Chapter 328: Chapter 328: Is Lord Imu This Steady?

Chapter 328: Is Lord Imu This Steady?

"People from the Government are coming to take over?"

Sabaody Archipelago, Star Hunter Unit Command Headquarters.

Roy, having just returned to the command headquarters, heard this news from Fall and Hans.

"Yeah — it was those CP0 guys who came to notify us."

Hans and Fall both had faces full of displeasure.

They bore considerable wounds to varying degrees, and standing beside them was another person — the former Marine Headquarters Rear Admiral Lanli, who had also joined the Star Hunter Unit.

"That Surgeon of Death was terrifyingly strong. The three of us spent a lot of effort and even used some underhanded tactics to catch him. These pieces of trash from the Government snatch credit just like that..."

Hans muttered.

"Don’t worry — no one can snatch away the credit that belongs to you. By the way, where is Trafalgar Law?"

Roy said thoughtfully.

"Right in the temporary cell."

While Hans and Fall answered, Roy had already taken a step into the temporary prison of the command headquarters.

Inside the prison cell, as expected, a group of people was already locked up.

The most conspicuous among them was a polar bear Mink wearing a crew uniform — Roy naturally recognized at a glance that the other party was Bepo, a member of the Heart Pirates.

And beside the polar bear, a wounded pirate holding a nodachi was leaning diagonally against the prison bars.

He still had seawater on him, and his face was full of unwillingness.

Roy could actually understand the other party’s unwillingness — because he had already learned the whole process of capturing Law from Hans and the others.

In fact, the Surgeon of Death’s own strength was actually above Hans and Fall. Even after Rear Admiral Lanli came to support, he was able to fight and retreat.

Relying on his unique ability to shift positions, he almost seemed about to escape their pursuit.

But the problem was that after experiencing the previous incident with Golden Lion, Hans and Fall had already prepared a set of tactics for ability users like Law.

The tactic was simple — Hans would swallow cola bottles filled with seawater into his stomach in advance through the ability of the Glutton-Glutton Fruit, while Fall would take Hans into his own stomach using the ability of the Fresh-Fresh Fruit.

In that instant, Hans would deactivate his fruit ability, releasing the seawater.

And due to seawater’s restraining effect on fruit ability users, Fall’s Fresh-Fresh Fruit couldn’t store it — this seawater would appear out of thin air, forming a tsunami anywhere.

"This is our perfect combination skill!"

Law was caught by this exact strike — he successfully cut the bodies of Hans and Fall using the Op-Op Fruit, but was hit by the ensuing seawater, and thus captured.

"Still young after all."

Looking at Law’s face — even younger than in the original story — Roy sighed inwardly.

Due to the timeline in this world, Doflamingo, originally Law’s target for revenge, had been killed early by Monkey.

Under the butterfly effect, Law had seemingly chosen to set out to sea early.

This directly resulted in him being relatively young — compared to the deeply embittered and vigilant personality in the original story, he was clearly more immature.

However, Roy had no interest in paying attention to Law’s annoyance right now.

[Discovered Fruit Consumer ’Trafalgar D. Water Law’, confirmed fruit consumed is ’Op-Op Fruit’]

[Fruit Ability: Can expand an operating room (ROOM) and manipulate everything within the operating room]

[Parsing this fruit]

[Fruit Essence: Wish · Eternal Youth and Immortality of Soul and Body]

[LV3: Obtains all fruit abilities. Can expand an operating room (ROOM); within the operating room, can sever the bodies of creatures with a blade, can also casually swap the positions of any objects and creatures, but requires consuming a large amount of stamina. Creatures severed within the operating room will not die.]

[LV4: Can transplant and transfer ’personalities’, can create electricity and gamma rays within the ROOM, and use them as treatment materials, dealing massive damage to the enemy.]

[LV5: Fruit Awakening · K/R-ROOM]

[Fruit Awakening effect. Can open special K-ROOM and R-ROOM.]

[K-ROOM can attain a sharpness that truly ’cuts everything’; even Seastone and the sea can be cut open. Enemies cut open will be anesthetized and unable to resist for a short time. Can transmit ’waves’ through the scalpel to directly cause massive damage inside the enemy’s body.]

[R-ROOM can control more things within the operating room, such as ’light’, ’sound’, ’airflow’, and other various natural phenomena. R-ROOM also allows performing surgery outside the operating room for a short time.]

The information transmitted by the Fruit Encyclopedia was Roy’s top priority right now.

Just as he knew, the fruit Law consumed was the Op-Op Fruit — one of the strongest Paramecia fruits.

Defense, attacks, special effects... if the ability of this fruit were encountered in the past, Roy would absolutely have been excited to the extreme.

But for the current Roy, any Devil Fruit ability itself clearly couldn’t attract his attention too much anymore.

What he truly cared about was actually—

[Fruit Awakening · Unique · Perpetual Youth Surgery]

[A fruit consumer proficient in medical skills can sacrifice their own soul after fruit awakening to perform ’Perpetual Youth Surgery’ on themselves or any other creature.]

[After performing the surgery, the soul of the fruit ability user will shatter into fragments.]

[In exchange, the current life status and soul status of the ’patient’ undergoing the surgery will be fixed. Their body will not age and cannot be killed, and their soul also cannot leave the body through death.]

"..."

Looking at the introduction regarding the Op-Op Fruit in the Fruit Encyclopedia, Roy felt awe.

"This is it."

Yes.

This was exactly the reason he chose to come here immediately after hearing Hans and the others had captured Law.

He knew very well — the Op-Op Fruit is a very special fruit.

Its specialness lay not only in the power of its abilities, but even more so in—

"It is the key for Rocks and Queen Lily to seal Imu."

Roy carefully looked at the unique awakening effect of the Op-Op Fruit, confirming this point.

