Born Different

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Settle in, take your time, and let's see what waits in the dark 🖤

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He had to decide whether to give up or keep going.

Corvin tightened his grip on the gunstock, his brows drawn together.

He did not want to abandon a chance he had waited days for. At the same time, he did not want to take a risk he could not control.

He wrestled with the decision as Red and his companion entered the eighty-meter range.

In those few seconds, Corvin tried to find a reason to take the shot.

He looked up at the sky, and a trace of reckless hope rose in him.

Risk and reward went hand in hand.

Even if one witness survived, it would not matter as long as he was not discovered.

With the night and the uneven rooftops around him, his odds of escaping in time were high.

Once that thought settled, Corvin made his decision.

Even if the timing was not ideal, it was still too early to give up.

He took a deep breath, held it, and fixed his eyes on the two figures walking closer.

Seventy meters.

His index finger rested lightly on the trigger.

Sixty meters.

His finger tightened.

Fifty meters.

Corvin held his breath.

Just as he was about to fire, Red suddenly quickened his pace and staggered toward a wall.

Corvin's pulse jumped. He almost pulled the trigger.

Then he saw what happened next, and his racing heart slowly steadied. His finger eased away from the trigger.

In the alley, Red braced himself against the wall and bent over, vomiting freely at its base.

His companion patted him on the back while turning sideways to say something.

The dark clouds overhead parted slightly. Moonlight slipped through the gap and fell into the alley in thin beams.

Corvin watched the two figures lean close together, and a bold idea formed in his mind.

'That angle... no. Not quite.'

He rose carefully and moved a few meters to another shooting position.

Then he lowered himself halfway down, held his breath, and aimed the muzzle at the two figures beside the wall.

An imagined line ran downward through the side of Red's neck and ended at the center of his companion's brow.

'It can work.'

His expression hardened. His finger tightened on the trigger.

Bang.

The gunshot cracked across the night above the alley.

The next moment, two heavy bodies hit the ground below.

Red lay on the street with his eyes wide open, his mouth working like a fish pulled from water.

A bloody hole had opened in the side of Red's neck. Blood arced from it in a thin line and spattered across the ground.

His fierce-looking companion lay beside him, already silent.

The musket ball that passed through the side of Red's neck had lost some of its force, but it still struck the other man squarely in the forehead and killed him on the spot.

Moments later, people awakened by the gunshot began looking out of their windows.

For a time, scattered voices rose through the night.

Corvin had already left the shooting position. He moved down the building as nimbly as an ape and headed back toward the weapons shop.

Dozens of meters away from the shooting spot, Sol stood in the shadow of another building.

His presence seemed to blend into the night itself. Even up close, someone might mistake him for a statue.

Looking at the two corpses in the alley, Sol suddenly asked, "Now that you've seen it, what do you think?"

"I don't understand. And... I don't want to believe it."

Sunny's voice came from another patch of shadow several meters away.

She stepped out. Unlike Sol, who was looking at the bodies in the alley, Sunny stared at the now-empty shooting position with disbelief.

On the face crossed by that long blade scar, shock was plain and difficult to hide.

"When Corvin took the smoothbore from Yasopp, I saw him handling it. His movements looked awkward. He kept turning the gun over, like it was the first time he had ever touched that type of weapon."

"I'd rather believe he made that shot with a pistol than with a smoothbore musket. How did he do that?"

Sol glanced at Sunny, who looked as if she had been struck.

He understood how she felt.

He had gone through something similar himself.

Some things could not be changed, no matter how unwilling a person was to accept them.

People were divided from the moment they were born.

Some were born poor. Some were born rich.

Some were born gifted. Some were born ordinary.

"Sunny, the world never lacks monsters. Some monsters are born for the blade. Some are born for the gun."

"Then should I still... keep learning the gun?"

Sol frowned slightly, as if he saw an old version of himself in Sunny.

Seeing him fall silent, Sunny's mood sank further.

"I had no talent for the blade, and my body was too poor for me to focus on hand-to-hand combat. In the end, I settled for the gun."

"When Yasopp praised my talent, I really thought I'd found the right path."

"But now I see it. What Yasopp saw in me back then is nothing like what I see in Corvin now."

Sunny's discouragement was impossible to hide.

Sol sighed. "That brat's talent is beyond what I expected, but when it comes to guns, I don't think you're worse than him. Even if he's ahead of you right now..."

"Is that supposed to comfort me?"

"Even if I had nothing better to do, I wouldn't waste effort on something that thankless."

"So it is comfort."

Sol shook his head and looked toward the lights under the night.

"Sunny, this path is much longer than you think. Long enough that one day you'll feel what despair really means. You and Corvin have only walked a tiny part of it."

"You should know, when I was young, I wanted to become a great swordsman famous across the world. But just like you, when it came to the blade, I was also..."

He stopped because Sunny had already turned away.

"Hey, don't walk off. My heroic memoir has barely started. Come back here!"

Watching Sunny leave without looking back, Sol's wrinkled face twitched.

"That girl... I wonder if she heard any of it."

Sol lifted his head toward the night sky. The memories Sunny had stirred up grew clearer.

Once, he had also been defeated by the problem of talent. Once, he had thought there was no path suited to him.

Until...

In his mind, his captain's smiling face slowly appeared.

A faint smile touched Sol's lips as he sank into old memories.

But soon, unpleasant memories followed.

A man swinging a massive iron fist, his whole body coated black with Armament Haki, barged into his mind and shoved the captain's smile aside.

Sol shook his head violently and clenched his teeth.

"Damn it. Why did I have to remember him now?"

He looked as if he had swallowed a hundred flies.

Back at the weapons shop, Corvin returned to his room and carefully put away Usopp, which had just done its job.

"Hah..."

He let out a breath and summoned the black ledger.

On the black cover, a star point larger than the last had appeared.

Corvin lay on the bed and carefully felt the changes in his body.

This time, thanks to Sunny's information, the return was much better than the first hunt.

If his previous constitution had been roughly five times that of an ordinary person, then now it should be around fifteen times.

In terms of raw physical power, if measured by Doriki, that would be...

One hundred and fifty.

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