The dust had not yet settled, and a red layer appeared, falling down.
Saitama fell several meters before reacting.
He instinctively scratched his head while looking at the dust around him.
"?"
His gaze suddenly lifted, sharp and alert, fixing on the top of the distant building.
There, a figure stood still.
His black coat fluttered with the high-altitude wind, and in his hand, he held a katana.
Their eyes met.
Separated by thousands of meters.
"..."
Saitama's usual apathetic expression faded, replaced by an unfamiliar intensity. He adjusted his body as he fell and landed firmly.
At the top of the building, Damian smiled. In his pupils, there was no coldness or superiority left, only the pure flame of someone who had finally found a true rival.
The entire world seemed to hold its breath.
Two figures faced each other, eyes locked in an invisible clash that made the air grow even more tense.
Two beings at the peak of power.
Face to face, at last.
"Who are you?!"
Saitama's shout echoed, scattering the dust around him. His fists clenched purely by instinct.
'That feeling… it was too familiar. Exactly the same as in his dream….'
At the edge of the building, Damian stepped forward.
!
The heroes watched in shock as he threw himself into the void from over a hundred meters high.
But halfway down, he disappeared.
"Where is he?!" shouted Metal Bat, frowning.
Satoru looked up, then quickly turned toward the center of the ruins. "Huh? So you're into bald guys now?!"
Just five meters in front of Saitama, the space distorted, and Damian emerged with a smile.
"My name is Damian."
"And I'm Saitama! You feel it too, don't you?!" shouted the hero with an unusual grin stretching across his face, his fists cracking with excitement.
Damian nodded. "Yeah. You're really strong."
"Hahahaha!" Saitama's laughter echoed through the area. Those were the exact same words he had been thinking.
"Wanna fight?" Damian suddenly suggested, pulling out a pair of black fingerless gloves.
"Alright!" Saitama's fists collided, releasing a sonic wave that swept through the air.
In Satoru's ear, Damian's voice echoed: "Get everyone out of here."
Satoru sighed and turned to the heroes. "Alright, everyone~ we better get going. Things are about to get interesting."
Tatsumaki's hair bristled. "What do you mean by that?"
Satoru looked at her, smiling.
"What I mean," he pointed toward the center of the ruins where two silhouettes were preparing to fight, "is that place is about to look even more like hell."
The air between them began to distort, shimmering like heat over asphalt on a midsummer day.
Saitama's gloves flickered within the distortion. He frowned but kept his fists tightly clenched. In front of him, Damian's black coat fluttered slowly while his smile deepened, the demonic power within him fully awakened.
"Have fun~!" said Satoru before vanishing.
Bang looked at the scene one last time. His back curved with exhaustion, but his steps were firm as he walked away.
Atomic Samurai sheathed his sword, hoisted his disciple onto his shoulder, and left without looking back. Metal Bat cursed under his breath as he withdrew, and Puri-Puri Prisoner reluctantly stepped aside, turning his head again and again.
Only Tatsumaki remained floating motionless.
"Miss Tatsumaki," Bang's voice echoed from afar. "That young man called Nero… that slash he unleashed earlier…"
"..."
Tatsumaki's face tensed, and in her emerald eyes reflected the increasingly distorted space.
With a snort, she shot upward, landing on the roof of the association's building.
And at that very moment—
BOOM
The ground shook violently.
From the center where the two figures stood, a column of energy rose, lifting hundreds of meters of debris that hovered briefly before disintegrating into the air.
"Ha! Here I come!" shouted Saitama with an excited smile, and his silhouette suddenly blurred.
BOOM
He moved forward at absurd speed and appeared in front of Damian. His eyes gleamed with intensity as he drew back his right fist, gathering power before unleashing a simple yet devastating strike.
Damian half-opened his eyes, and the moment the air pressure shifted, he raised his left hand to block.
'Royal Block'
A dense vibration rippled through the air as a dark blue aura wrapped around his arm, expanding rapidly.
Saitama's fist came down with the force of a meteorite… but the blow stopped just a few millimeters from the energy-covered palm.
Then—
'Royal Release'
BOOM
The overwhelming force was repelled. Damian smiled slightly, and with the same arm that had blocked, he launched a direct counterattack.
The terrifying power of Saitama's strike, combined with his own, turned into an even more violent shockwave.
Saitama barely managed to cross his arms before being swept away by the explosion.
Swish
His silhouette shot out like a projectile, disappearing into a storm of dust as the roar reverberated for kilometers.
"Incredible!"
In an instant, Saitama emerged from the dust cloud completely unscathed, his face lit up with genuine excitement as he bent his knees, ready to launch himself once more.
Swish
But a black shadow appeared before his eyes. Damian was already in front of him, his right hand gripping Yamato's hilt tightly.
'Iaijutsu'
!
A lethal sensation burst into Saitama's mind, making his body react before his thoughts could even process it. His muscles tensed, and in a sudden motion, he threw himself backward, letting gravity pull him into a perfectly straight fall.
Swish
Something invisible crossed right in front of his face, grazing the tip of his nose.
"Tsk." Damian clicked his tongue. His wrist turned elegantly, and Yamato stopped being a katana, becoming an illusion of motion.
There was no light. No sound.
Only a sequence of slashes so fast that even the air itself had no time to split apart.
!
Saitama's eyes contracted in a desperate attempt to follow something that had already happened. He didn't understand what was going on, but once again, his body moved on its own, dodging a network of invisible cuts that seemed to slice through reality itself.
He turned.
He crouched.
He rolled backward.
His movements were clumsy but precise.
His cape disintegrated into a thousand pieces, reduced to shreds floating like ash around his body.
He dodged awkwardly, rolling across the ground again and again, saving himself by the smallest possible margin from each strike.
