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Chapter 151: The Straw Hat Pirates' Bounties
"In the sky?"
Mont Blanc Cricket stared blankly at the sky above, his face a portrait of utter bewilderment.
Time seemed to stand still for a few seconds. His mind ground like rusted gears, struggling to process Luffy's seemingly naive words. Gradually, the blankness in Cricket's eyes gave way to flickering doubt, which then ignited into the sheer ecstasy of solving an impossible puzzle.
"Haha… hahaha… hahahahaha!!!"
Cricket suddenly threw his head back and roared with laughter.
He looked at the unusually dense cluster of clouds high above, laughing with a near-manic intensity as he slapped his thigh. "The sky! The sky! That's right! Is it possible it was in the sky all along?!"
"I always thought… the City of Gold had sunk into the ocean… I spent ten years diving into the deep sea… ten whole years! Every time I pulled up a relic from the City of Gold, I thought I was getting closer… but I could never find the city itself."
"Because it was actually in the sky! Four hundred years ago, during some freak accident… it didn't sink to the bottom of the sea. It was launched into the sky!"
For ten years, Cricket had relentlessly searched for the City of Gold, never once casting his gaze upward. He had been so absolutely certain that it rested on the ocean floor that, despite knowing how to reach Sky Island, he had never even considered making the attempt.
But now, thanks to a single passing comment from Luffy, his entire worldview had shifted.
"To Sky Island…" Cricket muttered, his gaze growing sharp and fanatical. "I have to go up there and see it for myself!"
It didn't take long for him to make his decision.
"Hey, old man, if you're going, can you take us with you?" Luffy asked eagerly, stretching his rubber arms to grab Cricket's shoulders and shake him. "We want to go on an adventure to Sky Island too! Right, Ganyu? Robin?"
"Of course!" Cricket nodded heavily, looking at Luffy with profound sincerity. "If it weren't for you, I'd still be completely in the dark about the high probability of the City of Gold being up there! You are my benefactors!"
However, as his eyes drifted to the two women standing beside Luffy, his brow furrowed, and his tone grew deadly serious.
"But… the journey to Sky Island is incredibly dangerous. It's no ordinary voyage. We have to ride the Knock Up Stream, one of the most violent forces of nature in the world. Make a single mistake, and your ship will be torn to splinters. Everyone aboard will be buried at sea."
He paused, emphasizing every word. "Even knowing that, do you still want to go?"
"Doesn't that just make it sound even more fun?!"
Luffy's answer was instantaneous, his voice brimming with uncontainable excitement.
Cricket was taken aback by the boy's carefree nature. Looking at the straw hat-wearing teenager, he couldn't help but feel a surge of hot blood pumping through his own middle-aged veins.
"You…" Cricket opened his mouth to speak, eventually letting out a sigh that bordered on a helpless chuckle. "You really are an incredible guy."
"And what about you two? Are you willing to gamble your lives on this guy's dream?" he asked, looking at Ganyu and Robin with a mix of curiosity and anticipation.
The two women exchanged a brief, knowing smile. Ganyu was the first to answer, not hesitating for a second.
"Of course. He is our captain, after all."
—————
By that afternoon, Jaya was in an absolute uproar.
The news spread like wildfire through every corner of the island. The long-standing tyrant of Jaya, Bellamy the Hyena, had been defeated in a head-on clash!
It wasn't through trickery or a sudden ambush. Right in the middle of his own turf, in a fair one-on-one fight, he had been sent flying by a single strike from a relatively unknown green-haired swordsman.
Every pirate on the island was frantically digging for information. Who exactly was the monster that had crushed Bellamy?
Although Jaya was a lawless zone, the sheer concentration of pirates meant its underground intelligence network was incredibly efficient. In every tavern, casino, and black market alley, people were whispering, piecing together the fragments of what they had seen and heard.
"I heard it was a rookie crew…"
"Green hair, three swords, and a glare like a wild beast…"
"Bellamy couldn't even take a single hit!"
"Are you kidding me? Bellamy is a big-time pirate worth 55 million!"
Before long, someone managed to track down the latest newspaper delivered by the News Coo that morning. Tucked between the thick stacks of paper were several freshly printed, ink-scented bounty posters.
When the first poster was slapped onto a table, the entire tavern went dead silent.
"'Pirate Hunter' Roronoa Zoro — Bounty: 60,000,000 Berries!"
The photograph showed Zoro mid-stance, sheathing his sword with a razor-sharp glare, the Alabasta desert stretching out behind him.
Sixty million Berries! That was higher than Bellamy's 55 million!
"It's him…" someone muttered in disbelief. "That green-haired guy… he's a 60-million-Berry monster…"
But the shock didn't end there. The second poster was pulled out.
"'Frost Arrow' Ganyu — Bounty: 93,000,000 Berries!"
The image captured the blue-haired girl standing amidst a torrential downpour, her icy locks whipping in the wind as she looked up at the sky. Her unusually bright eyes and unearthly, exquisite side profile were immortalized on the page. In her hands, she held a longbow forged of pure ice, standing upon a desert that had been entirely frozen over.
Ninety-three million! A bounty bordering on one hundred million! In the first half of the Grand Line, that was a number terrifying enough to make any pirate crew turn tail and run.
A collective gasp echoed through the tavern.
But when the third poster was finally revealed, everyone's breath caught in their throats. The room plunged into the stillness of a graveyard.
"Monkey D. Luffy — Bounty… 100,000,000 Berries…"
—————
Meanwhile, in another half-destroyed tavern across town.
Bellamy, wrapped head to toe in bandages, lay dejectedly near the edge of the bar counter. Thick gauze covered his chest, dark patches of blood already seeping through the fabric. His eyes—once burning with arrogance and wild ambition—stared blankly at the ceiling.
Clutched tightly in his hand was one of the brand-new bounty posters. His fingers trembled slightly from how hard he was gripping it.
That idiotic-looking kid in the straw hat… he was actually the green-haired man's captain.
And he, Bellamy, the so-called 'Hyena' who had ruled over Jaya with absolute authority, was only worth a little over half of what the green-haired swordsman was.
He slowly closed his eyes, laying the bounty poster over his face.
In the darkness beneath the paper, the words passed down by Doflamingo's subordinate echoed mockingly in his ears.
"Capture that blue-haired girl for Lord Doflamingo… and you'll be promoted to a senior executive in the Family…"
Looking back on it now, it was nothing but a cruel joke.
I never realized… just how weak I really am…
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