The next afternoon, in Loguetown's central plaza, at the execution platform.
Rain arrived at his "work station" ten minutes early.
He was a little surprised to find that today, far more civilians had come to watch than ever before.
But unlike previous times, the crowd today was unusually quiet.
There were no curses or insults hurled at the pirate about to be executed. Instead, there were waves of low, suppressed murmurs.
"…Is it really Buck-sama? I don't believe it…"
"Sigh, he saved my daughter's life. How could this…"
"Good people shouldn't end up like this…"
"But the paper said he killed Hawk's whole family. All six of them…"
Behind his cold mask, Rain listened to their tangled whispers in silence, his heart as still as stone.
But he knew everything they said was true.
When the time came, that familiar scar-faced officer stepped onto the platform. He swept his gaze over the emotionally conflicted crowd below, cleared his throat, and read out the charges in a voice louder than ever:
"'Lone Walker' Buck! As a pirate, you had no regard for the law. Last Wednesday night, you broke into the Hawk residence and brutally murdered Hawk and his family—six in total! Your crimes are heinous, and the evidence is ironclad!"
The scar-faced officer's voice echoed across the plaza.
"By judgment of the Loguetown Marine Branch, you are sentenced to death. The sentence will be carried out immediately!"
He swung his arm down sharply.
"Executioner, ready!"
At the order, Rain lifted the long rifle in his hands, expressionless, resting the stock against his now-solid shoulder.
Through the sights, he looked again at the man tied to the stake.
In his mind, yesterday's case file surfaced on its own.
"Lone Walker" Buck—a pirate who'd roamed the seas around Loguetown for years.
He had no fixed base, moved alone, and specialized in robbing notorious merchants and vicious pirates. Most of what he took, he spent on helping the poor in Loguetown's slums.
Among the common folk, his reputation was even better than the Marines'.
For that reason, as long as he didn't cause any deaths, the Loguetown Marine branch had always chosen to "turn a blind eye."
Until last Wednesday.
That night, during a robbery at a local corrupt merchant named Hawk, whether he slipped or was pushed too far, the result was the same: Hawk's entire family of six died with no survivors.
Six lives—that crossed the Marines' red line.
No matter what the people thought, orders from above were absolute. That was why today's execution was happening.
Rain pulled his thoughts back to the present.
He looked at the man in his sights.
The people Buck had saved were probably more than sixty. But the law was the law, and the six lives he took were also fact. Good deeds and sins did not cancel each other out.
Right now, Buck wasn't struggling, nor was he cursing.
Through the mask, Rain looked into his eyes.
They were unbelievably complex.
In those eyes, Rain saw the calm of someone whose fate had already been sealed, saw unwillingness toward that fate, saw the relief of someone whose story was about to end.
But what he did not see was regret.
Rain realized that even he couldn't easily say whether this man was "good" or "bad," or whether he "deserved" to die.
He was the executioner.
His job was not to judge—only to carry out the sentence.
"Execute!"
The scar-faced officer's roar cracked across the plaza like thunder.
Rain's trigger finger was steady as stone.
The moment the order was given, he squeezed the trigger.
Bang—!
The gunshot put a full stop to the complicated life of this "righteous thief."
Somewhere in the crowd, stifled sobs broke out.
In Rain's mind, the cold system notification chimed right on time.
[Prisoner: "Lone Walker" Buck]
[Overall Rank: R5]
[Sin Index: 270]
[Execution Involvement: 100%]
[Selectable Rewards]: (choose 1 of 3)
[Wish List]: (activatable)
"Sin Index 270, huh… looks like those six lives are clearly and neatly accounted for," Rain thought. In the system's eyes, there was no such thing as "good deeds offsetting crimes."
"R5 overall rank… that's a bit of a surprise." No wonder he'd stayed active for so many years—this was the strongest pirate Rain had executed so far.
Rain knew exactly what that meant: this [Physique Inheritance] could be a huge boost.
His gaze finally settled on the brand-new entry that had appeared for the first time—[Wish List].
Just as he was about to look into it, something red flew toward him through the semi-transparent screen.
Rain reflexively raised his left hand.
Smack.
A rotten, overripe tomato landed perfectly in his palm, thick juice oozing slowly between his fingers.
He lifted his head and, through the mask, saw the faces below—filled with anger and grief.
They couldn't do anything to the Marines… so they dumped all their hatred onto the executioner who had killed their hero.
Rain said nothing. He tossed the rotten tomato into the nearby trash bin.
He felt a small surge of relief.
Good thing they made him wear this damned mask for every execution.
…
Back in his tiny room, Rain couldn't wait to pull up the system again.
"[Wish List]—looks like some kind of quest system," he muttered to himself, studying the softly glowing icon. "Is this something all R-rank or higher criminals have, or is Buck a special case?"
Driven by curiosity, he focused his will on the words "activatable."
In that instant, a massive flood of memories that didn't belong to him exploded in his mind like an ultra-realistic VR film.
He "saw" everything—
It was a stormy night. Buck slipped into Hawk the merchant's mansion. His goal was to skim enough ill-gotten Berries from Hawk's fortune to help the slums.
But in the basement, he unexpectedly found a ledger.
In thick black ink, line after line recorded cold, lifeless entries: names, ages… and strings of numbers behind them—prices, in Berries, that made the blood run cold.
Suddenly the door slammed open. Flames filled the room. Hawk, with his two sons, blocked the only exit.
"I was wondering what kind of rat crawled in," Hawk sneered, his fat face twisted with contempt. "So it's that 'righteous thief' who steals trash around town."
"These kids… was this you?" Buck's voice was hoarse with rage.
"Kids?" Hawk blinked, then realized and laughed even louder. "Ah… you mean those brats who went missing from the slums? Yeah, that was me. Good-looking, obedient little brats sell very well on the slave market. I suggest you mind your own business."
He jabbed a finger upward.
"Every deal in that book is under the protection of very important 'gentlemen' above me!"
"Gentlemen above."
"Missing brats."
The moment Buck heard those words, the "no killing" rule he'd clung to all his life shattered completely.
The scene shifted—mothers in the slums, sobbing as they begged him to help find their children.
Red. His entire vision went blood-red in an instant.
When silence finally fell again, Buck stood among the corpses, drenched in blood, eyes empty.
As he was about to take the ledger and turn himself in at Marine HQ, a faint cry drifted from a secret room on the second floor.
He found an infant hidden away—a baby still in swaddling clothes. It was Hawk's unmarried daughter's child, kept in the house in secret because no one knew who the father was.
Looking at that innocent baby, something complicated flickered in Buck's hollow gaze.
In the end, he took the infant and vanished into the stormy night.
The memory jumped again. Rain saw Buck entrust the baby to a middle-aged woman in the slums he trusted most, a woman with no children of her own.
Only after doing that did he go to the Marine base to confess to robbery and murder.
The memory flood ended there.
In front of Rain's eyes, the system's [Wish List] finally displayed its contents.
[Buck's Last Wish: The Trust]
Description:
"I killed those scum, but I didn't realize there was still an innocent child. I left all my life's savings in the old place. Please bring it out and give it to her, so at the very least… she can raise that child safely."
Quest Objective:
Go to the location where Buck stashed his savings, retrieve them, and deliver them to the middle-aged woman currently raising the baby.
Quest Reward: Unknown.
Now that he understood the full story, Rain just sat there, a little stunned.