The five years of peace had made the knights of the Royal Vanguard strong. They had trained under the impossible shadow of Saitama's power, pushing themselves to new heights of skill and discipline. But the beings that descended upon the palace courtyard were not like the disorganized demons or brutish monsters they had trained against. The Berserkers of the Bleeding Star were war personified.
They moved with a terrifying, synchronized grace, their star-fire swords carving arcs of incandescent destruction. Their obsidian armor seemed to absorb both physical blows and magical attacks, shrugging off the knights' desperate-but-valiant counter-assault. A knight's perfectly executed shield-bash would be met with an unyielding wall of alien metal. A mage's potent frost spell would hiss and evaporate inches from a Berserker's helm.
Princess Iris was a blazing inferno of golden light, Anathema a holy sword reborn. She met the charge of three Berserkers at once, her blade a whirlwind of parries and thrusts. She was holding them back, a single, defiant beacon against the tide, but it was a battle of attrition she could not hope to win. For every blow she landed, for every scorched mark she left on their dark armor, they pressed forward, their own burning blades forcing her back, step by painful step.
"For Midgar!" she cried, her voice a rallying call to her flagging soldiers, even as she felt her own strength begin to wane.
It was into this desperate, one-sided struggle that Saitama arrived. He didn't make a grand entrance. He didn't leap from his balcony with a heroic cry. He just… ambled down the main staircase, walked out into the courtyard, and stopped, looking at the scene with a quiet, almost serene, focus.
He had a half-eaten apple in one hand.
A Berserker, its attention momentarily drawn from a knight it was about to disembowel, registered Saitama's presence. It saw a soft, unarmored target in a ridiculous yellow suit, a bizarre anomaly in the midst of the glorious carnage. It turned, its star-fire sword raised, and charged.
Iris saw it. "Saitama! Look out!" she screamed, her own battle forgotten for a moment in a surge of panic.
Saitama took a calm, deliberate bite of his apple. Crunch.
The Berserker, its blade descending with enough force to cleave the very stone of the courtyard, was almost upon him.
Saitama, his mouth still full of apple, simply held out his free hand, palm open, as if signaling the Berserker to stop.
The Berserker stopped.
Its blade, wreathed in cosmic fire, made contact with Saitama's open palm and its momentum, its power, its very existence, ceased. The star-fire extinguished with a sad little fizzle. The obsidian armor, forged in the heart of a dying star, developed a network of hairline cracks. The Berserker itself froze, its inhuman face locked in an expression of pure, uncomprehending shock.
"Hey," Saitama said, his voice slightly muffled by the apple. "Cutting in line is rude."
He then closed his hand into a fist, gently, around the blade. There was a sound like a thousand tiny bells shattering, and the Berserker's legendary sword crumbled into a fine, glittering dust, leaving only the hilt in its owner's hand.
Saitama then delivered a single, open-palmed tap to the Berserker's chest. Pat.
The Berserker, the avatar of a dying star's rage, went limp, its eyes fading. It collapsed at his feet, an inert, silent heap of black metal and shattered purpose.
The entire courtyard fell silent. Every knight, every Berserker, stopped fighting. They all turned, as one, to stare at the man who had just defeated one of the invincible invaders with a lazy gesture and a gentle pat, all while chewing on an apple.
Saitama took another bite, swallowed, and then looked around at the remaining eleven Berserkers, who were now all staring at him, their silent, burning fury replaced by a new, alien emotion: confusion.
"Okay," Saitama announced, his voice carrying clearly across the silent courtyard. "Who's next?"
He tossed the apple core over his shoulder. The last vestiges of his five-year-long boredom had been utterly, completely, burned away. His eyes, for the first time in what felt like a century, were not just focused; they were… bright. Alive. Filled with the pure, unadulterated joy of a craftsman who has finally been given a worthy piece of material to work with.
This was not the cold fury of Oakhaven. This was not the tired duty of the Crown of the Heavens. This… this was fun.
The remaining eleven Berserkers, perhaps driven by their single-minded programming, or perhaps insulted by his sheer, overwhelming nonchalance, reacted as one. They let out a silent, psychic roar that was felt as a wave of pure killing intent, and they all charged at him simultaneously, a converging storm of star-fire and obsidian.
