City Z was now nothing but ruins. After the Monster Association's rampage, Saitama's former home was nothing more than a pile of rubble.
Saitama sighed, carrying a plastic bag of cabbages he'd just hunted during the end-of-day sale. He strode down the stone path leading to his apartment in the Hero Association headquarters, his new residence. Although this apartment was safer and more modern, Saitama still felt something was missing. Perhaps it was the quiet, though his old place wasn't exactly quiet anyway because of the monsters.
"I guess we'll have hot pot tonight, I hope those guys don't show up..." he muttered, his eyes fixed on the remaining change in his hand.
Just as Saitama stepped one foot through the elevator door leading to the luxury apartment, the space beneath him suddenly twisted. A pitch-black circle, emitting bizarre purple lightning bolts, widened like a giant mouth.
"Huh?"
Saitama could only utter a simple sound. Gravity seemed to vanish. His entire body was sucked into nothingness.
"Hey! My cabbage bag—!"
The golden-green shadow vanished in an instant. The gate closed, leaving the corridor silent as if nothing had ever happened.
<♤♤♤>
Crash!
A dry, sharp sound echoed through the sewer on the outskirts of Midgar. Saitama hovered slightly above the ground before falling, landing on both feet, creating a spiderweb-like crack in the stone pavement.
He froze for a few seconds, his hand still gripping the plastic bag. A silence fell. Saitama slowly opened the bag to check...
"Thank goodness, the cabbage was only slightly bruised..." He breathed a sigh of relief, then began to look around. "But... where am I? When did the Hero Association's elevator switch to a stone-like style?"
Before him were no longer the gleaming LED lights or metal walls. Instead, there were mossy brick walls and the smell of... waste?
"Ugh! What the hell is that smell?!"
Saitama looked around, realizing he was in a tunnel, clearly a sewage system.
He immediately jumped onto the stone steps ahead.
"What the hell is this place? I was just in an elevator, and now I'm in this sewage system."
Saitama began walking along the dark tunnel. He was unaware that, just beyond the thick stone wall, a bloody purge had just ended.
A few hundred meters away, in a large underground chamber of the Midgar sewer system, the air was thick with the smell of blood. A dozen or so butchers from the Diabolos Cult lay sprawled on the floor. In the center stood a young woman with golden hair and a tight-fitting black outfit—Alpha, a nickname given to her by her master.
She was wiping blood from her thin sword, her face expressionless.
"It's over. Clean up the scene," Alpha ordered members 664 and 665.
Just then, a slight tremor spread through the rock. It wasn't a magical tremor, but an extremely uniform physical vibration, as if something weighing thousands of tons had just slammed into the ground.
Alpha froze. Her pointed Elf ears twitched slightly.
"Stop! Someone's coming," she whispered, gripping the hilt of her sword.
"Is it someone from the Cult, sir?" 664 whispered, assuming a fighting stance.
"No... no magic. Absolutely none," Alpha frowned. This was very strange; even a child possesses a trace of magic. Only two types of people could move without leaving any trace of magic: either harmless commoners or masters of concealing their aura to an extraordinary degree.
And that thing coming is getting closer.
<♤♤♤>
Meanwhile, Saitama was still struggling to find his way out.
"This place is so long. Seriously, I shouldn't have pressed the elevator button so quickly. I wonder if Genos will find me."
He passed a turn and suddenly saw a flickering light ahead.
"Oh, there must be someone there, let's go check!"
Saitama happily ran towards the light. Because he was in a hurry to escape this foul smell, he unintentionally ran... a little too fast. To an ordinary person, it would just be a strong gust of wind, but to a master of senses like Alpha, it was a massive mass of air pressure hurtling towards him like a train.
Whoosh!
Saitama stopped abruptly right in front of an exit leading to an underground chamber.
On the other side, Alpha and the Shadow Garden members had already retreated to a defensive stance. In the dim light of the tunnel, they could only see a bald figure, dressed in a bright yellow outfit, red rubber gloves, and a head so bald it reflected light, with a white cloak fluttering gently behind him.
Saitama saw several girls in black, their faces completely covered, wielding swords with murderous intent. He froze for a few seconds before speaking.
"Uh... sorry." Saitama scratched his head, his usual expressionless face returning. "Excuse me, where is the nearest exit?"
Silence enveloped the room.
Alpha narrowed his eyes, observing the bald man before him.
'He's so calm standing before us? And even pretending to ask a silly question to distract us?' Alpha thought to himself.
"Who are you?" Alpha coldly asked, the sword in her hand emitting a faint blue light of intensely compressed magic.
Saitama blinked, looking at the sword and then at the corpses lying on the ground. He sighed, his shoulders slumping:
"Oh... um..." Saitama put down the bag of cabbage, crossed his arms, and said, "I'm an A-rank hero, level 39, bald cape."
"And I'm just a hero for fun."
End of Chapter One.