Chapter 38: The Chimera Project

The heavy, suffocating silence in the laboratory was thick enough to choke on.

The ambient moisture in the air continued to freeze, frosting over the surgical lamps and cracking the glass beakers on the walls.

Dr.

Hogback swallowed hard, his theatrical grin faltering for just a fraction of a second as the atmospheric pressure in the room became physically crushing.

But his ego was a terminal disease.

He couldn’t recognize absolute murder when it was staring him in the face.

“What,” I said, my voice dropping to a terrifyingly quiet, hollow whisper, “have you done to her?”

Hogback’s chest puffed out.

He completely misread the lethal drop in temperature, taking my cold, paralyzed horror as genuine scientific awe.

“I’ve given her perfection!” Hogback boasted, stepping back toward the operating table and gesturing to the brutalized, stitched-together body of Nico Robin.

“The standard zombie troops are weak.

Brittle.

I started by fundamentally replacing her skeletal structure, stripping out her fragile human bones and grafting in hyper-calcified marrow harvested from titan sea kings.

Biologically flawless and harder than tempered steel!

I then layered her with hyper-dense muscle tissue so she can wield that raw power without tearing herself apart.”

My hands hung loosely at my sides, but the kinetic energy inside me was already beginning to boil, vibrating violently through my veins.

“But that was just the canvas, Beastmaster!” Hogback laughed, his high-pitched voice echoing off the stone.

“Through the Underworld, I acquired two absolute treasures, the corpses of successful SMILE fruit users from the New World!

I used their biology to augment her.”

He pointed to her hands, which were heavily bandaged and stitched.

“I replaced her nailbeds with the retractable claws of a panther SMILE user.

I grafted the venom glands of a snake SMILE user directly into her jaw and circulatory system.

I’ve completely modified her cellular structure!

In theory, she should be able to actively shift into a Zoan-like hybrid form!”

The sickening reality of what he had subjected her to made my vision swim with red.

“But the crowning achievement!” Hogback shrieked, practically vibrating with pride.

“She already possessed the Hana Hana no Mi.

Grafting new Devil Fruit lineage factors into her biology would have caused her body to violently explode.

To bypass the rejection, I opened her chest and surgically implanted a second heart to safely isolate and manage the competing Devil Fruit bloodlines!”

I looked at Robin’s chest, watching the jagged, horrific “Y” incision rise and fall with agonizing, shallow breaths.

“She is almost complete,” Hogback beamed, grabbing a massive, blood-stained scalpel.

“To accommodate the new internal organs, and to ensure she is the perfect, undistracted soldier, I was just about to perform a full hysterectomy.

And the best part?

I didn’t want to suppress her neurological reactions, so I only used special anesthesia!

She has been fully aware of my genius this entire time!”

Snap.

My guilt didn’t just turn into anger.

It detonated into a blinding, apocalyptic fury.

The concrete floor beneath my boots violently spider-webbed, exploding into a crater of pulverized dust as a shockwave of raw kinetic energy rolled off my body.

The surgical lamps above us shattered in a shower of sparks.

Hogback finally realized his mistake.

I wasn’t admiring his work.

I was the executioner.

“Cindry!

The guards!

Kill him!” Hogback screamed, scrambling backward in sheer terror.

From the shadows of the laboratory, a dozen massive, heavily armored surgical zombies burst forward, wielding bone-saws and cleavers.

Cindry moved to intercept, throwing a volley of razor-sharp plates.

I didn’t even reach for the Jade Wings at my waist.

I channeled a massive surge of Fa-Jin directly into my right arm, stepped forward, and threw a single, empty-handed punch into the air.

The shockwave was absolute.

It ripped through the room like a localized hurricane.

The armored zombies didn’t just break, they were literally blown to dust, their bodies disintegrating against the far stone wall in a concussive blast of sheer, blunt-force trauma.

Cindry was blown completely out of the doorway.

Hogback fell to his knees, his jaw dropping as his elite guard was atomized in a split second.

I crossed the room in a blur.

I grabbed Hogback by both of his wrists.

He screamed, thrashing wildly.

“My masterpiece…..!”

“Your hands,” I whispered coldly.

I squeezed.

With my Fa-jin augmented strength, I didn’t just break his wrists.

I completely pulverized every single bone, joint, and tendon in both of his hands, reducing the prized tools of the twisted surgeon to useless, ruined pulp.

Hogback let out a blood-curdling shriek of absolute agony.

Before he could even draw his next breath, I spun, using his own size as leverage to slam him back-first into the solid stone wall of the laboratory.

The impact sounded like a cannon firing.

The stone cracked, and the sickening crunch of Hogback’s spine shattering completely echoed over his screams.

He dropped to the floor, a broken, paralyzed mess, coughing up blood.

I didn’t give him a second glance.

I rushed to the cold steel operating table.

The noise and the concussive force of the fight had disturbed the anesthesia.

Robin drifted into a hazy, agonized lucidity.

Her solitary blue eye opened a fraction, dilated and unfocused.

Terrified, exhausted, and in unimaginable pain, she let out a broken, ragged gasp, bracing her mutilated body for the scalpel.

“Hey.

It’s okay,” I said softly, my voice devoid of the monster that had just broken the doctor.

“Everything is over.

You’re safe.”

I quickly unstrapped the heavy leather belts holding her down, pulled off a heavy black coat from nearby, and gently draped it over her trembling, stitched-together body.

I placed both of my hands firmly over her chest, right above her two beating hearts.

I tapped into the deepest reserves of my Fa-jin, but instead of using it for destruction, I transferred it directly into her failing body.

The energy flooded her cells, stimulating a hyper-accelerated cellular growth.

The jagged, horrific incisions across her torso and face rapidly knit closed.

The massive sea king bone grafts and SMILE organs fused flawlessly with her nervous system without rejecting.

The internal bleeding stopped entirely.

The healing carried absolutely zero fatigue, washing away the agony and forcing her exhausted, traumatized nervous system into a deep, completely painless sleep.

Her ragged breathing leveled out into a soft, steady rhythm.

I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.

Carefully, making sure the coat covered her, I lifted her stabilized, sleeping body into my arms.

I walked out of the ruined laboratory, leaving the paralyzed doctor to rot in the dark.

I climbed the stone stairs back up to the surface and stepped out into the foggy courtyard.

Gammamon was sitting happily atop a massive, smoldering mountain of incinerated zombies, kicking his legs.

He looked down and saw the sleeping woman in my arms.

“Victor?” Gammamon tilted his head.

“Did you find a new friend?”

“I did, Gammamon” I said quietly.

I looked past the courtyard, up toward the towering, gothic central mast of Thriller Bark.

I adjusted my hold on Robin and rested my right hand on the hilt of my Jade Wings.

The kinetic energy inside me was a raging, roaring fire, demanding an outlet.

“Are we done playing?” Gammamon asked, sensing the shift in my mood.

“Yeah.

Playtime is over,” I said, my eyes burning with lethal intent as I stared at the Warlord’s tower.

“It’s time to tear this island apart.”

Word Count: 1244

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