Everyone who witnessed the scene felt a chill run down their spine.
Especially those heroes who had helped defeat the Deep Sea King—recently swelling with pride. Now, not one of them dared to breathe too loud.
So this… this is what S-Class power really looks like? Isn't this a bit too much?!
Even A-Class hero Blueflame, whose strength was just shy of the S-Class threshold, stared into the crater—big enough to bury thousands of himself—and felt every trace of arrogance vanish.
"S-So scary… Tatsumaki-senpai is amazing!"
The loudmouthed and thick-skulled Mizuki was the only one who could still speak. While the others were left dumbfounded, she shouted out in awe.
"So hot-headed… Come on now, don't be mad. I don't think he realized you were here."
Amid everyone's stunned silence, Kizaru suddenly reached out and patted Tatsumaki's head—then messed up her hair for good measure.
For a moment, many heroes thought Swift Flash's life was over.
But to their shock, Tatsumaki merely swatted his hand away in annoyance—more like someone sulking during a lovers' quarrel than someone about to vaporize a man.
"What the hell?! Why is Tatsumaki at Swift Flash's training camp?!"
Far away in a secret underground base, Dr. Bofoi was in complete disbelief. So much so that he momentarily forgot he was still piloting the war mech.
If not for the onboard combat AI automatically activating the shield, that first hit would've turned his precious robot into scrap metal.
He had risked exposing his mole within the Hero Association just to hack the network and trick Flashy Flash into leaving.
But who could've predicted that after removing an S-Class Rank 14, he'd run into an even scarier Rank 2 still on-site?
"Damn it! Begin self-diagnostics immediately! Check the mech's condition!"
Of course, Dr. Bofoi wasn't a fool—and more importantly, he wasn't on the battlefield himself. No matter how terrifying Tatsumaki was, she couldn't threaten him directly.
"Status scan in progress… Structural damage exceeds 17%. Energy reserves at 71%. Energy shield system—"
The War Armor truly lived up to being Dr. Bofoi's ace invention. Even after being hammered into the ground by Tatsumaki like a nail, buried dozens of meters deep, it still retained most of its combat capability.
However, there wasn't a trace of satisfaction on Dr. Bofoi's face. Just one round of attacks from Tatsumaki had burned through nearly a third of the War Armor's energy reserves.
Though that was partly because he hadn't activated the defense mode or evaded in time, the outcome still proved how terrifyingly destructive Tatsumaki was.
"Still operational…? Tatsumaki actually attacked the War Armor. Could it be the Association already suspects I'm planning to eliminate Swift Flash?"
Dr. Bofoi injected himself with an unknown serum, calming himself down at record speed.
He wasn't just a mechanical genius—if he hadn't refused to modify his own body, Dr. Bofoi could've easily been a more advanced version of Genos.
Even in the field of combat, his weakest area, he could use science and tech to turn himself into a near-perfect mech pilot.
"No… Impossible. Even if the Association did suspect something, there's no way Tatsumaki would've reached City B so fast..."
"But if this has nothing to do with the Association, then why did she attack my mech?"
No matter how hard he thought, Bofoi couldn't figure out what provoked Tatsumaki.
What he didn't realize was that because of the malice he occasionally radiated, Kizaru was able to sync with and sense his intentions in real time.
"That thing's pretty tough… Took all those hits and still isn't broken. Tatsumaki, be a dear and help fish it out."
Kizaru had thought the War Armor was a goner after being pounded by Tatsumaki's "concrete slab" attack dozens of times. To his surprise, Metal Knight's creation was still mostly intact.
Happy with that news, he called out to Tatsumaki for help. Recovering a mech from the bottom of a small lake, dozens of meters deep, wasn't exactly easy without her.
"Always making me do the grunt work..."
Tatsumaki muttered under her breath but still used her psychic powers to form an invisible hand, lifting the War Armor from where it had been hiding at the lake bottom.
"Artillery mode: engaged! Target locked! Hypercharge Cannon—fire!"
The moment it broke the surface, the War Armor's chest opened, revealing an internal ring-shaped power circuit. As energy surged through it, the ring lit up with a blinding white glow.
A searing beam of pure energy lanced toward Kizaru—so fast and so powerful that most people present didn't even register it before it fired.
"Final Flash."
But the ones who did react were, of course, Kizaru and Tatsumaki.
Before the enraged Tatsumaki could raise her telekinetic shield, Kizaru had already raised a single finger toward the mech.
Brilliant light burst from his fingertip. The War Armor's AI hadn't even managed to issue a command before the upper half of the mech was consumed entirely.
A straight column of light shot from Kizaru's finger into the sky, vanishing far into space, no one could say how far it had gone.
Even Saitama, who'd been preoccupied eating seafood, looked up instinctively—then shot Kizaru a rather resentful glance.
He wished that blast had been aimed at him—then he'd finally have an excuse to fight Kizaru properly.
"Oops… didn't mean to break the toy…"
Kizaru sighed and shook his hand in mild frustration. Catching Saitama's look, he glared back hard.
If it weren't for the pressure Saitama put on him, he wouldn't have subconsciously gone overboard. With his usual control, there was no way he would've blown the mech clean in half.
Saitama, confused by the glare, looked at the ruined mech and suddenly understood. He returned a knowing, sympathetic look.
No matter how much he tried to hold back, anything he hit always got obliterated. That, for Saitama, was a deep source of frustration.
"That… was that your full power just now?"
Tatsumaki looked at Kizaru with a complicated expression. She used to think the gap between them wasn't that wide.
Even if he was stronger, they were still on the same level—or so she had thought.
But that one move had shattered her assumptions.
