"No problem!"
"Forget 7,000 meters—even 10,000 meters is no issue!"
If this were the original timeline, Lucci definitely wouldn't have been up to it. But now? He was brimming with confidence.
Wasn't it just a matter of using Moonwalk continuously? Aside from maintaining altitude, he just had to keep leaping upward. Easy. He recalled a previous mission where he had used Moonwalk to cover over a hundred kilometers. What was a few thousand meters compared to that?
Obviously, Lucci had overlooked one critical factor: the air.
To Sean, however, that didn't matter. If anything went wrong, he would simply step in.
"Alright, then we're set." Sean gave a slight nod and clapped his hands together. "This time, just Lucci, Vivi, Robin and I will go!"
"Yes, Rear Admiral!"
"Yay! We're going to Sky Island!"
Beside them, Robin opened her mouth behind her mask as if to say something, but in the end, she remained silent.
"Additionally, Kalifa, Kumadori, and Fukuro—go to Mock Town and rendezvous with Blueno. Proceed with the tasks I assigned you previously."
"Yes, Rear Admiral!"
The three of them acknowledged the order and vanished in a series of swift blurs.
"Now then, let's head out!" Sean said to Lucci, sliding his left arm around Vivi.
Then, with a quick movement of his right arm, he scooped up the other woman. Before she could even react, he leaped powerfully into the air. Lucci followed close behind, springing upward and activating Moonwalk.
Unlike Lucci, who had to rapidly kick the air to maintain his lift, Sean's ascent was incredibly stable, as if each leap landed him on solid ground.
The person held in his right arm finally realized what was happening and began to struggle slightly.
"Let me go!"
"What's wrong? You don't want to go?"
"I don't!"
"Really? You're sure you don't want to go? There's a Poneglyph up there."
The struggling stopped instantly.
A Poneglyph... for Robin, that was the ultimate temptation. With a blush creeping onto her face, she allowed Sean to keep holding her. Fortunately, her mask hid her expression from the others.
And so, they ascended—one leaping rhythmically, the other carrying two women with effortless stability, climbing higher and higher into the atmosphere.
An hour later, as they approached an altitude of 7,000 meters, Lucci began to pant. He found it strange; why was he winded after only an hour? He even felt his breathing becoming labored.
Looking up, a thick layer of clouds blocked their path forward.
"Rear Admiral, should we go straight through the cloud layer?"
"Correct. But remember to hold your breath. Just do what you would when diving."
'Do what I would when diving?'
'Rear Admiral, are you kidding me? I'm a Devil Fruit user—I'm a total landlubber!'
Well, even if he couldn't swim, Lucci knew how to hold his breath. He took a deep gulp of air and pushed off again, continuing his ascent.
"Are you two ready?" Sean asked, looking at the two beauties—one grown and one young—by his side.
Both girls nodded, gripping Sean's clothes tightly. This gave Sean a strange look on his face. He could understand Vivi doing that; she was only fourteen, after all. But Robin? She was a fully grown woman; did she really need to cling like that?
With a wry smile, he shook his head, leaned forward, and surged upward once more.
Moments later, all four of them entered the White Sea.
Despite holding their breath, their vision remained unaffected, which sparked curiosity in the two women. To the touch, the environment felt peculiar—similar to water in some ways, but completely different in others. Visually, it was like being inside a vast, white mist; visibility was extremely limited, stretching only about three meters.
'Is this the White Sea Sean mentioned? An ocean above the sky?'
Suddenly, Robin's eyes widened. She saw a strange-looking fish swimming past them not far away.
There were fish in the White Sea? What would you even call them—Sky Fish?
After about a minute, the group finally broke through the cloud sea. Looking down, they saw what looked like an endless ocean. However, this ocean wasn't blue—it was white.
"Is this Sky Island?" Robin murmured, gazing at the scenery below.
"No, this is just the White Sea, located at an altitude of 7,000 meters. The place we're going is the White-White Sea, which is at 10,000 meters."
"So, we have to keep going up?"
"Not yet. Let's rest first. Lucci looks exhausted, and the air is getting thinner. It's better to let him adapt before we move higher."
Sean glanced at Lucci, who was clearly panting heavily, and immediately understood the cause. He scanned the horizon, and his eyes lit up as he spotted a specific direction.
"Lucci, follow me!"
"Yes, Rear Admiral!"
Lucci was indeed exhausted. At 5,000 or 6,000 meters, he had felt some shortness of breath, but it wasn't a major issue. He had believed he could make the push to 10,000 meters in one go. But as the altitude increased, the effort became exponentially harder. After climbing just another thousand meters, he had reached his limit.
It wasn't that he couldn't continue, but Sean saw no reason to push him to the brink of collapse. It was more logical to adapt to the thin air first. Furthermore, even though Vivi and Robin had been carried and hadn't exerted themselves, they were clearly struggling to breathe as well. They needed time to acclimate.
A moment later, Sean landed on a cloud island and set the two women down. Lucci landed right after them.
"Rear Admiral, why can this cloud support our weight?"
"This is called an Island Cloud. You can think of it as an island in the ocean."
"Island Cloud? An island?"
This entered Lucci's blind spot of knowledge. While he had seen some intelligence regarding Sky Islands during his time with CP9, the information had been vague. At most, it confirmed that Sky Islands existed; there were no detailed specifics.
"Yes. In the White Sea and the White-White Sea, there are many Island Clouds. Most of them are small, like the one we're standing on now."
"But some are massive. Those are what we call Sky Islands."
Sean gave them a brief explanation.
However, when he finished and turned around to look, he found that Vivi had already collapsed, lying flat on the island cloud.
'Well, I can't blame her,' he thought. She was only fourteen, after all, and her constitution was still quite fragile.
As for Robin, while she was faring better than Vivi, she had also sat down, panting for breath.
"The higher we go, the thinner the air becomes," Sean explained. "Your bodies need time to adapt the first time you reach this altitude."
"Don't rush it. Just take your time to adjust. Once you've adapted, we'll continue heading up."
"That goes for you too, Lucci!"
Hearing this, Lucci nodded and sat down as well. He finally understood why the last thousand meters had been so draining; it was because of the dwindling oxygen.
"Sean, why aren't you affected at all?" Robin asked, looking up with curiosity.
"Because I'm in great shape, obviously. Do I really need to explain that?" Sean replied with a look of absolute certainty.
He certainly wasn't going to tell them that his body had been modified by the system four years ago. After all, how could a normal human body possess Reiryoku?
Since his current form was composed of spirit particles, the thinning air had no effect on him. In fact, it didn't matter if there was no air at all. A Shinigami only needs to absorb spirit particles to maintain their body and restore their Reiryoku and strength.
As for the fact that the world of pirates lacked spirit particles for him to absorb, that wasn't an issue. As mentioned before, thanks to the system's modification, Sean's body could produce its own spirit particles.
In other words, while a standard Shinigami relied on an "external cycle" to absorb energy, Sean possessed an "internal cycle."
To put it simply... he was completely self-sufficient.
"Phew, I think I've adapted," Lucci said, standing up two minutes later.
Sean nodded. This speed was normal; those with stronger physical constitutions generally adapted faster.
Ten minutes later, Robin had recovered. As for Vivi, it took nearly half an hour before she finally caught her breath.
"Looks like you're all set. Let's keep going!"
As soon as the words left his mouth, Sean reached out, hooking an arm around both Vivi and Robin, and leaped upward once more.
Lucci followed closely behind.