Want to read ahead? Join my Patreon for just $7 to get early access to all upcoming chapters!
> Patreon.com/NegativeTranslations
________________________________________
Chapter 152: "God's" Greeting Gift
The next day.
The weather was relatively clear. The morning mist hadn't entirely dissipated, lingering over the ocean like a thin veil of white silk, softening the distant silhouette of Jaya into a dreamlike blur. Golden rays of morning sunlight pierced through the haze, scattering across the rippling water and turning the sea into a dazzling expanse of crushed gold, as if the entire ocean had been set ablaze with light.
In the midst of this glowing dawn, two pirate ships departed from Jaya's harbor, slicing through the tranquil waves.
Aboard the Going Merry.
Nami stood at the bow, shading her eyes with one hand. Her brows were slightly furrowed as she kept a tight focus on the Saruyama Alliance's ship leading the way. At the same time, her gaze constantly darted around, analyzing the sky, the air currents, and the subtlest shifts in the ocean.
Her feelings on the matter were complicated.
Yesterday, at Mont Blanc Cricket's enthusiastic insistence, the entire crew had gone ashore and spent the night in his makeshift, equipment-stuffed cabin. It was there that the rest of the crew learned the truth about the City of Gold and Sky Island, leaving them utterly shocked.
Unsurprisingly, the Straw Hats held a vote and decided to chase after Sky Island with a sweeping majority of seven to one.
Nami had been the sole dissenting vote.
It wasn't that she was against the idea of finding a sky island. She just hated their reckless approach.
"Charging blindly toward a place that might not even exist, armed with nothing but a fairy tale and a sudden burst of enthusiasm…"
It was too reckless. Too dangerous.
But Cricket had completely silenced her protests with a single sentence.
"Trust me, Miss Navigator. I've been preparing for this day for ten years."
Ten years. Over three thousand, six hundred days of diving into the crushing depths, sacrificing his youth for a single, unwavering goal. Even now, Nami couldn't shake the memory of his absolute conviction. It had moved her deeply.
But still… "Is there really a massive 'Knock Up Stream' hidden in the ocean?" Nami murmured to herself, unconsciously twirling a strand of hair. "Can a pillar of water really blast a ship weighing several tons thousands, or even tens of thousands of meters straight up into the sky?"
According to Cricket's explanation, the impossibly dense cloud cover hovering over Jaya wasn't standard cumulus. It wouldn't generate wind, and it wouldn't produce rain. It was a bizarre phenomenon acting as a middle ground between solid and liquid—a substance he called the 'Imperial Cumulus'.
Sky Island was likely sitting right on top of it. In fact, those very clouds were probably a foundational part of the island's ecosystem.
As for how to get there, there was only one way: the Knock Up Stream. It was a catastrophic upward current that lasted for roughly one minute, capable of reaching heights of over seven thousand meters. Like a colossal arrow of water fired from the depths of the sea, it could propel a ship directly into the heavens.
Right now, they were following the Saruyama Alliance in search of this exact current, which was predicted to erupt sometime today.
"Look! The old man's ship stopped!" Usopp's frantic shout suddenly rang out.
He was clinging to the rigging in the mainmast's crow's nest, pointing wildly ahead, his voice cracking with excitement.
The deck instantly erupted into chaos.
"Did they find the Knock Up Stream?!"
"Are we finally going to Sky Island?!"
Luffy, Chopper, Sanji, and even the normally composed Robin all rushed to the front of the ship. In the blink of an eye, the bow was completely jam-packed.
Nami, who had been standing there from the start, was instantly crushed in the middle of the mob, squished like the filling of a human sandwich.
"You… idiots… stop pushing me!!"
The navigator's fury exploded right on cue. With a flurry of brutal, rapid-fire punches, she knocked every single one of them—including Chopper—face-first into the deck.
Having vented her frustration, Nami straightened her clothes, smoothed her ruffled hair, and looked back out toward the ocean ahead.
"What in the…?!"
Her pupils shrank into pinpricks.
