Chapter 854: Ultimate Mimicry, Consecutive Serious Punches
Saitama pinched his nose, staring at the martial artist who had once again reconstituted into pristine form. Golden Ki violently tore through everything around the man's vessel, dragging Saitama along as he was forcibly redirected from his original trajectory toward Earth.
The azure globe shrank steadily into the distance of their vision, while before Saitama's eyes, the martial artist's frame suddenly expanded at an alarming rate.
Not enough... Still not enough!
The kaleidoscopic luster within Kaito Shirogane's eyes trailed like fluid light. A divine halo began condensing behind his skull, and every single power he commanded surged to the surface of his skin.
Having already tasted the reality of being ended by a single punch from Saitama in the B711 world, Kaito was naturally unwilling to be one-shotted once more.
In fact, his heart was pounding at frantic speeds, fueled by the manic thrill of having successfully evaded the Serious Punch.
Relying on his intimate understanding of Saitama alongside his own extensive experience executing the Serious Punch, Kaito had predicted the precise timing of Saitama's blow.
Just before that absolute sensation of total lockdown materialized, he used the Third Star Particles to detonate his own body from within.
Strictly speaking, Saitama's Serious Punch had struck only empty space.
Even so, Kaito had felt the all-consuming destruction woven into that fist.
The absolute conceptual might of the strike had been displayed to its absolute limit; brushing against even a stray shred of it meant being pulverized into fine dust.
On this conceptual dimension, the Tier 7 Physique of the Primordial Man was no different from Kaito's body back in the B711 world—it was completely powerless to endure the blow.
Even reinforced by the AT Field, the Qilin Armor, and countless defensive traits, nothing could halt the concept of Absolute Destruction from tearing everything apart.
[Phenomenal Manifestation of Giant]!
Out of the corner of his eye, Kaito glanced at the remaining timer on the [Anchor of Causality]. Barely a minute and a half had elapsed.
For beings of his and Saitama's scale, the remaining three and a half minutes represented an eternity.
Kaito's frame ballooned at staggering speed. This was not the crude physical enlargement of a standard Mysterious Being; it was far superior to the true forms unveiled by the pureblood dragons of the Primordial Dragon Court.
Strength, velocity, constitution, durability, and even the density of his Ki multiplied exponentially.
That overflowing presence, had it been unleashed on Earth, would have been sufficient to warp the physical realm and reduce cities to rubble purely by standing still.
Kaito felt that in this state, synergized with Ultimate Great Sin: King of Wrath and the Blood of Wrath trait, his power multiplication coefficient had scaled far past his performance in the previous world.
The Key of Miracles and the Lock of Destiny engaged instinctively, binding Saitama and Kaito through an invisible thread of preordained fate.
Saitama cast a puzzled glance down at his own hands. He sensed that an anomalous connection had forged between himself and this martial artist, who had expanded to thousands of meters in height.
It was an undeniable certainty that no matter how he threw a punch right now, it would land flush against his opponent.
Conversely, no matter how that titan attacked, Saitama would also be struck.
Saitama had rarely crossed paths with an adversary of this archetype. Ever since his three years of rigorous training stripped away every strand of hair, he had never truly met an opponent who could stand as his equal.
Yet right here and now, a man had manifested, using an unknown esoteric power to chain them together in absolute symmetry.
Does he want to trade blows with me... blow for blow?!
Saitama's heart gave an involuntary thump. Though he had been deceived by the Primordial Dragon Court and experienced disappointment after disappointment inside that pocket realm...
At this exact fraction of a second, Saitama felt a genuine spark of anticipation.
Could this human truly possess that capability?
Could he truly grant him the long-lost ecstasy of a real fight?!
Carrying that quiet anticipation, Saitama made no move to resist being dragged into the deep void of space.
He lowered his hand and held his breath. He had never tested how long he could hold a single breath, but trying it now, he felt no suffocating strain.
Perhaps he could survive indefinitely in the vacuum of deep space.
As Saitama mused, the asteroid belt was pulverized by the colossal martial artist. The two plunged deeper into the cosmic expanse, until the azure Earth and another massive planet appeared nearly equal in size.
Saitama felt none of the fragile insignificance mortals experienced when looking into the void; he felt only curious novelty.
Novelty toward the cosmos, and toward the power this unique martial artist was about to display.
"Mr. Saitama... our battle begins now."
Without atmospheric displacement, the voice echoed directly within Saitama's mind. Saitama looked around in mild bewilderment, unable to grasp how such a feat was achieved.
Using his Divine Sense to transmit the voice without receiving a metaphysical reply, Kaito further confirmed his deduction: Saitama belonged neither to the divine pantheons nor to the Authority systems.
