"Laugh--"
The heavy, airtight steel door slid open slowly to both sides.
A rush of cold air erupted from inside, carrying with it a strong, pungent smell of formaldehyde.
The air conditioning was mixed with a sour, rotten smell of fermented raw meat, which hit my nostrils directly.
Shu Shiraishi stepped into the quarantine zone.
The military boots clattered heavily on the white, sterile floor tiles.
He flicked the ash off his cigarette, which was held between his fingers.
The ashes fell onto the clean floor, scattering into small black spots.
"The sky is under control."
Shu Shiraishi stared at the figure inside the door.
"How's the progress on the ground, Hiruko?"
A man wearing an oversized white lab coat suddenly turned around.
His hair was a tangled mess, like a clump of dry straw. The strands were greasy and knotted.
His face was as pale as paper, and he had two dark circles under his eyes.
Hiruko.
He was gripping a metal recorder tightly in his hand.
Upon hearing Shu Shiraishi's voice, his shoulders trembled violently, and his fingers lost their grip.
"Clatter."
The recorder's tablet hit the tiles and slid half a meter away.
He didn't pick it up.
"H... Lord Hokage!"
Hiruko. His rubber-soled shoes slipped on the wet paving stones.
He quickly regained his balance. His Adam's apple bobbed violently.
"The funds you provided. The live specimens you approved."
He turned around and pointed with both hands to the vast space behind him.
"Everything was used! Chimera's experiment was a success!"
Shu Shiraishi walked in the direction he pointed.
In the center of the laboratory stand three cylindrical explosion-proof glass culture tanks.
It's three stories high, reaching all the way to a ten-meter-high ceiling.
The jar was filled with a murky green nutrient solution.
Oxygen was continuously pumped into the thick metal pipe at the bottom, bubbling and gurgling with large and small bubbles.
Inside each jar, a huge dark shadow floated.
Shu Shiraishi stopped in front of the number two tank in the very center and looked up.
A monster.
Its torso is that of a brown bear skeleton, and it's even more robust than the fattest member of the Akimichi Clan.
His entire body was covered with bulging, bluish-black muscles.
A pair of five-meter-long, grayish-brown eagle wings were sewn onto its back. The fleshy growths at the Root of the wings were wriggling slightly in the nutrient solution, connected to large blood vessels.
There is not a single hair on its body.
Instead, it was covered with a dense layer of palm-sized blue snake scales.
"Bio-synthetic beast."
Hiruko to the side and behind Shu Shiraishi.
He clasped his hands together, his thumbs digging tightly into the knuckles of his index fingers, which turned white.
"I used the Chimera Technique to sew together the giant bear's muscle fibers, the Ninja Hawk's flight organs, and the giant snake's defensive scales."
Hiruko's throat was dry. He swallowed and continued his report.
"Ordinary sutures won't last more than a few days before rejection and collapse."
"So I drained the bone marrow from all thirty Kumogakure prisoners of war I captured. I extracted their Lightning Release nerve cells and made them into a neutralizing agent."
He pointed to a pulsating piece of flesh on the monster's chest.
"Perfect integration. No rejection reaction."
Shu Shiraishi took a drag of his cigarette. " Chakra consumption?"
"No Chakra needed!"
Hiruko's voice suddenly rose, his tone snapping.
He excitedly took a step forward, gesturing wildly with his hands in mid-air.
"They don't have Chakra channels at all! They rely solely on Lightning Release nerve stimulation to unleash their physical bursts!"
"We just conducted an out-of-body test in Cave Five yesterday. This monster's muscle density is so high that one claw could shatter a three-inch-thick steel armor plate."
"His speed is half again as fast as a regular Lightning Release Jonin. He can fly in the air and run on the ground."
Shu Shiraishi stared at the sleeping monster inside the jar.
There are no Chakra pathways.
This means that the Byakugan, Sharingan, or traditional Sensory Ninjutsu are all blind in front of it.
The mental radar can't detect it.
Once this thing is put into the battlefield, it becomes a tireless, purely physical meat grinder.
"How many can you make?" Shu Shiraishi flicked off a bit of cigarette ash.
The sparks flickered in the air.
Hiruko's chest heaved violently, his breathing rapid like a bellows.
"As long as there's a sufficient supply of high-grade nutrient solution and biological materials, a single production line can produce 500 head per month!"
He stared intently at the green jar, his eyes bloodshot.
"This is the most perfect biological weapon. No training required, and it's fearless. Its cost is less than one-tenth of Lord Orochimaru's mecha."
Shu Shiraishi turned his head and looked at him.
Hiruko has always been a laughingstock in Konoha.
A ninja of the same generation as Orochimaru, Jiraiya, and Tsunade. His talent was shockingly mediocre.
Others kill enemies and make a name for themselves on the battlefield.
He could only hide in the dark basement, tinkering with those pieces of meat that were considered taboo.
During Hiruzen Sarutobi's reign, his laboratory was raided three times. He was almost imprisoned in the Anbu prison on charges of "researching forbidden evil arts."
