowing, his henchmen complied.
"Even study subjects?" asked one of the Don Quichotte family soldiers.
"Take the ones that look promising, and leave the others here. They'll perish in the fire anyway. »
Auguste
Auguste didn't really understand what was happening.
/Analysis…/
The brute had dragged him, forced him to drink the most repugnant fruit juice he had ever tasted—but at least it resembled fruit juice and not one of those horrible, blurry, fizzy liquids or the usual potions.
/Gathering information/
The guard had slapped him around a bit - Auguste didn't know why, but scientific methods had always been strange in his lab. If Auguste ever got out of there, and some sort of association of scientists was formed, he'd write them a letter complaining about the great ethical lapses and bad methods. Where was the counterfactual? Double-blind studies? Placebos? RCTs?
/Environmental detection/
Then, suddenly, the sound of a gunshot. The guard had fallen to the floor. A man he'd never seen before had poked his head through the half-open door and seen a man in his twenties, dressed in a white loincloth, badly beaten, an arm missing, a S-53 branded on his torso, bleeding to death - the slaps Dr. Fritz's henchman had given him after muttering "another failed attempt..." had been a little harder than expected.
/Environment detected: category - "shitty world", subcategory "no, really, shitty world", type "some people can kill you by sneezing", subtype "One Piece"/.
The head was gone, the stranger had closed the door. Then Augustus had heard more gunshots, people shouting and...nothing.
/Personality Analysis/
Auguste wasn't dead yet. Which, he thought, was very strange for a malnourished guy who had been bleeding to death for over an hour. Strangely enough, the red fluid that had been oozing from his wound had darkened considerably until the bleeding had stopped altogether. That wasn't the only strange thing: the wound had closed. Stranger still, he could see strange signs in the air.
/Detected characteristics: traumatized, narcissistic maniac, fallen noble, poor comedian/
"Hey!" he growled.
And offensive signs at that.
/Attributed effect: the horror fruit, model: Nyarlathotep/
/Beginning of Chapter 1 - The Birth of the Monster/
Welcome to the joyful world of One Piece! You have been chosen - we're not sure how, considering your lack of luck so far - to be the "Horror Bringer" of this world! Feed on the fear of humans - and on humans themselves - to summon otherworldly horrors and creatures from other planes of existence! But before we give you a complete tutorial...
[Mission : beware the explosive start !]
Disarm the bomb if you want to survive
This rewrite of A Gamer's guide to Piracy was on my mind: what would happen if a horror-based gamer system were integrated into the world of One Piece? An excuse, perhaps, to write a more grim, realistic, world of one piece. Notably inspired by I am Mister Five, The Dark Wolf Shiro and Noodlehammer stories.
Please leave reviews to tell me what you think of this story! They motivate me to write, and I schedule chapter releases according to the reviews!
