Seeing how utterly lost the pirates looked, it was clear they had no idea how the game was supposed to go. Weiwei gave Karoo, her loyal duck companion, a sly wink—a signal to dig out the paper game set they always used.
To make attribute collection more efficient—and entertaining—Weiwei had adapted several games from her past life. One of them was "Hit Paper," a simple hand game modified with attribute-based interactions, designed specifically for animals like Karoo who had accompanying system privileges.
"Gah?" Karoo, who had been busy counting coins with gleaming eyes while calculating how many bottles of milk he could buy, tilted his head with a question mark practically hovering over his feathery face. His eyes, large and glistening, blinked at Weiwei in honest confusion.
Since arriving in this world, Weiwei had developed a strange, untraceable ability—whether due to a pet interface system or an awakened innate talent, she didn't know. But she could hear things—strange voices not unlike what she'd once read about Roger the Pirate King's "Voice of All Things." She'd never met the man, but she wondered if it was something similar.
For her, the murmurs of rocks, rivers, trees, and especially animals were semi-legible. If she focused, emotions and fragmented thoughts would surface in her mind. Among all the creatures she'd encountered, only Karoo's voice rang the clearest—yet even that was a one-way communication. She could listen, but she couldn't respond in kind.
So far, the skill hadn't given her any concrete advantage—if anything, the constant inflow of emotional noise left her mentally fatigued. Her brain often felt overloaded with vague impressions, and more often than not, she found herself yearning to sleep sixteen hours a day just to decompress.
In this case, her half-baked version of the "Voice of All Things" was useless. So she stuck to non-verbal cues. After a moment of gesturing, Karoo finally understood.
"Dang." From the oversized bag strapped to his back, the duck pulled out a heavy frying pan and raised it proudly, offering it as if asking, "This one?"
Three dark lines appeared on Weiwei's forehead.
"Quack? Quack!" Karoo flapped his wings, blinking again, then nodded repeatedly in understanding.
He rummaged through the cartoonishly large bag and began producing random items: green onions, a sealed bottle of milk, a pair of dice, a half-finished cotton hat, a clump of marbles, and some ragged ledger books. Weiwei's expression darkened with every item—until finally, the duck triumphantly withdrew two forty-four-square paper packets: one red, one blue.
Weiwei always used the blue one. Karoo got the red.
Paper slap was childish, sure—but Karoo was an experienced player. They'd trained for weeks. His paper-slapping form was elite.
This time, however, the pirates would face Karoo, not her. She would observe.
The surrounding pirates—bottom-rung grunts with barely enough berries to buy a cheap dagger, much less the fancy weapons their captain flaunted—stared at the setup. The game looked ridiculously simple. To them, it reeked of opportunity.
"You can go first," Weiwei offered magnanimously.
But paper-slap wasn't just brute strength. It required technique, rhythm, a calm mind. Noise and pressure could disrupt even a seasoned player's tempo. The pirates, in their anxious confusion, underestimated that.
The first pirate stepped forward, a hulking brute with a bald head and knotted arms. He lifted his fist and slammed it hard onto the blue square.
The red paper belonging to Karoo barely twitched.
"You lost," Weiwei said sweetly.
The other pirates shuffled closer, each with rising interest. Weiwei smirked. "Don't say I didn't give you a fair chance. You can all try, and we'll tally the scores afterward."
Seven pirates stepped up, one after another. And one by one, Karoo beat them.
Every time, his paper flipped theirs with effortless grace. Seven straight wins.
Weiwei laced her fingers and tilted her head. "So… are you paying, or…?"
The first pirate—his face now flushed with humiliation—let rage override reason. He refused to lose face. Without warning, he pulled out a battered musket from his coat and pointed it directly at Weiwei.
"What was that?! I didn't hear you!" he snarled, laughter turning manic. "This ain't your little tea party anymore! Hahahaha! Times have changed!"
Weiwei sighed. Of course it had come to this.
She knew One Piece pirates weren't exactly noble. Integrity was as rare as sea stone, especially among the lower tiers. And unlike the more straightforward brutes of Naruto's world—say, bandits from the Land of Fire—these pirates were slimeballs through and through.
Still, she wasn't defenseless. Her body wasn't enhanced by Devil Fruits or chakra, but her speed, thanks to constant training and stat grinding, allowed her to easily dodge bullets. She had options: use her iron chain whip to slice his wrist, snatch the gun mid-draw, or dodge and counterattack with precise restraint. But that wasn't her style.
Instead, she snapped her fingers.
Ms. Monday stepped forward, her massive frame like a mobile mountain.
A former bounty hunter built like an elite member of the CP9—or even an early Baroque Works agent—Ms. Monday cracked her knuckles. She loved this part of her job.
She raised one hand and, with a casual twist of the wrist, crushed the musket.
Then, from legs to waist, waist to shoulder, her muscles rippled in rhythm. In one thunderous punch, she slammed her sandbag-sized fist into the pirate's face.
"Bang!"
The man flew over ten meters through the air, his face caved like an overripe melon. Blood, teeth, and spit rained down. He crashed unconscious into a heap of supplies.
Ms. Monday rolled her shoulder.
Weiwei turned back to the remaining six pirates, beaming. "As you can see, the times haven't changed that much… So? Payment, or pain?"
They all chose pain.
One by one, Ms. Monday delivered precise, non-lethal slaps—just enough to bruise egos and faces alike.
Weiwei hadn't set up this game for money. Pirates who hung around cheap ports rarely had any. Searching their pockets would yield scraps at best. No, this was all for data collection.
She was testing something important.
Could physical confrontation trigger attribute drops?
Were they time-sensitive?
As Ms. Monday prepared another round of slaps, Weiwei pulled Karoo aside. He was still bouncing excitedly, ready for more games.
Opening her system interface, she activated the pet hosting panel again. This time, she tried something new: under the time parameter, she entered "10 seconds."
While she couldn't see light dots or attribute spheres herself, she could monitor Karoo's behavior. The duck's sudden peck at the ground confirmed it—something had dropped.
Weiwei smiled.
Direct kills were wasteful. Low-tier pirates had no skills worth copying, and if she wasn't careful, she might kill potential future sources. This method was cleaner—and possibly scalable.
And so, as bruised pirates groaned behind her and Karoo happily chirped beside her, Weiwei jotted down notes in her mental ledger.
A new era of paper-based piracy had begun.