The air around Saitama thickened, not just with interdimensional energies, but with an almost tangible cloak of oppressive shadow. The grotesque, multi-limbed creatures conjured from the vortex – Shadowfiends, as they might be called – lunged, their movements unnaturally fast, their claws like obsidian razors aiming to rend and tear. Their red eyes burned with a cold, alien hunger.
Saitama, bathed in his newfound golden aura, didn't even flinch. The "itch" within him, now a roaring furnace of awakened potential, seemed to grant him an almost preternatural awareness. The world, or rather, this chaotic interstice between worlds, slowed down around him. He saw the trajectory of each claw, the subtle shifts in their shadowy forms, the currents of dark energy that animated them.
He moved.
It wasn't his usual straightforward dash. His movements were fluid, almost ethereal, the golden light trailing behind him like a celestial ribbon. He didn't just dodge; he seemed to exist slightly out of phase with their attacks. A claw that should have skewered him passed harmlessly through the space he'd occupied a microsecond before. A shadowy tendril aimed at ensnaring him wrapped around empty air.
"Hmm. Evasive," the voice of Shadow, the alluring and terrifying presence within the vortex, mused. Her silver eyes narrowed within the swirling chaos. "But evasion is not victory, little spark. It is merely a postponement of the inevitable."
More Shadowfiends materialized, dozens of them, their forms shifting and unstable, some sporting chitinous armor, others dripping corrosive ichor. They swarmed him, a tide of living darkness.
Saitama sighed, a small, almost inaudible sound amidst the dimensional cacophony. "This is getting crowded."
He raised a hand, palm open. The golden aura around him pulsed, then coalesced around his hand, not into a fist, but into a flat, shimmering disc of pure, concentrated being. It wasn't an energy attack in the conventional sense. It was a projection of his own undeniable reality.
"Normal... Push?" he muttered, more to himself than anyone else.
He "pushed" the disc outwards.
It wasn't an explosion. It was a wave of displacement. The Shadowfiends caught in its path weren't blown away or incinerated. They were... unraveled. Their shadowy forms flickered, destabilized, and then simply dissolved back into the raw, chaotic energy of the vortex, as if their temporary coherence had been fundamentally negated by Saitama's assertion of a different, more stable reality.
The effect rippled outwards, clearing a wide sphere around him.
Within the vortex, the silver eyes of Shadow widened almost imperceptibly. "Intriguing. You do not merely destroy. You... unmake that which is not of your reality's foundational laws. Such a fundamental power... wielded so crudely. Like a god playing with pebbles."
The voice was still amused, but now a sliver of genuine curiosity, perhaps even a hint of caution, had crept in. The chaotic energies of the vortex roiled, and from its depths, a new figure began to coalesce. This was no mere Shadowfiend.
It was humanoid, tall and slender, clad in what appeared to be solidified shadow, intricately woven like the finest silk, yet harder than any diamond. Its face was obscured by a veil of shifting darkness, but two points of intense silver light burned where its eyes should be – the same eyes Saitama had seen within the vortex. This was an avatar, a projection of Shadow herself, stepping forth onto the battlefield.
The avatar moved with an impossible grace, flowing like liquid night. In one hand, it held a blade of pure, solidified darkness, its edge so sharp it seemed to cut the light around it. The pressure emanating from this single figure dwarfed that of all the Shadowfiends combined. It was a cold, suffocating pressure, the kind that extinguished hope and instilled a primal fear of the unknown.
Tatsumaki, watching from the distant, battered Hero Association building, felt a chill crawl up her spine that had nothing to do with the plunging temperature. "That thing... it's on a completely different level. Even from here... its power is terrifying."
Genos, still in Saitama's apartment (the crab was, indeed, not burning, thanks to his precise heat regulation), registered the avatar's appearance on his external sensors. "Energy signature... unclassifiable. It appears to be manipulating fundamental constants, bending space-time locally. The closest analogy in Dr. Kuseno's database is a theoretical 'Type IV' civilization's defensive construct, but even that falls short. Sensei is facing something truly… alien."
The Shadow Avatar regarded Saitama, its head tilted slightly. "You are a disruption. A beautiful, unexpected variable in a meticulously crafted equation. I am Cid Kagenou... though in this form, 'Shadow' is more appropriate. And I am compelled to understand the nature of your… interference."
Saitama blinked. "Cid? Like the guy from that old RPG? The one with the airship?" The golden aura around him didn't waver, but his expression was genuinely puzzled.
The Shadow Avatar let out a soft, melodious laugh, a sound that sent shivers down the spines of anyone who might have heard it. "Perhaps. Names are fleeting. Power is eternal. And your power, little spark, is... an enigma I intend to unravel."
She moved. It wasn't a dash or a leap. She simply wasn't where she had been, and then she was directly in front of Saitama, her shadow blade a streak of absolute black arcing towards his neck. The speed was beyond comprehension, faster than light, faster than thought.
Saitama's head tilted, his golden aura flaring defensively. The shadow blade, which should have bisected him effortlessly, met an invisible barrier. Not a shield of energy, but the very fabric of Saitama's amplified reality pushing back. Sparks, not of fire, but of distorted space-time, erupted at the point of impact.
"Resistant," Shadow observed, her voice calm. "But for how long?"
She didn't relent. The shadow blade became a blur, a storm of impossibly fast strikes from every conceivable angle. Each blow carried the weight of collapsing stars, the cutting edge of pure void. The air around them fractured, tiny, short-lived wormholes winking in and out of existence as the fabric of reality itself strained under the assault.
Saitama was... blocking. Not with brute force, but with an almost casual fluidity. His hands, now wreathed in the same golden, reality-affirming light, moved to intercept each strike. Each block was not a clang of metal on metal, but a soft, resonant thrum, as if two fundamental concepts were colliding and trying to overwrite each other.