In that distant past, Queen Lily had bound Imu.

That binding resulted in Imu becoming His current appearance — He, who should have been the God of the world, was forced to hide behind the scenes.

And besides that, thirty years ago, Rocks ultimately chose to go to Mary Geoise to die, and ultimately should have also used his ability to accomplish something.

The commonality between these two heroes — who must inevitably leave their names in history — was the Op-Op Fruit.

Roy was over ninety percent sure that the way these two ultimately posed a threat to Imu was through the Perpetual Youth Surgery.

"The current life status and soul status of the patient undergoing the surgery will be fixed. Their body will not age and cannot be killed, and their soul also cannot leave the body through death..."

Carefully studying the introduction of this ability within the Fruit Encyclopedia, Roy’s eyes were sharp.

"That’s right — if one thinks about it carefully, since the establishment of the World Government eight hundred years ago, the existence of the Abyss officially had a name, and was called Lord Imu."

"And coincidentally — among the initial twenty kings of the World Government, there happened to be one named Saint Nerona Imu?"

This was a question that had always puzzled Roy.

Because currently he had completely clarified Imu’s essence — He was not human at all, but the reflection of the Genesis Pillar, the God of the Abyss formed by the convergence of all malice.

Such an existence shouldn’t even have a name, let alone the name of a truly existing person.

Now, after seeing the unique awakening effect of the Op-Op Fruit, a bold guess arose.

"Judging from the murals on the Abyss, when Imu made the agreement with Davy Jones, His main body should have existed inside the Tree."

"At that time, the true master of the world was actually Davy Jones. Imu was only a collaborator providing him with power."

"But after the initial twenty kings betrayed the world and signed a contract with Imu, the situation changed."

According to the current intelligence, the twenty kings should have each obtained a contract unique to them, and each bore a part of Imu’s essence — similar to the current Contract of the Abyssal Sea.

But—

"Given Imu’s personality, He should desire to truly rule the world, and not just play the role of a power provider."

"So — perhaps the essence of that contract meant that Imu would irregularly project His own soul and consciousness into the body of one of the twenty kings?"

Just like when Imu descended through the body of Saint Saturn during the Battle of God Valley.

The contracts possessed by the initial twenty kings of the World Government were clearly more complete and powerful, and the time, power, and completeness of Imu’s descent upon them were clearly higher.

Roy could even boldly guess — this kind of descent should be rotational.

Every once in a while, Imu would switch the body of one king to serve as His vessel. This could ensure that the twenty Celestial Dragon families could rule the world revolving around Him as the center.

But—

"Eight hundred years ago, during the first Levely, an accident occurred."

Before Roy’s eyes, he could almost see what happened back then.

"The Levely is the key node announcing Imu’s rule over this world. He would not miss it."

When the consciousness of the Abyss chose one of the initial twenty kings as a vessel to descend upon the human world as usual — that long-hidden, brave rebel, using an ability prepared long ago, completed that binding of God with the resolve to face certain death.

"The king possessed by the Abyss was Saint Nerona Imu."

"And at that time, Queen Lily sacrificed her own soul — she sealed the soul and will of the Abyss within the body of Saint Imu."

"From then on, the Abyss became Imu."

Based on the current situation, even if the Abyss could casually create Devil Fruits, as long as the wish and essence represented by the fruit itself still existed in this world, He could not truly erase the ability of a certain fruit.

And the awakening effect of the Op-Op Fruit is fixing the current soul and body status.

This meant that Imu, who bore the Abyss, fundamentally could not have His body die — so even the soul and consciousness of the Abyss could not leave Imu’s body.

Yes — that wish of Perpetual Youth and Immortality instead became the chain binding God.

This was undoubtedly the most reasonable explanation, and could even explain why Imu’s power had declined to such an extent.

"It is equivalent to the current Abyss only possessing the power of that portion of the contract He bestowed upon Saint Nerona Imu."

Thinking of this, Roy couldn’t help but sigh in admiration.

If his guess was true, then the current Imu at most only possessed one-twentieth or even less of His power at His peak.

But even so, His abilities were still so powerful — this was enough to show that if He was truly in His peak state, this world would absolutely be unable to resist Him.

"Queen Lily did an amazing thing."

Muttering like this, Roy immediately became curious about Rocks again.

"If my guess is right, Queen Lily sealed and bound Imu through performing surgery on the body of Imu."

"Then what did Rocks do?"

This was the question he was curious about — since Rocks ultimately chose to go to his death, there must definitely be something he had to do.

"Perhaps knowing he would undoubtedly die, putting everything on the line to add another layer of binding to Imu... mm, highly possible."

Roy pondered, but also felt it shouldn’t be this simple.

Given Rocks’ style of doing things, he always felt the other party highly likely did something else as well.

Especially considering the Vivre Card compass he received not long ago in Elbaf, which Rocks had passed to him through Loki.

A bold guess arose.

"This guy Rocks, could it be..."

He frowned slightly.

But before he finished his thoughts—

"Are you the ’Black Judge’?"

He heard a voice from behind him.

Roy turned his head.

Then he saw several figures wearing white armor, who had entered the temporary prison at some unknown time.

The marks on their bodies were naturally very familiar to Roy.

That was the mark of the Divine Servants.

"It’s actually Divine Servants — they aren’t even willing to send a single God’s Knight?"

Roy mocked inwardly.

He wasn’t surprised that the Government dispatched people — especially after seeing the effect of the Op-Op Fruit and roughly guessing what Queen Lily and Rocks did back then, he understood even more what the Op-Op Fruit meant to Imu.

He even felt somewhat surprised.

For such a crucial fruit, Imu actually wasn’t even willing to send a single God’s Knight?

Is Lord Imu playing it this steady now?

(End of Chapter)

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