The sea voyage was, for Saitama, a masterclass in profound and multi-faceted boredom. The initial novelty of being on a big, floating thing wore off in approximately three hours. After he had explored every inch of the sturdy merchant vessel, the 'Salty Siren,' counted all the seagulls following them (thirty-seven, one of whom he named 'Steve'), and tried to have a conversation with the ship's stoic, wooden figurehead (she wasn't very talkative), he was left with a vast, featureless expanse of blue water, a vast, featureless expanse of blue sky, and a vast, featureless expanse of time to fill.
The ship's crew, a hardened, superstitious lot, had been given a simple, direct order from the Royal Port Authority, backed by a very large bag of gold: "Keep the bald man in the yellow suit happy. Do not provoke him. Do not question him. And if he asks for snacks, give him the snacks." They treated him with a terrified reverence, giving him a wide berth, whispering about him when they thought he wasn't listening.
"Heard he punched the ocean once," a sailor with a large, tangled beard muttered to his shipmate. "Made a tidal wave that washed away a whole pirate fleet."
"I heard," the other whispered back, his eyes wide, "that he doesn't actually sail on the ship. He just runs on the water underneath it, pushing us along."
Saitama, who was leaning against the railing trying to see if he could spot any interesting fish, could, of course, hear every word. He sighed. The rumors were getting less and less creative.
His days fell into a monotonous rhythm. He would wake up, do his hundred push-ups, hundred sit-ups, and ten-kilometer run (which involved him just jogging in place on the deck for about twenty minutes, an activity that caused the entire ship to gently vibrate, much to the crew's terror), eat the ship's rations (mostly hardtack biscuits and salted fish, which he declared "crunchy, but needs hot sauce"), and then spend the rest of the day staring at the ocean.
He tried to find ways to pass the time. He tried "fishing" by dangling a piece of string with a biscuit tied to it into the water. A colossal, twenty-foot sea serpent with teeth like daggers shot up from the depths to swallow the biscuit. Saitama, annoyed that it was trying to steal his snack, had simply reeled it in, pulling the massive, thrashing beast out of the water and onto the deck with a single, effortless tug. The crew had screamed in terror. Saitama had just looked at the massive, flopping sea serpent. "See? Told you I could catch one. You guys got a big enough frying pan for this?" (They did not. He had, with a sigh, "patted" the serpent on the head and tossed it back into the ocean, leaving the crew to stare in stunned silence at the massive, serpent-shaped dent in the deck.)
He tried helping the crew with their duties. He "helped" hoist the sails by pulling on the rope so hard that the main mast creaked and threatened to snap in two. He "helped" swab the deck by using a mop with such vigor that he accidentally stripped the wood of its protective oils, leaving a patch of pale, vulnerable timber. He "helped" the navigator by pointing out that they were "going that way," which was, while accurate, not particularly useful. After a few of these incidents, the ship's captain, a grizzled old sea dog named Captain Finn, had politely but firmly asked him to please, for the love of all the sea gods, just sit still and not "help" anymore.
So Saitama sat. He sat on the forecastle, his chin in his hands, watching the endless, unchanging horizon, the sun rising and setting in a spectacular, but ultimately repetitive, display of color. The boredom was a physical weight, heavier than any monster, more suffocating than any swamp fog.
It was during one of these long, empty afternoons that he found himself talking to Lyraelle. Not the real Lyraelle, who was leagues away on her own quest, but a memory of her, a thought. He remembered what she had said: "The weight of restraint is often heavier than the weight of action."
He looked out at the vast, empty sea. He could punch it. One "Serious Punch" would part the ocean, create a trench that would reach the very seabed, a temporary canyon in the water. The resulting tidal wave would probably sink their ship and, likely, several small coastal nations. He could do it. The power was there, humming quietly, uselessly, in his fists. But he couldn't. Because it would be messy. Because people would get hurt. Because it was… the wrong thing to do.
This was the true prison of his power. It wasn't that he couldn't lose; it was that he couldn't even truly use his strength. Not to its fullest extent. Not without catastrophic consequences. He was a living god forced to live by the rules of mortals, a being of infinite force constrained by the fragile, breakable nature of the world around him. Every action had to be measured, held back, dialed down from "apocalypse" to "mildly destructive," and the constant, unending effort of that restraint was… exhausting.
