Chapter 856: Abyss · Singularity
"Just what in the world... happened here...?"
Mumen Rider stepped down from his bicycle, looking upon the apocalyptic landscape stretched out before him. He tried to speak, but his throat seized, producing scarcely a whisper.
"Ugh!"
Further back, a wave of heroes—even veteran B-Class combatants—were overcome by the suffocating, unyielding stench of copper and bile, vomiting uncontrollably into the dirt.
Most had seen their share of blood, but never in a concentration so dense it felt as though the greasy gore was boring directly through their pores and saturating their lungs.
Before the ranks of lower-tier heroes who had rushed across municipal borders to reinforce City A lay the total, unmitigated erasure of the metropolis.
Skyscrapers, paved avenues, the administrative sprawl of modern civilization—all of it had been wiped from existence.
In their place stretched an endless, lake-like expanse of pooling blood, framed by mountainous heaps of severed, titanic draconic flesh paving a new, grotesque geography over the soil.
Only in isolated pockets could scattered shards of rebar and pulverized concrete be discerned.
Everything that had once defined this great city was gone.
The mere thought of City A's civilian population sent an icy chill racing through Mumen Rider's veins.
"Uuuugh..."
Unable to suppress the violent churning of his stomach, he dropped to his knees, heaving violently. Yet it was not the foul stench of gore that turned his gut.
It was the sheer, crushing weight of the tragedy.
The realization that millions—perhaps tens of millions—of ordinary mortals had been reduced to shredded meat and crimson slurry in this single cataclysm caused his entire frame to convulse with tremors.
While this nightmare was unfolding... what in the world was someone calling himself a hero doing...?!
Mumen Rider gave zero thought to whether a hero of his meager caliber could have altered the outcome. He knew only that he had arrived too late to do anything at all.
How many souls... in their final, dying breath... were desperately praying for a hero to step forward...?!
Splosh...
Mumen Rider was the first to wade into the crimson mire. The thick, viscous fluid stung against his skin with a faint caustic bite, yet he paid it no heed, marching blindly toward what had once been the civic heart of City A.
Seeing him advance, the other shaken heroes steeled their nerves and followed in his wake.
Speed-o'-Sound Sonic observed the scene from a jagged perch with icy detachment. His keen instincts parsed immediately that the astronomical volume of blood blanketing the basin could never have originated from humanity; even rounding up every citizen in the metropolis and draining their veins dry could not account for this crimson sea.
Moreover, the liquid carried an exotic, corrosive property. Direct contact risked severe contamination.
Sonic quietly siphoned samples of the blood and severed tissue into a sealed container, intending to analyze or perhaps cook it later.
Shifting into a blur of speed, he sprinted straight toward the epicenter.
He was morbidly curious to discover what kind of entity could completely level City A when so many S-Class titans had assembled within its borders.
Hum...
Space flickered subtly across his flank. Sonic snapped his head around, finding only empty air. Sensing anomalous turbulence, he leaned entirely into his velocity, accelerating to his operational limit.
CLANG!
A flash of steel erupted from the void. Sonic drew his ninjato in a reflex block, yet the blinding speed behind that strike threw him off balance. Skidding across mounds of pulverized meat, he fought to stabilize his footing.
Standing before him was Flashy Flash, his gilded hair stained with gore and his chassis covered in wounds. Flashy Flash locked eyes with the intruder, recognizing he was no Mysterious Being. Before he could speak, a vibrant wash of emerald psychokinetic light surged across the clearing.
Sonic lost all physical autonomy in an instant. He struggled violently, but the crushing telekinetic grip hurled him through the air. Tumbling to the ground, Sonic discovered a cluster of figures already pinned beneath the same emerald shroud.
Most conspicuous among them was a girl with stark silver-white hair and slit-pupils, who radiated a distinctly unsettling, feral aura.
"So... are you bastards companions of those overgrown lizards as well?"
The crisp, youthful voice dripped with raw, murderous fury.
