The Hero Hunter had attacked S-Class Heroes without ever suffering a real defeat. The reason she had not drawn widespread attention was that everyone thought King had already taken her out. She had also never gone looking for trouble with the far more numerous heroes at A-Class and below.
"That B-Class is standing that close? Is he an idiot?"
"Master!"
Saitama looked around. Huge numbers of Black Sperm bodies and the Dragon-level Monsters that had not yet been eliminated were still present. Capturing Psykos did not mean the others would obediently surrender. If anything, apart from gathering in one place, the monsters had shown no other form of unity at all.
"When did so many monsters get outside? And is that my TV over there being stepped on?"
Yimi sat upright. "Should we take them out first, then keep fighting?"
"Hmm..."
Saitama picked his nose. "What a pain. Aren't there other heroes here?"
Genos was left somewhat speechless when he heard that. Master had complained to him before that all the credit always ended up being attributed to Genos, yet now, at the perfect opportunity to show off his strength, he said something like this.
That cat again. She had casually said she was going to take all of them out...
There were not many Dragon-level Monsters present who could still fight, but Black Sperm could not pretend he had not heard that. At this point, there was nothing left to hesitate over, was there? Throwing sheer numbers at these S-Class Heroes had already proven useless.
Black Sperm bodies numbering in the tens of trillions surged together and condensed into one.
If possible, he would never have wanted to use this.
This was not merely the usual kind of aggregation that increased his combat power. This time, the bodies were devouring one another until only a single complete individual remained in a permanent fusion. In other words, he would sacrifice the consciousness of almost every other self!
"Hey, what's this guy doing?"
Golden Sperm!
What finally emerged was a single individual with a golden surface and perfectly proportioned musculature like an ideal human bodybuilder. He lowered his head and studied his own body almost admiringly.
"I don't understand. How is this any different from before?" Zombieman drew his gun.
"Sorry, coming through."
At the same time he spoke, Golden Sperm had already moved from more than ten meters in front of Zombieman to a position behind him. Even Zombieman himself needed a moment before realizing his body had been cut apart.
"This guy?"
In this fused state, he was unquestionably far beyond the other Dragon-level Monsters present!
Everyone else went on high alert as they faced him, but Golden Sperm's attention was not on them. It was on the fat cat who had been making such arrogant statements.
Earlier, she had wiped out several tens of quadrillions of his bodies in a single burst. Combined with the betrayal by his fellow monster Nyan, even though the fusion had left him as only one individual, it could not erase the resentment shared by the collective.
Golden Sperm instantly appeared beside the two of them.
"You know him?" Saitama threw a punch.
The kitty shook her head. "Looks like something... you can't eat."
Golden Sperm's upper body vanished to somewhere unknown—or perhaps it simply ceased to exist. His legs, still moving from inertia, bent into a ridiculous kneeling pose and slid forward for a long distance.
"..."
Child Emperor gave two dry laughs. "So he was just a paper tiger with higher attack power?"
How could he possibly be a paper tiger??
Only the small number of Black Sperm bodies that remained knew how powerful that punch had been. If that man were ranked as a monster, he would be far beyond ordinary Dragon level!
"Let's keep fighting," Yimi called out, then explosively kicked off the ground. The airflow flattened her ears back into airplane ears.
Saitama at least went through the motions of raising his hands to block. One punch after another perfectly stopped every attack. Once they reached a more open area, their speed increased again, and the airflow driven by their movement blasted apart every place they passed.
Once again a cat paw smacked Saitama across the face and sent him flying a thousand meters. Having a paw pad slap against his face actually did not feel all that bad.
But this time, even though neither of their feet touched the ground, an absurdly long trench was carved through the ruins. In the end, they crashed into a Dragon-level Monster called Gums and smashed it to pieces.
This Hero Hunter was a major threat!
The heroes watching all reached the same conclusion without needing to discuss it.
"It's clearly just you attacking me one-sidedly. I'm not getting any of the thrill of fighting at all."
Seeing the heroes, whose enemies had steadily dwindled, begin directing hostile looks at Yimi, King hurriedly shouted in a direction even he was not sure about. "Saitama-shi, don't hurt her!"
"King-san?"
"Little Tatsumaki!"
