Sword Flight

"My Greatsword."

Garen ground his teeth and muttered to himself: "It's been stolen!"

He finally snapped awake: he had just been chatting and laughing with a thief.

Garen looked around. Everywhere was a sea of bustling people, with shops and houses crammed tightly together.

Such a lively, crowded place was undoubtedly the perfect environment for hiding one's tracks.

On Garen's system interface, he had a game Minimap that could display the Avatars of humans within a thousand-meter radius.

But there were simply too many people around. Garen had no way to track down Nami through this method.

And with Nami's agile skills, she had probably already fled far away by now, who knew where.

"Damn it!"

Garen was so angry his mind went blank.

Without his Greatsword in hand, Garen was like Tahm entering the Tongue-Pulling Hell, the Blind Monk suffering High Paraplegia, or Barrel drinking Hongmao Medicated Wine.

He was pretty much a cripple.

"It can be like this?"

Garen complained bitterly to the frozen system in his mind:

"What about the so-called Data Mode? Garen's Greatsword can actually be lost?"

This was absolutely impossible in the game.

For a datafied game character, weapons and armor were inseparable parts of the body;

no matter how fierce the battle, a weapon could never slip from the hand and fall to the ground.

The system, however, remained in its frozen state, offering no reply.

"Sigh."

Garen let out a helpless sigh:

"Looks like this Data Mode still has to compromise with reality."

Come to think of it, that made sense.

Garen was, after all, a real person. He couldn't just have the greatsword stuck to his hand forever, could he?

"I've lost my Greatsword. How am I supposed to play this Garen? Switch class to Blue Fist?"

Garen couldn't help but complain inwardly again:

"Can't they give me an item recovery function? This is my exclusive weapon, after all!"

What Garen didn't know was:

At that very moment, as his mind stirred, a striking phenomenon occurred on the other side of the town, thousands of meters away.

The Cat Burglar Nami clutched the greatsword tightly, weaving swiftly through the crowd.

She knew she had shaken off that Iron Can, but she still refused to slow down.

Nami's final destination was the dock, where a small boat she had prepared earlier was waiting.

The victim was still on this island. Only by taking the loot and sailing out to sea, vanishing without a trace, would Nami feel at ease.

As she darted through the alleys and streets, Nami quickly calculated in her mind:

In her little boat, she still had over two million Beli in cash, stolen not long ago from the Steel Cutlass Pirates.

And this extraordinary Greatsword in her hands, even if sold cheap, could probably fetch twenty million Beli from a weapons dealer in Loguetown.

The goal of one hundred million was almost within reach!

Cocoyasi Village, trampled for so many years, the villagers oppressed and enslaved by Arlong—

A smile flickered across Nami's face, both joyful and heavy.

In that instant, all her beautiful hopes for the future were condensed into the Greatsword in her hands.

But just as Nami was about to sprint onto the dock, embarking on the final journey to save her hometown—

The greatsword in her hands suddenly moved. On its own.

"What's going on?"

Nami halted in shock.

She felt the greatsword in her arms tremble once, then be yanked upward by an invisible force toward the sky.

This force was utterly irresistible, as if heaven itself had decided to take the sword away.

"No! Absolutely not!"

"This is my sword!"

Nami clenched her teeth, tears nearly welling in her eyes.

She wrapped herself around the restless greatsword like an octopus, refusing to let go no matter what.

But the Greatsword still flew up, carrying Nami along with it into the sky, and together they turned into a streak of light on the horizon.

Nami didn't fly for long, because the destination wasn't all that far.

The Greatsword automatically flew back into Garen's hand.

"It actually flew back on its own?"

Garen stared at the hilt in his hand, utterly stunned.

He hadn't expected his greatsword to have a one-button recall function, just like Thor's Hammer.

What stunned him even more was that his Greatsword had an Orange-Haired Girl clinging to it for dear life, refusing to let go.

Nami hugged the broad blade tightly, dangling from Garen's grip like a big sugar gourd.

The sword had flown too fast just now; the instant, extreme acceleration made Nami's insides churn with nausea, and her whole body trembled uncontrollably.

At that moment, Nami was like a kitten that had climbed a big tree and didn't dare come down—both cute and pitiful.

"Yo,"

Garen couldn't help flashing Nami a nasty grin:

"Isn't this my runaway little girlfriend?"

"A girl flying through the sky?!"

"And it looks like Sword Flight?!!"

"So cool!"

Even in the World of One Piece, where superhumans were a dime a dozen, flight abilities weren't exactly common.

The residents of the weakest sea, the East Blue, had never seen such a novel sight before.

Nami, soaring away on Sword Flight, instantly became the center of attention in the bustling marketplace.

At that very moment, a group of fierce-looking men also noticed this.

These men all had their chests bared, showing off knotted muscles and intricate tattoos, and the gleaming steel blades in their hands gave off an unmistakable aura of trouble.

They were a pirate crew, the Steel Cutlass Pirates, who terrorized the East Blue.

The captain's epithet was "Steel Blade," and his weapon of choice was also a steel blade, with a bounty of ten million Beli.

In the weakest sea, the East Blue, that amount was already a chilling figure.

"Steel Blade" and his gang had roamed the East Blue for years, committing every crime imaginable—burning, killing, looting—yet few dared to cross him.

Steel Blade himself was strong and simple-minded; when he went berserk, he'd even charge head-on at pirates with higher bounties.

Not long ago, Steel Blade and his crew had fought tooth and nail to snatch a big haul from another high-bounty pirate.

That fearsome pirate had a bounty of fifteen million Beli—a full five million more than Steel Blade's worth.

Not only that, but that pirate was also a rare and powerful Devil Fruit user in the East Blue; in a straight fight, Steel Blade was no match for him.

But despite the enemy's strength, the Steel Cutlass Pirates had managed to steal a fortune in treasure from him through a bit of luck.

Beating a stronger foe and coming out ahead—that should have been something to boast about.

If that glorious feat got out, Steel Blade's bounty would rise significantly, bringing him closer to the so-called throne of the East Blue's overlord.

But then, They'd foolishly fallen into the hands of an orange-haired girl.

The treasure worth over two million Beli that Steel Blade had fought so hard to take from that powerful pirate was all stolen clean by Miss Nami with a simple trick.

That was an unforgivable crime.

Feeling his intelligence insulted, Steel Blade had chased Nami's escape route all the way to Samwell Island.

"Is that brat really here?"

Steel Blade, who hadn't put a single point into intelligence and had dumped all his stats into fighting, barked impatiently at his underlings.

He had no interest in strolling around with his crew; robbing was more his style.

The crew's navigator wiped the cold sweat from his brow and answered nervously:

"She's definitely on this island!"

"The course she fled on points here. And this island is the biggest supply stop on this route, perfect for her to hide."

"That thief is definitely here!"

But the irritable Steel Blade couldn't calm down; he just swung his long blade and cursed:

"Then where the hell is she?!"

His big sword was already itching for action.

Suddenly, the crowd stirred.

"Boss, found her!"

A lackey shouted excitedly: "I saw that female thief!"

"Found him? Hahaha!"

The Steel Blade Captain revealed a ferocious and cruel smile, the large blade in his hand reflecting a chilling gleam under the sunlight:

"Excellent!"

"Today, I'll make that despicable thief understand what it means to have no path to heaven."

Before he could finish his harsh words.

The Lackey, trembling, pointed at the sky not far away and stammered with a tied tongue:

"Th-that thief."

"He's gone to heaven."