The shockwave from Saitama's "Normal Punch" was not merely a localized event. It was a statement. It propagated through the ancient stone of the monastery, a deep, resonant thrum that caused the entire structure to groan. In the deepest sanctum, Prelate Malakor was thrown from his feet as the chamber floor bucked violently. The dark-energy crystals lining the walls flared with sympathetic energy, then shattered, plunging the room into near darkness, lit only by the flickering, failing containment field.
"Report!" Malakor roared, scrambling to his feet, his gaunt face contorted with a mixture of fury and dawning dread. "What was that?! Did the Flesh-Golems detonate?!"
His scrying crystal, which had been showing a chaotic view of the Grand Vestibule, suddenly went dark, its connection severed. A panicked voice shrieked through his communication amulet, "Prelate! The Vestibule… it's… gone! The Golems, the Hounds… everything! There's just… a hole! A massive, clean hole leading into the lower archives!" The voice cut out with a gurgle and a wet crunch, followed by static.
"Gone?" Malakor whispered, a cold dread seeping past his fanatical zeal. A hole? He couldn't comprehend it. The Flesh-Golems were his masterwork, resilient enough to withstand cannon fire. The Gore-Hounds were relentless. How could a single intruder… erase them?
His dark, calculating mind raced. This wasn't a knight. This wasn't a sorcerer. This was something else. A force that didn't play by the rules of magic, steel, or even conventional reality. The 'Tempest'… the name suddenly felt chillingly appropriate. He was a storm, and their ancient, sturdy fortress was proving to be made of little more than straw.
"Seal the archives!" Malakor screamed into his amulet. "Activate the Chrono-Stasis Traps! Release the Void Lurkers! Slow him down! I need more time!" The siphoning of the abyssal entity was nearly complete. He just needed a few more minutes to absorb its power. With that power, he reasoned, he could face any threat. Any threat.
Saitama, meanwhile, was conducting what amounted to a one-man audit of the Cult of Diablos's operational security, and finding it severely lacking. He ambled through the "shortcut" he'd created, which led directly into a vast, multi-storied library filled with towering shelves of ancient, leather-bound tomes and forbidden scrolls. The air was thick with the scent of old paper, dust, and dark magic.
"Wow. Big library," he commented, looking around. "Lots of reading material. Probably overdue on their library fees." He scanned the shelves. "Okay, so… where would they keep the noodles? 'N' section? 'I' for 'Instant'? Or maybe 'D' for 'Delicious'?"
A group of black-robed acolytes, who had been studying forbidden necromantic texts in a corner, looked up and saw the bald man in the tattered yellow suit suddenly appear through a newly created hole in their library wall. They stared, speechless, their faces pale with shock. One of them, in a panic, began chanting a complex incantation, his hands weaving intricate patterns in the air. A bolt of crackling, necrotic energy, designed to rot flesh from bone, shot towards Saitama.
Saitama, who was trying to read the title on a particularly large, dusty book, just happened to scratch an itch on the back of his head at that exact moment. His elbow, moving in a casual, reflexive arc, intercepted the necrotic bolt.
Fzzt.
The bolt, a spell that could fell a manticore, simply… fizzled out against his elbow. It didn't even singe the fabric of his jumpsuit.
Saitama blinked. "Was that a mosquito? Annoying." He looked at the terrified acolyte. "Hey, you! Glasses! You work here? Can you tell me where the snack aisle is?"
The acolyte stared, his jaw working but no sound coming out. He had just unleashed the 'Curse of Withering Despair,' a spell that took him a full minute to cast and required a significant portion of his life force. And the target had defeated it with an elbow-scratch. The acolyte's carefully constructed understanding of magic, of power, of his own significance in the grand, dark scheme of things, shattered into a million pieces. He made a small, whimpering sound and fainted dead away.
The other acolytes, witnessing this, chose a different, wiser course of action. They screamed, dropped their ancient, forbidden texts, and ran for their lives, their dark robes flapping behind them.
Saitama watched them go. "Huh. Guess it's his day off." He shrugged and continued his search. He wandered down an aisle labeled (in a spidery, unsettling script) "Texts of Corporeal Reanimation." He peered at the titles. "'Fun with Femurs,' 'Advanced Intestine-Braiding,' 'A Hundred and One Uses for a Spare Spleen'… nope, no noodle recipes here. This place has a really weird selection."