Child Emperor turned toward the person with the most reliable raw strength, only to be glared at in return.
"Shut up. If you think you can't beat her, that's purely because you're too pathetic. Don't make excuses for your own incompetence—especially that celebrity who got beaten first. Completely useless!"
"Huh? Who are you saying got beaten, shorty?" Handsomely Masked Sweet Mask twisted his face in irritation.
Child Emperor: "..."
Why had she suddenly gotten angry... Ah. So that was it. She was protecting one of her own?
Tatsumaki was not deaf. How could she fail to recognize that familiar halting, childish way of speaking?
He could not really be blamed for reacting slowly. The little girl's human form had white ears, while her cat form had black ears like a panda. Who could possibly have guessed it?
"Even if I wanted to hurt her, I can't. Isn't that move way too unfair?" Saitama answered King leisurely while continuing to block attacks.
Yimi could not break through the bald man's defense at all, but she still had a way to win.
As she continuously slapped at Saitama's face, Yimi thought of something she had not done in a long time: Famine's second-stage activation. If she bit herself hard enough to draw blood and dripped it into the other person's mouth or nose, she could trigger the effect without needing to injure them.
She did not need to drain him dry. As long as she made this bald man lose the ability to fight, the kitty would win!
But before she could do it, Saitama spoke first.
"You said you wanted to settle this, but if neither of us can hurt the other, there's no way to decide a winner. Let's settle it in one move. If we keep going, we'll just cause trouble for everyone else."
"Meow?"
Saitama rubbed his fists together. Despite saying they would settle it in one move, he did not give Yimi any time to prepare a technique of her own. "Killer Move: Serious Series..."
Reaction speed was also an important part of a fight, right?
"That move is going to be dangerous." Genos, who had personally experienced just how terrifying Master was, murmured under his breath.
Even the current Yimi only had enough time to transform back into human form and take out the Spear of Longinus, but Saitama was far, far faster than her!
The cloud layer that had finally accumulated again over the past few days was blown apart once more. The trembling ground finally failed to hold, and the Monster Association Headquarters that Tatsumaki had violently dragged out of the earth sank deep downward.
"You baldy!" Tatsumaki shouted angrily from the sky.
For the first time, the stubborn kitten realized that she seemed to have lost. Not in terms of raw strength, but in some other concept Yimi had not yet learned the word for.
The punch Saitama had thrown with such terrifying momentum did not trigger Love Train's transfer effect.
In other words, even without Love Train, she would not have taken any damage from that punch.
Yimi fell through the opening into the underground depths. She looked up at the faint gap far above, then looked at the Spear of Longinus in her hand.
And put it away again.
This bald man was a very good person.
Saitama looked down into the hole and rubbed his smooth scalp. "You're not following up? You didn't even get to use your move."
"D-did he get her?" Superalloy Darkshine stared at the spot uneasily.
For some reason, there had been an instant when he genuinely felt as though this man and cat could break through his defense.
Genos shook his head. "No. Judging from Master's attitude, he shouldn't have been trying to kill her. That puddle of water never reacted to either of them from beginning to end."
Master's strength was not merely physical power.
Child Emperor gave another dry laugh. "Genos-san, you call him Master..."
"Did you people come here purely to fight? Where is the hostage?!" At this point, the first—and only—person who remained relatively clearheaded was actually Handsomely Masked Sweet Mask, whom everyone else had been ignoring off to the side.
This was exactly why his attitude toward these S-Class Heroes was so bad.
Ignoring their reactions, he jumped straight down through the huge crack.
"Hey!"
Garou had no time to process the fact that Saitama was the person who had knocked him unconscious a few days earlier, much less restore his confidence over it. He jumped down as well.
They were extremely lucky. At a glance, both of them spotted human-form Yimi standing there and looking upward.
And then they were extremely unlucky. Behind the child, Handsomely Masked Sweet Mask saw a surviving monster whose appearance had changed drastically: Phoenix Man.
Standing directly behind Yimi, Phoenix Man could finally reveal a human face from within his Mascot Costume, and he wore a sleazy grin.
Handsomely Masked Sweet Mask's face darkened. He rushed forward and reached out to seize Phoenix Man by the throat.