"Are you saying you were just training?"
Usopp touched his long nose, looking weirded out. You have to understand, a certain moss-head trained on the deck every single day, yet he'd never seen Zoro cause this much destruction from training.
Sherlock pushed up his glasses in slight embarrassment. He really hadn't expected that Duochong Jingfan [Translator's Note: Multiple Mirror Reflection] could actually multiply the impact force he generated.
"Yes. Although it was an accident, it was indeed my fault. I am truly sorry, and I will repair the hole I smashed into the ship." As he spoke, the bespectacled man, who had aristocratic etiquette ingrained into his very bones, offered an elegant, deep bow to Usopp.
"Hey, hey, hey, that's enough, Sherlock. You don't need to do that." The long-nosed bro hastily waved his hands. Carefree as he usually was, he really couldn't handle this aspect of Sherlock. "I'll just fix the hole. Besides, I'm the one who always repaired the damage Luffy and the others caused before anyway."
"I see... Very well, I'll have to trouble you then." With that, Sherlock gave another deep bow.
The blond cook lit a cigarette and glanced around. "By the way, where did Luffy run off to? I just saw him a moment ago."
"If it's Luffy, he probably ran over to the wreckage of that ship to hunt for treasure."
Robin answered without even looking up, holding several fragments of a human skull in her hands and carefully piecing them together. Judging by her intense focus, she seemed highly interested in the rather old-looking bones. The sight of this prompted a certain timid reindeer to quickly hide behind the ship's mast.
Yes, and he was hiding backwards again.
"Speaking of which..." Zoro looked toward the slowly sinking wreckage, frowning slightly. "How did this ship fall from the sky?"
"Who cares why? It has nothing to do with us. Let's just hurry to the next island! Haha, I want to properly experience the joy of spending money!"
Saying so, the orange-haired navigator, having just acquired a massive windfall, looked down at the Log Pose on her wrist with a beaming smile—only for her expression to drastically change!
"Ah! Why... why is the Log Pose pointing at the sky?! Don't tell me it's broken." Nami's pretty face turned pale. As a navigator, she knew all too well what a malfunctioning Log Pose meant in the Grand Line.
"No, no, no, Nami. Please have faith in the product quality of the Goldglint Trading Company."
Staring at the red arrow inside the spherical glass orb pointing straight up into the sky, a strange light flickered in Sherlock's eyes. "At the same time, as a navigator, you must place your faith in the Log Pose on your wrist."
At this moment, Robin set the partially reassembled skull down on the deck and chimed in, "Wherever the Log Pose points, there will undoubtedly be an island, Miss Navigator. And if the needle is pointing upwards, it means that above this stretch of sea, there exists..."
"...a Sky Island!" x2 Sherlock and Robin said in unison.
"A Sky Island??!!" x5
The four humans and one reindeer were all stunned by this somewhat absurd claim. How could there possibly be an island floating in the sky??
Just as they were about to ask further questions, a familiar cry for help suddenly echoed from nearby.
Zoro and the others looked toward the sound, only to see that the wreckage of the galleon that had fallen from the sky was almost completely submerged. And there, in the water right next to it, their idiot captain was splashing about with great vigor.
"Hey, hurry up and save me! I can't swim." Luffy struggled for a moment, but he quickly lost his strength, and his splashing gradually grew weaker.
Everyone aboard the Going Merry (Can someone please tell me why this guy ran off just to get himself killed...) stared at their slowly sinking idiot captain, all sporting dark lines down their faces.
Since their Log Pose's recorded magnetic path had been overwritten, the Going Merry was forced to drop anchor right where they were.
Sherlock gazed up at the sky, an indecipherable light glinting in his eyes.
(A Sky Island... Isn't that the place my mother always wanted to go to back in the day?) In that instant, he actually felt a sensation that could only be called destiny.
Luffy's treasure hunt on that decrepit galleon hadn't been entirely fruitless. He had found a chart that looked like a map of a Sky Island. However, Nami firmly believed it was just a fake map someone had drawn for fun, which caused the initially overjoyed Straw Hat idiot to become greatly disappointed.
Meanwhile, Robin had successfully finished piecing together the skull of the remains. Utilizing her extensive archaeological knowledge, she extracted a wealth of information from it, leaving the rest of the crew gasping in amazement.
