December 17, 1494, Age of the Sea Circle
Twelve days have passed since Orion received the alert that the figure named Giolla was less than 500 km away. During these twelve days, the distance slowly decreased day by day.
Apparently, Giolla was traveling in his direction, but she was in no hurry; at times she increased her speed and at other times she stopped completely and remained motionless for a day or two.
She was, evidently, exploring the nearby islands.
Right now, she was 50 kilometers away. Orion didn't have a map at his disposal, but he surmised that there must be an island at that distance.
If Giolla continued traveling at the same pace as the previous days, then she would probably reach Pacific Town in the next few hours, or the next day.
Thinking about the possibility of encountering a named figure, he felt very nervous. If it was a benevolent person, there wouldn't be any major problems; he could simply interact with the other party and try to earn system points.
But if it was a vicious and infamous pirate, the safety of his town could be in danger.
After all, he was confident he could repel an attack by a small group of common pirates, but a pirate who was a named character was no common pirate!
Orion looked at the horizon worriedly, and suddenly a system notification appeared.
*Ding*
*New Special Mission Available*
*Mission 02 - Frustrated Artist
Description: The character named Giolla has been traveling the world in search of the essence of art. Since she was a child, her great sensitivity to the arts caused her personality to become eccentric. Over time, her personality has become more and more distorted, and now she is on the verge of collapse.
Objective: Help Giolla satisfy her desire for knowledge about art, and help her stabilize her personality by showing her the beauty of the world.
Reward: Increased favorability of the named character Giolla, system points, a random special skill.
(The better the final evaluation, the better the rewards) *
*The favorability system has been activated. You can now view your favorability rating with named characters.*
*The skill "Painting (Level 0)" has been granted to assist the Host in completing this quest. Good luck!*
Orion opened the favorability screen and saw the meager information displayed.
*Favorability:
Gion: 92
Hound: 10
Shyarly: 65
Giolla: -25
*
Seeing the negative favorability of the new character Giolla, he could only scratch his head and wonder how he had offended someone he had never met. Or was this Giolla a person who simply despised everyone initially?
If it was the latter, she might be difficult to deal with.
...............…
December 18, 1494, Age of the Sea Circle
Today, when Orion opened his eyes, two system notifications appeared on the system screen.
*Character named Giolla (35) is located less than 10 kilometers away*
Yesterday, Orion had waited as long as he could, but Giolla never arrived. Ultimately, he had no choice but to leave his body to his childhood self, hoping she wouldn't arrive on the island before he regained consciousness, otherwise his childhood self might try to interact with her, which could end very badly.
As for his childhood self, he had discovered certain things over the past year. At first, he thought his childhood self lost all memories related to him, and that the time his adult mind spent controlling the body was time "lost" to his younger mind. But this wasn't the case. Just as he could remember what his childhood self did in his daily life and was influenced by his feelings, his childhood self could also remember what he did when he was in control, and was also affected by the feelings of his adult mind.
This was why, even when his adult mind was asleep, his childhood self still continued with the boring training routine or helped the townspeople complete tasks "to improve the world" and earn points from the system.
Of course, his childhood self knew of his adult mind's existence and even left him mental messages. They could carry on asynchronous conversations using their thoughts, which was a blessing for his childhood self, who could satisfy many of his doubts and absorb knowledge like a sponge.
After all, even though there was an adult and a childhood version living in the same body, they were ultimately the same person. The difference between them was that his childhood self didn't possess the same cognitive ability, nor could he recall memories from his previous life.
Overall, both his adult mind and his child mind were on the same page and worked together to achieve their goals. That was why Orion feared that his child self might go looking for Giolla on his own to try to complete the mission, and get hurt in the process. After all, he still had the mentality of a child, even if he was much more mature than normal for his age.
As a precaution, he had left him a mental message explicitly telling him not to go looking for Giolla, but he didn't rule out the possibility that his simpler mind was eager to achieve results and help, which could backfire.
Luckily, nothing bad had happened. Judging by his child self's memories, Giolla hadn't arrived yet when he went to sleep.
Orion looked at the second notification that had appeared on his screen and raised his eyebrows in surprise.
*A native hunting competition will be held in the Azuleo Kingdom, in North Blue. If you wish to participate, you must come within 500 kilometers within the next 24 hours*
The native hunting competition again. It had been three years since he'd last received this message. Was this a regular competition? Were they like the Olympics of this world? But that name…
Orion had asked his grandfather about it; after all, his grandfather was the only person he knew who had traveled the world outside of this remote island. However, his grandfather knew nothing about it and looked at him strangely when he asked a question about something so unusual.