As he turned a corner, the air in front of him shimmered and seemed to… freeze. A Chrono-Stasis Trap, one of Malakor's prized defenses, activated. It was a bubble of localized, frozen time, designed to trap any intruder for a thousand years in the space of a single second. Anything entering its field would be locked in place, a statue of flesh and bone, until the spell was released.
Saitama, walking at his usual ambling pace, walked right into it.
For the briefest fraction of a nanosecond, the trap tried to work. The incredibly powerful temporal magic washed over Saitama, attempting to seize his atoms, to halt his motion, to lock him in a single moment of time.
And then, the trap broke.
It didn't shatter or explode. The bubble of frozen time simply… popped. Like a soap bubble. Saitama's sheer, forward-moving existence, his personal inertia that seemed to operate on its own set of rules, was so absolute that the concept of 'being stopped by frozen time' was just another inconvenience to be shrugged off. He didn't even seem to notice it, beyond a faint feeling of walking through a slightly thicker patch of air.
"Weird draft in here," he muttered, continuing on his way, leaving behind a fizzling, broken temporal ward that was now rapidly aging the surrounding bookshelves into fine grey dust.
He found himself in a large, cavernous section of the catacombs. The air here was cold, damp, and smelled of something unpleasant, like stagnant water and old meat. The floor was littered with bones. From shadowy alcoves along the walls, things began to emerge. They were Void Lurkers – creatures summoned from the spaces between realities. They had no definite shape, just masses of writhing, semi-corporeal tentacles, gaping maws filled with needle-like teeth that phased in and out of existence, and a multitude of non-blinking, unnervingly intelligent eyes. They moved with a silent, slithering gait, their very presence causing the stone around them to subtly warp and discolor.
They converged on Saitama, not with the roaring fury of beasts, but with a silent, predatory intelligence. They were ambush predators from a dimension where physics was a matter of opinion.
Saitama looked at the slithering, tentacled, multi-eyed horrors. "Okay, now this is just getting gross. Looks like someone spilled a giant bowl of calamari and it went bad."
A Void Lurker lashed out with a tentacle that seemed to defy physical space, disappearing from one spot and reappearing an inch from Saitama's face, its tip hardening into a razor-sharp psychic barb.
Saitama, with the practiced ease of someone swatting a fly, backhanded it.
Smack.
The sound was surprisingly solid. The Void Lurker, a being that could phase through solid walls, found its reality-warping biology utterly negated by Saitama's fist. It solidified completely for a split second, its many eyes widening in what could only be described as cosmic surprise, before it burst like a water balloon filled with ink and regret, its essence dissolving with a final, pathetic hiss.
Saitama looked at his hand. "Ew. Slimy." He looked at the other Void Lurkers, who had all paused, their tentacles quivering, their many eyes blinking in unison. "Alright, guys," he said, cracking his knuckles. "This place is a mess. Time for some serious house cleaning."
He moved. A blur of yellow, red, and white.
"Consecutive… Normal… Punches."
He didn't shout the name. He just… did it. A flurry of punches, each one simple, straightforward, yet delivered with a speed and force that defied comprehension. Each punch created a miniature sonic boom, a pocket of compressed air that slammed into the Void Lurkers. The creatures, for all their reality-bending properties, were simply overwhelmed. Their semi-corporeal forms were ripped apart, their essences scattered, their brief incursion into this reality brought to an abrupt, violent, and utterly one-sided end.
Within five seconds, the cavern was empty, save for Saitama and the lingering smell of ozone and disappointed calamari. The very air felt cleaner, more stable, as if his punches had not just destroyed the creatures, but had also hammered the warped reality they created back into its proper shape.
He dusted off his hands. "Okay. No more spooky space squid." He looked around the now-empty cavern. His eyes fell upon a large, reinforced iron door at the far end, glowing with faint, angry purple runes. "Huh. That looks important. The head bad guy is probably in there. And the head bad guy always has the best snacks."
He walked towards the door, his footsteps echoing in the suddenly silent catacombs. His quest for noodles had led him on a strange detour, but he felt he was finally getting close. After all, the final boss room was always where the ultimate treasure was kept. And for Saitama, the ultimate treasure was, and always would be, a satisfying, preferably instant, meal.