Year 1499 of the Sea Circle Calendar
In the first half of the Grand Line, on Red Leaf Island.
This island got its name due to its resemblance to a red leaf and the abundance of trees with red leaves that grow on it.
The people of Red Leaf Island are simple and honest, with nearly half of the population being professional lumberjacks and gardeners who cultivate the red leaf trees.
Due to the climate, these special red leaf trees thrive particularly well on this island.
Once these red leaf trees reach a certain age, they become excellent material for shipbuilding, so most of the island's residents make their living from this trade.
In a forest of red leaf trees near the coast, a black-haired boy was swinging an ax with all his might, hacking at the thick trunk of a red leaf tree.
However, whether it was due to a lack of skill or because the ax simply refused to cooperate, the boy's heavy strikes never seemed to hit the same spot twice.
For a native of Red Leaf Island, not knowing how to drink, brag, or fight might be forgivable, but being unable to proficiently chop wood was definitely not. The level of skill Wood was displaying would have made him a laughingstock among the islanders if anyone had been around to see it. They would surely mock him as being less competent than even a child.
Wood was already fifteen years old, which in this world meant he was considered an adult.
Yet, the woodcutting skills that every resident of Red Leaf Island mastered from a young age were still beyond his grasp.
But this wasn't entirely his fault because Wood was not originally from this world.
Or rather, while his body was that of the native Red Leaf Islander named Wood, his soul had undergone a transformation.
"Ding, task completed: 1,000 strikes, five red leaf trees chopped. Performance: Below average. Task completed."
"Congratulations! You have earned a chance to use the Life Simulator."
That's right, Wood was a transmigrator, and like many who shared his fate, he had a "cheat" ability. His cheat was a system called the Life Simulator, which was popular in his previous world as a small program game.
Wood had been hacking away at the trees not because he wanted to make a living out of it—after all, he wasn't trying to become a bald cartoon character constantly chased by two bears—but because the system had assigned him a task.
[Task Name: The Lumberjack of Red Leaf Island]
[Task Requirements: Use the specified ax to strike red leaf trees 1,000 times. The more trees felled, the higher the evaluation.]
[Task Completion Standard: The task evaluation must be at least average or better. No time limit.]
[Task Reward: One opportunity to use the Life Simulator.]
(PS: Consider yourself lucky, small fry. This is a well-known beginner's task. Don't expect future tasks to be this simple.)
Seeing the task completion notification, Wood finally set down his ax and let out a long sigh of relief.
His still-immature hands were sore and weakened from gripping the ax for so long, and they were covered in blisters from the effort.
The system kept insisting that this was an easy task designed for beginners, but Wood couldn't agree with that assessment.
He had no idea how many days he had spent chopping trees in this red-leafed forest.
From initially not even knowing how to properly hold the ax to finally completing the task, it had taken Wood over three months to chop down five red-leafed trees!
At first, due to his physical condition, Wood could barely manage 1,000 swings of the ax per day, but after about a month, he finally met the target. The next two months were spent swinging the ax 1,000 times each day, though he rarely felled more than one tree, if any.
Unable to achieve an average task evaluation, Wood had been forced to mindlessly repeat the task of chopping trees day after day.
Fortunately, the unique characteristics of this world meant that people's physical resilience and recovery abilities were generally far superior to those in his original world. Even though Wood was exhausted every day, by the next morning, he would be full of energy and ready to start again.
The lack of a time limit on this task was another saving grace because what appeared to be a simple woodcutting task would have been an absolute nightmare otherwise.
Wood had been in this world for over a year, but the system had only activated six months ago.
When Wood first arrived, he was unaware of what kind of world he had come to. Since the residents of Red Leaf Island were simple and peaceful, and there seemed to be no significant threats on the island, Wood initially believed he had arrived in an ordinary, peaceful world.
Although the technology in this world lagged far behind that of his previous one, the natural lifestyle and unpolluted air made Wood feel quite at ease.
Just as Wood was beginning to think he could live out his life comfortably with the help of some advanced knowledge from his past life, an earth-shattering piece of news shattered his plans for a peaceful future.
"Do you want my treasure? If you want it, you can have it. Go find it! I left everything the world has to offer there."
The news came via a newspaper delivered by the news bird, with the headline featuring a black-haired man kneeling on an execution platform, yet wearing a calm and serene expression. The article was so long that it took up more than half of the front page.
In the year 1498 of the Sea Circle Calendar, the Pirate King Gol D. Roger was executed, but his final words sent shockwaves across the entire ocean, leading countless people to flock to the seas, marking the beginning of the so-called "Great Pirate Era!"
It was only after reading this report that Wood finally realized what kind of world he had come to.
This was no peaceful world, and it certainly wasn't devoid of powerful entities. It was just that his birthplace happened to be a backwater region!
Roger's death signaled the start of the "Great Pirate Era," and within just a few months, the tide of this new era had already reached Red Leaf Island.
With the arrival of the Great Pirate Era, people wanted to sail, which required ships.
Unfortunately, Red Leaf Island's red trees were among the best shipbuilding materials available. Consequently, as the era's tide rose, countless pirates swarmed to the island.
The peaceful inhabitants of Red Leaf Island had no means of resisting the ruthless pirates.
Within a month, three waves of pirates had raided the island, stripping most of the residents of their finest timber.
Wood, having no woodcutting skills to speak of, had nothing worth stealing and was therefore spared.
But the pirates didn't just plunder the island's resources; they also killed without hesitation. Wood had once witnessed a little girl about to be killed right before his eyes. Unable to bear it, he courageously stabbed a pirate henchman from behind, an act that finally triggered the activation of his system.