A terrifying anomaly was forming in the water ahead of them.
"A whirlpool… and a massive, incredibly rare one at that," Robin said, having casually stepped up beside Nami. She held Noland's thick logbook in one hand, her voice calm but layered with quiet gravity. "The affected area is well over a hundred meters. A phenomenon of this scale usually means there's some kind of violent energy activity happening on the ocean floor."
Just as she finished speaking—
Whoosh. A gentle breeze swept across the deck.
Ganyu descended from the sky, her toes landing lightly on the Merry's sheep figurehead. Her striking pink-and-purple eyes rippled with focus as she stared intently at the swirling abyss.
As a pureblood Qilin, her eyesight was vastly superior to anyone else on the crew, outclassing even Usopp's eagle-eyed vision. Right now, her gaze pierced through the churning water, staring straight down into the pitch-black depths a hundred meters below.
She saw it.
Directly beneath the center of the whirlpool, a colossal cavern had fractured open in the seabed, its diameter exceeding fifty meters. Deep within that abyss, a faint, sinister red glow pulsed rhythmically—magma, surging up from the Earth's mantle.
The ocean above was being sucked into the cavern by the immense pressure of the whirlpool. The moment that freezing water made contact with the superheated magma…
BOOM——!!!
An apocalyptic explosion ruptured from the ocean floor!
The sound was a muffled, earth-shattering roar, like the furious bellow of the planet itself. The shockwave violently rocked the sea, causing the Merry to pitch wildly. The crew scrambled to grab hold of masts, railings, and ropes, holding on for dear life.
Then came the sight that none of them would ever forget.
A monstrous pillar of water, easily thirty meters across, obliterated the center of the whirlpool and erupted toward the sky!
The ocean had been hyper-accelerated by unimaginable geothermal pressure, transforming into a vertical, raging torrent that blasted upward like a rocket. The sheer friction of the water tearing through the atmosphere created rings of blinding white vapor around its edges, while the core of the pillar churned with an endless barrage of deafening, exploding bubbles.
One thousand meters… two thousand meters… three thousand meters…
The pillar's ascent was so fast it was suffocating. In a matter of seconds, it pierced straight through the lower cloud layer, aiming directly for the distant, heavy expanse of the White Sea.
"I-Is that…?!"
Everyone aboard the Going Merry was struck dumb.
But a second later, pure, unadulterated euphoria washed over their faces.
This was it! This was the Knock Up Stream they had been searching for!
"Straw Hat kid! Follow us!!"
From the ship ahead, Cricket's booming voice cut through the roar of the water. The massive galleon of the Saruyama Alliance had already adjusted its heading, aiming its bow directly at the base of the towering water spout.
Then, under everyone's watchful eyes, the Saruyama Alliance's ship suddenly accelerated, throwing itself fearlessly into the raging current!
To everyone's shock, it wasn't instantly destroyed.
Instead, as if caught in the palm of an invisible giant, the ship tilted backward and caught the vertical flow of the water. It began to slide up the surface of the towering pillar, accelerating faster and faster until it was hundreds of meters in the air.
"They made it?!" Usopp screamed in delight.
Before anyone could even celebrate, the hull of the Saruyama ship began cracking at a visible rate. The wooden hull groaned and cracked under the crushing force of the water pressure. The masts snapped like twigs, the sails ripped to shreds, and massive chunks of the hull were violently torn away, raining back down onto the ocean below.
Whether it was because the ship was too heavy or the wood simply wasn't strong enough, it couldn't withstand the ascent. With a sickening CRACK, the galleon lost its grip on the current.
It plummeted backward, tumbling out of the sky as the crew watched in horror.
KABOOM——
A massive geyser of water exploded as the wreckage slammed into the sea.
"Old man!"
Luffy and Usopp screamed, panic gripping their hearts.
Thankfully, a few seconds later, several figures bobbed up to the surface. Cricket, Masira, Shoujou, and their crewmates coughed and thrashed in the water. They looked completely battered, but they were alive. Though their ship was thoroughly destroyed, the remaining debris still had enough buoyancy to keep them afloat.
