Superhuman

"Is this the complete form of your ability?" Hikaru said as he eyed the one-metre hole that Botan punched into the road. "The enhancement of destructive power. So simple yet powerful."

Despite Hikaru's capacity for learning sophisticated abilities, he liked simple things. He didn't have to do much thinking.

Botan wasn't in the mood for talking. The spies in the police had reported that there was a "bodyless massacre" at Inari ward. There was blood everywhere but the bodies were nowhere to be found. This was familiar as he remembered watching Hikaru absorb a casualty at the Battle Royale.

Now that he found out Hikaru was a renegade, it made sense. He figured that Hikaru was killing friends and foes because he was power-hungry. This meant that if Hikaru got away here, Daichi would be next on his hit list. He vowed to kill Hikaru here to protect his master.

Hikaru was guessing what went through Botan's mind since he was silent and was giving him a deathly stare. Hikaru was surprised that Botan sprinted into the house instead of jumping on the roof. He leapt out of the way in time as Botan smashed through the roof an instant later. On top of the house, Botan held a piece of the roof that looked like a giant jigsaw puzzle and aimed at Hikaru.

Hikaru used a trick that he used earlier and grabbed a nearby electric pole with his whip. Botan was waiting for that. He had lifted the debris over his head to fake a throw. The debris was lobbed at Hikaru's whip which was attached to the electric pole like a taut string.

Hikaru snapped his arm off before he collided with the debris and forward rolled on the ground. He then jumped out of the way without looking up thanks to his third eye. When Botan landed, his fists smashed into the dirt creating a cloud of dust.

It wasn't on purpose. His fists were so heavy that they could injure his back so he had to drain the weight force into the ground.

But of course, he took advantage of the decreased visibility and hid his next move in the clouds.

Hikaru waited for him to do what he had planned. A huge shadow came out of the dust and headed towards him at a high speed. It was a car.

The distance between him and Botan wasn't that short but the dust decreased the amount of area that he could see and react. However, with parallel thought, he nimbly ducked to the ground with the skills of an acrobat.

The space underneath the car and between the road was only half a metre but Hikaru did a stretch similar to the deep side lunge split and narrowly avoided scraping the car.

He could have just lay prone but his pride wouldn't let his face touch the ground. The car whammed into a house creating a huge hole. Then the whole wall collapsed. Bricks fell out like dominoes.

"Aghhhhhh!"

A woman screamed from under the rubble. A man started to pick the rubble apart. She couldn't get away as she was pinned under a rock that had smashed her foot. The man was lifting the rock with all his strength.

'Come on! You got this! You used to be a national powerlifting champion!' The 40-year-old man pepped himself up. With that, the rock was budging.

Botan had just thrown a car that weighed over a tonne which was known to be the barrier to superhuman strength.

The only human to have the greatest recorded absolute strength was Paul Anderson. Forget the "top 10 heaviest weight lifted of all time" or Hafthor Bjornsson's world record lift of 501 kilograms. There is only the Guinness Book of World records' back lift of 2840 kg (6270 lb.) that truly deserves the praise of "the greatest weight ever raised by a human being".

However, it is never known if Paul Anderson could have lifted a one-tonne car. There are no records of any human beings who can lift a car without any of the wheels touching the ground. It is deemed impossible.

Even if it was possible, it would require someone to do a lift using their whole body. Botan didn't just lift the car with his hands, he chucked it with unprecedented strength. He has surpassed peak human strength.

It was safe to say that if the parasites invaded Earth during the medieval ages, the human race would have been wiped out with no way to resist. With the current weapons of today, mankind has a chance.

Just as the dust was subsiding. Botan slammed into the ground causing the earth to quake. The ground was shaking so much that just about anyone would fall. Hikaru was about the only one that was able to stand up albeit he was staggering around. Even enhancers would have difficulty keeping themselves up.

Botan grabbed another car like a club and charged in. Hikaru couldn't run away while the ground was shaking so he barely did a jump. It was so unbalanced that it was only a small jump backwards but it was enough to dodge Botan's swing of the car.

A brute would have just swung but Botan was still calm-headed despite his berserker appearance. The swing was a feint. Instead of attacking, he was merely bringing it over to his left shoulder to toss it at Hikaru.

The car rapidly went through the air. There wasn't enough time to dodge. Hikaru enhanced his arms with the same red flesh as Botan which was a modification of Juro's ability. He copied the muscle tissue of the whip into his arms which were all he could do. It wasn't easy to synthesise a new ability even from an existing one.

He was using accumulated data to extrapolate a new form which took countless experiments and permutations. Every second of the day, Hikaru was doing experiments in his cells all over his body that no one could see.