Above a certain sea area in the first half of the Grand Line.
The weather was fine, and the sea breeze was gentle.
Above the azure sea, a metal-hulled speedboat drifted with the push of the seawater.
After finishing his inspection work at the Marine Lulucca Island branch, Sephiroth, wearing a white justice cape and a blue suit, lay on the deck of his exclusive speedboat, closed his eyes, and leisurely sunbathed. He wasn't in a hurry to rush to his next inspection location, Eto Island...
He was the Commander of the G4 Base, after all. Slacking off at work was only natural, wasn't it?
Currently, he threw the paperwork to Kuro to handle, while he himself left the G4 Base by speedboat every day under the guise of inspecting work, cruising around the nearby sea areas...
Although the officers below were full of complaints about Sephiroth, the Commander of the Base who was rarely seen, they could tolerate it...
After all, there was the precedent of Aokiji, a Marine Admiral candidate, cruising around on a bicycle all day at sea. So, it didn't seem too abrupt for their G4 Base Commander to sail around aimlessly by himself...?!
Just as Sephiroth closed his eyes and concentrated on controlling his Bat Clone thousands of miles away, conducting technical research related to soul crystals...
Above the sea, in front of the speedboat, a cloud of rainbow-colored mist suddenly appeared. It instantly erupted with a powerful suction force, pulling the entire speedboat, along with Sephiroth lying on it, inside.
The moment he entered the mist, Sephiroth immediately lost contact with his Bat Clone.
Not only that, but all the other vampire bats he used for positioning also lost their connection with him, making him unable to perform ultra-long-distance spatial teleportation.
Greatly startled, Sephiroth immediately opened his eyes and stood up from the speedboat deck. He wanted to know what had happened that caused him to lose perception of all his vampire bats.
However...
Before he could react, the cloud of Rainbow Mist behind the speedboat, which had sucked him into the alternate dimension, suddenly vanished without a trace with a "Swish!"
Seeing this, Sephiroth couldn't help but frown slightly, his gaze beginning to scan the surroundings.
Immediately, numerous stranded and damaged ships came into his view.
Among them, he also found many ship wrecks that did not belong to this era, including types of sailboats from over two hundred years ago, as well as metal warships full of futuristic technology.
In the distance around and above the sky, the entire space was shrouded in layers of mist, hazy and making it difficult to see clearly.
In this scene, Sephiroth seemed to have thought of something. His eyes widened sharply, and a look of surprise appeared on his face. He put his hand on his forehead and muttered to himself:
"Holy crap! Could it be... this is inside the Rainbow Mist...
How could this be...?"
"Right, this is near the sea area of Lulucca Island... which is exactly where the Rainbow Mist frequently appears! My luck is really something else!"
In this One Piece World, all sorts of bizarre and incredible things exist, and the Rainbow Mist is one of them.
Inside the Rainbow Mist, both space and time are in an extremely chaotic state...
No! Perhaps that isn't quite right. The essence of the Rainbow Mist is more like a spatiotemporal singularity, running through the past and future of the entire world, connecting different times and spaces.
After realizing his situation, Sephiroth immediately bent down and picked up the two sabers on the speedboat deck, tucking them into his waist.
Following that, he slowly closed his eyes, his right hand gripping the hilt of the butcher knife. Using the spatial perception ability of the Door-Door Fruit, he carefully sensed the spatial changes around him.
In Sephiroth's perception, the space filled with mist was full of distortion and chaos. Even describing it as a tangled mess didn't capture its state...
Suddenly!
In his perception, a hazy passage opened in the mist space. He tried to extend his perception outwards, but he couldn't sense the outside world.
Sephiroth thought for a moment and felt that staying here doing nothing wasn't a solution.
Instead of wasting time doing nothing, it would be better to try and interact with more variables.
This way, he would at least have a chance to figure out the general pattern of the Rainbow Mist...
Swish!
Sephiroth lightly swung the butcher knife in his hand, opening a spatial door in front of the speedboat. On the other side of the door was an exit glowing with colorful mist.
Boom!
As he pressed the ignition device on the control panel, the flame jet at the stern of the speedboat instantly spewed out a ball of blue flame, carrying Sephiroth himself with a "Whoosh!" through the spatial door and directly plunging into the Rainbow Mist.
After a strong sense of spatial distortion, Sephiroth, steering the speedboat, rushed out of the Rainbow Mist area!
Above the clear sky, there were no clouds for miles, and the sun hung high in the air, its light shining on the azure sea surface, creating shimmering waves.
The sea breeze blew across the surface, creating circles of white waves that lapped against the hull of the speedboat.
Sephiroth turned off the engine and stopped the speedboat. He frowned slightly, his gaze fixed on a certain direction in the distance.
The moment he left the Rainbow Mist, he noticed a very serious problem...
This was not the time and space he was originally in!
If you ask why...?
Because Sephiroth couldn't sense the vampire bats he had placed on various islands throughout the Grand Line and the Four Seas for positioning and teleportation!
This indicated that the current time node was either hundreds or thousands of years after he left, or that he'd arrived in the distant past.
However, what concerned him was that something seemed to be calling to him from the distant beyond, creating an extremely strong urge to investigate!
Sephiroth first turned his head to look at the Rainbow Mist behind him, which had not yet disappeared. After weighing his options, he ultimately couldn't resist his curiosity and wanted to go to the distant beyond to see what was calling him.
Now that he had left the Rainbow Mist and was in an unfamiliar time node, he didn't need to rush back.
Anyway, if he plunged back into the Rainbow Mist now, even if he found another exit, without understanding the pattern of the Rainbow Mist, there was a high probability that he would still appear in another unfamiliar time node!
Moreover, although the Rainbow Mist would disappear, it always appeared intermittently near the sea area of Lulucca Island...
Sephiroth possessed the butcher knife, which had eaten the Door-Door Fruit. When holding it, he could clearly sense any distorted spatial node through Observation Haki.
With the wide range of his Observation Haki, he was very confident that he would definitely be able to find the Rainbow Mist again!
As for when the Rainbow Mist would appear next... did that matter?
After all, whether it was five, ten, or twenty years, Sephiroth, who had eaten the Vampire Fruit and possessed a long lifespan, could completely afford to wait!
However, right now, more than confirming what was calling him, Sephiroth wanted to confirm what time node he was currently in.
Thus, Sephiroth immediately opened his spatial pocket, took out the permanent log pose for Lulucca Island, and drove the speedboat at a maximum speed of three hundred kilometers per hour towards the direction indicated by the pointer.
To be prepared for unforeseen circumstances, he had stored the permanent log poses of all islands in the Grand Line possessed by the Marines in his spatial pocket a long time ago.
Therefore, even if he arrived at an unfamiliar time node, he could still come and go freely on the Grand Line!
Soon, an island covered in dense forest came into Sephiroth's view. He drove the speedboat, circling the entire island for more than half a lap on the outer side, before finally seeing a small town.
After docking the speedboat at the pier, Sephiroth casually found a middle-aged man with a simple attire and a full beard. He used mental hypnosis and asked the other party a question.
"What is the date today?"
Hearing this, the bearded middle-aged man, whose expression was still a little dazed, immediately answered without hesitation:
"It is July 20th, Year 1321 of the Sea Calendar."
Sephiroth: "..."