Chapter Eleven: The Power of the Giant

After the tyrant bear departed, Buffon followed his own schedule, spending half a day stitching together naval corpses and the other half continuing to repair the demon Oz.

That day, he happened to be sewing up the body of a female navy officer—the second female corpse he had encountered aside from Miss Sindori. Buffon silently recited to himself, “A healer sees no gender!” Yet, whenever he donned his gloves, his hands would inevitably...

The repair took only fifteen minutes, but when it was done, Buffon's face was covered in a fine sheen of sweat. The “Character Atlas” appeared in his mind:

[Owner: Tana]
[Level: T4]
[Faction: Navy]
[Rank: Colonel]
[Obsession: 100%]
[Current obtainable benefit: Agility +345→10697 (Third-level Residual Cloud)]
[Skill obtainable: Shave]
...

The Six Forms! As expected, not one was missing!

Buffon smiled faintly, then packed up his tools and headed for Ice Storage No. 900.

The demon Oz’s corpse stood an imposing sixty-seven meters tall; Buffon himself, at 2.68 meters, didn’t even measure up to one of its fingers. Every wound on Oz’s body took far longer to repair than any zombie Buffon had ever worked on before. Thus, the preservative and enhancement serums could only be injected and infused locally, bit by bit. The rate of absorption was maddeningly slow, and Hogback could only brew the serums so fast—while keeping up with daily necessities, they could only supply Oz with enough for half a day. And that was with Buffon occasionally lending a hand back in the lab. So Buffon could only spend half his day each day repairing Oz.

Oz had died from freezing—and that was five hundred years ago—so there were countless hidden injuries invisible to the naked eye. But Buffon was undeterred; the Transparent Fruit allowed any object he touched to become transparent as well, essentially giving him an X-ray machine at his fingertips. Combined with his encyclopedic knowledge, he was able to locate all the hidden injuries Hogback would never have been able to discover.

Buffon stood at Oz’s left calf, observing for a moment before beginning to cut. First, he sliced through several dozen centimeters of skin, then meters of muscle. He called Ryoma over to act as a human brace, prying apart the muscle so Buffon could see the wounds on Oz’s bones.

The area of damage on the bone was considerable—about a meter in diameter, with fine cracks radiating outward from the center in all directions. Buffon gazed at the wound, wondering what kind of being could inflict such a hidden injury on Oz’s bones with a single strike. With Oz’s size, if he were alive today, he would certainly be among the very strongest. Whoever managed to injure him must have possessed unimaginable power.

As Buffon pondered, his hands never stopped moving. It took him over an hour to repair the hidden injury on the bone. Luckily, Ryoma was a zombie; if anyone else had acted as the human brace, they would have collapsed from exhaustion long ago.

Buffon spent another half hour sewing up the muscle he had just cut open. There was no other way—Oz’s body was so massive that every single muscle fiber was equivalent to an entire muscle from an ordinary zombie. Buffon could only sew them together one fiber at a time.

When the operation was finally finished, Hogback—who had been watching for half a day—remarked, “Buffon, if it weren’t for you, I can’t imagine how I’d ever be able to complete this job alone! And those hidden injuries—how did you find them? Did you eat the X-ray fruit?”

Buffon had no interest in responding to such idle questions and answered coldly, “Instead of standing here, you’d be better off brewing some more serum.”

Miss Sindori interjected sharply, “Without Buffon, you’d never have been able to finish this job at all!”

Hogback looked thoroughly exasperated, but what Sindori said was true. Aside from brewing serums, Hogback had contributed almost nothing to the repair of Oz. In the first few days, he attempted stitching a few small wounds, but compared to Buffon’s skill and speed, Moria quickly sent him back to the lab to make more medicine.

Days passed, then half a month. Both Oz and the navy corpses were nearly fully sewn up. On Oz’s side, only the wound on his right shoulder remained before the work would be complete.

That day, Moria and his group gathered in Ice Storage No. 900 to witness this historic moment. Buffon enlarged the wound on Oz’s right shoulder; Ryoma stepped forward to brace open the muscle, revealing the necrotic, blackened bone beneath. Buffon knocked away the dead bone and stitched a prepared piece of elephant bone in its place.

Watching this enigmatic series of procedures, Moria turned to Hogback and said, “Heeheeheeheehee! Hogback, Buffon’s craftsmanship has reached a level beyond comprehension—I feel calling him an artist doesn’t do him justice. He’s a creator!”

Hogback, resigned to his fate, replied, “Huff! Huff! Huff! Buffon is truly the greatest blessing the heavens have bestowed upon Lord Moria!”

While the two conversed, Buffon was already sewing up the muscle, then the skin. The entire process took more than three hours, but Moria and his group watched without blinking the entire time. When he finished the last stitch, Buffon exhaled deeply, almost tempted to shout that classic line: “I want meat!” But he restrained himself, and soon the “Character Atlas” appeared in his mind:

[Owner: Oz]
[Level: T1]
[Faction: Pirate]
[Bounty: Unknown]
[Obsession: 100%]
[Current obtainable benefit: Physique +3794→26825 (Third-level Major)]
[Skills obtainable: Giant’s Power, Demon Bungie...]
[Collect benefit?]

“Giant’s Power, huh? I wonder if I’ll actually turn into a giant after obtaining it?” Buffon mused as he climbed back up the ladder to the aerial corridor.

“Heeheeheeheehee! Buffon, without you, I can’t imagine how long Hogback would have taken to finish this epic project. This will become the top asset of our zombie army. Tell me, what kind of reward do you want?”

Moria knew his words were merely ceremonial—Buffon, who cared for nothing but sewing corpses, would never ask for anything. As expected, Buffon replied coolly, “I lack for nothing.”

Just as Moria was about to say something, Hogback piped up, “Buffon, Oz hasn’t been numbered yet—let me witness your unparalleled tattooing skill!”

Indeed, Buffon’s needlework was so fast that the naked eye couldn’t follow it, faster even than a tattoo machine, and all the zombies’ numbers had been tattooed by his hand. Buffon nodded, regained his composure, and climbed back onto Oz.

He spent another two hours inscribing “SZ900” onto the skin of Oz’s left deltoid. Super Zombie No. 900 was now fully complete!

Climbing back to the aerial corridor, Buffon was about to return to the lab when he heard Moria’s voice again: “Buffon, I’ve decided to reward you with a pirate ship of your own! I’ll personally commission it for you in Water Seven!”

As the captain of a pirate crew, Moria knew it was Buffon’s prerogative not to ask for anything, but reward he must.

Buffon nodded and walked toward the lab, understanding what had been said. “Water Seven, huh? Interesting.”

Back in the lab, Buffon finished stitching up the last three navy corpses. With that, the first batch of navy zombies was ready; all that remained was for Moria to implant shadows, after which they could be handed over to the World Government.

From these navy corpses, Buffon had collected all Six Forms, gaining both improvements and a variety of bizarre skills—hair styling, blowing smoke rings, manicuring, shooting, and more, both useful and utterly pointless.

One skill in particular gave him a clue about the source of these navy corpses: “Interrogation!”