"—Root Fist of All Lifeforms!"
As the name echoed in the void, Cosmic Garou's form did something impossible. He didn't move. He collapsed. His entire being imploded, condensing into a perfect, absolutely pitch-black sphere less than half a meter across, a hole in reality itself.
"King, witness this." The voice was cold, omnipresent, emanating from the sphere's heart.
Then—light. Not from the sphere, but from the space to its immediate left and right, two lines of pure, annihilating brilliance erupted into being.
Root Fist of All Lifeforms · Gamma-Ray Burst!!!
Gamma rays. The universe's final, most violent scream. The death rattle of collapsing hypergiants. Energy concentrated enough to scour life from galaxies, released in a blink.
One lance of this star-killing light lanced out into the infinite black, destined to cross light-years and sterilize some unsuspecting, vibrant world eons hence.
The other was aimed, point-blank, at King.
BOOM——————————————————!!!
The silent cataclysm hit on a perceptual level. The Emperor Armor screamed on contact. The glorious crimson-gold aura was suppressed, eroded, dissolved by the absolute, sterile white. Armor plates charred, bubbled, and flaked away to ash in milliseconds.
"EMPEROR ENGINE—FULL POWER!!!"
King's roar was a spiritual detonation. His body was a battleground. Tissues vaporized under the hyper-energy radiation, only to be forcibly reassembled an instant later by the Engine's twin miracles—"Eternal Rhythm" and "Heart Source Creation." Destruction and rebirth, cycling billions of times in a nanosecond. An agony beyond mortal comprehension.
Yet, his spirit soared.
For in this endless cycle, the limiter within him… cracked.
CRACK—
A sound only his soul could hear. Every cell in his body screamed, not in pain, but in exultant anticipation of an imminent evolutionary leap. The Emperor Engine's defiance of reality was the only thread keeping him from being utterly unmade.
But the cost of holding on was absolute. He was the final dam. Behind him—Earth.
If even a fraction of this stellar fury slipped past him, the aftermath would scorch the atmosphere, boil the oceans, and shatter the crust. Human civilization, all life, would be erased from the cosmic record.
"You selfish… BASTARD!!!" The thought was a lightning bolt of fury.
There was only one path.
King's Summon.
A golden flash. A figure in a simple yellow suit and white cape materialized in the void behind King. No explanation was needed; the crisis was conveyed in an instant through shared intent.
"Saitama! The ray! Dispersal—now!"
"Got it."
Saitama's usually placid eyes sharpened into points of absolute focus. The infinite void seemed to hold its breath around him.
"Serious Series—"
He inhaled. The vacuum itself seemed to strain. His fist drew back, not with speed, but with a terrible, gathering finality.
"—Serious Punch."
Where his fist pointed, light bent, space wept. This was not kinetic force. It was a conceptual negation of phenomenon, given form.
The plain, cloth-wrapped knuckles met the spear of gamma radiation.
BOOM——————————————————————————!!!
The explosion was silent, yet it echoed in the soul of every being watching. A flower of impossible energy bloomed above the Moon.
The star-killing gamma-ray burst shattered. It fragmented into a billion harmless motes of light, scattered into the endless dark. The sheer aftershock of the punch blasted a temporary void in the starfield behind them, a momentary black patch where starlight dared not reach.
Inside the Emperor Maru Kai, the S-Class heroes were statues of frozen awe.
Superalloy Darkshine's legendary muscles quivered involuntarily. Tanktop Master's jaw hung slack.
Clang. Atomic Samurai's prized sword fell from numb fingers, unnoticed.
Zombieman, the unflappable immortal, simply stared, his mind a perfect blank.
"This… this is Saitama-sensei's… true…?" Child Emperor whispered, his voice raw. The smoking, overloaded detector in his hand was forgotten. "He… dispersed a stellar extinction event… with a punch?"
Metal Bat's grip on the railing turned his knuckles bone-white. "The hell… is that…? That ain't power… that's… that's just cheating."
But the most chilling sight was yet to come.
On the viewscreen, in the wake of that universe-rending collision, the very fabric of local spacetime had become a maelstrom. Within it, the figures of King and Cosmic Garou flickered horrifically—their bodies continuously tearing apart and reassembling, caught in a violent, recursive loop of destruction and rebirth, as if trapped in a temporal singularity spawned by the clash of two absolute forces.
Thud. Thud.
Two charred forms crashed onto the lunar regolith. Cosmic Garou—or what remained of him—struggled to push himself up. The swirling star-dust of his face churned with a profound, cosmic disbelief.
He had believed he'd grasped the power of a god. He'd believed he held the key to finally toppling King. But this… this unassuming bald man… Under that single, simple punch, Garou had felt not power, but oppression in its purest, most absolute form. It wasn't a technique. It wasn't energy. It was something that transcended the very concept of 'power' itself.
"You… what is that power?!" Garou's voice, a vibration through space-time itself, held a note of frantic, cosmic inquiry.
Saitama ignored him. He was already squatting beside King, his usual blank expression replaced with genuine concern. "Oi, King. You okay?"
It seemed defying the laws of physics—specifically, the lack of a medium for sound—was merely a casual perk of their level.
King coughed, a fine black ash (the remnants of his vaporized armor) flaking from his body as vibrant, new skin knitted itself beneath. He managed a wry, pained grin. "Saitama… be honest. Did you put all the salt from losing fifty-seven rounds of Fighting Fighters to me last week into that punch?"
Saitama immediately rubbed the back of his head, a sheepish, evasive chuckle escaping him. "Ahaha… no way, that's…" His darting eyes told the complete truth.
King didn't press. His mind was racing on a different track entirely. Saitama's Serious Punch had been the final, overwhelming catalyst. The endless cycle of destruction and rebirth under the Gamma-Ray Burst had stressed his limiter to its absolute limit—Saitama's blow had shattered it completely.
"So that's the method…" A sharp, understanding light gleamed in King's eyes. "The brink of annihilation… total destruction followed by forced creation… It truly is the key."
A full-body shudder, deeper than any chill, ran through him as he recalled the sensation—not just of his body being unmade, but of his very soul being scoured raw by the aftermath of Saitama's strike. It was an experience he had no desire to repeat anytime soon.
He mentally summoned his system interface.
[ — Deterrence System — ]
[ Host: King ]
[ Level: 2 (Experience: 0 / 200) ]
[ Attributes:
Strength: 100 (+)
Agility: 100 (+)
Spirit: 100 (+)
Free Attribute Points: 10 ]
[ Skills:
Emperor Engine (Profound Realm: 15 / ?)
Cosmic Starburst Fist (Divine Attainment · Tier 1) ]
[ Deterrence Points: 37,456,210 ]
A surge of satisfaction cut through his pain. Child Emperor's global live broadcast had paid dividends beyond measure. While the average citizen couldn't generate Deterrence Points, the sheer number of martial artists, heroes, monsters, and psychics on Earth who had watched, awestruck and terrified, had poured their shock and fear into his reserves. The points had skyrocketed into the tens of millions.
He was richer, and fundamentally stronger, than he had ever been. And as he rose to his feet, his gaze settling once more on the recovering, seething form of Cosmic Garou, he knew the battle was far from over. The first act had concluded. The second was about to begin.
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