West Blue.
Orute Kingdom.
An underground laboratory.
The pungent smell of disinfectant hung in the air.
Orochimaru stood before the operating table, a fanatical gleam in his slit pupils.
On the operating table.
Eustass Kid was pinned down by steel bars.
The pirate who had once swaggered through the West Blue now looked like a dying stray dog.
His jaw, shattered by a punch from Tsunade, hung limply against his neck.
His mechanical arm was completely wrecked as well.
Only ragged flesh remained at his right shoulder, and half his chest had caved in.
Yet he still hadn't died.
Orochimaru had injected him with a specially formulated cellular vitality serum.
The serum wouldn't heal Kid's injuries. It would only force him to cling to life.
"What a wonderful specimen..."
Orochimaru extended his long tongue and licked his pale lips.
Holding a syringe filled with eerie blue liquid, he plunged it straight into Kid's carotid artery.
Kid's eyes flew wide open.
His bloodshot eyeballs nearly bulged out of their sockets.
He wanted to scream, but all he could produce were airy, rasping gasps.
Agonizing pain tore through his nerve endings like countless steel blades churning wildly.
Orochimaru couldn't have cared less about Kid's suffering.
Under the Empire's laws.
A pirate guilty of so many atrocities should have been hung from the city walls to dry out long ago.
If not for the need to research Conqueror's Haki, Kid wouldn't even have qualified to lie here.
"Your mental fluctuations are quite unusual."
"You haven't awakened the power called Conqueror's Haki, yet some sort of catalyst lies hidden deep within your soul."
Orochimaru's fingers brushed over Kid's forehead.
Chakra flowed from his fingertips, forcing its way into Kid's brain.
Kid's body began convulsing violently beyond his control.
The Magnet-Magnet Fruit ability he took