Last time, the competition had been held in a kingdom in the West Blue, and now it was in one in the North Blue. Perhaps next time it would be in the South Blue? If that were the case, perhaps he would have a chance to go and take a look, although it might be very dangerous to go without knowing anything about it. If there were powerful people there, he could end up dead due to carelessness.
Orion stopped thinking about the native hunting competition and got out of bed to begin his day. Today was a very important day, as he would come into contact with the character named Giolla for the first time!
...............…
The weather was particularly nice today. During his long journey around the world, Giolla had encountered all sorts of weather phenomena. Sometimes there were great storms, other times the scorching sun consumed everything, and other times the temperatures dropped so low that even the seawater froze.
How many years had it been since he had undertaken this journey in search of inspiration? Surely it had been at least more than a decade.
Giolla, who was now 35 years old, was at the height of her beauty. Her voluptuous and sexy body could awaken the most ardent fantasies in the most chaste minds; her curly blonde and red hair intermingled, forming a wonderful contrast, and her face always bore an expression of detachment from reality.
Giolla had set out to explore the world with one goal: to see the beauty of it and perfect her art.
However, what she had seen in the vast world had not been beauty, but pure ugliness.
Indeed, she considered this world to be horrible.
It hadn't always been this way. As a child, dreaming of becoming a great artist, Giolla was full of hope, and the world she saw through her eyes was beautiful. It was with this positive attitude that the young artist left home on her study trip.
For the first few years, everything went well; her art progressed day by day, and she felt she could achieve her goal of becoming the greatest artist in the world.
However, as she came into contact with the powerful people of this world, her vision of it began to distort. After a few years of seeing the dark side of this world, she no longer had the same light in her eyes that she had when she was a child full of hope.
She realized the change in her perception and turned away from the human world to focus on the natural world, in a desperate attempt to save her perception of beauty.
However, her psyche had already begun to distort, causing her altered perception to extend to everything in existence.
The beautiful landscapes she had seen as a young woman now seemed repulsive and crude, and the people who lived in this world seemed extremely annoying. She became irritated at even hearing another person's voice.
Right now, she still continued her journey in search of beauty and art, but she did so out of inertia. She knew she would no longer find beauty in this world. She wasn't capable of it.
Her mind was on the verge of collapse, and this could be clearly seen in the form her art had taken.
She, who had once had the ability to create the most beautiful and spectacular works of art, could now only create stupid doodles that no one would ever like.
Every time someone pointed out this abrupt change in her art, she would lose her mind and wreck the place.
Her mind was undoubtedly in a very delicate place, and any stimulus could push her to the point of no return any day now.
For this reason, although the weather was particularly beautiful this morning, Giolla felt no difference at all. On her small sailboat where she traveled alone, she was painting her usual doodles like a heartless automaton, while in the distance, an island with a small village appeared on the horizon.
There was no change during the entire process of art creation, and even when she saw a new island on the horizon, she didn't flinch. She no longer expected anything, no longer sought anything; her heart had died somewhere along the way.
...............
Orion ate a simple breakfast and left his house without doing his daily Swordsmanship training. Giolla was less than 10 kilometers away, and if she hadn't landed on the island yet, she would at any moment.
He ran at high speed through the semi-deserted streets of the small Pacific Town.
Since a large number of residents had emigrated due to the pirate attack, the town was much more desolate than it used to be.
Orion had added a new item to the list of things he would like to do in the future: develop his town.
The global improvement system focused on improving the world of the original One Piece story, trying to make it a better place. In that case, he was destined to live a complicated life. Sooner or later, he would have to come into contact with the great powers of this world, and he would definitely need a base of operations.
While all this was very distant for his current self, who was just a child of almost 5 years old, he always held some ambitious goals for the future in his mind. Although he didn't dare say it out loud right now, he fantasized about forming his own kingdom and becoming one of the most influential figures in this world.
After all, he was the owner of a system, and a reincarnated person, by the standards of the literature of his past life, he met the requirements to be the protagonist of the story!
With his current speed, it didn't take him long to reach the coast, where the village's small dock was located. There, he found a small boat he had never seen before, and his heart leaped. Giolla had already arrived! But where was she?
He approached a small fruit stand nearby and asked the old man who was the owner if he had seen the person who had gotten off the unknown boat.
The man paled upon hearing the answer, and stammering, told her that Giolla had left for the mountains behind the village.
Pacific Town used the same currency used all over the world: Belly.
However, being a small, self-sufficient society, the people of this village generally relied on barter as a method of commercial exchange. Therefore, the arrival of foreign visitors was the perfect opportunity to acquire Belly.
With that in mind, the fruit stand merchant had approached the visitor who had just disembarked to offer her his wares, but things hadn't gone as he'd expected. Giolla, who hated being approached by strangers during her journey, simply punched the vendor hard in the stomach, causing him to fall to the ground, vomiting and curled up like a shrimp.
