Chapter 215: Dangerous Experiment
Marineford Era 1492, July.
Although half a year had passed since the last sea chart modification incident, many in the Pirate Crew still remembered that event vividly.
At that time, Kaido, covered in wounds, clutched the unconscious Aoxi in his dragon claws and flew back to Fenrir Island unsteadily, which really startled Brother Burufaruto and Ember.
Thinking they had fallen into some ambush, the two immediately sounded the alarm and notified the island garrison executives on each island to prepare for battle.
However, after Sister La’s emergency treatment and their wounds healed, everyone realized there was no enemy ambush; it was purely the two of them getting carried away in the fight.
Although somewhat speechless, Brother Burufaruto and the others dispersed after learning what happened.
After all, getting carried away in a fight was no news within the Beasts Pirates, even if the person involved was the Captain himself.
At most, they marveled at how this brat Aoxi had progressed at an astonishing speed, growing in such a short time to the point where she could truly injure Kaido.
But this was no bad thing; after all, the stronger the executives’ strength, the stronger the Beasts Pirates’ strength.
The potential shown by Aoxi, who was only about ten years old, also gave many elders within the organization worried about a lack of successors a reassuring pill.
But just as everyone put their hearts back in their stomachs and prepared to go about their business, they found the matter was far from over.
In short, Kaido and Aoxi, who used to never stop talking once they met, now acted like they had some falling out, not saying a word to each other.
If there was anything, they had others relay it.
For example, Kaido: “Ember, go tell that brat, this old man OOXX…”
Aoxi: “Uncle Burufaruto, reply to that bull-headed gorilla, tell him I XXOO…”
Kaido: “Ha? Ember, go tell her that kind of thinking is OOXX!”
Aoxi: “Tch! Uncle Burufaruto, tell him this young master wants to OO however I XX!”
……
Such dialogues gave Ember and Brother Burufaruto headaches, not to mention the key point: these two guys were clearly face-to-face but insisted on communicating this way.
Completely like children throwing a tantrum!
If you two really don’t want to talk to each other, can’t you just stay far apart?
Or carry paper and pen and write it down directly… sounds even stupider.
Anyway, Kaido and Aoxi spent the first half month in this mutual sulking.
In the end, it was Brother Burufaruto who couldn’t stand it and went to Miss La to resolve the issue.
……
Brother Burufaruto’s Fish-Man Karate Little Classroom, Break Time—
“Hey~ Sister Aoxi, Sister Aoxi~”
“Last time you said Lin Daiyu piloted the Tenrei and blasted the Land of Light in one strike, what happened after?”
“Yeah, yeah, the justice Emperor Alien must have appeared to protect those weak Ultramen, right?”
“Hmph! How could the mere Emperor Alien be Lin Daiyu’s opponent? To save the Land of Light, it has to be the invincible Safurin.”
“Eh? But didn’t Safurin die in the fight with Usi Dishi?”
The Fish-Man children surrounded Aoxi in the center, looking at her with expectant eyes, clamoring for her to continue the story from yesterday that she hadn’t finished.
This red-haired sister had been coming here often ever since Brother Burufaruto went out on business a week ago and had her substitute for a day of class.
She seemed to really like being with children, even though she looked like a kid herself.
“Hmm~ You want to know the story’s continuation…”
“Arlong, come over first and give sister a shoulder massage.”
Aoxi pointed at one of the noisiest little Fish-Men, then continued:
“Picking up from last time, the Tenrei fired a Comet Magic Light and blasted the Land of Light. Just as Lin Daiyu reached out to take the Ultrakey, a figure suddenly appeared before her—it was the Earth Emperor White Martial Male! He shouted loudly: ‘You dog donkey! Behold my Magnetic Field Rotation…”
“Miss Aoxi, you’re here.”
Just as Aoxi was getting into the story, a voice came from afar—it was someone she didn’t recognize.
“Uh… who are you?”
“Ah? I’m Dante, Teacher Wright’s assistant.”
Seeing Aoxi’s blank look, Dante continued to remind her:
“Last time you accidentally set the island’s backup ammunition depot on fire and Miss La made you copy the fire and electricity safety rules, I was the one next to you…”
“Cough, cough!”