All of Saitama's might stemmed from the foundational concept of the [Vessel]. He was an anomalous, rule-breaking human who had taken every physical attribute an organism could possess and amplified it to a cosmic extreme.
Humans can jump; therefore, Saitama could bend his knees and vault clean onto the moon or into deep space.
Humans possess biological durability; therefore, Saitama needed only to stand rooted in place to shrug off cataclysmic strikes from entities of Kaito's and Boros's caliber without a single scratch.
Humans possess the capacity to throw a punch; therefore, a casual strike from Saitama unleashed kinetic payloads that no entity in this realm could hope to withstand.
He was a being who had scaled every baseline mortal parameter into the realm of the absurd.
Hence, even without flight, requiring biological respiration, and devoid of supernatural affinities, he remained terrifyingly, unassailably supreme.
The authority of absolute Concepts was displayed to absolute perfection across Saitama's frame.
If Son Goku's Super Saiyan supremacy was built upon quantitative accumulation—an extraordinary destructive output born from breaking through numeric ceilings...
Then Saitama represented an entity whose shattered Limiter granted his Vessel numerical attributes that naturally stood above all existence, collapsing that sheer mass into absolute concepts.
Debris from the asteroid belt was violently churned by the Limit-Break Spiral, drifting through the vacuum in imperceptible operational currents.
Kaito parsed Saitama's mechanics to an even deeper layer—a realm he had been completely blind to back in the B711 world.
His heart hammered past physical limits. Spurred by that unprecedented stimulation, his restlessness and rage were harmonized by his Divine Sense, easing him into a transcendent state.
All volatile emotions were suppressed beneath his skin.
When he hungered for raw power, boundless wrath surged to the surface.
When he required cold calculation, reason snapped back into focus.
Should the exchange tilt against him, unbridled battle lust would override everything!
Kaito felt that he had moved beyond merely comprehending reality; he had begun to assimilate and reconcile all forces within himself.
In this second, Kaito experienced an unnatural sensation: he felt he was no longer an isolated human organism, but something infinitely vaster, grander, and more profound.
Mars behind him and the distant Earth no longer seemed colossal compared to his presence.
He was becoming an entity far more aloof, far more primordial!
"Hah..."
Kaito exhaled involuntarily. As his jaws parted, strange spatial tremors pulsed across the vacuum, carrying sound through the airless expanse.
That phenomenon had been displayed earlier by the ancient dragon Tiamat on the moon—an anomaly that surfaced only when an individual entity approached planetary mass.
Relying purely on exhaled Ki, he forced acoustic vibration and fluid currents into the vacuum.
An unnatural phenomenon birthed by absolute might.
Golden Ki swirled around the ten-thousand-meter titan like a blazing corona. The radiant golden colossus brought his arm back, hurling the bald man forward with cataclysmic momentum.
Whoosh!
A beam of white light slammed dead-center into Mars. The distance was far too vast for sound to carry across the vacuum; only the colossal plumes of planetary dust heralded the sheer kinetic payload of the throw.
Kaito did not pause for a microsecond; he knew well that an attack of this caliber could never bring Saitama down.
Though before the duel commenced, Kaito had intended merely to use these five minutes to experience Saitama's power, right now, with [Ultimate Great Sin: King of Wrath], the [Sixteen-Fold Kaio-Ken], and [Phenomenal Manifestation of Giant] firing simultaneously, his output had blown past all historical benchmarks.
At this exact moment, he wielded crushing, sovereign might.
Arrogance and supreme pride were birthed from that power, swelling rapidly within the surging tides of energy.
He was going to engage Saitama in an authentic, unconstrained duel!
Screech!
Within the pitch-black void, incandescent golden Ki condensed in an instant, resembling the birth of a brand-new sun.
Under normal circumstances, Kaito could never sustain Phenomenal Manifestation of Giant for long; in primary worlds, a single discharge was enough to exhaust the form.
Yet backed by the Key of Miracles and the King of Wrath, abilities carried zero operational toll, locking him in a state of boundless, inexhaustible reserves.
Phenomenal Manifestation of Giant was integrated seamlessly into his foundational combat framework.
In this titanic form, he aimed a Dodon Ray that surpassed all theoretical limits.
Feeling the cataclysmic Ki converging at his fingertip, Kaito remained unsatisfied.
"I bind myself with the condition that I shall never unleash the Dodon Ray again in this battle, to elevate this singular strike to its absolute peak!"
Within his Sea of Consciousness, Satoru Gojo—the King of Curses who had previously been dissipated by Son Goku—rested his palm against the Throne of the Heart, sensing the unhinged, apocalyptic clash raging beyond their host's vessel.
