"Cough... I didn't expect him to be this strong. This was a serious mistake."
Liver held his injured side and watched Nyau being defeated so easily. He began wondering whether they should retreat and reorganize.
The only person he remembered possessing strength on this level was his former subordinate, Bulat.
However, although this stranger also used a lance, his technique was entirely different. It could not be him.
"I never expected someone to suppress all three of us without using a Teigu," Liver said after injecting himself with a clotting agent and forcing himself back to his feet.
"With strength like yours, why not join us and serve Lady Esdeath?"
As Esdeath's most loyal follower, Liver did not show fear even when facing someone far stronger than himself.
Noah had not expected to be recruited.
"I refuse."
He made his answer firm, expecting them to understand the difference in strength and withdraw.
At least, that was what should have happened.
"I see."
Liver let out a quiet sigh before raising his voice.
"Then I'll eliminate you here!"
He took out another syringe and drove the needle into his neck.
Through Appraisal, Noah immediately recognized it as a physical enhancement drug with severe side effects.
For a short period, it could push the body's abilities to their natural limit.
Noah raised an eyebrow.
Instead of retreating, Liver had decided to risk everything and continue fighting.
Noah had only intended to drive them away.
Liver's refusal to accept that made him wonder whether there was another reason behind his determination.
"Aaaaaah!"
While Noah was thinking, Daidara forced himself back onto his feet. An empty syringe identical to Liver's lay near him.
"Hahahaha! My strength is back! This feels amazing!"
Other than Nyau, who was lying unconscious on the ground, Liver and Daidara had both injected themselves with physical enhancement drugs.
Seeing that the two men were now focused entirely on killing him, Noah changed his mind.
He returned the lance to Spear, then stepped forward.
"Have you heard the saying that the best way to deal with a Teigu user is with another Teigu user?"
Liver's pupils narrowed.
The mysterious man before him was already powerful enough to possibly stand alongside Lady Esdeath.
The only reassuring thing had been that he had not used a Teigu.
But those words clearly meant he had one.
If he was already this strong without it, Liver could only hope that the Teigu itself was not especially powerful.
"Oranides, Focalor. Two decent meals have delivered themselves to you. You can eat them!"
Noah spoke almost as though he were talking to himself.
But a small figure suddenly leapt from his body and shot into the sky.
Liver immediately followed it with his eyes, unwilling to let it out of his sight.
As it climbed higher, it began expanding.
It grew larger and larger until Liver's expression changed from caution to fear.
Oranides descended before them in its combat form, its entire body covered in black armor.
The pressure it released was enough to make everyone nearby feel as though their lives were no longer under their own control.
The black giant raised its head and roared. The vibration from its voice alone sent the snow on the ground swirling into the air.
Liver raised an arm to shield his face while his clothes whipped around in the wind.
He and Daidara stared up at Oranides in disbelief.
What kind of Teigu was that?
Was it a biological type?
Did that mysterious man truly control a monster like this?
Seeing the two of them frozen in place, Noah deliberately provoked them.
"Aren't you going to attack? If you keep standing there, the effects of those enhancement drugs will wear off."
"Tch!"
Daidara was too impulsive to ignore the taunt.
He roared and threw both enormous axes with all his strength.
"There's nothing to be afraid of! It's just a large target! I'll take it down in one hit!"
He shouted as if trying to convince himself more than anyone else.
Oranides looked down at the tiny man who had thrown something toward it.
With visible annoyance, it raised one finger and flicked the incoming axe aside.
Bang!
The axe flew backward several times faster than it had approached and struck the ground almost instantly.
Daidara cried out and cautiously looked toward where it had landed.
The deflected axe had carved a crack almost ten meters long through the ground.
That impact was already stronger than his own most powerful attack.
And Oranides had produced it with nothing more than a flick of one finger.
Daidara stared at the damage in disbelief.
This was not a fight he could win.
This was not an opponent a single person, or even an ordinary Teigu user, could handle.
Daidara stared at the ten-meter crack carved into the ground, his will to fight almost completely gone.
A shadow suddenly fell over him, making the sky seem darker. He tried to look up, only to hear Liver shout an urgent warning.
"Move!"
"Huh?"