Sonic's face turned paper-white under an atmospheric pressure that defied description. The petite green-haired girl before him felt like an absolute, world-ending devil capable of tearing his limbs from his torso at the slightest whim.
Strong—monstrously, incomprehensibly strong!
Even within the hidden Ninja Village, he had never encountered an entity of this magnitude; perhaps only the mythical Ninja Leader could inhabit such heights.
The next second, Sonic's tactical mind caught up with reality: even with a defender as terrifying as Tornado of Terror on the field, the total annihilation of the city had still proven unavoidable...
He noted that the psychic girl carried fresh lacerations across her frame. Nearby, the martial grandmaster Silver Fang Bang sat stripped to the waist, quietly wrapping bloodied bandages around his ribs.
Every apex combatant was battered and bleeding.
Yet surviving in this state was already the optimal outcome; those of lesser capability had likely been ground into the bloody sludge underfoot.
By now, Mumen Rider and the reinforcements from the lower tiers arrived at the perimeter. Emergency relief helicopters buzzed in from neighboring sectors, followed by transport convoys and hordes of media reporters.
Yet the moment they beheld the bloody wasteland that had replaced City A, the entire assembly was struck dumb.
Even the journalists hungering for sensational headlines stood trembling and pale, stripped of all words.
"U-Um... Miss Makima?"
The trio of Public Safety hunters took in the apocalyptic surroundings, looking uncertainly at Makima, whose expression remained bizarrely distant.
Denji wondered privately if Miss Makima had simply been traumatized into a daze by the carnage.
Power, on the other hand, was inhaling deeply with absolute delight, intoxicated by the metallic aroma blanketing the basin. Had Aki not kept an iron grip on her collar, she would have long since dived into the crimson lake for a swim.
Aki Hayakawa furrowed his brow, studying Makima with deep unease before finally asking: "Just what happened here?"
Makima tilted her head back, gazing up into an unnatural sky. With the atmospheric envelope torn open, the vault of heaven reflected strange, bruised hues.
And more than that...
Something beyond the physical world had fundamentally shifted, casting an eerie distortion over reality itself. Foundational rules were changing.
She needed more information.
Her Control authority pulsed silently through hidden circuits, mobilizing her throngs of domesticated pawns to gather intelligence across the continents.
Yet before all of that... there was an even more vital truth to acknowledge.
Aki had asked what had happened.
"That is inaccurate," Makima murmured, her voice carrying clearly across the quiet ruins. "You should ask... what is happening up there right now."
"The fate of this world... is likely being written beyond the stars."
Her words were not loud, but every S-Class veteran heard them clearly.
Tornado's expression darkened further, but remembering that Makima had attempted to shield her earlier, she withheld her temper, looking upward into the void.
She contemplated whether she should attempt another atmospheric breach to verify if that bald weirdo could truly win the day.
And...
Just what was that Mercenary Tao trying to achieve?!
Hum!
With a flick of her will, Tornado dragged the two Reincarnators she had pinned beneath her psychic field straight to her boots.
"You two. What is your relationship with that Mercenary Tao?!"
Dead of Night's face was pale. She felt subtle electric currents probing her cerebral cortex, violently dredging up memories of Mercenary Tao.
Tornado was reading her mind!
An esper of this caliber could manifest practically any mental authority she desired.
Dead of Night knew the Space's systemic wards would censor sensitive mechanics, but if Tornado hit a dead-end, the escalating mental probe would eventually leave her brain-dead. She commanded neither Kaito's layered immortality nor Reverse Cursed Technique refined enough to repair her brain tissues; surviving this world meant she had to acquire the Six Eyes at any cost upon return.
"We are Mercenary Tao's subordinates," Li Qingzi interjected smoothly, breaking Tornado's psychic focus. Under the watchful eyes of the gathered S-Class and Garou, she continued calmly: "Rest assured. Even a monster like him cannot overcome Saitama. This is merely a pilgrimage toward death in search of the martial summit."
