Three Hammers Become One: The Meteor Hammer

Whether by appearance or by strength, Orton looked like the kind of species with well-developed limbs and a simple mind.

Even Aeneas had thought so at first.

Yet Emondi wore a grave expression—he had not even worn this look when facing Kotahan, a Devil Fruit user.

This left Aeneas somewhat baffled.

What is going on? Aeneas was a bit bewildered. Orton doesn't seem to be a Devil Fruit user, right? Is his threat really greater than Kotahan's?

Orton was the very first boss Aeneas encountered upon entering Tinos, but back then Aeneas had treated Orton almost like a toy—Orton simply could not do a thing to him.

Though Orton's strength was high enough, his speed and agility were completely lacking. Aeneas had even thought at the time that, with a hit-and-run strategy, he might be able to kite Orton to death directly.

"Orton's strength is extremely unstable, like a roller coaster. Sometimes he's very weak, so weak he's inferior to an ordinary person, but other times he's fiercely strong—strong beyond all calculation!" Emondi's words were completely cryptic, and Aeneas did not understand them at all.

"What do you mean?" Aeneas followed up on Emondi's words. "Then what state is he in right now?"

"Strong!"

Emondi uttered only a single word.

This did indeed surprise Aeneas somewhat—could it be that this Orton was actually the deepest hidden of all?

"Besides, what kind of setting is strength that fluctuates between high and low?" Aeneas frowned, not knowing what Emondi was driving at.

Emondi did not seem to understand it very well either, and at that moment Kotahan, who had just wiped the blood from his own body off to the side, spoke up.

"It's because of his battery level!" said Kotahan in a childish lisp. Even though he knew the other party hadn't said it on purpose, Aeneas still almost failed to control himself for a split second.

Kotahan's eyes narrowed as he watched veins suddenly bulge on Aeneas's forehead, but with Orton eyeing them with hostility nearby, any grievance he held no longer mattered—the important thing was that he had to kill Orton first!

Then Kotahan continued his explanation.

"Orton is not human!" Kotahan tossed out a few terms. "His body is semi-mechanical. He can only display his proper, original strength when his battery level is sufficient. If the power is low, he grows weak and becomes an ordinary person."

"What!" Both Aeneas and Emondi wore expressions of astonishment.

Even Emondi, having been in Tinos for so long, had never heard that Orton possessed such a bizarre identity.

A cyborg?

"What kind of nonsense is this?" Aeneas grew increasingly baffled. "Could this be another mess stirred up by Germa 66?"

Aeneas pondered briefly. In the North Blue, what other group could possibly dabble in semi-mechanical things?

Thinking it over, only Germa 66, which constantly researched Lineage Factors and clone armies, was likely to have touched upon this kind of technology.

"I don't know, maybe." Kotahan did not care how Orton had ended up like this. "No matter what he is, he's dead for sure!"

With that, without waiting for Aeneas and Emondi, Kotahan bolted forward in a sudden stride!

Kotahan's left and right fists simultaneously transformed into heavy giant hammers, the spikes upon them gleaming sharply.

Double Hammer Strike!

This time it was not a single hammer, but two. Although it was merely a doubling in number, Kotahan sprang into the air, suddenly increasing the weight of his hammers and focusing all his kinetic energy upon the dual strikes.

This achieved a 1+1 > 2 effect!

"Hah!" Orton watched Kotahan rushing furiously toward him and sneered. "Insects carving characters on a pillar!"

Orton's muscles instantly knotted and bulged, his strength exploding forth as he swung his multi-ton giant axe, actually intending to meet Kotahan's Double Hammer Strike head-on?

One had to bear in mind that Orton had not mastered Haki by any means; to deal effective damage to Kotahan, who was a Paramecia Devil Fruit user, he had to possess an absolute suppression in sheer force.

Otherwise, if their strength were comparable, the hammers formed by Kotahan's own body would be far more formidable!

Yet as it turned out, Orton possessed precisely that kind of suppressive power!

Boom!

It was as though a violent explosion had occurred, the shockwave whipping up a gale-force wind that blew away the surrounding rubble and dust completely clean!

Bang!

Kotahan was actually knocked flying by a single axe swing from Orton?

The previously hard and thick hammers on his hands were now covered in bloody patches?

As for Kotahan himself, the sensation was even worse; he even felt as though the bones in his fingers were about to shatter.

"Damn it!"

Kotahan was smashed into the second floor of a building. Next to him stood a fishbowl where two carp swam about; their fish eyes rolled upward to glance at Kotahan before they turned away.

Enduring the agonizing pain throughout his body, Kotahan—his fists still completely numb and devoid of sensation—once more condensed his hammerheads, staring fixedly from his second-floor vantage point at Orton, who remained standing in place.

"This time, I will absolutely not retreat!" Kotahan roared out. Perhaps because his voice was somewhat hoarse, though it still retained a touch of softness, it lacked a shred of childishness and gained a razor-sharp ruthlessness!

Every time Kotahan thought of his family—his wife, who had a few freckles on her face yet looked quite pleasing and gentle, and his baby daughter who had just been born not long ago—

His wife and daughter were the sole convictions that kept him alive!

Yet everything was destroyed on that day!

The frantic Orton had cleaved his house in two directly with an axe, and unluckily his wife was sliced in half on the spot. An enraged and unhinged Kotahan had rejected Orton's recruitment right then and there, but how could he defend against a sniper bullet fired from the shadows?

His beloved little daughter had died right in his arms!

Without even letting out a single cry, that frail and soft little body had been stained red with blood and grown ice-cold!

Growing ice-cold right along with it was Kotahan's heart!

He vowed that he could not die; he had to live, carrying all his hatred and fury, and live!

Then kill his enemy with his own hands!

How could the world know that his inner self was completely different from his outward appearance, and instead resembled his voice—except that the only person who understood his gentleness had already died...

"Single Hammer!"

Risking bone fractures, Kotahan's left hand morphed into the shape of a hammer.

"Double Hammer!"

Even if it meant shattering his right hand, Kotahan was determined to execute Orton with his own hands!

"Triple Hammer!"

This time Kotahan lowered his head, actually condensing his very skull into the shape of a hammer!

Kotahan brought his dual hammers down hard upon his own head, fusing the three hammers into one to transform them into a long chain hammer! Round as a golden melon, hard as granite, dense with spikes, its imposing might was boundless!

The user of the Tsuchi Tsuchi no Mi could turn their body into a hammer, but there were many varieties of hammers.

In Aeneas's view, this Kotahan clearly lacked imagination when it came to hammer weapons, but the triple-hammer-fused long chain meteor hammer before his eyes was rather interesting.

The chain connecting Kotahan's lower body and the meteor hammer rapidly extended, smashing toward Orton at blinding speed!