"However, I have one condition."
Koby felt a sense of relief at this moment and thought that it would be good if there were conditions.
He was afraid that it was two mentally abnormal people getting together.
Luffy pressed his straw hat to prevent it from being blown away by the wind and replied casually, "What condition?"
Lin Bei thought joining Luffy's crew would be a good idea. He put his hands on Luffy's and Koby's shoulders.
"If I join, can you protect me?" Lin Bei asked.
"Eh???"
Both Koby and Luffy were surprised.
"Aren't you already very strong?" Koby asked.
"Yeah, I've never seen someone as strong as you. You can control the sea!" Luffy added.
Lin Bei explained, "You can think of me as an undefined person. I change every day. Today, I might be extremely powerful, but tomorrow, who knows? To put it simply, if I can control the sea today, I may only control a sardine tomorrow. Knowing this, would you still want me as your crew member?"
Normally, anyone else might hesitate, but Luffy's eyes shone brighter.
"Amazing! You can control sardines?! Can you do a show?"
Lin Bei: 'Isn't your focus a little strange?'
Luffy laughed loudly, holding his straw hat, and spoke with a grin like the shining sun. "You're my crew member now! I, Monkey D. Luffy, will never abandon my crew!"
If it were anyone else, Lin Bei might doubt them.
After all, people's hearts are unpredictable. But with Luffy, he could believe it without question.
"Call me Lin Bei," he said, bumping fists with Luffy, officially joining the crew.
Koby was bewildered, wondering how this happened so quickly. Didn't these two have any common sense?
"Since I've joined, let's help the captain a bit. You must have a destination, right? This small barrel won't get you there."
With that, Lin Bei made Luffy and Koby float. For the first time, they experienced the sensation of flying.
"Amazing!!!" Luffy cheered, enjoying the experience for over ten minutes.
"Shi Shi Shihi, I knew you were interesting."
After all, he wanted to be a pirate since he was a child, but he didn't think about eating devil fruits at that time, so he practiced swimming hard.
Until he ate a devil fruit by mistake, he never experienced the feeling of swimming ever again.
Now, swimming in the air feels a lot like swimming in the water, only with less resistance, but also faster. It brought back the old memories of those days.
Koby, though initially shocked by his worldview-shattering, soon joined in, having fun.
Lin Bei felt like he was taking care of two kids. He had to join in their games as well. Neither of them would listen, and he would be dragged by one of them to play together.
Just kidding, he's an adult now! Not a child, who would play such a boring game with them.
"Ever tried skydiving?" Lin Bei asked, raising them to 1,000 meters and then temporarily releasing their gravity.
From here, one occasionally sees a flash of brilliance as it streaks through the azure sky. The great boundary between the Earth below and the sea of stars above was reached.
The weightless fall has begun!
Lin Bei and Luffy shouted and laughed loudly.
Koby also shouted... but he was crying loudly.
"MAMAAAAA!!!!!"
When they were about ten meters from the sea surface, Lin Bei snapped his fingers, and the three of them slowly came to a stop.
Luffy immediately flipped his body over and raised his arms in excitement.
"That was fun, let's do it again!"
Koby: My tears have already filled the ocean. "Please, I beg you, just you two play..."
Koby's personality was timid to begin with, and after this experience, he directly developed a fear of heights.
But Lin Bei and Luffy were tireless in their fun, even managing to perform high-difficulty moves like a 720-degree spin, followed by a Thomas flare and a backflip in the air.
Lin Bei hadn't expected that someone as "cool and aloof" as himself would bond so quickly with Luffy!
They started playing at noon and didn't stop until evening, only quitting because they got hungry.
Heaven knows, his original idea was just to ask Luffy which direction to go, and then fly the two of them together.
Who would have thought they would end up playing for an entire afternoon...
"That's about enough, Captain. If we keep playing, we'll miss dinner time. Give me a direction; we can't just float above the sea forever."
Luffy scratched his head.
"I don't know where to go either... But I just heard an interesting name from Koby and those pirates, a pirate hunter named Zoro. I plan to check him out, and if he's good, I'll make him my crewmate."
So the first island is the one where Zoro is...
"Koby, do you know the direction?"
The pink-haired, chubby boy nodded repeatedly, looked at the setting sun, and pointed in a direction.
Lin Bei immediately grabbed Luffy, the chubby pink kid, and... that barrel, and began to fly.
He just hoped it wasn't too far. If they had to fly for seven or eight hours, he had no idea what the next random superpower would be. By then, they might be relying on that barrel to hold all three of them...
Fortunately, the journey wasn't too long. After flying for less than an hour, they saw an island.
"That is Shells Town. It's where the 'Demon' Zoro is being held," Koby explained.
He was actually from this island. He had originally planned to join the Marines, but ended up on Alvida's ship instead.
By now, the sky had turned completely dark. When they landed at the port, there was basically no one around. They had to walk a bit further inland before they saw shops with lights on.
The plan was to march straight over and invite Zoro to the crew, but as they passed a restaurant, both Lin Bei and Luffy stopped dead in their tracks.
Only Koby kept walking forward, rambling on about how they needed to be cautious once they reached the Marine base. He was completely oblivious to the fact that Lin Bei and Luffy were no longer behind him.
At the entrance of the restaurant, Lin Bei looked exactly like Uncle Goro, the main character from that famous gourmet TV drama—mouth slightly open, expression glazed over.
Uncle needs food or Kodoku No Gurume.