In Vegapunk's eyes, this Devil Fruit had flaws, but to Vane it represented high-end combat power.
At first, even Vane himself wanted to eat it. But after thinking carefully about the possible defects, he stopped.
His own room for growth was still huge. There was no need to gamble on a Devil Fruit that might have problems—better to keep it to cultivate others.
Seeing his artificial fruit get "snatched away," Caesar Clown felt anxious but had no way to stop it. Thinking it over, no one should be able to resist the temptation of an artificial Devil Fruit.
And he was the only person besides Vegapunk who could "produce" Devil Fruits. Vane could only rely on him, so in the end that Devil Fruit would still return to his hands.
Thinking this way, Caesar Clown felt much more at ease.
"Alright, alright, I'm very familiar with this place. For example, this room—back when Vegapunk was making artificial Devil Fruits here, a lot of failed products were thrown in here. Smell it, that rotten stench."
Caesar Clown pointed at the room he had just been hiding in, his face full of pride.
Actually, there wasn't much of a rotten smell. After all, it had been sealed for so long. All that remained were many black, indistinct substances.
Suddenly, Vane looked at Caesar Clown and asked, "You're not a Devil Fruit user yet?"
Just now Burgess had dragged him out directly. In the future he would be a Logia Gas-Gas Fruit user—without Haki, Burgess definitely wouldn't have been able to drag him out.
"I haven't eaten that kind of thing yet. I don't care for Zoans."
Vane, who had just obtained a top-tier Devil Fruit, felt that his collection might end up with one more.
The Paramecia Gold-Gold Fruit, a replica of the Mythical Zoan Azure Dragon Fruit… and possibly a Logia Gas-Gas Fruit.
"Burgess, take Meowth and Caesar Clown to move the stuff. I'll clear out this 'storage room.'"
Vane took the initiative to clean this storage room.
The room wasn't small. You could tell it used to be piled with many things. Some black lumps could barely still be recognized as having the shape of fruit.
The Devil Fruit research institute had brought in a huge pile of fruit… It seemed Vegapunk's early idea had also been to try to "graft" Devil Fruits.
But that line of thought was quickly abandoned after the imperfect artificial fruits appeared, and he later developed the much stronger "green blood."
Vane patiently cleaned up this chaotic pile of junk.
He hoped to find a Gas-Gas Fruit that might be hidden among this mess.
Unfortunately, even after he cleaned up the last bit of fruit residue, he still didn't find any trace of a Devil Fruit.
"Guess I was overthinking it. How could I find two top-tier Devil Fruits in a single day?"
Getting a replica of the Azure Dragon Fruit was already extremely lucky. Another Logia on top of that would be downright against the heavens.
But since there was nothing else to do, Vane simply continued searching around the warehouse.
Most of it was useless junk—at least useless to Vane himself.
"What is this?"
Vane found a cabinet… though calling it a cabinet wasn't quite right. It was more like a big coffin.
This scene felt inexplicably familiar. When he was a kid watching Jackie Chan Adventures, there was an episode in an old castle where Jade used a coffin as a coffee table.
Click—
The coffin opened, and inside was, shockingly, a mummy.
"What a huge body… Who would show up in Vegapunk's experimental base?"
This mummy was dried out, with a mask on its face, and its body was four to five meters tall.
"This is… wings?? A Sky Island person? No, Sky Island wings aren't that big."
A flash of insight struck him. Right—
This was a Lunarian, the race of King under Kaido. It was said the Lunarians were the original inhabitants of the Red Line. After the Celestial Dragons moved up there, the Lunarians met with disaster.
They were slaughtered and imprisoned. By King's generation, there was likely only King left.
Even if there were any still alive, they were probably imprisoned on the Red Line.
Vane hadn't encountered a living Lunarian, but he had run into a dead mummy first.
The Lunarians were, in the truest sense, the race closest to "gods."
Giants, Tontattas, Fish-Men, long-armed, long-legged, long-necked—before the Lunarians, they were weak.
Their black wings granted them the ability to fly. When the flames on their backs burned, their bodies had incredibly strong defense, and even if they were injured, they could quickly recover their stamina.
If the flames went out, they would gain tremendous offensive power.
"Compared to the Celestial Dragons, you're more like the descendants of gods."
Vane's hand touched the wings on the mummy's back.
Thump, thump—
In that instant, Vane seemed to hear a heartbeat. The mummy in front of him was obviously lifeless, yet Vane had the feeling that its cells were still alive.
That shouldn't be…
Vane felt his blood speed up.
Thinking of this, he forced a drop of blood from his finger and let it fall onto the mummy's chest.
The blood spread over the mummy's chest like mycelium and quickly disappeared.
The mummy absorbed his blood? No—rather, his blood had entered the mummy.
But the level of his blood wasn't high enough—not up to the level of that guy, the Demon King Muzan.
If Muzan came, he might directly use his own blood to awaken this corpse. Of course, even after awakening it would only be a puppet. Once the soul was gone, no one could solve that.
If you swapped in another brain, you might even be able to make something like a Seraphim—half human thinking, half machine.
...
"Why are you carrying a coffin… wow, there really is a mummy, meow!"
When Meowth and the others ran into Vane again, they saw him carrying a very large coffin over.
Caesar Clown leaned in to take a look and said, "This is a Lunarian corpse, right? I've even seen a living Lunarian before."
He was talking about King.
"Caesar, do you know cloning technology?"
"Cloning? Yeah, I do, but why are you asking?"
In this world, the ones known to be able to do cloning were Vegapunk, without a doubt.
The other two were Buckingham Stussy and Judge, plus a somewhat half-baked Caesar Clown.
Stussy's representative work was her son, the so-called 'Little Whitebeard,' Weevil.
Judge had a clone army, but his best works were the ones carried to term by a mother—Sanji.
Caesar Clown had produced several awkward pseudo–ancient giants. His technology could be said to be quite a failure.
"Then your next focus is to revive him."
Caesar Clown: "What? Boss, you might be misunderstanding something. This is a mummy with no cells and yet somehow still 'alive'!"
"Starting from zero and cultivating a single cell is still much easier than reviving this!"
Should I run? The money on this pirate ship is way too hard to earn… Damn it, my Devil Fruit was even taken away.
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Pls Drop some Power Stones
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