Chapter 857: Near-Death Saiyan
Boundless light and searing thermal radiation submerged all things. The titan, wrapped in a raging golden aura and crowned by Miracles, held his follow-through punch. The devastating shockwave pierced clean through his vessel; even in the pitch-black cosmic vacuum, the cataclysmic scale of that impact could not be masked.
Gravitational waves and a torrential energetic deluge swept outward across the void, crashing indiscriminately toward neighboring celestial bodies.
Across the opposite vector, his suit largely in tatters, with only a ragged scrap remaining of his signature red glove, Saitama wore an expression of absolute, unvarnished seriousness. He suddenly snapped his torso around and threw a single punch into the void.
BOOM!
A gargantuan hollow was violently blasted clean through the shockwave tearing toward planet Earth.
Twisting his frame with a sharp flex of his hands, Saitama somehow managed to propel himself across empty space.
He turned into a beam of light streaking from the black void toward the azure globe. Midway through his trajectory, he cast a rare glance backward at the golden titan still standing in the emptiness.
Saitama recalled that final collision. The payload concentrated before that human's fist had been terrifyingly heavy. It was not merely the synchronized output of tens of millions of souls swinging in unison; it was something far more esoteric, far more terrifying.
It felt like staring down the cosmos itself. Even Saitama had felt the staggering, unnatural weight of that blow.
Yet the martial artist who had unleashed it was simply not strong enough yet. Consequently, the strike had been scattered before its authentic, unbridled might could fully unfold.
Perhaps, given a few more years, that Mercenary Tao might genuinely throw that complete fist. And when that day came...
Badump. Badump.
Saitama felt the steady thud of his own heart. It felt as though his personal time, halted for so long in stagnant boredom, had finally begun to flow once more.
BOOM!
Across the surface of the blue planet, towering plumes of dust and atmospheric shockwaves billowed outward. Though Saitama's punch had neutralized the core trajectory of the cosmic wake, the stray outer edges of the blast had still grazed the globe, stirring localized natural disasters across the surface.
Igniting against the upper atmosphere, Saitama plunged like a falling meteor, crashing heavily into the cratered ruins of City A.
The lake of pooled draconic blood detonated outward, pulverizing the remaining fragments left behind by Neltharion into absolute nothingness.
"Sensei!"
Genos had regained consciousness. When Saitama had dragged him across the void from the moon earlier, the sheer acceleration and atmospheric friction had knocked his cybernetic processors offline.
Saitama looked across the hollow basin where City A had once stood. In the distance, clusters of heroes in eccentric costumes were combing through the wreckage for survivors.
Noticing his master's quiet confusion, Genos explained immediately:
"The Hero Association's S-Class Rank 1, Blast, has returned. He brought deeper intelligence regarding this calamity. Telemetry indicates an extra-dimensional plane known as the Primordial Dragon Court has been mounting invasions and purges across multiple realities. Those dragons appear to harvest unique conceptual power by eradicating planetary civilizations..."
"The S-Class heroes have assembled alongside Blast to meet with the Cabinet and the Prime Minister, aiming to unite the heroes of the world to repel them."
Saitama nodded, his expression sliding back into his habitual, indifferent dead-fish eyes. In truth, he didn't care much about those Dragon Court entities.
They had deceived him, but that was the extent of it.
Those dragons failed to stir a ripple across his temperament. At most, if he ran into them in the future, he would simply treat them like any ordinary Mysterious Being.
Suddenly, Saitama tilted his head, catching sight of a figure he hadn't anticipated seeing.
A tall martial artist clad in a dark-green overcoat, his long black hair resting against his shoulders.
The man stood with an unhurried, measured posture, radiating an inexplicable, dense presence.
"You are..."
Kaito Shirogane's features brimmed with deep satisfaction. He offered Saitama a calm, respectful nod.
"Mr. Saitama. I am Mercenary Tao. Mercenary Tao for Fun."
Saitama furrowed his brow slightly. Fragments within his mind began shifting and rearranging, until finally, the image of the dark cosmic void and that black-hole-like strike of pure Chaos surfaced with razor clarity.
Seeing that Saitama could genuinely bypass causality and retain complete memories of the encounter, Kaito felt his inner delight swell even further.
"Ah! Sensei, this hero's registered moniker is Mercenary Tao for Fun!" Genos chimed in, his database updating in real time. "He answered the Heroes Assemble decree as a high-tier reinforcement. Historical archives record him conducting hero activities in City J. During today's apocalyptic disaster, he single-handedly engaged the supreme leader of the alien armada. He is a remarkably formidable S-Class hero!"
Genos's internal archives had updated rapidly upon returning to Earth; when he had spotted Kaito on the moon earlier, the spatial filters had prevented those records from syncing.
Kaito maintained an unruffled expression. Five minutes ago, his consciousness had scattered into nonexistence within the dark void of deep space.
His golden titan body under Phenomenal Manifestation of Giant had been pulverized into cosmic dust by the cataclysmic recoil of Saitama's strike clashing against his own Chaos Terminus.
