"Am I too late?"
He gave a soft sigh.
A note of regret and sorrow flashed through Eschbach's gray-brown eyes. In the next instant, tiny sparks fed on those feelings and kindled into blazing fury. He stared at the dark, blood-soaked figure standing before the watchtower, his eyes burning as if they could reduce the man to ash.
In terms of sheer size, he was the biggest of Aleus's four stewards.
At three hundred and fifty centimeters tall, he could intimidate plenty of cowards into keeping their distance just by standing still. Add his imposing expression and thick, powerful fists, and he looked like trouble by any measure.
In truth, however, Eschbach had the gentlest heart of the four stewards.
No matter how many times he saw it, he could never get used to people suffering. He hated torture more than anything, and the interrogation room was the place he least wanted to go. But that didn't mean he'd show mercy to his enemies.
When dealing with wicked men with blood on their hands, he could hit with twice the force he put into a punch.
And now,
was one of those times.
"Black Beast, Tadra. Bounty: one hundred and ten million. From West Blue. Former commander of a mafia army. Once massacred an entire town to intimidate a rival family..." As Eschbach recited the details from the report word by word, the killing intent in his eyes climbed higher and higher.
"You know quite a bit... But food is still just food, no matter how much it knows."
After listening to Eschbach's "nonsense," Tadra grinned, baring two rows of bloodstained fangs.
Then,
the distance of over ten meters
vanished in the blink of an eye.
Loping on all fours like a beast, Black Beast charged at Eschbach. He stayed low to the ground instead of standing, balled his right hand into a fist, and smashed it toward Eschbach's right ankle.
"BANG!!!"
There was no sharp, clean snap of breaking bone.
Tadra felt as if his fist had slammed into an iron pillar. The incredible hardness sent a shock of pain through him, reminding him what pain felt like for the first time in a long while. He hadn't felt such bone-deep agony since learning Armament Haki in the New World.
"You punched me!"
Eschbach looked down at Tadra, who was crouched on the ground like a beast.
He raised his right foot.
"I'll pay you back with a kick."
As he spoke, his foot came down.
A deafening boom rang out. The sea cliff beneath them seemed to shudder as if struck by a falling meteor. Dust billowed like clouds, then the sea breeze swept it away in an instant, revealing a deep crater in the ground.
"Cough, cough!"
Tadra knelt at the crater's edge, hunched over as he coughed up a mess of blood. It was hard to tell whether it was his own blood or something he'd brought up from his stomach.
"You..."
The man, who seemed more beast than human, opened his mouth as if to say something.
But—
"Shut up, trash."
Eschbach had no interest in talking. His thick, powerful fist, wrapped in Armament Haki, said everything for him. In ancient times, humans had used their fists to tame the wildness and bestial nature of beasts, domesticating them into livestock.
Fists collided, shoulders brushed past one another, and legs crashed together like steel whips. It was like stepping into a blacksmith's shop: the clanging was rapid and relentless.
Tadra was an out-and-out villain,
but his bounty of one hundred and ten million also showed that the Marines recognized his strength.
He was no weakling.
And Eschbach and Tadra both excelled at hand-to-hand combat.
So their fight reached a fever pitch from the very start. There were no flashy moves, only the most primitive, bloody, direct violence. Fists were humanity's most primitive weapons of violence, and at that moment, both men wielded them to their fullest.
Even when the Den Den Mushi on Eschbach suddenly rang, neither man let up for even a moment.
"Your companion's pretty impressive!"
The man wearing nothing but a pair of blue swim trunks clicked his tongue in admiration. "Tadra's a beast in human skin, but those fists of his are the real deal. To hold off Tadra... Are you reinforcements from the Ekmondo Kingdom?"
"But none of the intelligence we gathered mentioned you. I thought the Ekmondo Kingdom's top fighters were Beautiful Sword and Fighting Dog?" The man stared at Dick, who stood opposite him. He wore a smile, but inwardly he was cursing the intelligence team to hell.
He didn't have Observation Haki, but his instincts were naturally sharp. The ponytailed man in front of him, along with the hulking figure fighting Tadra, were both skilled enough to make him feel his life was in danger.
In other words,
by pirate standards, the two men blocking their way were worth bounties of over a hundred million each.
And yet there was not a word about such powerful fighters in the intelligence. The intelligence team was useless. If he made it back alive this time, he'd kill those worthless fools.
"You're not worth the trouble of making either of our lords come out."
Dick lifted his chin slightly. His beautiful blond hair was tied in a ponytail, swaying lightly behind him as he moved. His gaze was full of contempt as he looked at Swimsuit Man. That one gesture, that single look, showed his pride to the fullest.
"Then, can you tell me your name?"
Swimsuit Man kept smiling, seemingly unaffected by Dick's arrogance.
"Strangling Ghost, Farug. Are you... fishing for information?" The voice drew closer, closing the distance in an instant. Swimsuit Man—Farug—felt warm breath suddenly brush the back of his neck, and the hairs on his body shot upright.
He instinctively lunged forward and rolled clumsily across the ground. The moment he threw himself ahead, a rush of wind swept past behind him.
The dull sting in his back told him that if he hadn't reacted quickly, someone would have torn out his spine and whipped him with it.
"You... a Devil Fruit user?"
Without checking the wound on his back, Farug crouched and turned to look at where he'd been standing. A gigantic leopard stood there, lazily swishing its long tail and gazing at Farug with a playful look.
"A Zoan user?"
Farug's lips felt dry. He stuck out his tongue and licked them.
His mood grew heavy.
He wasn't a Devil Fruit user, but he knew how troublesome they could be. Zoan users in particular might not have the Logia's overwhelming destructive power or the Paramecia's bizarre, varied abilities, but if any master of physical combat could choose a Devil Fruit to eat,
at least nine out of ten would choose a Zoan.
The vitality and recovery Zoan Devil Fruits granted their users meant greater strength, speed, stamina, recovery, and resistance to blows—a boost across the board.
That meant the enemy in front of him had tremendous endurance and could take a serious beating.
It was bad news for Farug.
Strangling Ghost
hated nothing more than someone who was hard to strangle in a single blow.
Before you continue