“It’s, it’s you! I suddenly remembered!”
Amid the suspicious gazes of the Fish-Man subordinates beside her, Aoxi quickly interrupted him from continuing.
“Spit it out, what do you want? Dan, Dan… Egg Tart?”
“It’s Dante.”
Dante corrected speechlessly, then got to the point.
“Miss Obei is looking for you, saying there’s an experiment that needs your cooperation and assistance.”
“Eh~ Experiment? Sounds boring, I have important business right now…”
Aoxi lost interest the moment she heard it was Miss Obei’s experiment and started brushing it off.
She had cooperated during this time, but every time it was either being a power bank or helping Miss Obei rub some strange metal ingots—utterly boring anyway.
“This time it’s a weapon experiment with super cool special effects.”
Dante recited the ‘anti-Aoxi spell’ that Miss Obei taught him.
Snap!
“Let’s go!”
Aoxi unhesitatingly stepped out of the children’s encirclement and strode toward the Beasts Heavy Industry lab building.
“Eh?! Sister Aoxi, you haven’t finished the story!”
Arlong watched as Aoxi appeared several meters away in the blink of an eye and reached out to shout.
“I’ll continue when I get back.”
“How can you do this~”
“Haha! Sorry, I’ll bring back some fun ‘toys’ for you guys later.”
“Really?!”
Aoxi didn’t answer, just waved her hand and left dashingly.
……
Ten minutes later, after deliberately taking a detour to kick away the sign at the weapon storage entrance that read 『Divine Attribute, Ten-Star, Egyptian God Beast Clan, Name Contains 【Osiris】 Field, Little Girl Not Allowed Inside』, Aoxi arrived at the door of Lab 001 with hands in pockets.
“Oi~ Obei, I’m here.”
“What’s this weapon with the super badass special effects you mentioned? Take it out for me to appraise.”
“Hm?”
In the lab, Miss Obei, who was discussing special liquid metal R&D progress with other weapon experts, heard the call at the door, waved to end the meeting first, then went out alone to bring Aoxi in.
……
“Wow~ I haven’t been here in half a year, and it’s completely changed.”
“Feels like it turned from a dirt workshop into a S.H.I.E.L.D. secret base instantly.”
Looking at the series of gates before her, with the complicated verification needed for each door passed, Aoxi kept marveling like an alien hick visiting Earth for the first time.
“Just roughly concentrating the technologies originally scattered among researchers in various places; this level isn’t worth being surprised about.”
This world’s technological development is distorted—Miss Obei had known this since she saw the aurora launcher and flintlock gun on the same lab bench from Sain back then.
The cutting-edge technology is almost all in the hands of geniuses scattered in corners of the sea.
These geniuses, ahead of the world by years, decades, or even centuries, easily produced artifacts in their small labs with magic-like techniques that even Miss Obei found unbelievable.
But any research needs funding; as the saying goes, one coin stumps a hero, let alone instruments costing tens of millions or even billions of Belly?
No matter how genius a scientist is, they can’t handcraft everything, right?
Even someone as strong as Vegapunk now has to submit to the King of Usury Du Field’s MADS due to funding issues, doesn’t he?
Now the Beasts Pirates have the wealth to support a professional research team. Though the recruited talents may lag several levels behind MADS’s few, they surpass them in numbers.
After all, Sister La always gives the green light to funding for this area.
And these people are more than enough to meet the Beasts Pirates’ current needs.
……
After passing through five layers of thick security doors, Miss Obei led Aoxi to a quite spacious lab.
“This is a dedicated reinforced lab for high-instability weapon experiments.”
Aoxi nodded at the thick steel plate walls around and the dense objects on the ceiling that looked like sprinkler devices.
But then shook her head.
“High-instability weapon… why did you bring me here?”
“Wasn’t it supposed to be to see cool special effects weapons?”
Looking at this huge space with only an experiment table in the center and everything else empty, Aoxi had a bad premonition.
“I lied to you.”
Clank!
The last ridiculously thick security door locked shut, leaving only Miss Obei and Aoxi’s voices in the vast area.
“Ha?”
Aoxi instinctively stepped back but found her arm grabbed—by Miss Obei.
“W-what are you grabbing me for?”