That was an absolute erasure of existential identity. Kaito could not discern whether that staggering destructive yield belonged to Saitama's fist, his own Chaos Terminus, or a violent synergy of both.
His layered immortality and instantaneous regeneration, alongside his Tier 7 Physique of the Primordial Man and various defensive traits, had granted zero immunity.
He had died instantly in the aftershocks of that collision, dispersing alongside the surrounding asteroid dust into nothingness.
Then, his consciousness had reconstituted upon the shoreline. Spacetime reversed, causality inverted, and Kaito found himself holding an impossible memory of an erased timeline.
The fierce clashes waged after crushing the Anchor of Causality felt like a dream. Consequently, the catastrophic physical toll was undone, and even the irreversible process of physical death was completely overwritten.
It was like running a match in a hyper-realistic simulation, returning to the exact starting coordinate once the game concluded.
Yet simultaneously, Kaito's Martial God's Ultimate Intent and Limit-Break Spiral had etched every nuance of that evolution into his foundation—the qualitative harvest of grazing authentic pinnacle power.
The spatial interface displayed the progression with stark clarity:
[Fifth Step: Conceptual Step — Contacted and Mastered Conceptual Authority]
[Concept: Absolute Strike (Mastered): Unleashes a complete strike. When the target's existential standing and tier are inferior to your own, this attack cannot be evaded, cannot be nullified, and cannot be defended against. Absolute Strike can be channeled alongside any active ability, but consumes a massive reserve of Spirit.]
Kaito no longer needed to mimic the Serious Punch to manifest that conceptual execution; he could stack it directly atop the Dragon Fist or Chaos Terminus: Singularity.
The essence of conceptual power lay in the reality that so long as Kaito's focus remained absolute, every blow he threw became an Absolute Strike.
And the metabolic tax on his vessel was significantly reduced.
Against adversaries hovering near his operational echelon, Kaito now wielded lethal, instantaneous decapitation capability.
Pairing Absolute Strike with the Emperor of Death's Senra Intent of Death yielded an execution mechanic far deadlier than the black dragon's strategy of utilizing a Dragon King's Domain to strip low-tier foes of their traits before dropping a city-cleansing breath.
Only now did Saitama show a flicker of genuine intrigue. He had found it strange: before touching down, he had clearly seen the outer shockwave graze the planetary crust, yet upon making planetfall, the world showed no catastrophic shift.
And the man standing before him had undeniably waged an unconstrained duel against him beyond the stars, turning to cosmic dust, only to stand here alive and breathing.
Yet Saitama was never one to split hairs over metaphysics. If he couldn't parse it, he simply discarded the thought. He needed only to know that this warrior hadn't died, that he could continue honing his craft and unlocking the potential of that chaotic fist—and that perhaps one day, they could truly trade blows on balanced terms. That was more than enough.
Furthermore, this man had somehow erased the collateral damage to the planet. Under those terms, he could hardly be branded a Mysterious Being.
Saitama saw zero reason to raise a hand against him.
[Your reputation with Special Plot Character: Saitama has increased. Current: Friendly (47/100)]
Kaito arched an eyebrow. He did not know what calculus had run through Saitama's mind, but his reputation had climbed by a respectable margin.
Securing reputation gains with Saitama was a notorious ordeal for Reincarnators.
Though Saitama appeared simple-minded, he possessed the pristine clarity of a wise fool. Reincarnators approaching him with calculated agendas found it virtually impossible to raise their standing.
Only a vanishingly rare handful of lucky souls ever reaped rewards from him.
To Reincarnators, that was a matter of innate affinity.
Like that fragile woman Kaito had encountered in the B711 world whose name he hadn't even bothered to remember; simply by crying out for salvation, Saitama had answered.
"You're really strong, Mr. Mercenary Tao. Someday... let's fight again!"
Recalling that pounding heartbeat and that fist resembling primordial Chaos, Saitama offered the invitation of his own volition.
The moment his words fell, a prompt shimmering in dark gold materialized before Kaito's eyes.
[You have obtained Special Quest: The Promised Duel (Unique, Special, Irrevocable)]
[Quest Description: The rule-breaking narrative character Saitama has taken an interest in your incomplete Abyssal Art: Chaos Terminus. A pact has been forged to clash once more once your operational tier matches his and the Abyssal Art: Chaos Terminus reaches completion.]
[Quest Reward: Upon reaching the required power tier (God Tier) and perfecting Abyssal Art: Chaos Terminus (Current Completion: 37%), you may initiate this quest to summon the rule-breaking narrative character: Saitama.]
Staring at the distinct golden border of the interface, Kaito could feel the Space's hungry eagerness.
For the current Infinite Dimensional Space, a Third Sequence Reincarnator like himself already represented the absolute vanguard.
Securing the authority to summon a rule-breaking existence like Saitama into future battlefields was an astronomical strategic asset.
In upcoming Dimensional Wars, Kaito could weaponize this quest during critical junctures, activating the pact to drop Saitama directly onto the board.
