Thump… thump… thump… thump…
The King Engine's roar filled the space.
At some point, he had moved from the very back to the very front.
He merely stood there, quietly, between the monster and the energy core. His stern face remained expressionless.
But everyone felt as if the air around them had solidified because of his presence.
The raging Foul Devourer seemed to sense unprecedented danger.
It halted, its countless murky eyes fixing on the human in front of it as it let out a low, rumbling hiss.
"KING…" Sneck murmured, emotion complicated in his eyes.
He'd been hurt by the battle's aftershocks and could barely stay standing now.
He certainly didn't believe the "3888" that mask had shown. He'd watched the live broadcast where Deep Sea King had been "resolved" by KING.
He was simply curious—facing a troublesome monster whose physical and conventional energy resistances were nigh absolute and whose corrosion was terrifying—how would KING deal with it?
The scene that followed overturned everything the heroes thought they knew.
KING didn't use any fighting technique, not even a combat stance.
He only slowly raised his right hand and aimed his palm at the hulking monster.
"Energy Bullet."
He certainly wasn't dumb enough to trade blows up close. Never mind the corrosion; in pure melee he couldn't beat a Demon-level monster.
In the next second, a tiny golden point of light, nearly invisible, quietly appeared in his palm.
Immediately, it swelled and compressed and swelled again at an unbelievable speed.
A surge of pure, vast energy erupted from KING like a tidal wave!
"That pose…!" The Darkflame Dragon Blade Wielder's pupils shrank.
He instantly recalled KING's widely circulated move online—the "Purgatory Unrivaled Exploding Heat Wave Cannon."
"It's coming!" Sneck clenched his fists, holding his breath.
"What… is that?" Child Emperor's pupils constricted.
Far away, a precision instrument dedicated to measuring energy intensity suddenly wailed with overload, its readouts slamming past their max.
Everyone's hearts leapt to their throats.
The Foul Devourer's sense of threat reached its peak.
Its primal instincts screamed that if it didn't act, it would cease to exist in the next instant.
Cornered, the beast unleashed its last frenzy.
Roooar—!!!
With a piercing scream, the giant mouth on its abdomen gaped, and all the dark-green slime covering its body rushed back into it in the span of a heartbeat.
Its bulky frame shriveled at a speed visible to the naked eye as it poured every ounce of corrosive power into a single point.
A deep-green energy sphere over three meters across, reeking of filth and death, formed in its maw.
It would meet that terrifying golden sphere with its strongest attack.
And yet KING's eyes didn't waver in the slightest.
He merely pushed forward lightly with his palm, sending the golden, blinding energy drifting away.
The golden Energy Bullet left his hand without any sonic boom.
Almost at the same moment, the Foul Devourer spat out its all-or-nothing green energy sphere.
Gold and green—two utterly different auras collided in the gaze of all.
The expected apocalyptic explosion never happened.
The instant the gold touched the green, it didn't even pause for a second.
It devoured the green completely.
The energy ball into which the Demon-level monster had poured everything vanished without a ripple into the golden glow.
The golden bullet did not slow down at all; it struck the creature's massive body head-on.
Everyone clearly saw the moment the bullet touched the monster's flesh, the so-called slime that "corrodes everything" began to disappear.
In the stunned eyes of the heroes, the creature didn't even have time to scream.
Its countless terror-filled eyes, along with its entire body, were erased into nothing.
The whole process took less than two seconds.
When that all-piercing golden light finally struck the institute's rear wall and left a circular hole, it was over.
The light faded. Only an empty passage remained.
The Demon-level terror that had left several A-Class heroes at a loss had vanished as if it had never existed.
Even its nauseating acid stench in the air was gone—replaced by a freshness like after a spring rain.
Absolute silence.
Sneck, the Darkflame Dragon Blade Wielder… all the A-Class heroes who had been fighting to the death stared slack-jawed at the figure slowly lowering his arm.
"The Purgatory Unrivaled Exploding Heat Wave Cannon…"
The Darkflame Dragon Blade Wielder's lips trembled, shaken by the sheer might of KING's move so famous online.
No one knew how long it was before Child Emperor snapped back to himself.
He glanced at the instrument turned to scrap, then at the unscathed KING. A bolt of lightning flashed through his mind.
He smacked his own forehead with a cry of sudden realization:
"I get it! So that's how it is!"
He dashed to KING's side, looking up with a face full of excitement.
"Now it's clear—this backup unit must have a design flaw I didn't know about!"
He looked at KING, then pointed toward the direction Saitama had left, and said loudly:
"It can't measure heroes who are too strong!"
"Three thousand eight hundred eighty-eight? Don't be ridiculous! The energy response from that one move just now—if converted to a number, it would make any measuring instrument explode instantly!"
"My design isn't perfect yet! I have to go back and redesign and build a machine that can truly measure your power!"
Child Emperor's voice was full of scientific obsession and deep regret at failing to measure KING's true strength.
And this "perfectly reasonable" explanation made the A-Class heroes instantly "understand."
So that was it—it wasn't that KING's strength was only 3888; it was a flaw in the backup mask!
They looked at the silent figure who didn't even bother to turn his head, feelings too tangled to name.
-------
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