Chapter 133: The Suppression of Presence (Please Subscribe)

Kure Raian, returned to his human form and stark naked, was dragged out of the cubicle by one wrist by Wakatsuki Takeshi like a dead dog.

The physical drain of his first transformation, combined with Wakatsuki’s heavy blows, had left him completely exhausted.

Yet even in such a wretched state, a ferocious, exhilarated smile still hung from the corners of his mouth as he stared fixedly at the blue-gray skin covering his wrist.

“Ha! Hahaha! This power... it’s incredible!”

The harsh, grating noise made Wakatsuki, whose temper was already running wild, look even more grim.

But perhaps because he truly stood at the forefront of power development, his clenched, hate-filled expression did not translate into any roughness in his movements.

He tossed Kure Raian a loose white coat and settled him into a chair.

Meanwhile, Bai Tangjing and Kureha Shinogi entered the battered cubicle once more.

“It’s a shame that fellow destroyed the operating table. But I think...”

A seductive smile curved across Kureha Shinogi’s face, while the knife in his hand moved without the slightest hesitation, driving straight toward Bai Tangjing’s chest.

“With a spirit like yours, you couldn’t possibly be inferior to that Kure Raian, could you?”

“Don’t worry, Doctor.”

Bai Tangjing’s expression remained calm. To allow the fragile surgical blade to penetrate his flesh, he had deliberately softened his body with inner force.

“The pain of having a mere patch of skin removed hardly warrants an operating table or restraints.”

Perhaps he was trying to convince himself that the scene in which the boy had just intimidated him had been nothing more than an illusion.

Staring into Bai Tangjing’s eyes, Kureha Shinogi deliberately used slow, measured movements to cut away a piece of skin from his chest.

He hoped the pain would make the man tremble—even if it was only a flicker in his gaze.

That would put him at ease. It would prove that the young man before him was nothing more than a human being.

...But he was disappointed.

Even after he had pressed a piece of Godzilla skin against the other man’s chest with a sharp ripping sound, those deep black pupils remained as calm as a lake as they met his gaze.

Kureha Shinogi had handled more than a thousand bodies, both living and dead. Yet beneath the stare of those eyes, he inexplicably felt a chill spreading through his heart.

As though he wished to escape, Kureha Shinogi left the cubicle and shut the door far more quickly than he had when operating on Kure Raian.

“Psssh—”

The door sealed with the hiss of the pressure valve.

Wakatsuki Takeshi once again prepared himself to rush inside and forcibly suppress the situation, taking up position before the door.

And the super-doctor with pale-red hair, who had worn a carefree, irreverent expression ever since first appearing before the public, now watched the man seated on the ruined operating table through the observation window with an unprecedentedly grave look.

He watched Bai Tangjing calmly and thoughtfully stroke the blue-black transplanted skin on his chest.

On his tall, powerfully built body, the muscles rose and fell with each breath like sharply defined mountain ranges.

It was an overwhelming sense of power.

“Doctor...” Wakatsuki, who had been standing there for some time, asked with a frown. “Isn’t the fusion taking a little too long?”

Normally, within thirty seconds of Godzilla cells coming into contact with the human body, the pain originating from those cells would begin.

The body would start twitching and contorting involuntarily.

Within two minutes at most, the first signs of transformation should appear.

The bones deforming beneath the skin. The skin changing color...

Yet five minutes had already passed since Bai Tangjing received the transplant.

He had not changed in the slightest.

Kureha Shinogi’s face was practically pressed against the glass.

The delight blazing in his narrow, phoenix-shaped eyes was almost like a flame about to burst forth.

“Quickly! Wakatsuki, get in there and bring him out!”

The door opened once more with the sound of the pressure valve, and Wakatsuki Takeshi entered as well.

“Gulp—”

The moment his foot touched the floor, Wakatsuki reflexively swallowed. Every hair on his body rose of its own accord.

It was completely different from the ease he had felt when facing Kure Raian earlier, that man in the midst of his first transformation.

This was the sensation of danger one might feel with a thousand red-hot blades pressed against every inch of one’s body.

“Blades?” Wakatsuki thought absurdly.

What kind of blade could cut through his skin in its current state?

It was Bai Tangjing’s presence.

Relying solely on something as intangible as this, he had forced Wakatsuki’s body directly into a state of combat readiness.

You’re still terrifying, Bai.

At the same time as that sense of danger came the savage bestiality contained within the Godzilla cells.

Wakatsuki twisted his face, forcibly suppressing the desire to fight, the urge to tear everything apart.

He was a man with the “qualifications.”

He kept that firmly in mind, using it to encourage himself to remain rational.

The blond, muscular giant cautiously approached Bai Tangjing, who sat upon the ruined operating table.

“Bai? Are you all right?”

Perhaps even Wakatsuki himself did not realize that his voice now carried the hoarse growl of a roaring tiger.

One of his arms had unconsciously transformed into that of a beast, his fist clenching with a creaking grind.

“Shing—”

With a sudden crack through the air, the figure seated on the operating table vanished like smoke.

Wakatsuki’s pupils, already beginning to take on a beast’s shape, contracted sharply. Acting on instinct, he tightened his fist and hammered it behind him.

Even with such hurried force, his transformed body produced the thunderous boom of a sonic blast.

Small fragments scattered across the floor whirled through the surging air like foam caught in a vortex.

Behind the observation window, Kureha Shinogi’s eyes widened involuntarily in astonishment.

Even the enormous father and son who had entered the room behind him had failed to notice.

“Boom!”

Inside the isolation chamber, after a deafening impact, a human palm caught the beast’s fist and stopped it inches before a smiling face.

“I feel pretty good. You, on the other hand, Wakatsuki...”

Bai Tangjing looked down at him from above, the strength in his hand making Wakatsuki’s fist tremble with a harsh creak.

“After warming up with Kure Raian, you don’t seem to be in very good shape.”

The bones of the fist and the spines protruding from the skin gave off a dreadful, grinding squeal within a single human palm.

With the strength of one hand alone, Bai Tangjing forced Wakatsuki down another half a head.

“As payment for bringing me here, let’s conduct an experiment, Wakatsuki.”

The more thoroughly he was suppressed by that overwhelming strength, the wilder and more uncontrollable Wakatsuki’s battle spirit became.

Bai Tangjing smiled and leaned close to Wakatsuki’s twisted face. His low, steady voice sounded almost like idle conversation between old friends.

“I’ve always felt that people who can suppress the bestiality of the Godzilla cells and make it their own should possess more presence than this.”

“Don’t you agree?”

As he spoke—

“Thud!”

The boy’s kick slammed into Wakatsuki’s chest.

The tremendous force sent his half-transformed body flying into the wall at the other end of the room.

The metal wall that had suffered nothing more than a few scratches when Kure Raian had first transformed and gone berserk was now stamped with the unmistakable impression of a human body.

The impact seemed to shake the foundation of the entire building. Even the room beyond the isolation chamber lurched violently from side to side.

Kureha Shinogi, pressed against the observation window, lost his balance in shock and crashed into the broad, heavily muscled chest behind him.

When he looked up, he saw the wounds on Doppo Orochi’s face—the result of his brawl with his son—healing at a speed visible to the naked eye.

On that fierce, brutally ridged face, an excited, savage grin spread as he watched the battle through the observation window.

“The newly strengthened boy can already perceive this level?”

“This is... damn, this is interesting!”