He sighed, a sound that was lost in the vastness of the sea. "This hero stuff," he mumbled to a passing albatross, "is a lot more complicated than they make it look in the manga."
Meanwhile, on the continent…
The absence of Saitama, the "Great Distraction," had changed the dynamic of the shadow war completely. With the Tempest now on a trans-oceanic culinary quest, the board was clear for the true players to make their moves.
Princess Iris and Lyraelle's "Royal Pilgrimage" proceeded with a new, quiet urgency. Without Saitama's chaotic presence, their journey became more focused, more perilous. They were no longer just tourists on a monster-punching road trip; they were the sole inheritors of a sacred, dangerous quest. They encountered Cultist ambushes, not the head-on assaults they had faced before, but subtle, insidious traps – illusions, magical poisons, attempts to turn local populaces against them with whispers and lies.
They fought back with a skill and determination that surprised even themselves. Iris, forced to rely on her own strength, found her connection to Anathema deepening, the blade's golden light burning brighter, more fiercely, with each righteous blow she struck. Lyraelle, her own power slowly returning, became a silent, graceful whirlwind of silver light and devastatingly precise magic, her ancient knowledge a weapon far more potent than any brute force. They were becoming a true team, a fusion of mortal valor and celestial grace, the shield and the sword of the coming age.
And they were not alone.
Shadow Garden, under Alpha's direct, and Shadow's indirect, command, now operated with a new, breathtaking efficiency. Using Saitama's absence as the ultimate cover, they moved like a scalpel through the festering body of the Cult's network. They were always one step ahead, a silent, unseen force that dismantled the Cult's operations from the inside out.
A cultist alchemist, preparing a new batch of the Veridia plague, would find his laboratory mysteriously flash-frozen, his reagents rendered inert. A high-ranking Cult spy in the Oriana court would be found in a locked room, dead from a single, untraceable poison, a playing card – the black joker – left on his chest. A convoy carrying a dark artifact would be found wrecked in a mountain pass, its guards eliminated, the artifact gone, the only clue a few stray, wolf-like hairs found at the scene.
Alpha coordinated it all, a master strategist playing a multi-layered game of chess against an enemy who was only just beginning to realize that the board had more than two sides. She used the intelligence they gathered to subtly feed information to the Midgar-Oriana alliance, guiding Kristoph's knightly orders towards secondary targets, using the official armies as a blunt instrument while her own elite forces performed the truly critical, surgical strikes. She was fighting the war on three fronts: the overt, the covert, and the informational.
And at the center of this web, the young man known as Sid watched with a profound, almost artistic, satisfaction. His plan was working perfectly. Saitama was gone. The Cult was reeling. The kingdoms were stumbling in the right direction, guided by his invisible hand. He was the ghost in the machine, the unseen author of the entire narrative.
He sat in his headquarters, reviewing the latest reports. The princesses were nearing the final sacred site. The Cult was consolidating its remaining, most powerful forces for a last, desperate stand. Alpha's teams were in position, ready for the final act. Everything was converging, just as he had planned.
He had won. He had achieved the perfect, uncredited, shadowy victory.
And he was… bored.
The feeling was a cold, unwelcome shock. He had everything he'd ever wanted. He was the living embodiment of his chuunibyou dream. He was the secret master of the world. But the thrill… it was gone. The meticulous planning, the flawless execution… it had all become… a routine. There was no risk. No challenge. No one who could possibly understand, let alone threaten, his grand design.
He looked at a map of the world, at the pieces he was moving with such perfect, effortless skill. And he felt a profound, hollow emptiness that mirrored the one felt by a bald man on a lonely ship in the middle of a vast, empty ocean.
Two gods, one of light and one of shadow, had both reached the pinnacle of their power. They had both, in their own way, defeated their enemies and won their respective games. And they had both, in the silent, lonely aftermath of their perfect victories, come face to face with the same, final, unbeatable foe: the crushing, absolute weight of their own, unrivaled supremacy. The world was theirs for the taking. They just had to figure out what, if anything, they actually wanted to do with it.