She didn't have the kind of sensing ability Observation Haki provided, but that instinctual, primal fear—as if she were facing her natural predator—told her the truth.
Kizaru's strength was far beyond what she'd imagined.
If, before now, Tatsumaki thought that she and the other S-Class heroes shared the rank simply because "S-Class" was the highest available…
Then now she realized it applied to Kizaru too. The only reason they were in the same class was because the class didn't go any higher.
"That wasn't all of it, nope~ What's wrong, Tatsumaki? Don't tell me you're scared?"
At this point, Kizaru also pushed aside a bit of annoyance. It was just a slightly more intricate toy, after all—once he got his hands on Metal Knight, he could have as many as he wanted.
What nearly made him laugh, though, was Tatsumaki's slightly dazed little face.
Looked like the bit of power he'd shown off had really scared her.
Smiling broadly, Kizaru reached out and ruffled Tatsumaki's head. He had to admit—the feeling wasn't too far off from petting Nami-chan.
"W-Who's scared?! I'll surpass you one day!"
Tatsumaki, flustered and angry, ducked away from his large hand—but her mood was clearly lighter than before.
Quietly, she made a decision in her heart: she had to become stronger. At the very least, she couldn't fall so far behind that she couldn't even see Kizaru's taillights.
Deep down, Tatsumaki had a little thought she hadn't even shared with Fubuki—
—When she became stronger than Kizaru, she'd catch him, lock him up, and then do… things.
But she absolutely couldn't let Kizaru find out—otherwise she'd be the one getting locked up and "things-ed."
"Alright, let's take a look at our spoils… hopefully there's still something worth salvaging…"
Kizaru rubbed his hands together as he approached the wreckage of the war mech. They said every boy dreamed of piloting a giant robot at some point.
Even now, when he could crush these so-called mechs with a single finger, his fondness for them hadn't changed.
Unfortunately, he had gone a bit overboard with that last hit. Even in the pirate world, only monsters like Kaido or Big Mom could take that kind of force.
The war mech—tough enough to survive dozens of whacks from Tatsumaki's "brick"—was now reduced to just two mechanical legs and a partial torso still connecting them.
The cross-section was clean, filled with a dense mesh of electronics and mechanical parts. Kizaru, who had once been a science student many years ago, took one glance and felt dizzy.
"Tch. It's a goner. Alright, one leg each—let's see if Tony and Vegapunk can make anything out of it…"
With a casual gesture, Kizaru shot a beam of light that sliced the mech cleanly at the hips.
He traded one leg to Tony Stark, while the other he planned to take back to the pirate world for Dr. Vegapunk—the smartest man alive—to see if he could discover anything useful.
At that very moment, deep in the underground base, Dr. Bofoi still hadn't recovered from his shock.
His pride and joy—the war mech he'd poured his life's work into—had been obliterated in a single hit by that man's blinding speed.
Snapping back to his senses, Bofoi quickly pulled up the battle logs, hunting for the peak energy output detected at the moment of the mech's destruction.
"This… this can't be! What is that man, a nuclear fusion plant?! How could a human possibly contain that level of energy?!"
Staring at the astronomical figures on the screen, Dr. Bofoi felt like his entire understanding of the world had been shattered.
If a human could outperform machines by such a ridiculous margin, then what had all his years of painstaking research even been for?
At that moment, the still-functioning comms device embedded in the wreckage of the war mech crackled to life—transmitting Kizaru's voice.
Bofoi, mid-breakdown, caught one key word, and his dazed mind snapped back into focus.
"Research! That's right! There's no way that Swift Flash is just a regular human! He must be some kind of artificially-created super lifeform! But who could've made him? Kuseno? No—that's impossible! He doesn't have the tech. Was it that Tony and Vegapunk that he said…?"
Bofoi replayed the recording again and again, his mind now spiraling through one plan after another to deal with Kizaru.
"So this thing still works, huh… You can hear me, right? Don't worry—I'll be paying you a visit real soon, Metal Knight."
Before Bofoi could fully wrap his head around what was happening, Kizaru's voice cut in again without warning.
Startled out of his skin, Bofoi let out a yelp, tripping over himself as he scrambled out of his lab.
Back near the war mech wreckage, Tatsumaki looked over at Kizaru, who was now addressing the broken machine.
"You think he can actually hear you like that? You're dead meat, Metal Knight! I'm coming after you too!"
She shouted at the wreckage, which had been reduced to little more than a leg.
Kizaru had mentioned earlier that Metal Knight probably didn't realize she was present—otherwise he wouldn't have dared show up.
But that didn't matter to Tatsumaki. If he had the guts to attack Kizaru, then he'd better be ready to pay for it.
"Hmm… Nope. Can't hear him anymore. Looks like you scared him off,"
Kizaru said after closing his eyes and focusing for a moment, completely throwing Bofoi's panic onto Tatsumaki's shoulders, despite it being his own voice that nearly scared the man into cardiac arrest.
Unfortunately, Metal Knight had folded way too quickly. Just wrecking a single mech was enough to send him running, which left Kizaru disappointed—he hadn't even gotten to fully test the limits of his new ability.
This power, which he'd named Malice Perception, seemed to have three main effects so far:
1. When someone harbored enough ill intent toward him, Kizaru could "see" their face, regardless of distance.
2. If someone with hostile intent began plotting against him, Kizaru could not only see their appearance and location, but also directly sense their thoughts.
3. He could assign a kind of "marker" to any person detected by this ability. Through that mark, he could vaguely perceive things and people connected to the target, including their general whereabouts.
All in all, it wasn't far off from advanced Observation Haki forms like "future sight" or "hearing the voice of all things"—and in some ways, it might even surpass them.
°°°
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