In a final, desperate surge of will, Garou shattered the golden net of prediction. He became a dark-red torrent of annihilation, a roaring defiance that clawed its way upward against the descending tide of a galaxy!
That final punch was no longer mere technique. It was the crystallization of his entire existence—every slight endured, every limit broken, every rebellious scream against the natural order given physical form. Where his fist pointed, reality itself splintered, a spiderweb of black, spatial cracks racing upward to meet the cascading cosmos.
BOOM—!!!!
Silence. A silence more profound and shattering than any noise. Time ceased to have meaning. Dimensions warped.
In the observation deck, every S-Class hero—every sensor, every camera—captured the image and seared it permanently into their souls and memory banks:
Two ultimate forces, one the judgment of a celestial sovereign, the other the blasphemy of a mortal demon, met in a head-on cataclysm a hundred thousand meters above the dead world.
A singularity of blinding white was born at the point of contact.
Then—expansion.
It was a supernova in miniature. Indescribable light. Unfathomable heat. A shockwave that was a perfect, annihilating ring of pure energy, propagating across the Moon's near-side in an instant, moving faster than physics should allow.
The lunar surface churned. New mountains were flattened, fresh canyons were filled, the entire geography rewritten by an invisible, angry god. Massive chunks of the Moon were hurled into the void, forming a fleeting, terrifying ring of debris.
But at the heart of this storm, the outcome was decided in a microsecond.
King's Galaxy Impact simulated the death-throes of stars and the reversal of cosmic spin. It had transcended force; it contained fragments of the fundamental laws of Collapse and End.
Garou's Godfall, for all its magnificent, concentrated fury, had only brushed the hem of such principles.
CRACK.
SHATTER.
The sound, transmitted through their colliding energies, was horrifically clear in the vacuum. Garou's fist, then his arm, and finally the dark-red armor encasing it, disintegrated under the galactic force.
King's fist, its momentum utterly undiminished, continued its descent.
It connected squarely with Garou's faceplate.
CRACK—
The demonic helmet exploded into fragments, revealing the human face beneath—twisted in a rictus of shock, defiance, and dawning, absolute realization.
Garou's body became a projectile. He was hurled backward, carving a plasma-filled trench dozens of kilometers long across the lunar plain. Rock vaporized into silvery mist in his wake.
Thud.
He came to rest at the ragged edge of a newborn crater, a broken doll amidst the cosmic dust. Every bone felt pulverized. His organs screamed. The monstrous power that had sustained him drained away like water through shattered fingers, leaving a cold, hollow weakness he had never known.
Is this… it?
Everything I had… everything I became… burned to ash… and still… so fragile?
King… 'Strongest on Earth'… hah… so… this is the view from the bottom…
The despair was a black hole, consuming his consciousness.
Then, a voice. Not heard, but felt. It resonated from the crumbling depths of his soul and from the cold, infinite void above. It was the whisper of dead stars and the echo of unborn chaos.
"Garou…"
The broken monster's head twitched. "Who…?"
"Your grand pursuit… your 'Absolute Evil'… will it truly end here? Snuffed out by a being who wears the title of 'Hero' like a crown?"
Garou's remaining eye, bloodshot and desperate, strained against the darkness. "Who are you?!"
"Look upon this gap. Taste this despair. Mortal flesh, mortal will… they have limits. But what if the limit itself is the illusion? What is it you truly crave? Is it not the fist that can shatter all laws? The power to challenge… even the concept of God?"
From the swirling, energy-scarred void beside him, a figure began to coalesce. It was not fully formed, more an impression of terrifying, infinite potential—a silhouette that drank the light from the wounded stars, offering a power far older and more dreadful than any hero's justice.
White hair. A white beard. The unmistakable, weathered visage of Bang.
The old man extended a hand, his expression suffused with a gentleness Garou had never seen.
"Come, Garou… no master… would stand idly by as his disciple falls… Accept this power… fulfill your destiny… and throw that fist that can defeat anything!"
Garou stared at the offered hand, at that 'warm,' 'selfless' smile. It didn't bring solace—it seeped a bone-deep chill and a profound, soul-rending disgust.
"Heh… hehehe…"
A low, mocking sneer rattled in his shattered chest.
"The old man… would never… spout such saccharine, hypocritical garbage!!! He'd just… scowl and call me an 'idiot'… or… punch me in the damn face!!!"
With the last dregs of his will, fueled by pure revulsion for this profane mimicry, Garou's remaining good arm lashed out, smacking the false hand away. "Get lost! Don't you dare… defile his image!"
But—
In that fleeting moment of contact, a cataclysm was triggered.
An unimaginable, violent energy forced its way into Garou's broken form, a tidal wave of power that bypassed consent and rewrote reality.
"GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH—!"
A true, soul-shattering scream tore from Garou's throat—a sound of pure agony as his very essence was ripped apart, his cells crushed and remade, his existence violently overwritten.
***
Tens of thousands of meters away, King's eyes narrowed to slits behind his visor.
In his Observation Haki, Garou's life-force wasn't just recovering—it was exploding, skyrocketing past the Dragon-level threshold and ascending into a terrifying, unknown stratum.
And the environment itself was twisting. Above the barren moonscape, two colossal, hundred-mile-wide spiral nebulae of unknown energy coalesced from nothing. They churned slowly, pregnant with lightning that didn't just flash, but tore rents in the fabric of space.
"So it is… He has intervened. God."
King's gaze lifted to the cosmic anomaly, his mind racing. According to his knowledge, God's true form should still be bound by Blast and his team within a dimensional seal. This… this was merely His influence, bleeding through the cracks in reality. A distant, yet devastating, touch.
***
At the heart of the crater, the screams died. An oppressive, deafening silence fell, heavier than the vacuum itself.
Huuu… Huuuu…
The sound of breathing. Impossible in space, yet it vibrated through the lunar bedrock.
A figure rose from the dust.
Gone was the hulking Demon God form. Gone was the broken weakling.
This Garou stood in a state of terrible, symmetrical equilibrium—a perfected, humanoid silhouette, yet wrapped tightly in 'bandages' woven from flowing stardust and fragmented constellations. They pulsed with a deep, cosmic mystery.
But the most horrifying sight was his face.
It was no longer a face. It was a void, a window into a swirling, star-dusted infinity.
Cosmic Mode Awakened Garou.
Cosmic Garou. Born.
"Ka… ka ka…"
His voice bypassed sound, imprinting itself directly into King's consciousness.
"King… the true finale begins now. Behold the ultimate fist I have comprehended—the technique born from understanding the flow, the birth, and the death… of all things in this cosmos."
He raised a hand, the stardust bandages swirling around his fist, drawing in the light from the spiraling nebulae above.
"Its name is—"
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