On the deck, the last vestiges of resistance finally crumbled.
Even Tornado, usually so stubborn, let out a reluctant groan. The emerald light around her flickered, then vanished completely. Her petite body dropped to the cold metal floor, arms propping her up as she sat cross-legged, breath shallow. Her emerald eyes were wide, filled with a shock and bewilderment she had never known before.
Every S-Class Hero, without exception, lay prostrate beneath the crushing weight of that vast heavenly might.
They looked up. First at the towering figure that seemed to blot out the stars. Then at the man standing before them—so close, yet impossibly far away.
King.
At that moment, their hearts were swept away by a monstrous wave of awe and dread, as if the heavens and earth themselves were collapsing around them.
If Saitama's moon-shattering strike had shown them what "ultimate strength" was—absolute, irrational power that bent common sense until it snapped—then the vast majesty emanating from Kaito was something else entirely.
It was not merely strength. It was authority.It was supremacy itself—an overwhelming presence that governed rules and dominated the Spirit.
But Kaito himself had no time to notice the shocked faces of the heroes behind him.
The extreme fusion of the Three-Color Haki and the Emperor Engine surged within him. Behind his back, the million-meter Heavenly Emperor phantom blazed like a star on the verge of exploding. Violent currents of power clashed, threatening to tear the phantom apart at any moment.
He had to act now.
Kaito's eyes sharpened, like blades slicing through the void. Enduring the soul-rending backlash, he raised his right hand with painstaking effort.
At once, the colossal phantom mirrored him, lifting its titanic palm. Fingers spread wide, the shadow seemed to blot out the heavens themselves.
That giant palm descended. It ignored the alien architecture of the warship, ignored the laws of matter, and simply enveloped the entire Dark Matter Pirates' spaceship in its grasp.
And then it closed.
"Ughhhhhh—!!!""No—!!!""Lord Boros, save us—!"
Terror erupted within every corner of the ship. Every hidden alien, every minion, felt a dread that clawed at the depths of their souls.
"Annihilate."
The single word slipped coldly from Kaito's lips.
But that word struck like a divine decree.
"BOOM—!!!"
It mattered little how strong the aliens' minds were. In that instant, each one of them understood the truth:
This was no mere death.This was erasure.The absolute negation of existence itself.
Their lives, their spirits, even the basic data that composed their being—all of it vanished in silence, like snow melting under a merciless sun.
No screams could escape. No resistance lasted more than a heartbeat.
In a single breath, tens of thousands of alien minions were gone.
[Ding! Host has successfully caused 13,475 alien monsters to turn to ashes in soul-shivering terror, gaining a total of +673,750 deterrence points!]
Six digits. A feast beyond anything Kaito had ever experienced.
A grin tugged at his lips. For once, joy nearly drowned out his fatigue. But his excitement burned too hot, shaking the delicate balance he maintained.
Three seconds.
That was all he had.
The Heavenly Emperor phantom, a figure that seemed able to suppress the very cosmos, shuddered. A soundless wail—heard only in Kaito's soul—escaped it. Then, with a final roar, the phantom shattered. Light particles scattered into the night sky and faded away.
As it dissolved, so too did the suffocating pressure that had pinned the heroes to the deck.
Exhaustion slammed into Kaito's body. His knees nearly buckled, vision darkening at the edges. But with sheer will, he forced himself upright, refusing to collapse.
And then, the heavens themselves shifted.
The heavy clouds above, torn apart by the phantom's might, opened in a vast rift. Through it spilled a golden ray of sunlight, cascading down onto Kaito's lone figure.
The S-Class Heroes stared, their breaths caught in their throats.
In that golden light, Kaito stood tall, unmoving.
In their eyes, he was no longer human.He was a god.
Meanwhile, far above, on the surface of the moon—
The clash between Boros and Saitama reached its climax.
Boom!
Another punch sent Boros flying, carving a deep trench across the grey lunar soil. He slammed to one knee, his armor shattered, his flesh torn, purple blood dripping freely.
His single eye burned with fury, frustration, and despair.
"Why… why can't I hurt you?!"
His roar carried no sound in the vacuum, but his desperation was clear enough to the bald hero standing across from him.
Boros realized the cruel truth.
Even as he pushed his body into overdrive, burning away his own lifespan to force himself into the third stage of Meteoric Burst State, it wasn't enough.
Not even close.
That bald man—his opponent—remained completely unshaken.
What made it unbearable was not the strength of his foe, but the complete indifference. Throughout their battle, that man's aura had not wavered once. Not even slightly.
Those lifeless, dull eyes… in Boros's gaze, they became the sharpest blade, the cruelest mockery of everything he had pursued for a lifetime.
He, Boros—the cosmic overlord, the terror who made billions of stars tremble—couldn't even make his opponent take him seriously.
The humiliation was unbearable. The unwillingness was poison. The rage was fire.
That fire consumed his soul, igniting his final madness.
"Not enough… still not enough!!!"
The roar tore through his mind, though no sound reached the void.
Boros abandoned all restraint. He began to overclock—once, twice, again and again—each surge of power shredding what remained of his body. Every punch shattered his own limits, his destructive might leaping higher and higher, each blow stronger than the last.
But the cost was merciless. His life essence poured away like a dam bursting, draining faster than he could endure. A chilling aura of death wrapped around his battered frame, suffocating and inescapable.
Yet Boros did not fear death.
He had been born for battle. He longed to die on the battlefield of the strongest.
What tore at his very core, what shook his soul with despair, was that no matter how he broke his limits—no matter how far he climbed—the bald man before him still swatted away his desperate strikes with casual, effortless blows.
Punches that seemed ordinary.Palms that looked careless.And yet, they erased everything.
Despair seeped into his boiling blood, chilling it from within.
"At least… at least let me knock you down once!!!"
Boros's fury, his unwillingness, his pride, and his pure, unrelenting lust for battle—he crushed it all into a single point. Everything he was, everything he had lived for, condensed in this final instant.
He abandoned defense. He abandoned evasion. There was only this one strike.
Burning the last of his life's fire, pouring the boundless energy of a star-sea into a single attack—
"COLLAPSING—STAR—ROARING—CANNON!!!"
The roar resounded in silence across the moon's barren surface.
Boros's body became an unstable furnace, overflowing with apocalyptic power. Azure lightning poured from his flesh, no longer a symbol of control but the chaotic torrent of energy breaking free.
Each arc of lightning lashed across the moon, vaporizing ancient craters, carving deep, violent scars into the desolate grey land.
The lunar surface quaked. The entire moon trembled under the weight of Boros's final strike.
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