BOOM—!
A catastrophic roar rent the heavens.
The monumental, crescent-moon-shaped flying slash slammed squarely into Saitama while he was suspended helplessly mid-air!
Watching from above, Fubuki's heart leaped into her throat. The localized space where the strike connected began to warp and shimmer, leaving shimmering, distorted afterimages in the atmosphere as if reality itself was buckling under the sheer kinetic load!
The terrifying caliber of that blow was beyond comprehension.
Initially, Fubuki had marveled at Saitama's seemingly absolute defense, but looking at this apocalyptic display, she couldn't help but feel a sudden wave of primal panic for him.
Yet, a fraction of a second later, an anomaly occurred that shattered all of her tactical expectations.
The sweeping wave of emerald energy did not blast Saitama out of the sky like the previous assault. Instead, the moment the roaring green light made contact with his frame, its onward momentum ground to a sudden, absolute halt.
From her vantage point, it looked as if the catastrophic blade had simply stuck in mid-air. It was as though... he had caught it?
An expression of utter, paralyzed disbelief painted Fubuki's beautiful face. To completely halt a localized disaster of that scale? How is that even biologically possible?!
Before she could even finish the thought, the reality of the battlefield validated her worst fears. The colossal emerald crescent remained entirely locked in place, its expanding light completely neutralized, as if hitting an invisible, planet-sized wall.
The next instant, Saitama simply flexed both of his arms. With a casual, outward snap of his wrists, the monumental crescent of energy violently shattered into millions of harmless green particles right before Fubuki's traumatized eyes!
Gasp—!
Fubuki sharply sucked in a breath of cold air.
This specific display shook her to her very core far more than if the youth had merely survived the impact. Saitama hadn't just endured the energy; he had manually, physically crushed the manifestation of Ryuu's power with his bare hands. What kind of ungodly, primordial strength was this?!
A bizarre, surreal realization washed over her.
Suddenly, Vaccine Man—the mutated monster that had just effortlessly flattened half of A-City—seemed entirely insignificant. Compared to the two anomalies currently rewriting the landscape below, that planet-born monster was a complete afterthought. The real, undisputed calamities were the swordsman and this random, plain-looking bald guy.
And right now, these two gods were trading blows right beneath her.
With a cold sweat breaking out across her skin, Fubuki subconsciously pushed her psychic flight even higher and further away from the epicenter. She was beginning to have serious doubts about whether A-City would even remain on the map by the time this clash reached its conclusion.
Down on the cracked bedrock, Ryuu's pupils constricted slightly behind his sharp, hawk-like eyes as he watched Saitama casually disassemble his flying slash.
Even though his cognitive memories had prepared him for this level of absurdity, witnessing it firsthand still delivered a profound shock to his system. After all, he currently commanded the unmitigated, absolute peak power of the World's Strongest Swordsman! To have an ultimate technique effortlessly shattered like glass by a casual hand-gesture was mind-boggling.
Yet, beneath the initial shock, an even fiercer, more intoxicating thrill ignited within his veins.
Is this truly the absolute zenith of power in the One Punch Man universe?!
In a trance-like state of focus, Ryuu suddenly felt a sensation mirroring Hawkeye Mihawk's legendary encounter with Whitebeard during the Paramount War. In his inherited memories, Mihawk had analyzed the gap between himself and the Strongest Man in the World from a distance. He had never engaged Whitebeard in a prolonged, unbridled duel, but the baseline difference had been calculated. Whitebeard fully deserved his title as the absolute apex, yet Mihawk had never harbored a single shred of fear; instead, his heart carried a silent, burning desire to surpass that ceiling.
Right here and now, Ryuu's mindset was identical.
Stripped of his narrative armor, Saitama was ultimately just a common, detached otaku who happened to stumble into a miraculous tier of power by shattering his limiter. In a fundamental sense, there was zero difference between Saitama's evolution and his own acquisition of the system.
If a mortal human could ascend to the peak through simple discipline, why couldn't he—armed with the ultimate character templates—take that throne for himself and become the undisputed strongest entity in this world?
The moment that ambitious, reality-defying thought consolidated in his mind, his synchronization with the Hawkeye template began to surge once more!
[Ding! Current role-playing completion rate +2%!]
[Ding! Current role-playing completion rate +2%!]
The system's notifications chimed like a rhythmic battle drum, supercharging Ryuu's combat drive.
Seeing Saitama's silhouette descending back toward the earth, Ryuu planted his boot, fracturing the bedrock as he blitzed forward to intercept him.
Swish! Swish! Swish!
Mid-sprint, the Black Blade: Yoru dissolved into a sweeping, chaotic storm of silver afterimages, its razor-sharp edge bared completely.
The moment Saitama's boots touched the rubble, he was instantaneously enveloped by an absolute cage of cutting wind. The hypersonic slashes overlapped flawlessly, executing a three-hundred-and-sixty-five-degree matrix of pure destruction that left zero operational blind spots.
Yet, right at that critical threshold, Saitama's physical frame also began to fracture into overlapping afterimages.
Exploding with a level of raw, catastrophic velocity that defied the laws of physics, the bald youth began to fluidly weave through the razor-thin spaces between the cutting blades!
Most terrifyingly of all, Saitama wasn't merely tracking the strikes with superhuman speed; his kinetic reactions were so absolute that before the descending slashes could even complete their trajectories, he had already slipped through the microscopic openings of the formation, closing the distance to point-blank range. Raising a completely plain, unextraordinary fist, he aimed a direct strike straight at Ryuu's torso.
DANGER—!
Ryuu's perfected Observation Haki exploded with an unprecedented, deafening mental alarm, signaling a threat level he had never experienced before.
In that microsecond of absolute peril, his hawk-like eyes flashed with unbridled fury. Rather than retreating, his battle lust peaked. Pivoting his wrists, he forcefully converted his thrust into a sweeping upward parry, unleashing a dense, jade-tinted shockwave at point-blank range!
BOOM—!
A violent kinetic detonation erupted between them, looking as though a localized missile had gone off. Under the crushing displacement of air, Saitama's silhouette was forcefully launched straight up into the atmosphere.
Ryuu's spirit surged. Seizing the opening, he prepared to follow up with a hypersonic volley of aerial slashes—but a split second later, his expression dropped.
The airborne figure he was targeting suddenly turned translucent before dissolving into thin air. It was nothing more than a high-speed afterimage!
Simultaneously, a massive shift in atmospheric pressure materialized directly in front of his chest. Saitama had appeared out of absolute nowhere, his arm already locked and loaded as he drove a plain, standard punch straight toward Ryuu's centerline.
In that singular fraction of a second, the incoming fist felt as though an entire mountain range had been unrooted and dropped directly onto his chest. The sheer, unmitigated majesty of the strike was absolute!
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