"Blood Dragon Ascension!"
Liver unleashed Black Marlin's strongest secret technique.
The side effects no longer mattered.
He knew his body would never survive the combined strain of so many enhancement drugs anyway, so he poured everything he had into this final attack.
"I offer this body to my master, Lady Esdeath!"
The blood gathered into a huge dragon and twisted through the air.
Liver's presence rose to its peak as he continued feeding his own blood into the creature, holding absolutely nothing back.
Among all the enemies Noah had faced, Liver might have been the first willing to sacrifice everything simply to bring him down.
Ending the fight instantly would have been easy.
Blood conducted electricity well.
A single Lightning Strike would tear apart the technique and reduce Liver to charcoal at the same time.
But Chouri and Spear were still watching, and Noah did not want to reveal such an obvious ability in front of them.
As far as the Empire knew, the only notable lightning Teigu user was Grand General Budo.
Showing control over lightning would bring unnecessary attention.
Noah did not trust Minister Chouri simply because he was close to the Leiden family.
There was no guarantee where the old man's loyalties would fall once politics entered the equation.
"Oranides, you may use Focalor. Finish him."
At Noah's command, Oranides opened its jaw impossibly wide.
A sword hilt rose from deep inside its body.
Oranides caught it in one hand and drew out an enormous blue blade made entirely of compressed water elements.
"What?"
Liver stared in disbelief as the giant pulled a sword from its mouth, or more accurately, from inside its body.
Then he realized that the blade itself was made from water.
But why could he not control it?
Black Marlin was a Teigu that manipulated liquid.
In his current state, he had even broken past the usual requirement of physical contact.
Yet the water forming that enormous blade might as well have been solid steel.
No matter how hard he tried, he could not affect it at all.
There were two reasons.
The first was Focalor's own will.
To Focalor, the lake's worth of water stored inside its core was part of its body.
The second was the sheer amount of water involved. Liver assumed the blade contained only what he could see, but those were highly compressed water elements.
If fully released, they would cause a devastating flood.
Even after breaking through his limits, he could not control such an enormous mass.
The blood dragon lunged at Oranides, making the scene look like a battle between two creatures from ancient mythology.
Oranides seized the blood dragon by the neck with one hand and swung Focalor with the other.
The blue blade moved with almost no sense of weight, passing straight through the blood dragon's neck and cutting off its head.
The severed head dissolved in midair.
Liver's technique had been broken head-on, and the backlash immediately struck his body.
He vomited blood and dropped to both knees. His presence rapidly weakened as his body shriveled visibly.
Within two or three seconds, the dignified gentleman had become a dried husk.
"What a shame..."
Those were Liver's final words before he died.
After defeating both enemies, Oranides reached down and gathered the remains of Daidara from beneath its hand.
It opened its enormous mouth and swallowed the flesh along with the soul.
Watching the monster eat a person, Chouri and Spear felt a chill spread through their bodies.
They could only hope it would not remain hungry enough to turn on them next.
Focalor's water blade softened and moved like a living ribbon, wrapping around Liver's corpse and pulling it inside.
His soul was swallowed as well.
After processing the two bodies, Oranides spat out two hard objects.
One of them was Daidara's Teigu, Belvaac.
Focalor, however, did not return Liver's Black Marlin.
Noah examined it and discovered that Focalor had completely absorbed the ring, gaining Black Marlin's ability to manipulate liquids.
The power was extremely compatible with Focalor.
Together with the souls they had consumed before, Oranides and Focalor now possessed intelligence roughly equal to that of human children between ten and twelve years old.
After checking their changes, Noah finally remembered that one of the Three Beasts was still missing.
He turned toward the place where he had smashed Nyau into the ground.
Only a human-shaped crater remained.
Nyau himself was gone.
"He escaped?"
Noah was honestly surprised.
He had not held back much during that attack. It would have been normal for every bone in Nyau's body to be shaken apart.
Yet that delicate-looking boy had taken the blow directly and still managed to stand up and flee.
"It seems I underestimated him."
Nyau had at least judged the situation well.
After recovering enough to move, he had neither returned to help his companions nor tried to attack the mission target. He had focused entirely on staying alive.
His survival instinct deserved some recognition.
It also showed that instinct guided him more strongly than reason or loyalty.
"Come back."
Noah called to Oranides.
The giant quickly shrank and dove into the bundle beneath Noah's ragged cloak.
With all the torn cloth covering him, no one could tell that anything was hidden underneath.
Who would imagine that such a shabby-looking man was carrying a monster capable of growing nearly ten meters tall?
Only after the creature vanished did Minister Chouri finally release the breath he had been holding.
He was a civil official rather than a soldier, and his knowledge of Teigu was limited to what he had read.
Even then, he had not studied them very deeply.
Otherwise, what he had just witnessed would have seemed impossible.
That black giant was clearly a Teigu.
The sword it had used was also a Teigu.
One Teigu using another should not have been possible!
Of course, that limitation applied to ordinary users.
It was different for the person who had created them.
"Minister Chouri, Leims knew this journey would not go smoothly, so he asked me to help you."
Noah approached the old man and spoke in a low voice.
"The assassins have been defeated, but since the first attempt failed, this is only the beginning. You understand that, don't you?"
The relief on Chouri's face disappeared.
As someone who had once been Minister Honest's greatest political enemy, he understood Honest's methods very well.
That was why he had retired in the first place.
Otherwise, he would have followed many of his old friends to the grave long ago.
This time, Chouri had believed that once he returned to the Imperial Capital, he could unite with the remaining honest officials.
If they stood together, even Honest would find it difficult to move against them openly.
But the journey he had thought secret had already been exposed, and assassins had been waiting for him before he even reached the city.
"Sir, thank you for saving Spear and me. Without you, we would certainly have died here."
Chouri looked at the corpses scattered across the road and tightened his grip on his daughter's hand.
They had come frighteningly close to being left dead together in the wilderness.
"What do you plan to do now?" Noah asked.
Chouri's expression hardened. "Honest sent three Teigu users to kill me. That alone proves he fears my return to the capital. So I must continue."
"Even if I begged for mercy now, he would never spare me, and he certainly wouldn't spare my daughter. Returning to the Imperial Capital is the only way I can gather support and protect my family."
The idea was not foolish. Under the circumstances Chouri understood, it was mostly reasonable.
Even so, Noah shook his head.
That plan depended on the political situation still being what Chouri remembered.
"I'm sorry, but you should abandon the idea of returning to the capital."
"Why?" Chouri asked, startled.
"The Imperial Capital is completely different from the one you knew. You won't be safe there. Within three days at most, you and your family will either be found dead in your estate after an apparent suicide, or you'll simply disappear without a trace."
At this point, the conscientious faction survived only because General Budo provided them with the bare minimum of protection.
Without that, they would have been wiped out already.
Chouri believed he could join forces with other ministers and oppose Honest, but that path had closed long ago.
Most of the people he hoped to rely on had already abandoned the Empire and joined the Revolutionary Army.