Looking at Cat Claws Brian before him, he turned toward Ray beside him.
Ray focused, and soon a palm-sized wormhole appeared on Brian's forehead, with Brian's brain visible on the other side.
Noah had already disinfected the scalpel. Without hesitation, he cut into Brian's brain and removed the prefrontal lobe.
"All right, close the wormhole!"
"OK."
When Ray withdrew his power, Brian's forehead returned to normal, with no outward sign of anything amiss. That was the convenience of a Devil Fruit power.
If an ordinary surgeon wanted to perform brain surgery, they would need extensive preparations beforehand and would also face various risks of infection.
But using the Hole-Hole Fruit's power together with Observation Haki bypassed the need to open the skull, minimizing the risks and making the operation easier.
Even though Noah had only performed surgery and related experiments on animals, he could safely remove Brian's prefrontal lobe.
Once the lobotomy was complete, Noah removed the iron barrel used to soak Brian in seawater.
A moment later, the Zoan Devil Fruit hidden within Brian began to revive now that he was out of the seawater. The Zoan's powerful physical recovery allowed his body to heal rapidly, and with an IV drip supplying nutrients, Brian regained consciousness on his own a little over an hour later.
Yet Brian's eyes were vacant when he awoke, and he seemed entirely devoid of wants or desires.
"Brian?"
"Here."
"How do you feel now?"
"I don't know."
Noah asked more than a dozen questions and quickly confirmed Brian's condition.
But to be safe, he called Mary back and asked the questions again while she observed Brian with her senses.
Mary stared at Brian in shock. "Big Brother, what happened to him? Why is he so calm? He's even a little unnaturally calm."
"I performed an operation on him, a lobotomy."
"A lobotomy?"
"This operation has only one effect: it removes emotion."
Mary's eyes widened, and she murmured, unable to bear it, "There's an operation like that? But isn't it too cruel?"
"Mary, the ordinary people who died at Brian's hands are the ones you should feel sorry for. Don't empathize with this scum of the seas. Maybe they went to sea in the first place because they had no other choice, but that's no excuse for their evil deeds. If they dared to strike at the World Government and the Celestial Dragons, I'd admire them as real men. From the moment they attacked the weak and the innocent, they became monsters, no different from the so-called Celestial Dragons."
Mary fell silent. When she thought of the civilians in the Rum Kingdom, her sympathy for Brian vanished. "Big Brother, I understand."
"If we're going to change this world, we have to show the wicked no mercy. They won't spare you because of your sympathy; they'll take advantage of it instead. You shouldn't waste your kindness on this scum of the seas."
"Yes, Big Brother Noah."
Noah continued examining Brian's body and conducting a series of tests.
When the tests were complete, Noah found that Brian had lost his emotions entirely after the removal of his prefrontal lobe. But the side effects were also obvious: Brian could only act on biological instinct, making it difficult for him to carry out Noah's orders to the letter, and his Haki had vanished completely.
Noah had anticipated this.
Emotion was the root of a living being's behavior. Without it, a living being was a walking corpse.
But this was also the result Noah wanted.
He took out a tarot card, and its face was none other than the [Page of Wands] from the Minor Arcana Deck.
"Root of the heart, crystal of illusion."
"Page of Wands, I grant you a body."
He pressed the card against Brian's chest over his heart. In an instant, the golden flame-and-cloud patterns on the card began spreading across Brian's body.
Brian offered no resistance. Before long, the golden patterns covered him completely, turning him into a golden cocoon.
Then the golden cocoon began to recede. He still looked like Brian, but his eyes had come alive.
A moment later, Brian knelt on one knee. "Master! Your loyal servant Brian pays his respects."
"Do you have all of Brian's memories?"
"Yes, Master."
"Can you use Haki?"
"Yes." As soon as he spoke, Brian activated Observation Haki and Armament Haki.
"What about your Fruit power?"
"That too." Brian's body swelled, transforming into a half-beast form. His Fruit was the Cat-Cat Fruit, leopard cat form.
At a thought from Noah, he said, "Return!"
Brian's body turned into a streak of golden light, then condensed into a card. But the image on the card had changed from its previous appearance to Brian's likeness, with a leopard cat curled up behind him.
The name had also changed to [Page of Wands: Brian].
He called the products of this modification "Apostles."
Essentially, he removed a normal person's prefrontal lobe to strip them of emotion entirely, then used a tarot card's Card Spirit as a substitute for the subject's emotions, thereby creating an "Apostle" who obeyed his commands.
Removing the prefrontal lobe was an indispensable step.
The reason was that the Card Spirit was the Card-Card Fruit's instinctive will. When it was divided among the 22 Major Arcana cards and 56 Minor Arcana cards, the instinctive will residing in each became too small to suppress a normal person with normal emotions.
Therefore, a normal person had to lose their emotions before they could serve as raw material for creating an Apostle.
Noah also tested the effect of Conqueror's Haki on Apostles.
The result was that it had little effect, because an Apostle's soul core was a combination of a damaged human soul, a Card Spirit, and a Devil Fruit. In particular, the affinity between the Card Spirit and the Devil Fruit allowed it to draw on part of the Devil Fruit's instinctive will, increasing its resistance to Conqueror's Haki.
Of course, this also had to do with Noah's will.
As the master of the cards, Noah's strength of will and his thoughts affected the strength of his Card Apostles' willpower.
If the master of the cards was timid and fearful, the Card Apostles would be the same.
Conqueror's Haki worked best against people with weak wills.
With the birth of the first Card Apostle, Noah understood how to awaken the Card-Card Fruit.
As long as he created the Apostles corresponding to the 22 Major Arcana cards and 56 Minor Arcana cards, the Card-Card Fruit would naturally awaken.
But creating the corresponding Apostles for every tarot card would be extremely difficult.
That was because not just any raw material could be used for an Apostle. Devil Fruit Users were the best material, and the need to select suitable Devil Fruits made it even harder.
But if Noah could create Apostles for an entire set of tarot cards, his strength would reach unprecedented heights.