Li Qingzi understood better than anyone that even with Kaito outstripping all Reincarnators by a terrifying margin, defeating Saitama in open combat remained impossible.
He was merely utilizing the Anchor of Causality to savor the pinnacle of combat without consequence.
The apex dragons of the Primordial Dragon Court were dead, Boros had fallen, and this world was largely sanitized of threats.
Or so she assumed...
Hum!
Tornado pivoted in an instant, her emerald psychokinesis flaring outward. A silhouette warped the spatial fabric directly behind the heroes.
The newcomer raised an open hand; pitch-black gravitational waves canceled out Tornado's psychic blast on contact. Tornado's pupils shrank. Though decades had passed and his features had aged...
That signature authority was unmistakable.
"It's... you..."
"My apologies for the delay. I ran into a bit of trouble elsewhere."
S-Class Rank 1: Blast had finally returned.
BOOM!
Spacetime twisted and splintered. Kaito Shirogane felt the icy lockdown of absolute tracking settle over his senses once more. Saitama's silhouette seemed to swell to the scale of a celestial body, completely filling Kaito's vision and perception.
Across his Limit-Break Spiral and Martial God's Ultimate Intent, Saitama radiated a presence as massive and unyielding as a living star.
As the punch descended, every cell across Kaito's frame shuddered in sympathetic resonance. Under that crushing pressure, Third Star Particles accelerated to their operational ceiling within his vascular conduits.
Within the colossal frame of Phenomenal Manifestation of Giant, his energetic channels burned with incandescent clarity, the Third Star Particles racing through his veins like streams of pure luminescence.
Power—boundless, astronomical power—surged without restraint.
Deep within his core, an ancient foundation stirred to wakefulness beneath the torrential flow.
Suspended amidst the stars, an unnatural serenity washed over Kaito. In this fraction of a second, he tasted a long-lost stillness.
Unlike the aloof detachment granted by Divine Sense, Kaito felt as though he had harmonized every facet of his existence into an unbroken whole.
His vessel was like the cosmic void itself, accommodating all things. Even the volcanic wrath of the King of Wrath was extinguished within that cosmic mantle, leaving behind only refined, unadulterated power.
Kaito took a heavy stride forward through the void. Drawing upon his visceral comprehension of Saitama's authentic strike, the esoteric mechanics of the Abyssal Domain snapped into sharp focus.
The ten-thousand-meter golden giant stepped forward in lockstep, Ki fusing with kinetic mass as the Surge of Murderous Intent and soul energy ignited in unison.
Every complex power, trait, ability, and Authority collapsed inward toward a singular point!
A kaleidoscopic sphere of hyper-dense energy coalesced, shifted into an abyssal pitch-black hue, and compressed violently until it shrank to a point smaller than a mortal fist.
The second that black singularity materialized, local space caved inward into an absolute gravitational sinkhole, pulling ambient gravitational waves toward its core.
As Saitama's fist drove forward, Kaito unleashed his strike in perfect symmetry.
Abyssal Art: Chaos Terminus · Singularity!
Bound by the Lock of Destiny, neither combatant could evade the other's offensive. Kaito knew his grasp over the Abyssal Domain remained incomplete, lacking Saitama's intrinsic property of guaranteed impact.
Fortunately, Saitama would never dream of evading.
Framed against the drifting dust of Mars, twin fists struck the void simultaneously.
Across hundreds of miles of empty space, opposing gravitational waves collided first.
Then came the catastrophic collapse.
Feeling that absolute, transcendent power colliding against his knuckles, Kaito's manic euphoria breached its zenith.
This is it... This is the power I have sought all along!
BOOM!
Like the detonation of a cosmic supernova.
Space shattered across the void. Destructive gravitational waves collapsed inward, opening a miniature black hole that swallowed cosmic dust, planetary fragments, and ambient radiation in a single ravenous pull.
Then, across the soundless reaches of the cosmos, an apocalyptic wave of blinding light and thermal radiation erupted outward in all directions.