【One Piece】Dawn in the Darkness

Lucci paused with his hand holding the mask. "Just to avoid unnecessary trouble, why did you save me?" Lucci asked puzzledly.

"I will not watch a child die in front of me." Rayleigh took a sip of wine and continued with a smile, "I have been observing you for the past few months. I have seen all your battles. You are very brave for your age. You are growing very fast. How about it, are you interested in being my apprentice?"

"Why?" Lucci asked in shock, he didn't understand why he did this.

"Is this you?" Raleigh picked up a wanted poster.

Lucci became nervous when he saw the wanted poster, but he did not panic. He knew that if he wanted to catch him, it would be easy as he could not beat him at all.

"It's me, what are you going to do? If you want to ask me about the past or about dragons, I can't answer you. I don't remember anything before the age of 10," Lucci replied calmly.

"Don't remember?" Rayleigh asked in surprise. "What happened?"

"I don't know either. I didn't remember anything when I woke up. I only knew my name." Lu Qi said.

"Is that so?" Rayleigh stroked his chin and said, "Please consider my proposal. I don't want to see a promising young man die prematurely."

"Aren't you afraid? My identity? My existence will bring you a lot of disasters. Once the Navy and the World Government find me, they will do their best to hunt me down." Lucci said in a painful and angry voice, "They have already triggered a demon-killing order to kill me! Do you still want me to be your apprentice?"

He didn't know why the navy used warships and cannons to attack the island before. During the three months of investigation in Water City, he had discovered the cruel truth. The World Government chose to blow up the entire island just to ensure that they could kill him.

Rayleigh looked at the skinny shoulders of the child in front of him trembling violently, feeling a little distressed. He shouldn't have to endure this at his age. Rayleigh slowly approached him and raised his hand to ruffle his hair. "This is not your fault. The fact that I can make this suggestion proves that I have the ability to protect you. At least before you grow up, I can train you so that you can protect yourself. I just gave you room to grow."

His nose felt sore and Lucci's eyes were instantly filled with tears. He tried hard to stop the tears, but they still fell uncontrollably. He cried loudly, as if he wanted to vent all the pain, guilt, self-blame and fear that he had suppressed before.

He wanted to go with this uncle. He wanted to become stronger. At least he would not be as helpless as he was now. He did not want to experience this feeling of loss again. Both the villagers who saved him and his memories were caused by his weakness.

……

"Luffy, this way!" Ace turned around and looked at Luffy who was squatting on the ground looking at insects. "Luffy, stop playing. We have to find a place to sleep before dark."

"Oh, Ace, look!" Luffy happily held up the beetle he had just caught.

"Okay, Luffy, we should go." Ace looked at his brother's adorable behavior and couldn't help but ruffle his hair.

"Okay, Ace... I'm hungry!" Luffy touched his belly and complained with a pout.

"Luffy, stop being a spoiled brat." Ace held his forehead and looked at Luffy helplessly, but after Luffy reminded him that he was also hungry. It had been nearly three months since the last time the stinky old man brought them to this island. In the past few months, the stinky old man had been making them do a lot of hard physical training. Every day, they either ran around the island with heavy objects or did thousands of push-ups or fought with various animals. Every day, they were tortured by the stinky old man until they were in pain all over and fell asleep exhausted. And today, they had just been trained by the stinky old man for a whole day, and they hadn't eaten anything yet, but the stinky old man threw them into the middle of the forest and let them fend for themselves.

Ace and Luffy looked around, trying to find something to eat, but this forest seemed to be more dangerous than Mount Gorpo. He could vaguely hear the roars of many large animals. Ace couldn't help but say to Luffy, "Luffy, this forest is much more dangerous than Mount Gorpo. You must follow me here and don't run around!"

Seeing Ace's serious expression, Luffy obediently responded, "Got it, Ace."

Ace continued to walk forward, looking for food. After a while, Ace saw that there seemed to be red fruits in the bushes in front of him. Just when he was about to call Luffy over, he turned around and saw Luffy squatting on the ground looking at something.

"Luffy, what are you doing?" Ace said helplessly as he walked towards Luffy.

"Ace! I found food!" Luffy heard Ace's voice, looked up at him happily, raised the colorful mushrooms in his hand and signaled to him, "Come on, there are a lot of these mushrooms here!"

Ace approached Luffy and looked carefully at the mushrooms in Luffy's hand. He found that they were all poisonous mushrooms and sighed helplessly.

"Luffy, don't think everything is edible!" Ace slapped the mushrooms off Luffy's hand, pulled him up and said seriously, "These are poisonous mushrooms, you can't eat them!"

"But they look like they will be delicious!" Luffy looked at the mushrooms lying on the ground reluctantly.

"Don't you know that the brighter the color of something, the more poisonous it is?" Ace crossed his arms and looked at Luffy and lectured.

"But I think they look delicious!" Luffy muttered with a pout.

"Don't worry about what you think. Don't refute your brother!" Ace hit Luffy on the head.

Luffy covered his head and said unwillingly, "Okay..."

"I just saw a lot of red fruits in front of us. They should be edible." Ace couldn't help but comfort Luffy when he saw his aggrieved look. However, in order to prevent Luffy from eating when he was not paying attention, Ace took the initiative to hold Luffy's hand and walked towards the bushes where he saw fruits just now.

After picking the wild fruits, Ace took Luffy to explore around to see if there was anything else edible.

Luffy lay on the tree and looked carefully at the bird's nest on the tree. He poked his head into the nest, trying to sneakily take the eggs from the mother bird. When Luffy was about to reach out to take it, he found that a little bird had hatched from one of the eggs. Luffy hurriedly stretched out his index finger and whispered to the little bird, but was still discovered by the big bird. The big bird pecked at Luffy in an instant. He was startled and fell from the tree, and subconsciously shouted "Ace!"

Ace soon discovered that Luffy was being attacked by a giant bird, and quickly went to help Luffy attack the bird. After the two brothers' continuous attacks, the bird was successfully knocked down. Ace quickly stepped forward and hit the bird a few more times. After making sure that the bird was unconscious, he happily said to Luffy, "Luffy, we can eat bird meat tonight!"

"Hehehe, that's great! There are bird eggs on Ace!" Luffy said excitedly with drooling.

After a while, Ace and Luffy continued to grope forward with the food they had just caught. Soon they saw a stream with many fish in it. However, there were no crocodiles like the creek they often went to before, but the fish in it were still very big.

Ace and Luffy quickly walked to the stream, and Ace put the food in his hand on the open space not far from the shore.

Luffy drooled, staring at the big fish in the river with sparkling eyes, and called Ace's name in a drawn-out voice, "Ace..."