"Damn… guess we're not making it to Sky Island this time," Cricket sighed, looking at his weeping crewmates with a resigned but peaceful smile.
"Stop crying! Straw Hat and his crew are still up! They'll make it for us!"
He whipped his head around, his eyes shining with desperate hope as he watched the small caravel with the straw hat Jolly Roger speed past them, charging fearlessly toward the towering pillar of water.
He clenched his fists tight and roared at the top of his lungs.
"Straw Hat! Who knows when the next Knock Up Stream will erupt! You have to make it!! You hear me?!"
His voice echoed across the churning waves.
"Yeah! We hear you, old man!" Luffy grinned fiercely, locking his eyes on the monstrous wall of ascending water.
"Alright, everyone! It's our turn!"
—————
Upper Yard.
An ancient, majestic palace sat perched atop the canopy of a colossal beanstalk. Its architecture was a bizarre fusion—blending the ornate elegance of Angel Island with a distinctly primitive, tribal aesthetic.
A bare-chested man wearing a white headwrap and wielding a golden staff stood barefoot on the roof of the palace.
Enel.
The 'God' of Sky Island.
At this moment, he was casually munching on an apple—a local Skypiean specialty known as a 'Cloud Apple', featuring crisp, juicy flesh. As he chewed, he absentmindedly used his power to monitor his domain.
His domain, naturally, encompassed everything: Upper Yard, Angel Island, the entirety of the White Sea, and beyond.
Ever since he had personally annihilated his homeland of Birka eight years ago, usurped this 'holy land', and banished the former God, Gan Fall, Enel had ruled as the absolute, uncontested sovereign.
Everything within thousands of meters—the drifting island clouds, the growing trees, the beasts swimming in the White Sea, and every movement made by the citizens of Sky Island—was entirely under his watch.
All of this was made possible by the fruit he had eaten so long ago.
Enel didn't know the term 'Devil Fruit'. He didn't know it was officially called the Rumble-Rumble Fruit.
All he knew was that eating it had granted him absolute dominion over lightning.
He could transform his body into pure electricity. He could hear the 'voices' of the world. He could move at the speed of lightning and call down catastrophic, heavenly judgment from the sky.
With power like this, he was no longer a mere mortal.
Only the title of 'God' was fitting for a being of his magnitude. And as God, he naturally had divine duties to fulfill.
Chief among them: delivering God's judgment to any heathens who dared disrespect him.
"Hm?"
Enel paused mid-bite.
His half-lidded, perpetually bored eyes suddenly gleamed with a spark of genuine interest.
Bzzzt…
Invisible arcs of electricity crackled through the air, gathering distant frequencies and feeding them directly into his brain. This was an advanced application of his power—an ability the locals called 'Mantra'.
"Interesting…"
A cruel, sadistic smirk crept across Enel's face, as if he had just discovered a fascinating new toy to kill his boredom.
"It's been years since a flock of ignorant Blue Sea dwellers managed to trespass here."
He tilted his head down, his gaze piercing through the thick clouds to observe the White Sea seven thousand meters below. There, a strange pirate ship was stubbornly riding the remnants of the Knock Up Stream, fighting its way into his domain.
What truly surprised him, however, was the strength of the trespassers.
He could sense three or four unusually strong presences on that tiny ship. And among them, one signature was entirely unique. It pulsed with a strange, foreign frequency—something completely different from any Skypiean or Blue Sea dweller he had ever encountered.
Curiosity getting the better of him, Enel raised a single hand.
High above, the clear sky instantly began to curdle. Dark, violent storm clouds rushed together, churning aggressively as blue lightning flashed within their depths, accompanied by the low, threatening rumble of thunder.
"Outsiders, allow God to present you with a greeting gift."
________________________________________
Support this fanfict by leaving Positive Review, Comments, and Power Stones.
For Advance Chapters:
> Patreon.com/NegativeTranslations