Chapter 8 - Shipwreck

-One hour later.

[The island shape is almost circular, with a diameter of 127 kilometers. Your current location is 32 kilometers from the coast.]

[The magnetic fields here are very strange and I am unable to determine the geographical poles of this planet.] Jaya's voice rang.

"Hmm... transfer the 'Terrain map' you created to my retina. Make it small enough not to disturb my field of vision."

[Acknowledged, sir. Would you like to add a function to point out the life forms?]

"Proceed, but only point out creatures with power level's higher than 10,000."

[Sorting…]

[Eliminating redundant data…]

[Projecting final result.]

At this moment, one could see a faint glint of blue in Victor's right iris.

"It's like a mini map function of the video games I played in my previous life." Victor smiled.

"Oh… 37,000? And nearly 100 creatures over 10,000 power level. And half of them have higher power levels than me."

He analyzed the 'mini map' appearing in front of his vision.

"Let's see if I can find something interesting over there." He said as he accelerated towards the island's coast.

Flying over the beach, he focused his gaze to look for anything that could give him information about where he is.

"Is that… a ship?" Victor said, looking at what appeared to be a large, wooden shipwreck. It was broken from the middle, with half of it behind the shoreline on the shallow waters, while the rest of its body was over the beach. It had four masts with the sails showing signs of decay.

As he descended and got closer, he noticed a familiar emblem faintly visible, painted to the decaying sails of the ship.

"Oh, for fuck's sake!" He exclaimed halting his descend.

The emblem was in blue color, resembling shape of seagull wings. And of course, it had the word "MARINE" written just below it.

Rubbing his forehead, he began thinking an then it hit him.

"Volcanos! Large, odd shaped animals! Fucking One Piece world! This is probably Rusukaina Island where Luffy trained with Rayleigh during the time-skip.

Fuck!!

That explains the powerful animals.

Wait, wait! How come these animals have power levels in tens of thousands? Isn't One Piece world relatively lower in power scale compared to Dragon Ball?"

[…]

"Hey Jaya… Do you have a theory, why these animals have abnormally high energy readings?

[It could be because of the dense 'World Energy', sir. Couple that with the extremely vigorous physique, it might be the reasons for detecting high power level readings from them. However, they should have a very low upper limit. Although their physique is strong, they do not have pure energy manipulation capabilities like most other races in the universe.]

"Hmm… So let me get this straight. They're stronger from the start because of their physique, but their growth is heavily capped because they don't have the ability to interact with pure energy of the universe?"

[…]

"Jaya?"

[Yes, sir. You can phrase it like that.]

"And what about me? You modified my genes by referencing them. Do I also have their growth limit now?" Victor asked, with a tone uncertainty.

[No, sir. Your DNA was altered to reap only the benefits.] Jaya explained simply.

"Phew..." Victor sighed in relief, and focused back to the wreckage

"I don't sense any living beings inside. But, better safe than sorry… Hey Jaya!"

[Sir?]

"Scan and see if there are any living beings inside that ship!"

[…]

[Nothing noteworthy detected. Only some insignificant readings of single digit numbers.]

"Hmm… Let's see what you got inside," saying that he continued the descend, and landed on the half where it was on water.

"Corpses?" Victor's eyes narrowed slightly.

For Victor, this isn't the first time seeing dead bodies. He was a doctor, and a soldier. Two professions where one would come across dead bodies the most.

Sending his gaze to the other half, he found the situation similar. The bodies still had bits of rotten flesh attached to the bones, indicating that it had not been a long time since they had died.

"Hmm… All of them seem to be wearing coats."

Victor observed the dead bodies. Their cloths had many holes and signs of being burned. There were even lines like sword marks on a few of them. There were also many rusted guns and swords all over the deck.

"They all have half red, half blue epaulets on each of their shoulders. And this guy, he has a blue set of epaulets. A vice admiral?"

Victor stood in front of a corpse, which he assumed, was once a vice admiral of the marines. He leaned down to observe closely.

"Jaya, can you estimate when this body died?"

[Judging from how much the corpses have decomposed; I can estimate their time of death to be between 16 and 20 weeks ago. I can give more accurate data by scanning the rotten flesh, sir.]

"You want me to touch it?"

[That's correct, sir.]

"No thank you." Victor rejected decisively.

He stood straight and looked around for anything significant.

"Nothing much on the deck," he thought, and moved towards the frail looking door in the middle.