…
Amid the ruins, Saitama moved like a nameless specter, barefoot before the impossible, dodging blade after blade with his bare back exposed.
A few meters away, Damian stood motionless, moving Yamato at imperceptible speed, his pupils fixed on the bald figure who kept evading over and over again.
"Are you not even gonna let me breathe?!" complained Saitama, rolling between the cuts.
"Try it," Damian muttered with a quiet exhale, not stopping the motion of his wrist as Yamato's shadows stretched before him.
The moment he finished speaking, the stream of attacks stopped for an almost imperceptible fraction of time.
0.0000 seconds of interval.
Saitama's eyes gleamed with intensity. "Ha!" he exclaimed, and his legs struck the ground with devastating force.
Boom
The terrain beneath his feet collapsed, opening into a massive crater as his body shot upward like a projectile.
"This one's mine!" he roared with euphoria, his right fist tensing.
"Killer Move: Serious Series…"
Around his arm, particles vibrated out of phase, unable to decide whether to exist or disintegrate; the fabric of the world bent, and the atmosphere folded like a liquid mirror around his fist.
What emanated from him was no longer energy nor physical power, but a conceptual pressure—the materialization of the act of destruction—as he descended toward Damian.
"... Serious Punch"
Damian looked up.
Without haste, he slid Yamato back into its sheath, and as his hand closed over the hilt, the air vibrated with a hum that spread outward.
"Instant Manifestation"
The sound of the draw was unlike anything known. It was a fracture, a vibration that tore through the constants of the world.
A luminous crack appeared before the descending fist, like the broken reflection of a mirror that should not exist.
In a fraction of an instant, the crack expanded, reverberating in thousands of overlapping layers across the destructive stream.
"..."
And the impact never came. Saitama's strike—strong enough to erase continents—was absorbed.
The energy of the punch simply vanished, as if it had never existed.
"Eh?" High above, Saitama opened his eyes in disbelief.
"Do you always get distracted that easily in the middle of a fight?"
Damian's voice slid calmly across the ground as he maintained his stance.
"Absolute Cut!"
Swish
Yamato left its sheath for the second time.
Swish Swish Swish
Countless blue flashes appeared out of nowhere, blocking every possible escape route, closing in from all directions with a shriek that split the eardrums.
There was no way out.
Saitama floated in midair, and the confusion on his face vanished, replaced by absolute seriousness.
He struck the air with both feet.
BOOM
A visible ring of pressure exploded beneath him, a white wave stabilizing his body midair. His fists drew in tightly at his waist, lowering his center of gravity as every fiber of his muscles tensed.
"Killer Move: Serious Series…"
"... Consecutive Serious Punches."
BOOM BOOM BOOM
His arms became a blur of red fury, moving at incomprehensible speed.
The fists multiplied uncontrollably, roaring as they collided with the closing slashes from every direction.
The impacts thundered like a storm of hammer blows.
The crimson wind of the punches and the blue slashes intertwined, clashed, and shattered one another, annihilating themselves in a burst of pure destruction.
But—
Swish
A sharp slicing sound tore through the air again and again, repeating like an echo. The crimson current created by the wind of the punches was mercilessly shredded by the relentless blades that advanced without rest.
Although the slashes fragmented upon colliding with the brutal force of the blows, their destructive edge kept pushing forward, layer by layer, devouring the wind barrier that protected him.
Saitama's hero suit began to tear apart, but his gaze burned with a fierce glow.
That sensation… it made his blood boil.
A surge of emotion ran through his nerves like an electric shock.
This was what he had been searching for! This was the battle he had dreamed of! Someone capable of pushing him beyond!
"Ha… HAHAHAHAHAHA!" A wild, manic laughter burst from his throat, filled with mad euphoria.
The slashes were about to close in on him and completely tear him apart.
Damian slightly furrowed his brow.
… Something wasn't right.
Saitama shouldn't stop there. Could it be…?
Just as the cuts were about to consume him entirely, time seemed to freeze at the center of that blue storm.
Suddenly, an indescribable force erupted from that point.
!
Damian's pupils contracted.
"Serious…"
A restrained voice rose, cutting through the roar of the slashes and striking Damian's ears.
"… Punch!"
!
Saitama's body, immersed in that blue inferno, began to lose definition, as if his existence itself fluctuated between the tangible and the immaterial.
"Slowly" he drew back his fist, and everything within him—muscle, mind, and spirit—retracted into a single point.
Every fiber of his being tensed to the extreme, as though the structure that held him together was on the verge of collapsing under its own intensity.
The atmosphere vibrated, and from his fist emerged black lines branching out like cracks across the glass of the universe.
The euphoria of surpassing his limits converged into a single point.
"..."
Damian's heart skipped a beat, an electric jolt running through his chest like a surge of energy.
There it was.
BOOOOOOM
Saitama threw the punch.
And what emerged from his fist was a naked force, stripped of form—a manifestation so pure of movement that the laws of the universe couldn't define it.
Space reacted in horror.
The very coordinates of the world fractured under that absolute pressure.
The fabric of the sky shattered like a mirror robbed of its reflection. From the point where his fist advanced, the void opened into a colossal crack—an ontological tear that belonged neither to matter nor to energy.
It was a hole in the very concept of continuity, a void where time did not flow and existence itself had no permission to remain.
Damian's slashes struck against that abyss and crumbled without a sound, dissolving at the threshold where even destruction ceased to have meaning.
It was as if the universe exhaled one final breath before remembering what absolute nothingness truly was.
"HAHAHAHAHA!!!"
A liberating laughter echoed within that "nothing."
Still in striking position, Saitama floated before the tear that was slowly beginning to close.
________
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