"I found it. The St. Briss, hailing from the South Blue. It set sail 208 years ago." Nico Robin pointed to an illustration in a book, her stunning face maintaining a perfectly placid expression as she continued,
"Although corpses cannot speak, we can still unearth a great deal of useful information from them. By combining the data obtained with other intelligence, we can essentially deduce whatever we want to know."
(Why does that sound so familiar??)
Looking at the intellectual beauty's wise and composed demeanor, Usopp and the others felt a strong sense of déjà vu. They subconsciously glanced over at a certain bespectacled man who was deep in thought, their gazes turning even weirder.
(If you just pushed up your glasses right now, it would be absolutely perfect, Robin...)
Just then, the idiot captain waved his hand expansively and declared to his crewmates with righteous conviction:
"I've decided! We're going to the Sky Island!"
"Oh!!! Sky Island!!!" Usopp and Chopper cheered in thunderous agreement.
Sanji reached up and flicked away his burnt-out cigarette butt, murmuring softly, "A Sky Island, huh... I wonder if there are beautiful angel ladies up there?"
"But how exactly are we supposed to get there?" Zoro asked, rhythmically curling a dumbbell in his hand. "Our ship can't fly, you know."
"Well, we'll naturally just leave that kind of problem to our navigator," Luffy said with a wide grin, speaking with absolute willful abandon.
Thwack! With a muffled thud, the idiot captain instantly hit the deck.
"Idiot! I'm just a navigator, not a god!" Nami reeled in her fist with a dark expression on her face, before saying seriously,
"Listen closely, Luffy. As long as there is a sea, wind, and a Log Pose with a clear direction, I, your navigator, can take you anywhere. But a Sky Island... I truly can't do anything about that."
Suddenly, a lightbulb went off in the little blue-nosed reindeer's head. He waved his small hooves and said excitedly, "Um, Sherlock, doesn't your magic carpet fly?"
"Can you fly us up into the sky?!"
Swish— Everyone simultaneously looked toward the Sorcerer. Luffy even lunged forward in a flash, grabbing Sherlock's clothes and shaking him violently. "That's right! Sherlock, hurry up and fly us up there!"
"Let go of me first, Luffy." Utterly speechless, Sherlock pried himself away from his goofball captain. He gently pushed up his glasses and explained to his crewmates, "Using the magic carpet, I can indeed fly, and I should be able to reach the altitude of a Sky Island."
"Ahahahahaha! Sherlock, it's so great having you around!" Upon hearing this, stars instantly popped into Luffy's eyes, and even Zoro and the others broke into smiles.
(Sure enough, we still have to rely on Sherlock in critical moments!)
"However..." Sherlock's tone shifted. "Robin mentioned earlier that what floats in the sky is a sea of clouds, and the Sky Island rests above it. And that sea of clouds... is also a type of sea."
"A sea? Oh, I get it."
Sanji blew out a smoke ring and then explained to the group, "In other words, if we want to reach the Sky Island, we have to pass through that sea of clouds. But in the sea, you Devil Fruit users will lose all your strength, meaning you wouldn't be able to keep flying. Is that what you mean, Sherlock?"
Sherlock smiled wryly and nodded.
After hearing the curly-browed cook's words, the rest of them suddenly saw the light. Nami, Chopper, and Usopp simultaneously shivered in fear.
The consequences of plummeting from ten thousand meters in the air... Hiss~ The three of them didn't even dare to imagine it!
However, just because those three didn't dare, didn't mean someone else wouldn't.
"If we fell from that high up, even if we landed in the sea, the immense impact would shatter our bodies into pieces. From a distance, our corpses would look like a few little red flowers blooming on the surface of the ocean, bright and eye-catching..."
A certain morbidly dark-minded woman calmly described the "beautiful" mental image she had conjured up, giving off the distinct vibe of "sharing a good thing" with everyone.
"Ahhhh! Robin! What kind of mindset do you have?! Even if you think of something so terrifying, don't say it out loud! And what the hell was that description at the end?! The thoughts in your head are way too dark!!!"
The Cowardly Trio was instantly scared to tears.
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