Luckily for the old man, she hadn't used all her strength and hadn't aimed for a vital spot on his body, otherwise he wouldn't have survived that encounter.
Thinking about the large bruise on his stomach, the old man felt the terror of the power of the sexy girl who had arrived on the island only moments before, and warned Orion not to approach her because she was a dangerous woman.
However, Orion ignored his warnings. He had a mission to complete, and he had to go meet Giolla even if he didn't want to.
Still, he took note of the power Giolla had demonstrated in her interaction with the merchant. Clearly, she wasn't just a defenseless art-loving woman. He would have to proceed with caution.
If he was relieved of anything, it was that Giolla hadn't killed or seriously injured the man at the fruit stand, so it probably wasn't a lost cause. If she were truly a ruthless person who would wantonly kill an innocent person, Orion would never try to establish a friendly relationship with her, even if it meant abandoning the mission.
Orion ran toward the mountain behind the village.
Peaceful Village was located on a large island that had been uninhabited until the founders arrived decades ago. Most of the island's terrain was unexplored, and the townspeople were hesitant to venture onto the mountain or beyond, as there were a large number of wild beasts living there.
For some reason, however, these wild beasts never left the mountain, and the small village had never had to worry about an attack from them.
Orion feared that if Giolla ventured too far into the mountain, there would be no way for him to follow her, and he would have no choice but to wait for her to return.
Luckily, however, when he left the village and entered the mountain area, he immediately spotted Giolla, who was sitting on a large rock, watching two trees leaning against each other in the shape of a cross. On the floor near her was an easel with a blank canvas, ready to receive her art.
She was so focused that she didn't notice Orion's arrival.
He inhaled deeply. This would be his first direct interaction with a named character other than little Gion, so he was quite nervous. Especially since Giolla's favorability toward him was in the negative.
He looked at the information displayed on his skill screen.
*Skills:
Swordsmanship(1)
Drawing (3)
Carving (2)
Strong Body (2)
Medicine (0)
Hand-to-Hand Combat (0)
Herbalism (0)
Painting (5)
Unused Points: 511
*
Knowing that for this mission he needed to use his painting skill to influence Giolla, Orion had raised the level of that skill as high as possible with the points he had available. In total, he had invested 665 points!
He didn't know how good his level was compared to Giolla's, but he was certain that if he had possessed this level of skill and knowledge in painting on planet Earth, he would undoubtedly have been a globally famous artist. Although he still wasn't on par with history's greatest geniuses, at least not in terms of creativity and innovation.
Orion approached cautiously, but without hiding his presence. The worst that could happen was that Giolla would mistake him for an enemy, and her favorability would worsen even further.
Giolla heard someone approaching, but paid no attention; she was focused on the nature around her, trying to gain inspiration for her art; her concentration was incredible.
Orion didn't try to start a conversation; he knew that would be counterproductive. Instead, he walked over to the easel with the blank canvas, and before Giolla could react, he bit one of his fingers, causing a little blood to flow. Then, he placed his bloody finger on the white canvas and began to paint a delicate picture.
Giolla had dedicated her entire life to art, and one could say it was an almost morbid obsession. She had obviously deeply studied the artistic techniques of this world, and there were few people in the world who were on par with her in this specific field.
Therefore, when she saw Orion, who was painting with his own blood, using techniques she had never seen and had never even thought could exist, her heart, which had been static for so long, began to beat strongly. Something within her had awakened once again, and the brightness in her eyes continued to increase, sublimating her beauty, which had previously been overshadowed by her indifference to the world.
Orion didn't notice the changes in Giolla. His mind was completely focused on the painting he was creating. He knew that if he could make a great impression with this painting, subsequent interactions with Giolla would be much smoother.
Before the beautiful woman's surprised gaze, a face began to appear on the once-empty canvas.
She immediately recognized the person portrayed in the painting—it was none other than herself!
However, the face and expression of the "Giolla" in the painting were not the same as the real one.
The Giolla Orion was drawing was the perfect image of the woman before him in his imagination.
Finally, the painting was finished.
Orion's face was pale from blood loss, and there was a grimace of pain on his face, the result of the multiple bites he had had to give his fingers to prevent his blood from clotting.
Orion's gaze finally left the painting, and for the first time since he had arrived, it rested on the beautiful woman who was still standing on the rock, looking at him in surprise.
He smiled faintly and said, still somewhat wearily
"I'm sorry I used your canvas. The moment I saw you, I couldn't help but feel inspiration welling up within me. I had to capture the image in my mind as quickly as possible, before the fleeting image disappeared. As an apology and a thank you, this painting is for you!"