"Grandpa?!" Luffy's eyes widened, almost popping out from shock.
If there was one person he feared most in his life, it was his grandpa, Garp, who had subjected him to devilish training since childhood.
He never expected to encounter him on the very first island he landed on after setting sail!
No, if he didn't run, he would definitely be captured by him.
Luffy, in a flash of inspiration, grabbed Koby, who was still bewildered by his call of "Grandpa," and threw him towards Garp's face.
"Goodbye, Koby, you can join the Marines with my grandpa!"
After a quick farewell to Koby, Luffy used the fastest speed he had ever achieved in his life. His two gomu arms rapidly stretched out to grab a distant building, and then his body suddenly propelled forward... He completed this series of actions in just a few seconds.
However.
"Hmph, you brat, you ran into this old man and still think you can escape? Come back to Marine Headquarters with me obediently!"
Garp's lips curled into a smile. He hadn't expected his grandson, whom he hadn't seen in years, to deliver himself right to his doorstep.
Luffy's burst of speed, in his eyes, was almost no different from standing still.
"Soru!"
With just a light step of his foot, he casually carried Koby and instantly appeared at Luffy's landing spot after he propelled himself. A large hand, covered in Armament Haki, firmly grabbed the back of Luffy's neck.
"Hehehe, you two brats, are you ready to receive this old man's loving Iron Fist?"
That night, Luffy and Koby, having received a good beating, were in a sealed room within the base.
"Ow, it hurts so much! Luffy, why is your grandpa so rough?!" Koby, covered in bruises, lay on the bed, checking his injuries by the moonlight shining into the room.
Good heavens, he was black and blue, and more than half of his body was swollen. He hadn't sustained such severe injuries in the two years he spent on Alvida's ship.
"That's just how Grandpa is. Every time we meet, I get a beating, but it seems like I get a little stronger after each one." Luffy wasn't much better off, his face bruised and swollen, looking quite comical.
"Nani? Can you really get stronger?" Koby became excited upon hearing this; he yearned to become stronger.
"Who knows?" Luffy smiled, then slowly got up, rubbing his fists. He looked up at the ceiling where the moonlight shone through, and a flash of determination crossed his eyes.
"Koby, you stay here and train with that old geezer. Even though it hurts, you'll definitely get stronger!"
"Then... what about you?" Koby realized something and sat up from the bed, looking at Luffy with reluctance.
"Haha, of course I'm taking off first!" With that, he punched through the ceiling above him, revealing a starry night sky outside, and the vast, boundless world.
"How can a pirate stay with you Marines?"
"I'm going to—find my crew!"
After speaking, he smiled at Koby, made a goodbye gesture, and then pulled hard with both hands, launching himself into the sky like a spring.
Meanwhile, on the rooftop of another building, an old man with gray hair witnessed Luffy's entire "prison break."
"You brat, this old man will catch you again someday!"
...One day later.
A single-masted sailboat, about five or six meters long, sailed quietly on the sea.
Inside the cabin.
Silas curled her legs and leaned against the wooden wall, her fingertips gently turning the pages of a yellowed "East Blue Navigation Beginner's Guide." Her eyes occasionally darted to a compass on her wrist.
This was an essential tool for sailing on the sea, commonly known as a compass.
"For sailing in the Four Seas, this ordinary compass is enough, but once you reach the Grand Line, you'll need a Log Pose that can record the magnetic fields of islands."
"That kind of compass is even more complex to use. I can barely use the most basic compass right now... Sigh."
After ten days of recent study and practice, Silas deeply understood that navigation knowledge was not easy to master.
On the first day after setting sail from Shells Town, they rescued a merchant ship that had been attacked by pirates. To thank them, the merchant ship's captain gave them a large amount of treasure.
Rejecting Zoro's suggestion to hoard a lot of alcohol, Silas bought the current small sailboat on an island.
However, it was only when they got the ship that they realized neither of them knew how to sail a sailboat.
Helpless, Silas could only find a navigation book in the market, studying it while practicing on the open sea.
In these ten days, as a novice beginner, Silas had several times steered the ship into dangerous whirlpools, crashed into rocky shorelines, sailed into the mouths of Sea Kings... and even, due to improper operation, caused several capsizing accidents. Once, Zoro happened to be napping and almost drowned in the sea... In short, it was a miracle they were still alive!
"Luffy, and Nami, where are you all?"
Looking at the obscure and difficult-to-understand knowledge in the book, Silas sighed silently.
Sigh, she was having such a hard time.
She had never sailed a ship in her previous life, and now her only companion was a top-tier directionally challenged person!
Even now, Silas still believed that most of those unforgettable experiences over the past ten days were caused by Zoro, the helmsman who couldn't tell north from south.
But little did she know, her own navigation skills were equally poor.
"Hey, Great Navigator, come out for a second."
At this moment, Zoro's voice came from outside the cabin.
"Great Navigator" was a nickname Zoro gave Silas after several of her capsizing incidents.
"What is it?" Silas replied impatiently. Although annoyed, she still closed the book without delay.
For this directionally challenged person to actively call for her, it was probably an emergency.
After emerging from the cabin, Silas immediately saw Zoro standing by the ship's rail. His gaze was fixed on the sea, his eyes shining like a hungry wolf eyeing its prey.
Following his gaze, on the flat surface of the sea, there was a conspicuous yellow dot, vaguely discernible as a wooden barrel.
"I'm very familiar with the mark on that barrel; it definitely contains rum." Zoro licked the corner of his mouth, looking at the woman who had emerged from the cabin and was gleaming in the sunlight.
He had to admit, the woman was truly pleasing to the eye.
"So?" Silas's face was cold.
Zoro slapped her shoulder casually: "You can fly, can't you? The task of retrieving that barrel is yours!"
He called her just for this?!
Silas bit her lip, her pair of pink and purple eyes glaring "fiercely" at him. This guy really treated her like a laborer.
He kept calling her "stupid woman" and "Great Navigator," yet he ordered people around with such self-righteousness.
Even worse, this guy was a hopelessly severe, top-tier directionally challenged person, rendering her painstakingly practiced navigation skills useless.
The more she thought about it, the angrier she got. Silas clenched and unclenched her fist. Ice-blue elemental power gathered in her palm, the surrounding temperature plummeted, and even the sea surface began to form tiny ice crystals.
The air seemed to have dropped several degrees.
"Hey! Crazy woman, what are you doing?!" Zoro instinctively took half a step back, watching the increasingly strong aura emanating from her.
"Of course..." Silas suddenly smiled brightly, her eyes curving into crescent moons, looking incredibly adorable, yet in reality, it filled Zoro with dread.
"I'm sending you to find your rum ~"
An icy palm strike heavily landed on Zoro's back.
The next second, a certain Three-Sword Style swordsman transformed into a shooting star in the sky, his scream piercing through the long sky.
"Phew, that feels good." Silas watched the parabolic trajectory, finally unable to hold back her laughter.
All the pent-up resentment of so many days now vanished with that shrinking black dot.