Chapter 41: The Soul Surgeon
The commotion and ancient grudges of Level 6 were a distant, muffled echo here. Levi stood in the oppressive, humid heat of Level 2: the Wild Beast Hell. The roars of monstrous beasts and the scent of blood and straw were the background music to his private experiment.
At his feet lay four corpses. They were not simply dead; they were testaments to bizarre, silent violence. One was severed into geometrically perfect sections, the cuts so clean they seemed polished, with no blood seepage. Another had sections of its skeleton simply missing, as if erased from existence, leaving the flesh to collapse inwards. A third had melted into a formless, flesh-colored ooze. The last appeared untouched but had a face frozen in a rictus of soul-deep agony, eyes wide and empty.
Domino watched, her professional detachment warring with a visceral, fascinated thrill. She had seen Magellan's poisons dissolve men, seen blades and beasts rend flesh, but this… this was different. It was surgical, silent, and violated the very laws of nature. Levi's hands had barely moved. Sometimes a flick of a finger, sometimes just a focused gaze. It was artistry of the most terrifying kind.
How? her mind screamed, even as a dark, hungry part of her soul admired the efficiency and mystery of it.
Levi was not seeing corpses. He was reviewing data. "So," he murmured, almost to himself, making a mental note. "Physical alteration follows spiritual interference. Direct manipulation of the soul's structure causes catastrophic somatic feedback. A useful offensive vector, if imprecise." He observed the last living test subject—a burly pirate who had been part of a recent, failed uprising. The man was pressed against the wall by an invisible force, his face ashen, trembling uncontrollably as he stared at the surreal remains of his comrades.
"Everyone possesses Reiatsu, a spiritual pressure," Levi mused aloud, ignoring the prisoner's whimpers. "The baseline is merely minuscule. What happens if I introduce an external charge? Can I overwrite the native template?"
"No… no, please…" the pirate begged, snot and tears mixing on his face. "I won't do it again! I swear! Just kill me clean! Make it quick!" The spectacle of his friends being unmade was a horror beyond any torture Impel Down offered.
To Levi, this wasn't torture. It was methodology. He was using Reiatsu Analysis to map the man's spiritual blueprint, then applying minute, experimental edits with threads of his own power. The gruesome results were just side effects of a learning process.
Domino licked her lips, a faint, unsettling smile on her face. "Admiral Black Crow… your technique is… sublime. A true art form." A strange heat curled in her stomach. She'd always had a clinical fascination with the inner workings of the body, a drive that had led her to study medicine and, eventually, to a place where she could indulge that curiosity without societal judgment. This was a new frontier. This was the art of the soul.
Levi gave a noncommittal hum, his attention on the structural weaknesses he perceived in the pirate's flickering spirit. "I fail to comprehend the World Government's leniency. A mass murderer of civilians, kept alive because he possesses a Paramecia ability useful for manual labor? The logic of 'resource preservation' eludes me."
"It is the law, Admiral," Domino said, though her tone held no particular defense of it. "Valuable Devil Fruit users are assets, even here."
"An inefficient system," Levi stated, as if commenting on faulty plumbing.
He raised a hand. Two tendrils of condensed, invisible Reiatsu lifted the sobbing pirate into the air. From Levi's fingertips, dozens of hair-thin spiritual filaments extended, connecting to specific nodes on the man's soul that he had identified through his analysis.
Now, for a constructive test.
"No! NO! YACCHADAAAA!" the pirate screamed, thrashing against the spiritual bonds.
The filaments pulsed with silvery light only Levi could see. He focused, not on destruction, but on a forced, accelerated mending. He poured a minuscule amount of his own potent Reiatsu into the man's spirit, specifically targeting the concepts of "vitality" and "youth" within the soul's framework.
The results were instantaneous and shocking.
The pirate's many lacerations from the earlier beast attacks sealed shut, leaving pink, new skin. The grey streaks in his hair darkened. Wrinkles smoothed from his face. Within seconds, he looked a decade younger, brimming with a vigorous, stolen vitality.
The screaming stopped. The pirate hung in the air, panting, eyes wide with confusion and sudden, explosive energy. The searing pain was gone, replaced by a wild, intoxicating sense of power. His Devil Fruit ability—allowing him to sprout wooden spikes—activated on instinct. His arm morphed into a sharp, hardened spear of oak.
A feral, triumphant snarl twisted his rejuvenated face. He had been given strength! This Marine had made a fatal error! "GO TO HELL, YOU MARINE BASTARD!" he roared, driving the wooden spike with all his renewed force directly at Levi's unblinking eye.
Levi didn't flinch. The spike stopped a millimeter from his cornea, halted by a dense, shimmering pane of Reiatsu.
"Excellent," Levi said, his voice devoid of any emotion. "Confirmation. Targeted spiritual infusion can reverse somatic age and heal injuries. A form of forced cellular regeneration. A valuable data point for potential applications."
His fingers twitched.
The threads of Reiatsu connecting him to the pirate didn't sever; they vibrated at a specific, devastating frequency. It was not an attack on the body, but a direct, brutal shredding of the soul's very fabric.
The pirate's triumphant roar died in his throat. His eyes, wide with savage joy, glazed over in an instant, replaced by an abyss of indescribable agony—an agony that had no physical source but consumed his entire being. His body didn't convulse; it simply went rigid before collapsing into a boneless heap on the stone floor, utterly, silently lifeless. The final expression was one of pure, soul-dead horror.
"Satisfactory," Levi noted, filing the memory of the spiritual frequency away. A brutally efficient execute command.
He turned to Domino, who was breathing slightly faster, a flush on her cheeks. "We proceed to the next level. I require test subjects who understand Haki. The stronger, the better. I need to establish the correlation between spiritual fortitude and resistance to modification."
The strength of the soul was clearly tied to the strength of the will. Haki users would provide a much sturdier blueprint to work with, a greater challenge to his nascent skills.
"At once, Admiral!" Domino saluted, her voice tinged with a strange reverence.
Thus, a new legend was born in the whispered corridors of Impel Down, spreading from Level 2 upward through the terrified grapevine of prisoners and guards. It spoke of a new kind of devil—a Marine Admiral who didn't just kill. He unmade you. He played with your very essence, could make you young and strong only to shred your soul with a thought. He was the "Soul Surgeon" of Impel Down, and his arrival signaled a horror more profound than any beast or boiling blood.
(End of Chapter)
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