Handled properly, it would be an external intervention that broke every known paradigm.
Kaito nodded in agreement. He lacked the cold, administrative opportunism of the Space; having fought this duel, he had gained clear measurement of the chasm separating his foundation from the apex heights of power.
Compared to Son Goku's overwhelming, astronomical Ki, Saitama represented an entirely distinct sovereign path.
And Kaito intended to absorb both with absolute greed. He hungered for the explosive transformations of a Super Saiyan, just as he hungered for Saitama's boundless, unconstrained power born of shattering the Limiter.
Uniting both paradigms was the authentic supremacy he sought.
[Special Unit: Archetype of Terminus and Genesis, your trait: Near-Death Saiyan (Mythic) has been triggered]
[All Attributes +10. Current: Strength: 92, Constitution: 94, Agility: 87, Spirit: 109]
[Your Ki has undergone massive amplification. Current: ?]
Zzt!
Silvery information streams surged through Kaito's biology like high-voltage currents. Cellular vitality was massively reinforced, an unmistakable qualitative evolution rippling through his flesh.
Yet Kaito's brow furrowed. It was not out of awe, but disappointment—the yield was noticeably weaker than he had anticipated.
The mythic trait Near-Death Saiyan, harvested from Son Gohan's bloodline, demanded surviving the threshold of biological death to trigger its scaling, mirroring the native Saiyans of the Dragon Ball cosmos.
Yet that near-death state encompassed both physical and psychological dimensions. Kaito had tested it in the Training Grounds, suppressing his passive traits while exposing himself to lethal environments. That endeavor had proved agonizingly inefficient, burning through mountains of Dimensional Points to construct hyper-toxic, high-pressure crucibles.
The yields had been negligible. Not only was his physical vessel virtually immune to mundane hazards, but because the trial was self-inflicted, his conscious mind was never pushed to the brink of true existential ruin.
A trial where one retained an internal safety net damaged only the flesh, failing to satisfy the metaphysical conditions of Near-Death Saiyan.
Now, facing Saitama, he had genuinely been driven into near-death and had experienced authentic physical annihilation.
Yet it had yielded a mere ten-point boost across all attributes. Kaito was far from satisfied.
Even though that boost eclipsed the total yields of several standard mission worlds—and for an operative running a multiplicative scaling system, ten flat points yielded a terrifying multiplier—his ambition hungered for more.
[Authority: Physique of the Primordial Man has evolved. Current: Tier 8]
[Comprehension of Concept: Absolute Destruction has increased. Current: 89%]
[Comprehension of Concept: Absolute Defense has increased. Current: 75%]
Only when the subsequent cascade of spatial alerts flashed did Kaito's expression finally soften.
The harvest from this duel was immense. His inventory still held the mythic materials harvested from two upper-tier dragons of the Primordial Dragon Court, ready to be smelted upon returning to the Space.
Thwip-thwip-thwip—!
Helicopters descended rapidly from the perimeter, touching down across the clearing.
Several men clad in black executive suits approached with taut, nervous expressions. Sizing up Kaito's appearance, their lead representative spoke with deep deference:
"Pardon the intrusion... Are you the newly appointed S-Class Rank 3 hero, the Martial God, Mercenary Tao?"
"The Cabinet Secretary and S-Class Rank 1 Blast are currently assembling all top-tier heroes to establish a special tactical initiative against the Primordial Dragon Court. We formally request your presence."
"Your companions, Dead of Night and Eclipse, have already arrived at the executive manor."
Hearing the name of the Primordial Dragon Court, Kaito recognized this as the compensatory intervention of the Counter Force. While the Dragon Court's campaign to purge humanity aligned with the planetary consciousness, their reckless willingness to shatter the world's structural integrity had provoked the planet's wrath.
More importantly: the Primordial Dragon Court had failed.
For the first time, Kaito distinctly perceived the presence of a Plane's Will standing diametrically opposed to a Space.
Because this world's baseline power ceiling was remarkably high, the local Plane consciousness possessed the agency to directly confront external spatial factions.
It had laid bare the existence of the Primordial Dragon Court, mobilizing its apex assets to wage open war against the invaders.
Kaito turned his head, observing Saitama—whose authentic might had been witnessed firsthand by Tornado and Garou—being completely ignored by the arriving government liaisons once again. A thoughtful gleam crossed his eyes.
This, too, was the Counter Force at work. Saitama's existence directly interfered with the planetary will's biological cycle of purging mortal civilization. Because this world could not nurture an entity strong enough to suppress him, severing Saitama's administrative connection to the broader world was the most practical course.
[Special Event: Dragon-Slaying War has been triggered]
[Event Description: Eradicate all remnants of the Primordial Dragon Court stranded within this world. Each elimination yields tiered rewards based on combat ratings. Operatives achieving the highest evaluation will receive the special title: Dragon's Bane.]
Reviewing the mission briefing, Kaito knew this was the spatial bounty phase following their victory over the Primordial Dragon Court.