While Saitama was rediscovering the simple, profound joy of having an abundance of things to punch, another, quieter and far more subtle battle was unfolding in the city's hidden spaces. For Sid, the Eminence in Shadow, the Berserker invasion was not a crisis; it was a god-sent, heaven-sent, chaos-sent opportunity. It was the ultimate distraction, a city-wide, world-ending spectacle that drew every eye, every scrying orb, every iota of attention from the powers that be, leaving the rest of the board wide open for him to play on.
He stood on a high, shadowed rooftop overlooking a different district of Midgar, one far from the initial palace assault, but one that was now beginning to see its own share of panicked chaos as stray Berserkers descended. He was not dressed as the unassuming student Sid, nor as the imposing Lord Shadow. He wore the simple, practical, dark gear of an anonymous operative, a gray man for a gray task.
Alpha materialized beside him, a golden-haired ghost, her face a mask of focused intensity. "The city's defenses are in disarray, Lord Shadow," she reported, her voice a low, urgent murmur. "The Royal Knights are entirely focused on containing the Berserker landing zones. The Tempest is… engaged… in the central plaza, drawing the bulk of their forces. The palace's inner security is at its weakest point in a generation. It is the perfect time to strike."
Sid nodded, his gaze fixed on a specific, heavily guarded, and entirely unremarkable-looking building nestled deep within the Royal Precinct. It was not a treasury, nor an armory, nor a place of political power. It was the "Royal Archives of Forbidden and Esoteric Lore," the place where the kingdom kept its deepest, darkest secrets. It was the home of every captured Cultist artifact, every suppressed historical text, every piece of forbidden knowledge the Midgar monarchy had accumulated over centuries. It was the kingdom's secret attic, filled with dangerous, forgotten toys.
And it was his true target. The legacy of the heroes, the Tome of Aethel, was only one piece of the puzzle. To truly understand, and ultimately defeat, the "True Enemy," and to solidify his own position as the ultimate, all-knowing power in the shadows, he needed more. He needed all the pieces.
"The Cult of Diablos and their predecessors… they did not spring from a vacuum," Sid said, his voice the calm, analytical tone he used when deep within his persona. "Their power, their knowledge, their connection to the 'True Enemy'… its roots are buried deep in the history of this kingdom. In the secrets the heroes sought to seal away, and the kings sought to forget." He pointed towards the Archives. "The answers are in there. The full, unedited history of the Great Betrayal. The true nature of Diablos's bloodline. The location of the Cult's final, hidden sanctums. All the strings of the puppet masters are attached to the knowledge within that building."
"The defenses are formidable, my lord," Alpha cautioned. "Ancient wards, guardian golems, a permanent staff of elite battle-mages from the Archmagus's own order."
Sid just smiled, a faint, confident expression. "The wards are tuned to detect known magical frequencies and hostile intent. We are neither. The golems are slow. And the battle-mages…" he looked across the city, at the sky, which was now flashing with the distant, almost beautiful light of Saitama's high-speed "cleanup operation." "…I suspect their attention is currently… elsewhere."
This was the core of his new grand strategy. Not to use Saitama as a simple distraction, but to use him as an overwhelming one. Saitama's battles were so vast, so reality-warping, that they created a form of sensory and arcane blindness in everyone else. While the world's most powerful beings were shielding their eyes from the sun, Shadow Garden could move through the resulting deep shadows, completely unseen.
"Gamma has created a momentary bypass for the outer data-wards, timed to coincide with the Tempest's next major energy spike," Sid continued, his plan unfolding with the cool precision of a master clockmaker. "Delta and Zeta will create a minor, but noisy, diversion near the western gate to draw the bulk of the remaining guard patrols. You and I, Alpha, will go in. We will not be destructive. We will be ghosts. We acquire the 'Rosetta Chronicle' and the 'Codex of the Abyssal Pact.' Nothing else. In and out before they even realize they've been robbed."
It was a heist, a library raid of world-altering significance, conducted in the middle of an alien invasion. It was audacious. It was insane. It was perfect.
"And what of the Tempest himself, my lord?" Alpha asked.
Sid's gaze drifted towards the flashing lights in the central plaza, a faint, almost fond, smile on his face. "Let him have his fun. Let him be the hero. Let him save the city." He looked back at Alpha, his eyes glinting with a profound, almost artistic, sense of purpose.
