Chapter 127: Inside the Laboratory

After leading everyone inside the experimental facility along a conspicuous visitor corridor, the receptionist took his leave.

Standing before the imposing steel-and-glass doors to replace him was the president of Guhai Pharmaceuticals.

He was a round, stocky man with an explosive afro.

He was also the man who had once traveled to Ganryu Island alongside Takeshi Wakatsuki during the Kengan Annihilation Tournament.

As the president of Guhai Pharmaceuticals, he alone was qualified to serve as a guide for the world’s most powerful and influential figures.

“Everyone, please come in.”

Unlike the genial image he had presented on Ganryu Island, Guhai, now engaged in business, possessed a stern air of medical professionalism.

Beep—

A magnetic card passed over the access panel. Guhai extended a hand, inviting everyone inside.

“Normally, we would provide every guest with a temporary identification card. However, given the current situation in Tokyo, which is far from reassuring, I hope you will understand.”

“Not at all.”

“Please, there’s no need to apologize.”

Everyone responded with the appropriate polite courtesies.

But those pleasantries would last only this moment.

As the access lock released, the great steel doors slid apart.

An inexplicable shudder swept through all the visitors, like the chill of winter seeping through a crack in a door.

The polite smiles that had still lingered on their faces froze in an instant.

Their twitching facial muscles made the whole group look like a grotesque caricature.

Guhai seemed to have anticipated this reaction.

He stood silently at the entrance for half a minute. Only after their complexions had gradually recovered did he extend his hand and usher them inside.

Even then, the eyes of these upper-class figures, who had weathered countless storms in the ordinary world, still flickered with unease and suspicion.

Beyond the entrance lay a long, dazzlingly white corridor.

Several windows of one-way glass opened along either side.

Pharmaceutical companies seemed particularly fond of this color scheme, using it to evoke an impression of cleanliness and sterility.

Following Guhai, the group first arrived at the initial observation window.

The moment they stepped inside, many of their faces stiffened with discomfort and nausea, yet they forced themselves to keep watching.

The representatives from the pharmaceutical and arms companies, however, remained mostly unfazed.

Baitang Jing began to form a vague suspicion.

When he reached the window, the scene inside confirmed it.

Beyond the glass was a room resembling an operating theater. Beneath the surgical lamps, several figures in sterile chemical-protection suits stood around a certain “thing,” their expressions impossible to discern as they cut and dissected it with scalpels.

Every so often, they made notes.

Precise, rational… and utterly devoid of compassion.

The “thing” broadly resembled a derivative of Godzilla.

Standing nearly three meters tall, it was slightly shorter than the original derivative. Jagged spikes covered its entire body, while its elongated limbs ended in razor-sharp edges. Even its long tail, limp against the floor, looked savage and terrifying.

The most obvious difference was that these creatures were not mere skeletons.

Muscle had been forcibly stretched across their frames, clinging tightly to the bones. It was sparse, but it was there.

“Is that… human?” Baitang Jing murmured.

At that moment, the people in the room turned the thing’s limp head to one side, bringing its face toward the observation window.

It was unmistakably a distorted human face.

Despair and agony seemed ready to burst from features warped by the bones beneath them.

It was difficult to imagine how much torment the man had endured.

The cause of his death was visible on one side of his forehead.

There was a hole about the thickness of an index finger.

“President Guhai… what is this?”

A politician frequently seen on television questioned Guhai with a grim expression.

He was not afraid of human experimentation. As far as he knew, a project of this nature could not possibly be conducted without it.

But did they have to let him see it?

With a corpse displayed right in front of him, how was he supposed to remain in politics if this were ever exposed?

“Please rest assured. Every subject selected for this experiment was a condemned criminal. Furthermore, under the Supplementary Provisions of the Security Treaty, which will be enacted a week from now, this will be legally defined as permissible conduct.”

Guhai’s answer was flawless.

At the very least, the politician’s expression immediately relaxed.

“This is the preliminary result of fusing Godzilla cells with the human body. As for the mutated Godzilla cells, because of their immense instability and danger, all existing samples held by various nations have been sealed and will not be used.”

Guhai lightly tapped the glass. Vast quantities of data streamed down the one-way window like water.

At last, they assembled themselves into a report resembling a medical diagnosis.

“Ichiro Horino. Weight… height… The difference before and after fusion is that great?”

A representative of a pharmaceutical conglomerate stroked his chin and exclaimed in surprise.

“Indeed. Most importantly, the weight of the food provided before and after the fusion remained constant throughout.”

Guhai offered the explanation calmly.

“Incredible… This completely violates the conservation of mass! And after the fusion, every illness recorded in the subject’s medical history disappeared. His projected lifespan reached one hundred and fifty years… Remarkable.”

The pharmaceutical representative clicked his tongue in admiration.

But nearby, a white man loudly rejected the claim.

“Impossible! Absolutely impossible!”

He pointed at the final line of the electronic report displayed on the glass: Cause of death—direct cranial impact from an anti-materiel weapon at a range of one hundred meters.

“Come now, Mr. Guhai. You’re joking, aren’t you? An XM-109 armor-piercing sniper rifle…”

He appeared to be a representative of an arms company. With a tap, he opened an image of the weapon in the report.

“This is a weapon capable of piercing light armor at long range! Fired into that thing’s flesh, it left nothing more than a finger-width hole?”

His expression was mocking and derisive, as though he had just heard the most absurd joke in the world.

“The entire upper half of its body should have turned into a cloud of blood.”

Yet Guhai’s expression remained impassive.

“A semiautomatic twenty-five-millimeter rifle with a seventeen-point-six-inch barrel and an overall length of forty-six inches. Yes, sir. If that is the weapon you mean, then you are correct. It was fired from within one hundred meters, and it was that weapon which opened a hole the width of a finger in the target’s skull.”

“I must say, sir,” Guhai added at the end, “your company’s firearms are indeed remarkably powerful.”

The sincerity in his tone made the white man look as though he had seen a ghost.

Was this man truly not joking?

Guhai led them to another observation window.

The scene beyond it dispelled every remaining doubt among the advocates of conventional firearms.

“Whoa!”

Unrestrained cries of astonishment escaped from the visitors.

Inside the glass, a living monster was locked within an iron cage. Its appearance differed little from the corpse they had just seen.

The people who reached this point immediately understood the source of the inexplicable shudder they had felt before entering the facility.

Its eyes seemed to have lost every trace of reason. As its body moved, its vicious spikes crossed and scraped against one another.

Its long, horrifying tail swayed back and forth. Whenever it dragged across the cage, the sharp keratinous ridges along it produced a succession of metallic clanging noises.

The monster inside the room should not have been able to see the people beyond the one-way glass.

And yet, whenever its gaze happened to sweep across them, they trembled involuntarily.

It was as though that gaze were itself a razor-sharp limb, laid against their throats the instant their eyes met.

The creature was clearly the one confined inside the cage, yet the sensation of a life-or-death struggle about to erupt still drove many of the visitors to stagger backward in fear.

“Weapons testing begins now.”

Guhai did not try to reassure them. He merely spoke those words toward the window.

Then, rows of weapons currently in service across various nations appeared inside the room.