Iris screamed a warning. Kristoph, who had just arrived with reinforcements, could only watch in horror.
Saitama just smiled. A wide, genuine, almost boyish, grin. "Okay."
What happened next would be seared into the memory of every person who witnessed it, a moment that transcended combat and became a form of violent, beautiful, terrifying art. Saitama didn't just fight them. He began to conduct a symphony of single fists.
He moved. A blur of yellow.
A Berserker swung its sword from the right. Saitama, without looking, delivered a short, sharp jab to its elbow. The arm locked, the sword went flying, and the Berserker spun away like a top, crashing into two of its comrades.
Another lunged from the left, its blade aimed at his neck. Saitama ducked under the swing and, on his way back up, delivered a light uppercut to its chin. The Berserker's head snapped back, and it flew straight up into the air, tumbling end over end, before crashing back down a hundred feet away, out of the fight.
He weaved through the storm of burning blades, not with frantic speed, but with an impossible, almost lazy, economy of motion. He was never where the blades were. He was always in the perfect position to deliver the perfect, minimal, and utterly devastating, response. Each of his movements was a quiet, profound statement of absolute superiority.
A punch to the sternum of one, which caused it to fold neatly in half like a piece of paper.
A karate chop to the back of another's neck, which caused it to fall face-first into the flagstones and begin snoring.
A simple, firm push against the combined charge of three more, which sent them hurtling backwards to form a neat, unconscious pile against the palace wall.
He wasn't using his true power. He wasn't even using his "Normal Punch." He was using what amounted to basic, almost gentle, martial arts, but imbued with his own, absolute, underlying physical reality. And against beings forged for cosmic war, it was more than enough. He wasn't killing them. He was… disabling them. Disarming them. Embarrassing them. It was a methodical, almost playful, deconstruction of a supposedly unstoppable invasion force.
He was, in essence, bullying a wave of cosmic horrors.
The last Berserker, seeing its entire squad neutralized in less than thirty seconds without a single casualty (on its side, at least), hesitated. It was the leader, its armor slightly more ornate, its star-fire blade burning a fraction brighter. It stared at Saitama, and for the first time, its programming seemed to clash with a new, unwelcome, instinct: self-preservation.
Saitama stopped in front of it. "You're the last one," he said, his smile fading, replaced by a simple, direct focus. "You guys seem pretty tough. Not 'make me use my serious face' tough, but… you didn't break when I poked you. That's a good start." He raised his fist. "So. Are you gonna give me a good fight? Or do you just wanna go lie down with your friends?"
The Berserker leader let out its psychic roar and chose to fight. It swung its sword in a blindingly fast, complex arc, a technique designed to strike from seven directions at once.
Saitama didn't dodge. He just punched. One punch. Aimed not at the Berserker, but at the empty air directly in front of his fist. A "Normal Punch."
The resulting pressure wave, a solid, invisible wall, met the Berserker and its complex attack head-on. The seven arcs of star-fire were snuffed out. The obsidian armor, subjected to a force that existed on a different physical plane, didn't just break; it stress-fractured into a million pieces and was blasted away, leaving the true form of the being beneath exposed for a fraction of a second – a creature of pure, burning, star-like energy. And then that energy, too, was dispersed, snuffed out, completely, utterly, and silently, undone.
Nothing was left. Not even dust.
Saitama lowered his fist. The silence returned to the courtyard, profound and absolute. He had faced down a squad of elite, world-ending warriors. And it had still, in the end, been just a warm-up. A very, very satisfying warm-up.
He looked around at the stunned faces of Iris, Kristoph, and the Royal Knights. He looked up at the crimson tear in the sky, from which more Berserkers were beginning to descend upon the burning city.
"Okay," Saitama said, cracking his knuckles, the smile returning to his face, wider now, filled with a pure, unadulterated joy. "Let's go clean up the rest."
He crouched, and then he leaped, a golden comet soaring over the palace walls and into the heart of the besieged city, a one-man, one-punch symphony of salvation. The years of quiet, the rust of peace, had been scoured away, leaving behind the pure, brilliant, terrifying steel of a hero who had finally, finally, found something fun to do.