Before Daidara could even raise his head far enough to see what had blocked the light, Oranides's enormous palm came crashing down like a small mountain.
Daidara did not even have time to react.
He was flattened with a wet impact, reduced to a mangled stain beneath the giant hand!
His powerful muscles and enormous frame offered no resistance at all.
Crushing him had been no harder than breaking a raw egg, and blood sprayed out from beneath Oranides's palm, splattering even Liver's shoes.
After casually swatting the insect to death, Oranides let out a low, rumbling sound.
Liver was not sure whether the monster possessed true intelligence, but that sound seemed disturbingly close to laughter.
It was mocking them.
Mocking how small and powerless they were.
Killing Daidara seemed to have pleased it.
'What a terrifying monster...'
At that moment, Liver understood with complete clarity that even if he used everything he had, he could never harm this creature.
At best, his efforts would provide it with a little entertainment.
Even so, his loyalty to Esdeath forced courage back into his heart.
"Water Bullets!"
Several compressed shots of water, each more powerful than a shotgun blast, struck Oranides.
Yet they could not even scratch its armored scales.
Liver had expected his attack to fail, but seeing it do absolutely nothing still made his expression darken.
'So my strength really isn't enough to defeat it. If Nyau were still awake... No. Even if Scream increased my abilities, it wouldn't matter. This monster is far too strong.'
'Perhaps only Lady Esdeath had the power to defeat something like this.'
Liver had survived countless battles and walked away from mountains of corpses.
He was not someone who easily gave in to despair. He had escaped situations that seemed completely hopeless more than once.
He forced himself to calm down and think.
There were only two reliable ways to defeat a biological-type Teigu.
The first was to destroy its core. The core was both its energy source and its heart. Once it was destroyed, the Teigu would die with it.
The second was to kill the user. No matter how alive a biological Teigu seemed, it was still a weapon.
Without someone controlling it, it should stop moving.
Liver could only smile bitterly at those options.
He could not get past this monster by himself, and even if some miracle allowed him to do so, the man controlling it was still far stronger than him.
Should he gamble everything?
He could sacrifice whatever remained of his life to force his way into close range, then activate Black Marlin's secret technique without hesitation.
Perhaps he could take the enemy down with him.
The chance of success was probably less than one percent.
"Damn it... Is this really where I die?"
Liver clenched his fists, deeply unwilling to accept it.
He did not fear death. In some ways, he already considered surviving this long a blessing.
The man he had once been, trapped in despair with nothing left to live for, would not have cared if he died here.
But things were different now.
As one of Lady Esdeath's pieces, he could still be useful to her. This life belonged to her before it belonged to him!
Throwing it away without accomplishing anything would be the height of disrespect.
So he had to struggle.
"For Lady Esdeath!"
Liver roared and pulled out four more syringes.
He always carried five enhancement drugs with him, but until today, he had never needed to use even one.
He never imagined that the first time he used them, he would inject all five into himself.
The man before him was too dangerous.
He might one day become a threat to Lady Esdeath.
Liver would never allow that!
He forced Black Marlin to seize every trace of liquid around him, his eyes turning bright red as blood vessels burst under the strain.
Then something disturbing happened.
The corpses of the dead guards began to twitch and shift, almost as though they were trying to stand and return to the fight.
To Noah, however, the phenomenon looked very different.
He could sense the blood inside those corpses being pulled by an outside force.
Streams of blood tore free from the bodies and gathered around Liver.
Noah watched with open surprise, because this should have been beyond the man's normal capabilities.
When he looked at Liver again, Truthseeker immediately revealed the reason.
[Water Dragon Possession: Limit Break]
・The user has forcibly broken through the Teigu's limiter.
・Life force is being consumed as fuel to raise its power to a new level.
・Estimated remaining lifespan: 10... 9...
Liver's strength had increased enormously after exceeding his limits.
But the price was the rest of his life.
He had less than ten seconds left. Once that time ran out, his body would collapse completely.
"So a Teigu user can do something like this?"
Noah looked at Liver with genuine interest.
This state reminded him of a certain hardworking Blazer's once-a-day Noble Art.
The difference was that this world had no Blazer abilities.
The instant a true ordinary human forcibly broke beyond the body's limits, the countdown to death began.