"Carina, how long until we reach the next island? I’m starving!"
"Idiot. If you hadn’t secretly blown several million Beli forging yourself a suit of armor, I wouldn’t have been able to restock only a little fresh water and food. Do you still not understand how huge your appetite is? Now I’m starving with you."
"I get it, but my armor was modeled after the King of Knights. That suits my identity as a knight."
"Heh. You trained for five days and got dismissed for eating too much, and you still call yourself a knight?"
"Aw... I’m hurt. I became a knight to serve as Princess Carina’s knight, and you don’t appreciate it at all."
"Enough. You owe me 15.37 million Beli. When we hit the next island, make sure you grab a few pirates so we can cash their bounties. Otherwise I’ll sell that armor on your back for cheap, you idiot Karl, fake knight."
"..."
East Blue. On the boundless sea, a small single-cabin sailboat cut across the waves.
On deck, beneath a sun umbrella, a boy and a girl traded barbs in the sea breeze.
The boy looked no older than fifteen, but his legs were long; standing, he would be about one meter eighty. Short blond hair, emerald eyes, a handsome face still touched with youth.
He wore a suit of finely forged knight’s plate. A blue cloak hung from his back, and a plain knight’s sword sat at his waist.
The girl also looked no older than fifteen. She had a cascade of beautiful violet hair and cheeks that still held a hint of baby fat. Already, the shape of a great beauty had emerged. Those gem-bright blue eyes were fixed in a glare on the blond boy.
Sea Circle Calendar 1502. On an island in the East Blue, an orphanage took in two infants at the same time. The director named them Karl and Carina.
The boy was Karl, the girl Carina—childhood friends.
No one knew Karl’s soul came from another world, a transmigrant.
Unlike those who cross into another world and directly replace someone’s body, Karl was reborn.
Because the Great Pirate Era had left countless families shattered, Karl was abandoned at the orphanage door the moment he was born, without even a surname or given name.
Fortunately, he awakened a cheat the moment he was born: a three-choices egg-smashing system.
Every five years the system would appear with three golden eggs.
Smash one, and you would gain some ability.
According to the beginner’s guide, the eggs contained all sorts of strange things—superpowers, weapons, even egg-within-an-egg.
Thanks to the orphanage, Karl safely lived to five.
At five, he smashed his first golden egg and gained a monster physique that could evolve without limit. As long as he kept eating, he could grow stronger.
The side effect of that physique turned his appetite from a normal child’s into something like Charlotte Linlin’s, inhuman.
At first it wasn’t obvious. After Karl turned six, the orphanage’s rations for everyone weren’t enough for him alone, so he had to sneak out at night to hunt.
At seven, his appetite grew even more terrifying, and never being full made him fear developing the same insatiable hunger as Charlotte Linlin. He decided to leave the orphanage.
He left a letter, planning to slip away.
But Carina discovered him—the girl who had entered the orphanage the same day only a few hours later, whose name also contained the "Ka" sound, and who was impossibly close to him.
Because she slept in the bed next to Karl’s, she had seen him sneaking out every night to find food.
Worried he wouldn’t survive alone outside, Carina—an orphan who had grown up fast—decided to leave with him.
So two seven-year-olds started roaming the East Blue, a year earlier than Nami began stealing at eight to save her village.
At first, Karl thought Carina hadn’t appeared in the original story.
Only when Carina grew up did Karl suddenly realize she came from the movies.
Carina is from the film Gold, blessed with a beautiful singing voice and a quick mind, a phantom thief on par with the Cat Burglar Nami.
Now, however, she was Karl’s childhood friend, the person he trusted most in the world.
Karl and Carina were fourteen this year. In the seven years they struggled to survive, they did nearly every job short of becoming pirates.
Dishwasher, server, dockhand, even joining a small kingdom as a knight—Karl tried them all.
But because of his frightening appetite, none of the jobs lasted a day before he was mercilessly fired.
The only one that lasted a bit longer was a few days as a trainee knight.
Unable to live off anyone else, Karl and Carina had to rely on their own strength.
Thus their current profession, one that thrives in the Great Pirate Era yet is extremely dangerous: bounty hunters.
The monster physique that could evolve without limit gave Karl top-tier talent and potential in this world.
At seven, he could shatter rock with his fist and punch to death a bear several times larger than an adult.
At nine, his body ignored bullets; his skin had the defense of steel, impervious to blades and guns.
At ten, he could dive into the sea and battle sea beasts as large as a sailing ship, tearing apart monsters the size of small hills with his bare hands.
From ten onward, after becoming a bounty hunter, Karl never met an enemy he couldn’t defeat.
Because at ten, he smashed another golden egg and gained a polearm.
It was a long spear wrapped in white bandages. Its current ability converted stamina into light, unleashing a power like a radiant, world-ending spear—the sort of brilliance you’d see from a certain legend in the Fate world.
Yet it was not a mindless holy lance.
With the monster physique and the mysterious spear, Karl spent the following four years on easy mode. Pirates who ran into him never escaped their fate and were delivered to a Navy branch to cash the bounty.
Because he always wore his trainee knight’s armor, he and Carina became known throughout the East Blue as the duo the Knight and the Phantom Thief.
As for why Carina is called a phantom thief:
Simple. Before Karl matured and gained overwhelming strength, it was Carina’s wits that kept him fed.
...