Three days before the World Government officially ordered the Navy to be restrained.
Punk Hazard, deepest part of the underground laboratory.
There was no day or night here.
Only rows of cold white lights illuminating the frigid metal walls, as well as instruments so complex that ordinary people would get dizzy after one glance.
The low hum of machinery echoed continuously through the laboratory, while the nutrient solution circulation devices gave off a faint buzz.
Vegapunk stood before the incubation chamber, unable to speak for a long time.
Behind him, dozens of data screens flickered wildly. Targets that should have taken years to achieve had all reached their endpoint.
No, they had not merely reached it.
They had surpassed it.
"This is impossible..."
Vegapunk's voice had lost its usual steadiness.
"Theoretically, it should need at least another three years."
"Even with a constant flow of funding, Sky Island technology, and the data you provided, it shouldn't have been this fast."
His eyes remained fixed on the screens. Rows of values kept refreshing without showing the slightest sign of instability. That was the most terrifying part.
Everything before him was stable to an almost perfect degree, as though this fruit had known from the very beginning what it was supposed to become.
Vegapunk suddenly looked up at the inside of the incubation chamber. Within the transparent nutrient fluid, the fruit floated silently.
It had the shape of an avocado, plump and solid, slightly larger than an ordinary Devil Fruit.
Its surface was covered in layered azure-gold, scale-like patterns, fine and orderly, their edges glimmering with faint iridescence.
Like sunlight behind clouds, or the cold gleam flashing across the sea before a thunderstorm.
At its stem were a pair of curved black-jade dragon horns. Thunder patterns coiled around their bases, while faint