The silence in the aftermath of Saitama's shout was a profound, almost holy thing. In the Royal Council Chamber, the King, the princesses, the Magi, and the commanders slowly picked themselves up, their ears ringing, the ghost of that all-encompassing hum still vibrating in their bones. They looked out of the shattered windows into the now-silent plaza, where a fine, glittering dust – all that remained of the cosmic herald – was settling in the afternoon sunlight.
They had been on the verge of planetary "harmonization," seconds away from having their molecular structures unwritten by an alien frequency, and the crisis had been averted by their Royal Protector yelling at it to be quiet.
Archmagus Theron was leaning heavily on his staff, his face a mixture of terror and an almost religious awe. "He… he weaponized his own voice," the old wizard whispered, his voice trembling. "He produced a sonic frequency of pure, focused force, a counter-resonance that didn't just overpower the herald's field, but completely deconstructed its matrix. That is not a feat of magic. That is a feat of… biology. What kind of lungs are those?"
King Olric just stared, a slow, familiar sense of despair washing over him. The problem wasn't just that Saitama was powerful. The problem was that the solutions he deployed were becoming increasingly, bafflingly, domestic. He had solved a city-wide plague by punching a cure. He had defeated a secret society by demanding pudding. And now, he had saved the world from a dimension-hopping crystalline entity by shouting at it like a man telling his neighbor to turn down the music. How did one even begin to document such events in the official histories of the kingdom? "And in the 11th year of his reign, King Olric was saved from cosmic annihilation when the Royal Protector got annoyed by the noise." It lacked… gravitas.
The doors to the chamber swung open, and Saitama walked in, brushing some glittering dust from his shoulders. "Okay," he announced. "Noise complaint handled. The sparkly robot jellyfish thingy is gone." He looked at the assembled, stunned leaders of the kingdom. "So, where were we? You guys were talking about… ancient evils? Or was it the lunch menu? I kinda got distracted."
No one knew how to respond. They just stared at him. The sheer, casual whiplash between "averting planetary re-tuning" and "discussing the lunch menu" was too much for even their seasoned, crisis-hardened minds to handle.
It was Lyraelle who finally spoke, her voice a quiet, calm counterpoint to the lingering shock. She had weathered the sonic assault with her innate celestial resilience, and her silver eyes were fixed on Saitama with a new, even deeper, level of understanding. "You faced the herald of a 'Star-Eater'," she said, her words sending a fresh chill through the room. "A cosmic intellect that consumes entire worlds. And you… shouted it away."
"Star-Eater? Is that what it was called?" Saitama asked, his interest piqued. "Cool name. Very dramatic. But yeah, it was really loud. 0 out of 5 stars on neighborhood etiquette."
"Saitama," Lyraelle continued, her gaze intense, "that entity, that Star-Eater… it is still out there. In our heavens. Observing. Assessing. You have defeated its herald, its 'tuner'. You have, in essence, just told a god that its music is bad." She paused. "It will not be pleased. It will likely send… something else. Something… stronger."
Saitama just shrugged. "Cool. Hope the next one knows how to use its indoor voice." The prospect of a stronger opponent, a real challenge, still held that tiny, flickering allure for him, the promise made by the man in the desert. "As long as they show up one at a time, it should be fine. I hate group fights. Too much going on."
This statement, so casually delivered, so utterly confident in the face of a threat that had just paralyzed an entire kingdom with fear, was, in its own way, more reassuring than any royal decree or grand military plan could have ever been. He wasn't boasting. He was just stating a fact as he saw it. Problems, even cosmic, world-eating ones, were manageable as long as they formed an orderly queue.
The "Divine Complaint Review," as Princess Alexia later privately dubbed the incident, sent ripples not just through the heavens, but through the hidden worlds on earth.
In the newly re-established, now mobile and even more secretive, headquarters of the Benefactor's faction, the commander with the metallic voice reviewed the sensor data from the event in Midgar. The screen showed the energy signature of the Tuner appearing, the massive resonance spike, and then… a vocal signature that dwarfed it, followed by the Tuner's signature simply… ceasing to exist.
**
"His power seems to adapt to the nature of the threat," the commander observed, a new, almost academic, respect in his voice. "He does not just apply brute force. He applies the correct kind of force. Instinctively."
**
In a dark, quiet room somewhere in Midgar, a different analysis was taking place.
Sid, as himself, not as Shadow, was reviewing a pirated feed from the Royal Magi's own sensory network. He had seen the entire event unfold. He saw the alien perfection of the Tuner. He saw the city paralyzed. He saw Saitama's ridiculously simple, impossibly effective, solution.
And he laughed. A genuine, unrestrained, delighted laugh.
"Oh, this is perfect!" he said to the empty room, wiping a tear of amusement from his eye. "It's absolutely perfect!"
His grand, overarching plan to subtly manipulate world events, to be the Eminence in Shadow in a complex, multi-layered game of intrigue and betrayal, was being consistently, gloriously, upstaged by a series of increasingly powerful and alien invaders who were, in turn, being effortlessly and comically defeated by the one being in the world who was completely immune to narrative convention.
The cosmic horror, the ancient evil, the 'True Enemy'? The Cult of Diablos? His own carefully crafted plans? It was all becoming… a sideshow. The B-plot in "The Bizarrely Domestic Adventures of a Bored God and his Quest for a Decent Meal."
And he found that he didn't mind. In fact, he found it exhilarating. The board he was playing on wasn't just complex; it was actively insane. The rules were being rewritten, on a daily basis, by a man who didn't even know he was holding the pen. How could one be a master manipulator in a world where the primary motivating factor of the most powerful being was a noise complaint?
It was a challenge. The ultimate challenge. Not to defeat Saitama – he had already, quietly, in the privacy of his own humiliated soul, admitted that was likely impossible. But to somehow, some way, still manage to achieve his own goals, to still be the "Eminence in Shadow," in a world so thoroughly dominated by this chaotic, blindingly powerful "Eminence in Light."
"So, the gods are coming out to play," Sid mused, his smile turning sharp, calculating. "Let them come. Let them throw their heralds and their world-ending symphonies at the Tempest." He stood up, his own, quiet power beginning to coalesce around him. "It will create… distractions. Opportunities. And while the heavens are busy fighting the sun… they will never notice the quiet, patient work of the true shadow, growing deeper, and stronger, below."
He saw a new path forward. He wouldn't just use Saitama as a smokescreen anymore. He would use the entire, impending cosmic war as his stage. He would let the gods and the demigod have their noisy, explosive battles. And in the ensuing chaos, while everyone was looking up at the sky, he would achieve his true aims – securing the last of the hero's legacy, unraveling the final secrets of the Cult, and quietly, remorselessly, consolidating his own, absolute power.
The universe had issued a divine complaint against the mortal world. Saitama had reviewed it, and dismissed it, with a shout. And in the silence that followed, the true, hidden players of the world began to prepare for the main event.