It had surpassed the furthest horizons of his imagination.
Yet their host—that monster Mercenary Tao—was still extracting every drop of leverage even in an hour like this.
Even the Jujutsu power system, which seemed laughably frail by comparison, was weaponized without hesitation.
This was a Binding Vow: constructing an adverse restriction as collateral to radically elevate the output of a technique.
Within Gojo's cerulean eyes, light flickered with profound emotion.
In this second, he grasped the true gulf separating himself from Kaito.
Both were anomalies born distinct from their peers, gifted with peerless foundations. Yet he had always carried an aloof complacency.
His hunger for raw power lagged leagues behind Kaito's.
In battle, he had been far too conservative.
"You absolute madman... Ha..."
Gojo's lips curled into a broad smirk, his eyes widening. He felt as though he had returned to his initial awakening—the visceral rapture of witnessing true supremacy altering his soul from within.
Screech!
Standing upon the alien crust of Mars, Saitama watched a beam of concentrated golden energy pierce through space, descending upon his coordinates.
Because this was no longer Earth, Saitama did not counter immediately, leaping calmly forward instead.
He was long accustomed to absorbing an adversary's output first, especially when facing combatants of this unique caliber.
Hum—BOOM!
The planetary crust was caved in by the golden Ki. Moments later, an apocalyptic explosion erupted from beneath the mantle.
Sensing the destructive yield of the blow, Saitama bent his knees to vault into the sky, but the golden beam swerved with impossible trajectory, slamming dead-center into his chest mid-flight!
BOOM!
Saitama was driven deep into the planetary mantle by the Dodon Ray.
The next microsecond, thousands of miles of bedrock detonated outward. Continental plates flipped upward as planetary strata fractured entirely, showering into the orbital void amidst blinding thermal plasma.
BANG!
Saitama vaulted out from the core of Mars, his white cape singed with fire. Stepping repeatedly off the ascending asteroids, he cleared the atmosphere and bounded straight into outer space.
He clenched his right fist, throwing an unadorned strike toward the colossal golden titan looming in the void.
Normal Punch!
Kaito's frame stiffened for a microsecond. The sensation of being locked down by Saitama—as though the entire cosmos was compressing around him—halted his momentum, but only for a fraction of a millisecond.
Having resolved to duel Saitama, Kaito had fortified his resolve long ago. Taking a heavy stride forward through the void, his titanic right fist clenched as he twisted his torso with fluid, flawless kinetic execution.
Behind the colossal golden giant, an even more gargantuan phantom of Saitama materialized. The face of the phantom was completely blurred, identifiable solely by the fluttering cape and yellow uniform.
[Serious Punch]!
Locking onto Saitama's incoming Normal Punch, Kaito unleashed his Serious Punch in the exact same microsecond!
That identical sensation of the entire cosmos collapsing inward materialized around his knuckles.
Seeing his opponent deploy an authentic Serious Punch with his own eyes, Saitama's heart thumped with violent intensity once more.
A sensation that no Mysterious Being had ever granted him.
BOOM!
Twin apocalyptic forces collided head-on.
An invisible kinetic shockwave erupted across the vacuum, releasing a circular halo of blinding light and thermal radiation outward.
The planetary fragments of Mars that had just hurtled into space were instantly disintegrated into dust, blown backward by the concussive wake.
RUMBLE!
A massive portion of Mars collapsed inward, one-third of the planetary crust wiped out of existence by the shockwave alone.
Saitama was knocked backward through the void. Though he sustained zero physical trauma, he had undeniably been driven back by that strike.
This time, Saitama did not wait. The instant his boots touched what remained of the Martian surface, he sank into a deep, deliberate crouch, loading every tendon across his legs with immense kinetic potential.
The next microsecond...
Crack—BOOM!
The vacuum was soundless, yet the sight of Mars having more than half its planetary mass obliterated before Kaito's eyes was awe-inspiring.
Propelled by that terrifying launch, Saitama tore through space, appearing directly before the face of the golden titan.
Both fists blurred into an unbroken storm.
Killer Move: Serious Series... Consecutive Serious Punches!
[DEATH]!
Kaito's scalp prickled with burning agony as every cell across his vessel shrieked in mortal dread. In this fraction of a second, an inescapable, absolute death enveloped him entirely.
Countless red fists flared like blazing suns, blotting out his entire field of vision.
Kaito's irises quivered violently before the kaleidoscopic luster trailed outward like comet tails.
Before Saitama's startled eyes, the colossal golden giant swung both fists, mirroring his biomechanics down to the absolute millimeter!
"Killer Move: Serious Series... Consecutive Serious Punches!"