The industrial sector of City Q looked like a war zone from a fever dream.
Fires still burned in pockets where the Meltdown Colossus had fallen, but the heat had already begun to fade into thick black smoke. Nova stood at the edge of the glass-lined crater, suit scorched but intact, the blue glow in his veins pulsing slower now as his body stabilized the absurd new baseline.
Current Output Multiplier: 142×Stored Capacity: 2,150% (capped at safe limit – excess dissipating as passive aura)
He could feel it: every cell denser, reflexes sharper, strength no longer measured in tons but in orders of magnitude. The air around him shimmered faintly, like heat haze over summer asphalt.
A sharp, piercing shriek split the sky.
The tertiary threat—the high-mobility flyer—banked hard overhead. Wingspan easily sixty meters, body like a cross between a pterosaur and a stealth bomber, covered in iridescent black scales that swallowed light. Its beak opened wide, revealing rows of vibrating membranes.
Sonic attack incoming.
Nova didn't flinch.
The shriek hit like a physical wall—air compressed into a focused beam of sound pressure that shattered concrete for blocks around. Windows that had somehow survived the earlier fight exploded inward. Nearby Association support vehicles flipped end over end.
The wave slammed into Nova full-force.
Pain bloomed in his ears, chest, skull—but only for a heartbeat.
Then it converted.
Kinetic Charge +380% (sonic-kinetic hybrid absorption)Output Multiplier: 142× → 521×New adaptation unlocked: Sonic resonance dampeningBody integrity: 98% – minor internal bruising repairing
The flyer circled, confused. Its primary weapon had never failed to liquefy internal organs before.
Nova looked up.
"Thanks for the recharge."
He bent his knees and launched.
No boosters. No technique. Just raw multiplied power.
He crossed two hundred meters of airspace in under a second.
The flyer tried to evade—too slow.
Nova's fist met its underbelly mid-turn.
The impact rang like a cathedral bell struck by a meteor.
A visible ripple propagated through the creature's body. Scales cracked in fractal patterns. Internal organs ruptured in sequence. One wing folded backward at an impossible angle.
It spiraled downward, trailing smoke and ichor, crashing through three factory roofs before embedding in a molten slag pit left by the Colossus.
Nova landed beside the twitching corpse.
One kick to the skull—clean, surgical.
The head caved. The creature stilled.
Threat neutralized: Sonic Shriek WyrmKinetic Charge stabilized at 3,900% capacityCurrent Output Multiplier: 612× (post-kill adjustment)
He exhaled slowly. The air tasted of ozone and blood.
In the distance, green light flared—Tatsumaki was finishing the Corrosive Swarm Queen.
Nova turned toward the spawning ground.
The Swarm Queen itself was grotesque: a bulbous, pulsating mass thirty meters across, suspended between ruined cranes by thick tendrils of acidic mucus. Thousands of smaller drones—each the size of a large dog—swarmed from pores in its flesh, spitting globs of green corrosive fluid that melted steel like butter.
Genos hovered above it, incineration cannons blazing in sustained bursts. Metal Bat was on the ground, laughing maniacally as he smashed through drones in sweeping arcs, his fighting spirit keeping wounds closed and strength climbing.
Tatsumaki floated higher still, expression thunderous.
She raised both hands.
Entire city blocks lifted—cranes, shipping containers, rail cars—then compressed inward toward the Queen like a trash compactor from hell.
The monster screeched as its spawning tendrils were crushed.
But it adapted—fast. New pores opened. A massive wave of acid drones launched skyward toward the esper.
Tatsumaki clicked her tongue.
Before she could react, Nova arrived.
He landed between her and the swarm in a crouch that cratered the pavement.
The acid wave hit.
Thousands of globs struck him simultaneously.
Skin hissed. Suit dissolved in patches.
But every droplet's impact fed the cycle.
Kinetic Charge surging past cap – overflow re-initiatedOutput Multiplier: 612× → 1,840× → 3,200× (escalating)Corrosive-kinetic conversion in progressWarning: Overflow nearing critical mass
Nova stood up slowly.
The acid no longer burned—it steamed off him like water on a hot pan.
He looked at the Swarm Queen.
Then at Tatsumaki.
"Mind if I finish this one?"
She stared—actually stared—then waved a hand dismissively.
"Knock yourself out, hotshot."
Nova walked forward.
Drones dove at him in suicide runs.
He didn't punch them.
He simply raised one hand, palm out.
A pulse of redirected force erupted—silent, invisible, devastating.
Every drone in a hundred-meter radius disintegrated mid-flight, bodies turning to red mist before they could even scream.
The Queen recoiled.
Nova kept walking.
It spat a final, desperate torrent of acid—enough to dissolve a small skyscraper.
He met it with both palms.
The torrent parted around him like a river around a boulder, then reversed—redirected straight back at the source.
The Queen shrieked as its own acid ate through its flesh.
Nova closed the distance in one step.
He drove his fist into the center mass.
No fancy wind-up.
Just one clean, perfect strike.
The shockwave was white-hot.
The Queen's body ruptured outward in a hemisphere of gore and mucus. The spawning tendrils snapped like overstretched rubber bands. The bulbous core imploded, then detonated in a wet, green explosion that painted half the district.
When the mist cleared, nothing remained but a shallow, smoking depression.
Nova stood in the center—suit in tatters, skin steaming, eyes still glowing.
All Dragon-level threats neutralizedTotal Kinetic Charge: Unquantifiable (system overflow)Current Output Multiplier: Estimated 5,000×+New classification recommendation: Beyond S-Class measurement capability
Genos landed beside him, scanners whirring.
"Your power curve is… statistically impossible."
Metal Bat jogged up, grinning ear to ear, blood and ichor covering him from head to toe.
"Yo, newbie! That was insane! You just one-shotted the big mama after tanking everything!"
Tatsumaki descended slowly.
For once, she didn't have a snarky comment ready.
She just looked at Nova—really looked.
Then, quietly:
"…You're not normal."
Nova wiped a smear of acid from his cheek.
"Never claimed to be."
Overhead, Association choppers began circling for cleanup and extraction.
In the command center miles away, Sitch stared at the live feed, mouth slightly open.
"Rank 7… provisional."
He looked at the other board members.
"We need to update that. Immediately."
Somewhere far away, in a small apartment, Saitama paused mid-bite of a convenience-store sale banana.
He tilted his head.
"Huh. Feels like someone's getting kinda strong out there."
He shrugged and kept eating.
End of Chapter 9