Now.
This bottom-ranked player created a Kage Level army that didn't need Chakra.
"Well done."
Shu Shiraishi spoke calmly, tossing the half-smoked cigarette butt on the ground.
He stepped on it with his military boots and crushed it with force.
It left behind a pool of black ash.
" Konoha doesn't need those self-proclaimed geniuses of noble blood."
Shu Shiraishi looked at Hiruko's face, which was contorted with excitement.
"As long as I can build killing machines that can help me sweep through the Shinobi World, even mediocre trash is more valuable than the Senju Clan."
He held up three fingers.
"I'll triple your funding. Provide as much material as you need."
"Next month, I want to see one thousand finished products shipped out of the warehouse."
Hiruko was stunned.
It was like a thunderclap in his mind, making his ears ring.
Three times the funding. One thousand heads.
He had never heard such a prompt reply in his life.
There was no bickering among senior advisors. There was no moral blackmail from the Will of Fire. There were no hypocritical accusations.
Only a pure recognition of power.
"Thump."
Hiruko's knees buckled, and he knelt straight down on the cold, sterile ceramic tiles.
The knee slammed down with a dull thud.
He pressed his hands firmly against the cold, wet ground.
His head slammed heavily against the front of Shu Shiraishi's black military boots.
He slammed his forehead into the floor tile, leaving a large red mark.
"Thank you, Lord Hokage!"
Hiruko's voice was clearly choked with sobs, and his shoulders heaved violently.
He buried his head between his arms, his forehead pressed tightly against the tiles.
Tears mixed with snot streamed down his face, smearing his mouth.
"Those people before... they all called me trash. They said my Chimera was a pervert, a heretic."
He dug his fingers into the grout lines of the tiles, his nails scraping and making a harsh, screeching sound.
"They cut my funding, smashed my canisters, and told me to get out of the Hokage Building."
"Only you... only you give me money. You give me living people to experiment on."
Hiruko suddenly raised his head.
Snot hung from his chin. His eyes were filled with hysterical fanaticism.
"My life, now Hiruko, belongs to you!"
"Whoever you tell me to sew, I'll sew! Tell me to sew the people from the four great ninja villages into pigs, and I'll put pig tails on them!"
He wished he could rip his heart out and smash it on the ground to hear the sound.
Under this tyrant, he finally washed away decades of humiliation and found his purpose in life.
Shu Shiraishi didn't help him up.
He simply stood there, letting him weep bitterly on the ground.
The more insane your subordinates are, the faster this war machine spins.
He turned around and faced the huge culture tanks again.
"Laugh--"
The vent valve at the bottom of tank number two made a sound, and a large amount of nutrient solution suddenly churned.
The chimera inside the jar moved.
The enormous, bear-like head slowly rose, causing the bluish-black scales on its neck to rub against each other.
The two thick eyelids flipped upwards.
A pair of fist-sized, Red Eye lit up in the green nutrient solution.
No pupil. No focus.
Only murky blood vessels intertwined, revealing a pure, undisguised bloodlust.
It stared intently at Shu Shiraishi outside, separated by ten centimeters of thick explosion-proof glass.
Its powerful forelimbs suddenly rose up.
Sharp eagle claws extended and gripped the glass tightly.
"Crunch--"
A screeching sound pierced through the glass.
A light-colored scratch was left on the hard, explosion-proof glass.
The water in the jar was violently agitated, and the bubbles were shattered.
Shu Shiraishi stared into those irrational, Red Eye.
His brow furrowed slightly.
"Its destructive power is certainly sufficient."
Shu Shiraishi spoke, his voice drowning out the sound of water flowing from the jar.
"But these beasts have no brains."
He kicked the metal recorder on the ground.
The recorder slid into the corner and hit the baseboard.
"It's easy to let go, but how do you take it back?"
Synthetic beasts lack Chakra pathways and cannot distinguish between friend and foe.
If they go berserk on the battlefield, they will tear their own people from Konoha to pieces.
Since even Chakra receivers cannot be installed, conventional Genjutsu control becomes meaningless.
"Once deployed to the battlefield."
Shu Shiraishi turned his head to look at Hiruko on the ground.
How to achieve precise remote command?
Hiruko knelt on the ground and hastily wiped his face with the sleeve of his white coat.
He opened his mouth, about to explain the operating procedure.
Hiss.
A few hoarse chuckles suddenly came from the shadows of the spare equipment in the corner of the laboratory.
Orochimaru was wearing a spotless white coat.
I slowly walked from the darkness into the stark white light of the high-pressure sodium lamp.
His narrow, yellowish eyes stared at the monster in the jar. His long tongue darted out, licking his pale, chapped lips.
" Lord Shu."
Orochimaru stood with his hands in the pockets of his white coat, his voice brimming with barely concealed excitement.
"Command and communications issues."
He stopped and turned to look at Shu Shiraishi.
" Dan Katō's experiment over there..."
Orochimaru grinned.
"A breakthrough has been achieved."