"Was I too late?"
A soft, heavy sigh escaped his lips.
A flicker of regret and sorrow passed through Eschbach's hazel eyes, only to be consumed instantly by a rising inferno of rage. He stared at the gore-slicked, blackened figure standing before the sentry tower, his fury burning hot enough to reduce the man to ash.
Eschbach was the largest of Elus's four adjutants. Standing at three hundred and fifty centimeters, his sheer bulk was enough to petrify the faint of heart, and his stern, majestic features paired with fists like iron mallets made him look like anything but a "good man."
In truth, however, Eschbach was the most soft-hearted of the four.
No matter how many times he saw it, he could never stomach the sight of innocent suffering. He loathed interrogation; the torture chambers were the one place in the palace he refused to set foot in. But his compassion did not translate to mercy for the wicked.
When facing monsters who reveled in slaughter, he didn't just strike with his full strength—he struck with double the conviction.
"Tadra, the 'Black Beast.' Bounty: 110 million Berries. Origin: West Blue. Former Mafia Legion Commander. Once slaughtered an entire town to intimidate a rival family..."
Eschbach recited the dossier word for word, his killing intent climbing to a fever pitch with every syllable.
"You certainly know your history... but it doesn't matter how much the food knows before it's eaten."
Tadra grinned, flashing two rows of blood-stained, serrated fangs.
Then, in the space of a heartbeat, the ten-meter gap vanished.
Moving on all fours like a rabid animal, the Black Beast lunged at Eschbach. He stayed low to the ground, his right hand curling into a fist as he aimed a vicious blow directly at Eschbach's right ankle.
CRACK—BOOM!
There was no sound of splintering bone.
Tadra felt as if his fist had collided with a massive, reinforced steel pillar. The sheer force of the rebound sent a jolt of agony up his arm—a sensation he hadn't felt in years. Since mastering Busoshoku Haki in the New World, he had forgotten what bone-deep pain felt like.
"You struck me once."
Eschbach looked down at the creature crouching at his feet. He raised his right leg.
"I'll return the favor with a kick."
The moment his words fell, so did his foot.
The impact was like a meteor striking the earth. The entire sea-cliff seemed to shudder under the titanic force. A cloud of pulverized stone and dust billowed upward, only to be instantly swept away by the sea breeze, revealing a deep, jagged crater in the rock.
"Cough! Hack!"
Tadra knelt at the edge of the pit, doubled over and hacking up a glob of dark gore. It was impossible to tell if it was his own blood or the remains of whatever he'd eaten earlier.
"You..."
The beast-man opened his mouth to snarl something, but Eschbach wasn't interested in conversation.
"Shut up, trash."
A massive, tree-trunk of a fist, coated in the obsidian sheen of Armament Haki, served as his final response. In the primordial ages, humanity had used its fists to break the wild spirit of beasts, domesticating them into livestock. Today, history was repeating itself.
Fists collided, shoulders brushed and broke, and legs lashed out like steel whips. The sound of their battle was a relentless, metallic cacophony—like a frantic hammer beating against an anvil in a god's forge.
Tadra was a vile criminal, yes, but his 110-million-Berry bounty was a testament to his lethality. The Marines did not hand out such numbers to the weak.
Both men specialized in raw, hand-to-hand combat. From the very first exchange, the fight transcended technique and entered a state of primal, bloody violence. Even when the Transponder Snail in Eschbach's pocket began to ring, neither man afforded their opponent a single second of slack.
"Your friend is quite the monster!"
The man in the blue swim trunks let out a low whistle of admiration. "Tadra might be a beast in human skin, but his fists are as hard as they come. To stand your ground against him... you really are Echemondo's reinforcements?"
He stared at the man facing him—Dick. A smirk played on the stranger's lips, but internally, he was cursing his intel officers to the depths of hell.
"I don't recall seeing your faces in the reports? I thought Echemondo's only high-tier fighters were 'Beautiful Sword' and 'Fighting Dog'?"
The man in the trunks—Falugo—didn't possess Observation Haki, but he had a preternatural instinct for danger. The ponytail-wearing blonde in front of him and the giant pummeling Tadra nearby were both high-level threats that made his skin crawl.
In pirate terms, both of these gatekeepers were easily worth over a hundred million Berries.
And yet, there hadn't been a shred of intel on them. The intelligence department is a bunch of useless waste. If I survive this, I'm going to skin them alive, he thought.
"To deal with the likes of you, we don't need to trouble those two gentlemen."
Dick's chin tilted upward. His brilliant blonde hair, tied back in a high ponytail, danced with his movements. His gaze was heavy with the effortless arrogance of the elite.
"Now... can you tell me your name?" Falugo asked, his smile never wavering, seemingly unaffected by Dick's disdain.
"'Strangler Ghost' Falugo... are you trying to fish for information?"
The voice that answered him didn't come from across the path. It came from right behind his ear.
Falugo felt the sudden, warm sensation of breath against the back of his neck. Every hair on his body stood on end. Driven by pure instinct, he lunged forward in a desperate "Lazy Donkey Roll."
The moment he dove, a violent gust of wind whistled through the space where his head had been. The stinging sensation on his back told him that if his reactions had been a fraction of a second slower, his spine would have been ripped out to be used as a whip.
"Are you... an Ability User?"
Ignoring the shallow laceration on his back, Falugo spun around while half-crouched. Standing where he had just been was a massive, predatory leopard. It stood with predatory grace, its long tail flickering lazily, watching Falugo with eyes full of mocking amusement.
"A Zoan type?"
Falugo's mouth went dry. He licked his lips, his heart growing heavy.
He wasn't an Ability User himself, but he knew exactly how troublesome they were—especially the Zoan types. They lacked the wide-scale destruction of Logias or the bizarre versatility of Paramecias, but for a physical combat specialist, a Zoan fruit was the ultimate prize.
Nine out of ten martial masters would choose a Zoan fruit if given the chance. The boost to vitality, speed, strength, and durability was a total, all-encompassing upgrade.
It meant his opponent had bottomless stamina and could take a hell of a beating.
For a man nicknamed the "Strangler Ghost," this was the worst possible matchup. He specialized in quick, lethal snaps—and he loathed targets that refused to break in one go.