"The two of them jumped straight down, ten thousand meters above the sea!"
A powerful feeling of weightlessness wrapped around them instantly!
The roaring wind was like countless blades, slamming against their bodies. Clouds rushed past them as the whole world spun wildly.
"Aiden, you idiot!! You're going to kill us!!" Smoker shouted at the top of his lungs over the wind. He instinctively tried to turn into smoke, but under the terrifying pressure of the fall, the smoke was scattered as soon as it formed.
"Don't worry!"
Aiden's voice came through, sounding unusually calm.
During the terrifying fall, his Observation Haki suddenly spread out!
His senses pierced through the clouds and the ten thousand meters of open sky. Like a radar, he swept across the vast ocean below.
He "saw" it... countless islands of different sizes, and countless presences...
Then, he locked onto the target for this trip: Jaya, Mock Town.
Aiden snapped his eyes open, and a spark of electricity flashed in his pupils!
"Found it."
He shouted to Smoker, who was still screaming, "Smoker! Use your powers! Follow me!!"
"Zing!!!!!"
Aiden's body exploded in midair. He was no longer in human form, but a giant bolt of blinding blue lightning several meters wide!
The lightning tore through the clouds, changed direction, and shot toward Mock Town like a blue meteor!
"Bastard!" Smoker watched the lightning streak away. He could only curse before turning his whole body into a thick cloud of white smoke and chasing after it!
Jaya Island, Mock Town.
It was just as filthy and lawless as ever.
"Giant Axe" Mills, a one-eyed man with a bounty of 38 million Berries, kicked open the tavern door and threw out a pirate who owed him gambling money.
"Damn it, a bunch of useless trash!" Mills spat on the ground and took an irritated swig of booze.
He had been in a terrible mood lately.
A few days ago, a damn bell had rung out from somewhere. Ever since then, the idiots in town had been spreading rumors about a "Sky Island" and a "Golden Bell." It had made everyone restless, and fewer people were showing him respect.
"Sky Island? Golden Bell?" Mills mocked his subordinates. "It's all bullshit! I only believe in the Berries I take with the gun in my hand! You idiots better remember that too. Legends like that are just lies for fools!"
"Yes! Yes! You're right, boss!" his men said one after another.
Just then, a pirate leaning against the corner with a drink in his hand suddenly pointed at the sky. His bottle slipped and hit the ground with a clatter.
"Hey... look at the sky!"
"Look at what? You idiot, in broad daylight..." Mills looked up impatiently. Then the words caught in his throat.
In the blue sky, two huge streaks of light were trailing long tails of fire. They were getting bigger at a terrifying speed!
"A... meteor?!"
"No! What the hell is that?! It's going to hit us!!"
"Could it... could it be real?! Is it treasure falling from Sky Island?!"
In an instant, greed won out over fear.
Mills's one eye widened. Intense greed made his whole body shake!
Bang! He pulled out a flare gun and fired into the sky with a sharp screech.
"It's mine! Nobody try to take it!" he roared excitedly. "Boys! Get over here!!"
Countless pirates poured out from every corner of town. Led by Mills, they rushed toward the place where the two "meteors" were about to land!
The two meteors... finally came down.
"BOOM!!!!!!!!!"
A deafening explosion, followed by blinding blue light and a violent shockwave, went off in one corner of Mock Town!
The ground shook violently!
The air pressure was like a typhoon ripping through the area. It instantly tore the roofs off houses across hundreds of meters! Countless pirates were blown away like rag dolls!
The whole of Mock Town felt as though it had just been hit by a massive earthquake!
Dust and electric sparks filled the air, hiding everything.
The pirates who had been blown away crawled out of the wreckage and stared at the center of the explosion in terror. Mills also dragged himself up, covered in dirt, and fixed his eye on the center of the crater.
The dust slowly cleared.
In the middle of the giant scorched crater, which was dozens of meters wide, two tall figures slowly stood up.
Aiden stood at the bottom of the crater, tiny arcs of electricity still dancing around his body.
When the pirates saw what was inside the crater, they were completely stunned.
It was not the treasure they had imagined, but two... people?!
Mills narrowed his one eye and carefully looked at the two figures below.
One had white hair and looked like trouble, but he was bent over with his hands on his knees, coughing hard. Clearly, he was not in good shape.
The other... Mills paused. He was a young man who looked barely twenty. He was calmly brushing dust off his clothes, completely out of place among the ruins around him.
"...Just these two kids?"
Mills had lost count of how many punks like that he killed every year.
Once he saw they were just two young men, his brief worry disappeared and was replaced by greed. They had fallen from the sky. That meant they definitely knew the secret of Sky Island, and there was a good chance they had brought gold with them!
"Hey! You two!" Mills gathered his courage, gripped the flintlock at his waist, and shouted, "Where did you come from?! Did you... fall from Sky Island?!"
Aiden's expression remained calm. He brushed off the dust on his clothes and looked up at him.
"Yeah."
Aiden's voice was not loud, but everyone heard it clearly.
"I even rang the Golden Bell a few days ago. You all probably heard it."
The words "Golden Bell" were like a spark thrown into a powder keg! All the pirates' breathing grew heavy, and their greedy eyes turned red!
"He... he admitted it!"
"They really are from Sky Island!!"
"The Golden Bell! He said the Golden Bell!"
"Gold!! The gold has to be on them!!"
Mills was also starting to lose his mind from Aiden's words. Once he saw that more than a hundred of his men had gathered around him, his confidence surged.
He grinned cruelly, stepped forward, and pointed the dark barrel of his gun at Aiden. "Kid! I don't care what kind of freaks you are... hand over all the gold you brought from Sky Island! Otherwise, don't blame me for what happens next!!"
Seeing their boss pull his gun, his men also raised theirs and aimed at Aiden and Smoker in the crater.
The other pirate crews around them saw this, and although they were drooling over the gold, Mills and his hundred men had already surrounded the place. They could only give up unwillingly.
But faced with the threat of a hundred guns, Aiden acted as though he did not even see them.
He casually turned to look beside him.
Smoker was still coughing violently, spitting out the dust and dirt he had breathed in.
"Are you okay?" Aiden asked calmly.
"Cough... cough... Damn you, Aiden!" Smoker wiped his face and growled through clenched teeth. "If you do that again... I... I'll kill you myself..."
"HEY!!! ARE YOU TWO DEAF?!"
The way they chatted as though nobody else was there, with guns pointed right at them, made Mills feel completely humiliated!
His one remaining eye instantly turned bloodshot!
"You bastards... how dare you ignore me!!"
Mills was shaking with rage at their contempt. The cruel grin on his face twisted into something savage.
"It looks like you don't want to live!!" He stopped talking and slammed his arm down!
"Fire!!! Gun them down!!"