Chapter 115 — The Aragami

"Test Subject No. 139. Beginning experimental record."

Orochimaru's cold, fragmented-gold serpent eyes fixed upon the Eastern man on the operating table.

He was a portly merchant, and a clever one at that—after Orochimaru's men had marked him, the fellow had actually slipped away several times.

Unfortunately, cleverness, however petty, is no match for true intelligence.

Against an absolute gap in power, a few sly tricks mean nothing at all.

The man had clung to a fool's hope, remaining in the Eastern Land, hiding in a rural village on the outskirts of Tokyo, believing he might escape his fate.

He was wrong.

"This man's gene-fragment sequence is the key to completing the [Eastern Genetic Atlas]."

Orochimaru's hollow, chilling voice sounded beside the merchant's ear, as though he were murmuring to himself.

"Implanting Oracle Cells xd138."

The cold, sharp tip of the hollow-core needle pierced into the Eastern man's body, and the viscous black substance was slowly injected into him as the plunger was pushed.

"Mmph!"

The hapless Eastern merchant let out a whimper like a beaten dog.

He wanted to scream, to cry out for help.

But before the experiment had even begun, he had been injected with a suitable dose of chlorpromazine.

Now his muscles were limp and slack, his tongue dead to all feeling, and he could produce only faint, meaningless moans.

Chlorpromazine was nothing but an ordinary anesthetic—yet under the peculiar rules of the Marvel Universe, the effect it could exert far surpassed that in other planes.

In the original timeline, even Logan the Wolverine, possessed of superhuman regenerative abilities, had more than once been brought low by this plain, clinically commonplace anesthetic.

An ordinary test subject with no special abilities whatsoever could hardly be expected to defy it.

As the Oracle Cells, which had undergone over a hundred transformations, were injected, the balding merchant felt pain in every part of his body!

Muscles, bones, nerves—every cell wailed beneath a burden it could not bear!

Both his eyes turned a blood-red hue, and his expression grew numb and insensate.

Beneath his scalp came a crawling, tingling ache, as though something inside him were writhing.

His former Mediterranean-style balding pattern began to change rapidly.

Thick new hair covered his pate, the crow's feet at the corners of his eyes swiftly vanished, and even his double chin retracted apace.

Fat—that substance of stored energy—was consumed at a furious rate, expended to remodel his body.

In the span of a few breaths, the formerly portly middle-aged man had become a burly figure of knotted muscle.

In outward appearance, he looked like a youth barely into his twenties.

Had the experiment ended there, the dose of reagent called Oracle Cells xd138 would have amounted to nothing more than a miracle-working serum that creates superhumans.

Unfortunately, Orochimaru had not fitted the man with an Oracle Cell control bracelet, and so he could not become a God-Eater like Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes the Winter Soldier, or Logan the Wolverine.

He had become an Aragami—a beast utterly stripped of reason!

A black horny layer spread from the pores of his skin, his once fragile nails turned into sharp talons, and hideous blue-violet scales surfaced across his face.

His skull and spine stretched long, a tail bristling with barbs grew out, and a pair of gray, fleshy wings burst forth from his back.

He...

No, it should now be called "it"...

It had become a true Aragami!

It was bound to the operating table by restraint straps, yet its blood-red eyes glared fixedly at Orochimaru.

No hatred, no rage—only the most primal predator's hunger!

Drip. Drip. Drip...

Viscous drool ran from the corner of its mouth.

"Region-specific Aragami cell research... a success!"

Orochimaru was not frightened by malice of that degree.

Excitement surfaced on his face, and a fanatical light flickered in his golden, serpentine, slit-pupiled eyes.

The so-called Aragami are beings that live by preying upon all other life.

High-ranking Aragami can devour and assimilate even metal and plastic.

Across the endless planes they are as infamous as the Zerg, the sworn enemies of all sentient life.

Once their existence is discovered, even races locked in mutual hatred and open war will immediately set aside their differences and feuds, joining forces to exterminate them before they will rest.

It is not that they are willing to do so—it is because...

Every world that failed to do so was utterly destroyed by the Aragami!

"ROAR!"

The small Aragami, less than ten minutes old, was many times stronger than an ordinary human in every respect; that paltry dose of anesthetic could do little to affect it.

Snap! Snap! Snap...

One restraint strap after another was torn apart by its strength.

Quick-eyed and deft-handed, Orochimaru thrust a tube of clear reagent straight into the small Aragami's mouth.

This was an Oracle Cell suppressant.

The creature instantly lost all vitality, like a corpse lying on the operating table—even its breathing and heartbeat ceased.

Orochimaru knew this was only an illusion.

He unceremoniously tossed the whole Aragami into the "juicer" and pulverized it outright.

Centrifugal decomposition, serum formulation, cell cloning...

After one procedure following another, Orochimaru obtained three hundred units of Oracle Cells xd139.

He applied these cells to the other hundred-odd test subjects from other nations, all prepared well in advance.

Fifteen minutes...

Thirty minutes...

One hour...

A full forty-eight hours passed, and no change whatsoever occurred in the bodies of these test subjects from other lands.

They did not grow stronger, did not grow younger, and likewise did not transform into Aragami.

Orochimaru examined every one of them again without exception, and only after confirming that the Oracle Cells within their bodies had all withered and died did he draw a deep breath.

At last...

Success!

Orochimaru's pale palm covered his bloodless face; the corners of his cyanotic pale-violet lips curled upward, and he laughed hysterically.

"The curtain is about to rise!"

...

Charlton Xavier was a textbook winner in life.

He had, from the moment of his birth, attained what an ordinary person could strive a lifetime for and never reach—his father was a wealthy New York merchant.

In short, he was a rich man's son.

And moreover, he was an unusual rich man's son.

He was a genius whose intellect far surpassed the ordinary!

Charlton graduated from Harvard at sixteen, then studied at Oxford and Columbia for his graduate degrees, pursuing both master's and doctoral work, and successfully obtained multiple doctorates in genetics, biophysics, psychology, and other fields.

One might say he was born to be looked up to.

Charlton was clever.

He deliberately displayed his excellence and talent, yet concealed the most important thing of all—his identity as a mutant!

He was a powerful mutant possessed of mind-manipulation and telepathic abilities!

At this very moment, Cambridge Library.

"Hey! Charlton, are you free tonight? There's a party at the Gunfire Rose. If you show up, you'll definitely get the whole place going."

A girl with wine-red hair leaned in close to Charlton, her tone suggestive, seemingly more than willing to have a one-night stand with him.

Charlton was still a handsome young man with flowing blond hair, by no means the balding old man he would become.

The archetypal tall, rich, and handsome, with no small charm.

Instinctively he meant to refuse, but with the words at his lips, he could not help asking one more question: "Will Ai Chengyu be there?"

"Ai Chengyu? Which Ai Chengyu?"

The girl looked utterly bewildered.

She racked her brains, trying to figure out which little bitch named Ai Chengyu dared to steal her man.