With every block, the itch within Saitama, the burgeoning godlike power, adapted, learned, and grew. He felt his perception expanding, his understanding of the forces at play deepening. He wasn't just reacting; he was resonating with the very energies Shadow wielded, understanding their nature even as he opposed them.
"You're pretty good," Saitama admitted, actually sounding a little impressed. It had been a long time since anyone had forced him to actively defend. Usually, things just broke when he hit them. This was... different. More like a dance, albeit a terrifyingly lethal one.
The golden light around his hands intensified, and he began to subtly redirect the force of Shadow's blows. A strike aimed at his head was guided harmlessly past his ear. A thrust towards his chest was deflected downwards, the shadow blade carving a deep, sizzling gash in the already ruined street far below.
"You learn quickly," Shadow noted, her silver eyes glinting. "Your potential is… vast. Almost wasted on this… primitive world." Her attacks intensified, the shadow blade now splitting into multiple copies, each one as deadly as the original, weaving a complex web of lethal strikes. She wasn't just attacking his body; she was attacking the space he occupied, trying to unravel it, to pull him apart dimensionally.
Saitama found himself being pushed back, not by force, but by the sheer complexity and multidimensional nature of the assault. His golden aura flickered, stressed by the constant barrage of reality-warping attacks.
"Okay, this is getting a little annoying now," he said. The itch, the power within him, surged. It wasn't anger, but a desire for... clarity. For simplicity. This fancy shadow stuff was too complicated.
He stopped retreating. He planted his feet, the golden aura around him exploding outwards in a silent, blinding wave. It wasn't an attack, but a declaration. "Enough."
The word wasn't spoken aloud, but it echoed in Shadow's mind, in the very fabric of the space around them, with the force of a supernova.
For a single, timeless moment, the chaotic energies of the vortex, the swirling shadows, even the multiple blades of the Shadow Avatar, froze.
Saitama took a breath. The golden light around him condensed, becoming almost tangible, pure, unadulterated existence given form. His eyes, usually so blank, now shone with an almost unbearable intensity, reflecting the entirety of the cosmos, yet focused on a single point.
He cocked his fist back.
This wasn't a "Normal Punch." This wasn't even a "Serious Punch." This was something new, born of his awakened understanding, fueled by the unscratchable itch that was now a raging inferno of conceptual power.
"Consecutive..." he began, his voice resonating with an ancient, fundamental power.
Shadow's silver eyes widened. Not in fear, but in sheer, unadulterated anticipation. She felt it – a power that could potentially challenge even her deepest understanding of the Shadow.
"...Existential Affirmation Punches."
He unleashed a flurry.
Each punch didn't just carry kinetic force. It carried the weight of all reality. Each impact wasn't just against the Shadow Avatar's form; it was against the very concept of shadow, of negation, of the alien energies she wielded.
The first punch connected with the nearest shadow blade. The blade didn't shatter; it unraveled, dissolving into motes of confused light and bewildered darkness.
The second punch bypassed her guard, aiming for the center of her shadowy form. The avatar didn't try to dodge. It couldn't. It was as if Saitama's fist was moving not through space, but through concept, directly to its target.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
A series of impacts, not sound, but waves of pure, conceptual force, washed over the Shadow Avatar. The solidified shadow of her form rippled and tore, not from damage, but from being overwritten by Saitama's overwhelming reality. The silver light of her eyes flickered wildly.
"This… this power!" her voice, for the first time, held a note of genuine shock, a thrill that bordered on ecstasy. "To assert reality itself… to wield existence as a weapon! Magnificent!"
With a final, cataclysmic impact, Saitama's fist, blazing with an almost holy golden light, struck the very core of the Shadow Avatar.
There was no explosion. No grand dispersal.
The Shadow Avatar simply... vanished. Not destroyed, but recalled. Pulled back into the swirling vortex as if its connection to this plane had been severed by a force too fundamental to resist.
The vortex itself shuddered violently. The chaotic energies within it recoiled, as if from a blinding light. The pillar of alien light began to shrink, to contract, the glimpses of other worlds fading.
Saitama stood panting slightly, the golden aura around him slowly dimming, though not disappearing entirely. The itch was still there, but it was... quieter now. Sated, for the moment. He looked at his fist, then at the rapidly shrinking vortex.
"Huh. So that's what that felt like."
The voice of Shadow echoed one last time, not from the avatar, but from the receding vortex itself. It was fainter now, laced with an undeniable thrill.
"Saitama… was it? You are more than a mere ripple. You are a… a nascent singularity. A new axiom in the grand equation. This… this has been most illuminating. We shall meet again, little spark. Oh yes. The shadows will remember this… delightful dance."
With a final, wrenching tear, the vortex collapsed in on itself, the pillar of light vanishing, leaving behind only the faint, shimmering fracture in space that the Void Maw had originally created. The oppressive alien energies receded. The lights of City Z flickered back on, one by one. The normal, mundane sounds of the city slowly returned.
Saitama floated there for a moment, the residual golden light making him look like a descending deity. He scratched his head. "So, she liked it? Weird. Still didn't tell me if she had anything to do with my itch."
He glanced down. The city was battered but intact. The Hero Association building looked like it had seen better days. He sighed. More paperwork, probably.
But as he began his descent, he knew, with a certainty that settled deep in his bones, that something had irrevocably changed. The cracks in the ordinary had been exposed, and powerful, ancient eyes from across the veils of reality were now watching.
And the itch... the itch was a reminder. A promise of power he was only just beginning to comprehend. A power that would be needed.
The game had players now. And Saitama, whether he liked it or not, was one of them. A very, very overpowered one.