Roya watched as the black gel-like mass slipped through the turbine fan blades and vanished into the upper levels. He understood there was no point lingering.
Maintaining his threadlike form, he continued upward, tailing the black gel.
The next level was the fuel supply layer—a complex network of pipes constantly delivering liquefied explosive rock into each turbine engine.
The black gel made no pause here, and naturally, neither did Roya.
Moving further upward, he entered what appeared to be an assembly workshop.
Though all machinery and production lines were currently inactive, their sheer scale made it clear—once operational, this workshop's output would be staggering.
And most shocking of all—the products being assembled here were humanoid mechanical bodies.
At the end of the production line, suspended on conveyor belts, hung rows of completed but unshelved finished units.
Roya gave them a curious glance but didn't stop to analyze what powered them or how they were controlled.
Because the black gel had already climbed higher, following the conveyor belt to the next level.
Sure enough, the next layer was a warehouse—filled wall to wall with humanoid mechanical units, arranged in dense rows that filled the entire cavernous space.
By rough estimate, there were at least 100,000 of them.
"As expected of the World Government, which has ruled for over 800 years… its foundations run unimaginably deep."
Roya was stunned as he continued to follow the black gel upward along the conveyor path.
The next level—it was yet another assembly area.
But unlike the production floor below, this one consisted of individual workstations, each isolated from the others.
And on every workstation—
Lay a fully assembled Pacifista.
In that moment, Roya finally grasped the complete manufacturing flow of these humanoid weapons modeled after Bartholomew Kuma.
The humanoid mechanical units made in the lower levels weren't robots as he had assumed—they were metal endoskeletons for the Pacifista!
Delivered directly to this level, the metal skeletons were cut open and implanted, replacing the original bones of the cloned Kuma bodies.
This allowed for the seamless integration of power storage systems and energy weapons, maximizing battlefield performance through brute-force design.
By this logic, the level above must be Vegapunk's cloning lab.
A surge of excitement coursed through Roya as he hastened to keep up with the increasingly fast-moving black gel, following it up yet another level.
And just as he expected, this layer was packed wall to wall with cultivation pods.
Inside each transparent chamber stood a fully-formed Bartholomew Kuma clone, constructed with chilling perfection.
The sight was absolutely overwhelming.
In the brief moment Roya paused to take it all in, the black gel vanished from view.
Now within the very heart of Vegapunk's experiments and production facility, Roya wasn't in any rush.
He traced the conveyor line again—now reaching its terminal point.
Clearly, the entire Pacifista production line ended here.
But Roya's sharp senses caught a new detail.
At the top of each cultivation pod, a thick black tube, roughly the width of a man's arm, extended upward and disappeared into the ceiling above.
They must have connected directly to the floor above.
With a quick leap, Roya clung to one of the pipes and slipped through the almost nonexistent space between it and the ceiling.
What awaited him above—
Was the black gel.
But it had changed—its size had increased by hundreds, even thousands of times.
This one section alone—just one floor of the facility—was dominated by its massive bulk.
It took up at least one-tenth of the entire subterranean chamber.
It towered before Roya like a black mountain.
Compared to it, Roya looked no larger than an ant before a human.
"So this thing... is the life-source for all the cultivation pods below?"
"Then the foundational biological material used to create Prototype No. 1... must have been extracted from this."
"No wonder that smaller gel could revive itself. Its origin is so overwhelmingly powerful, it could even defy spatial limitation and restore life!"
Roya returned to human form and circled the mountain-sized gel mass.
Even he had to admit—the life force radiating from it was staggering.
It defied all reason.
Thankfully, this enormous black mountain was nothing but raw life energy condensed into one mass. It had not yet developed sentience.
Otherwise, it would undoubtedly become the most powerful creature in the world—without rival.
Because at that level of vitality, no one could truly kill it.
Not even Roya himself could manage it.
If its life-force were quantified numerically, it would begin in the tens of millions.
Even an Admiral-level attack would do little more than tickle it.
The damage inflicted might not even exceed its natural regeneration rate.
"Perhaps only by detonating the entire stockpile of explosive rock from the bottom layer in a single, simultaneous blast… could its life-force be extinguished in an instant."
> "But a detonation of that scale… might just blow up the entire planet."
Roya gave a bitter chuckle and, for now, left the terrifying life-force nucleus untouched.
He searched for a way upward and moved to the next level.
If the lower floors were for mass production, then this one must be where they researched high-end custom bio-weapons like Prototype No. 1.
As expected—the next level was again lined with cultivation pods.
But unlike the tanks below, these were no longer sealed jars. Each pod resembled a half-open organic nest.
Most shockingly, the nests were made of the black gel itself.
The life force required for these must be on a whole different scale.
And the weapons being cultivated inside?
They would be monsters beyond imagination.
The very first nest revealed this point clearly.
Two curved, moon-colored horns jutted from the pod, exuding a dangerous and overwhelming aura.
Below them was a tangle of long black hair.
That alone was enough to confirm the genetic template used for this biological weapon:
Kaido of the Beasts—the so-called strongest creature in the world.
Roya rushed closer to inspect.
Most of the weapon's body was still buried in the black gel nest, but the upper torso was partially visible.
It had taken on Kaido's hybrid dragon form.
But something was off—its physique was distorted.
The left arm was massively muscular—twice the size of Kaido's normal build.
The right arm, however, was just a dragon's claw—not yet fully formed, twisted and shriveled like a chicken's foot.
PS: Access the complete chapters/series at