Aoxi shook her hand, trying to break free, but found her wrist clamped like by a hydraulic clamp.
“I need you to assist me with the experiment.”
While dragging Aoxi to the central table, Miss Obei rattled on:
“Since the last Heavenly Fire Holy Judgment R&D failure, I’ve been searching for materials that can bear our power, but after searching, I found that all ordinary metals, special metals, non-metals on the market, and even World Government-controlled metals only available on the black market—none meet my minimum standards.”
“Do you know what this means?”
Miss Obei stared at Aoxi intently.
“Uh… O-originally, Obei, you can say so much at once? Really rare~”
“……”
“Anyway, currently besides the golden metal Big Sister provided, other materials can’t even make a slightly more durable shell.”
“T-then just use all of Sister La’s materials, right?”
Aoxi echoed while continuing to struggle, but helplessly, Miss Obei’s strength was ‘a bit’ greater than she imagined.
Now she was like a trainer being dragged by a racehorse girl.
“Of course not; how can a qualified weapon use only one type of material? Even the most ordinary knife or sword needs differential quenching for parts, right?”
“Big Sister’s golden metal has properties and structure that are too stable; its best use is to make a hammer directly and smash people—won’t wear no matter how you hit, won’t deform.”
“But if used in somewhat complex structured weapons, it can only be the skeleton or firing pin, otherwise it’s just a more exquisite hammer.”
“So now I need a more ‘malleable’, more ‘versatile’ material.”
Finishing another long spiel in one breath, Miss Obei finally dragged Aoxi to the experiment table.
She reached out and lifted the dust cloth covering the table, and pale golden light immediately shone on their faces.
“T-this is?”
“This is the standard experimental sample I asked Big Sister to make.”
Looking at the row of identical regular hexagons on the table, each with 1 cm edge length ‘gold’, Miss Obei said:
“I asked Big Sister; she said this metal is divine power directly compressed into solid, but I tried it and it completely doesn’t work.”
Miss Obei reached out; pure dark blue divine power compressed continuously in her palm… the energy’s color deepened with density, but it always stayed in a virtual-real superposition state and couldn’t solidify.
“Maybe my control over divine power is insufficient, or my divine power nature is like this; anyway, I can’t make my ‘gold’.”
Saying so, Miss Obei looked at Aoxi; as expected, after her demonstration, Aoxi began trying to compress her own divine power.
A basketball-sized mass of scarlet divine power compressed in Aoxi’s hand, compressed again, until her arm started trembling…
Finally, when that mass of divine power compressed to ping pong ball size, its state fully shifted from virtual-real superposition to a solid-like smoke.
“Tch~ Can’t anymore, this is the limit!”
Like gripping a wrist power ball spun to its limit, her arm’s trembling intensified… finally at some point, Aoxi’s tensed body relaxed, and the energy mass compressed to ping pong ball size instantly re-expanded!
Fortunately, at the critical moment, Aoxi threw that fireworks-like expanding bursting energy far away.
……
“As expected, it’s not the energy nature; it’s just that our current control over energy is too weak.”
Ignoring the several-meter diameter hole blasted in the refined steel wall behind, Miss Obei took out a small booklet from her pocket and began summarizing the experiment.
For now, making their own “divine power metal” in the short term seems unrealistic.
She herself couldn’t even compress energy to solid state; Aoxi was better but could only reach gas state, and not for long.
But that’s not a problem; according to Sister La, when divine power compresses to metal-like density, it can self-stabilize without needing personal maintenance.
“Alright, since the first method won’t work, let’s try the second now.”
Looking at Aoxi massaging her wrist, Miss Obei picked up a hexagon marked “1” from the table and said calmly:
“Since our current level can’t independently complete a whole piece, let’s work hard to modify existing products.”
“But be careful; even the density you just had uncontrolled caused that much commotion— if this one in my hand loses control too…”
After all, the so-called ‘stable’ nature is ultimately determined by its underlying structure, and what Miss Obei planned to do was precisely modify that underlying structure—like cutting the fuse of a timed bomb for fun.
“Um, I suddenly remember our home’s gas might be left on. I won’t disturb, I’m leaving ha~”
“You can’t leave.”