"The hero saves the day," he murmured, his voice a perfect summary of his entire philosophy. "But it is the shadow who writes the history of tomorrow."
As Shadow and Alpha melted into the city's hidden pathways, their own, far more important, battle beginning, Saitama was indeed having fun. The city had become his personal, high-stakes playground. He moved through the streets like a golden pinball, a blur of motion ricocheting between threats, his every action a simple, direct, and devastatingly effective solution.
He would appear in a burning square where a dozen Berserkers were overwhelming a platoon of city guards. A quick flurry of "Consecutive Normal Punches" would send the Berserkers flying in various directions, landing in neat, unconscious piles, while the resulting wind from his movements would conveniently put out the fires. He would then vanish, leaving behind a group of stunned, saved, but deeply confused, guardsmen.
He saw a Berserker about to bring its flaming sword down on a fleeing family. He appeared behind it, tapped it on the shoulder, and when the seven-foot-tall cosmic horror turned around, he simply flicked it on the nose. The Berserker's eyes crossed, it stumbled backwards, tripped over a stray cat (which was unharmed but deeply offended), and fell headfirst into a public fountain, out of the fight.
He wasn't just fighting; he was performing a city-wide, one-man rescue operation with an almost comical level of efficiency and a complete lack of unnecessary lethality. He wasn't killing the Berserkers; he was neutralizing them. Disarming them. Disabling them. He was, in essence, treating the alien invasion as a very rowdy, very poorly managed riot, and he was the ultimate crowd control.
In the Royal Palace, the scrying orbs struggled to keep up. The Magi and military commanders watched, their initial terror slowly giving way to a kind of stunned, slack-jawed awe.
"He… he's everywhere at once," King Olric whispered, watching as the icon representing Saitama on the tactical map blinked from one crisis point to the next, extinguishing threats as fast as they could be identified.
"His speed is… it's not teleportation," Archmagus Theron murmured, his hands trembling as he tried to adjust his sensors. "He is physically traversing the distance. His velocity… it's simply so great that the time between points approaches zero. He is, for all intents and purposes, a localized omnipresence."
Lyraelle just watched, a quiet, almost sad, smile on her face. This was it. The true, unburdened power she had sensed in him. The spirit of a hero, freed from the constraints of restraint, doing what he was meant to do. He wasn't a god of destruction. He was a god of… solutions. Very simple, very direct, very punch-based solutions.
As Saitama's symphony of controlled, almost playful, demolition continued, the tide of the invasion began to turn. The Berserkers, bred for conquest against opponents who fought back with recognizable strategies, had no idea how to process an enemy who was invulnerable, untouchable, and seemed to treat their apocalyptic assault as a mild form of cardio. Their coordinated attacks faltered, breaking down into confused, individual pockets of resistance that Saitama was mopping up with the ease of a man cleaning his apartment.
The crimson tear in the sky began to waver, the flow of new invaders slowing to a trickle, as if the cosmic intelligence behind them was sensing the profound, almost insulting, futility of its efforts. The beachhead was being… spanked into submission.
And while the city's attention, the world's attention, was fixed on this grand, impossible, one-man defense, two silent, ghostly figures slipped through the now-thinly-defended inner sanctum of the Royal Archives. They moved through ancient wards and past slumbering golems as if they were not there, their goal clear, their purpose absolute.
Alpha, using her speed and grace, disabled the magical traps. Shadow, using his deep, almost innate, understanding of "how things work," bypassed the ancient mechanical ones. They reached the deepest vault, the place where the true, suppressed history of the kingdom was kept.
Shadow placed a hand on the massive, time-locked vault door. He didn't punch it. He didn't use a spell. He just… understood it. He traced the lines of its locking mechanism, felt the subtle flow of its ancient energies, and with a series of quiet, precise taps and a murmur of concentrated power, he simply… asked it to open.
With a soft, almost reluctant groan, the ancient, meter-thick vault door swung open.
Inside, resting on pedestals, were the scrolls and codexes he sought. The true story of the kingdom. The true source of its secrets, its power, and its shame.
While the hero was saving the day in the blinding light, the Eminence in Shadow had just seized control of the truth. His own, silent victory was complete. And the world was none the wiser.