Time, space, and causality took a deep, shuddering breath.
Saitama's fist moved forward. It did not create a sonic boom; it was a movement so far beyond the concept of speed that the universe's rules simply ceased to apply in its vicinity.
The Herald, a being of cosmic power, a creature that had witnessed the birth and death of stars, reacted with a speed that transcended thought. The swirling galaxy in its palm, its 'Reset' button for entire worlds, erupted forward. It wasn't an attack. It was a wave of pure, conceptual unmaking.
The two forces met in the middle of Saitama's living room.
And the world did not end.
For the briefest, most terrifying nanosecond in the planet's history, Saitama's apartment was the single most violent, and most silent, place in the entire universe.
The Herald's wave of unmaking, a power that could have unwritten the solar system from existence, struck Saitama's fist. It was not stopped. It was not overpowered. It was negated. Cancelled out. The very concept of its attack was met by a simple, physical rebuttal that said, with absolute, undeniable finality, No.
And then, the shockwave from the Serious Punch expanded.
But it didn't expand outwards in a sphere of destruction. Saitama's control, even in this 'serious' state, was absolute. The force of a punch that could have shattered a planet was focused, channeled, and directed into a single, perfect, unwavering vector, straight at the Herald.
The Herald's flawless, light-carved armor didn't shatter. It didn't dent. It flexed, warped, and then came apart at the seams, its own advanced, physics-defying matter unable to contain the sheer, raw, kinetic truth of the impact.
The Herald was launched backwards.
It did not fly through the back wall of the apartment. It flew through the very fabric of the gateway it had created, a screaming white comet disappearing back into the abyss of non-space from whence it came. The portal, destabilized by the blow, collapsed in on itself with a final, sickening crunch, sealing the path.
The battle was over. The fight, between a man and a god's own messenger, had lasted less than a single second.
The aftermath was eerily peaceful.
The tatami mats on the floor were completely unscorched. The walls of the apartment were uncracked. Not a single cup on the kitchen counter had rattled.
The only evidence that anything had happened at all was that the front half of the apartment—the half that had been behind Saitama's punch—was completely, utterly pristine.
The back half, however... the section of the living room and the wall behind the Herald... was gone. Not blown out. Not destroyed. It had been neatly, perfectly, and surgically excised from reality, leaving a clean, sharp, building-sized hole that looked out into the clear blue sky.
The Serious Punch had missed. Or, rather, it had so perfectly connected with its target that the residual, leftover force, the barest fraction of a percentage of its power, had just kept going. It had carved a perfectly straight, perfectly smooth tunnel, not through the Earth, but through the atmosphere itself.
Miles above them, the punch's energy finally dissipated, but in doing so, it pushed the Earth's atmosphere aside with such force that it momentarily parted the sky.
Across the entire continent, every person who happened to be looking up saw it.
The clouds split. Not a small break, but a vast, continental-sized canyon being carved into the sky, revealing the dark, starry expanse of space beyond. It was as if a god had taken a brush and scraped away the very heavens. It was beautiful, terrifying, and completely inexplicable.
Back in the half-demolished apartment, Genos, his voicebox now free of the static, just stared, his processors trying and failing to compute. He held up his notebook, his metallic hands trembling. "Note to self..." he whispered, his voice full of a new, even more profound level of religious terror and awe. "...Master's 'Serious Series' has a noticeable and significant effect on local weather patterns."
Kafka, who had been thrown to the back of the room (the existing back of the room), just stared at the impossible hole in the sky. He had witnessed a power that could rearrange solar systems, all deployed to deal with a home intruder.
Saitama, for his part, looked at the giant, gaping hole where his TV and manga shelf used to be.
He looked at his own fist.
And a tiny, almost imperceptible smile touched his lips.
He had felt it. Just for a fraction of a second, as his fist connected with the Herald's unmaking-wave. A feeling he hadn't experienced in years. The faintest, ghost of a shadow of... resistance. It hadn't been a hard fight. It hadn't been a challenge. But it hadn't been nothing. His punch had actually been needed.
The King's Boredom, for the first time in this new world, had a single, tiny crack in its monolithic facade.
"So," Saitama said, his voice unusually thoughtful as he looked up at the parted heavens. "That Herald guy. He said he worked for a... 'Progenitor,' right?"
Genos and Kafka both turned to him, a new, dawning horror on their faces. They knew what was coming.
"Sounds like the Progenitor," Saitama continued, a dangerous, hopeful glint in his eye, "is the main boss."
The final confrontation of the entire saga was not going to be born of duty or a desire to save the world. It was going to be a personal quest, a pilgrimage. The bored, apathetic god had just found a monster he thought might, finally, maybe, be strong enough to give him a decent fight. And he was going to go find it. Not to save the Earth from being Reset, but for the most terrifyingly simple and Saitam-like reason of all:
For fun. The apotheosis was not humanity's. It was his. And he would happily punch his way across galaxies to get there. The final battle was not a question of 'if,' but 'when.' And the entire universe was completely, and utterly, unprepared.