In the cramped space, Spider-Man pushed his agility to the limit. Web after web shot upward, sticking to the bats' wings to throw them off balance and send them crashing to the ground, or directly binding them together in pairs to ruin their flight paths.
But the venom's spray radius was too wide. Several splatters hit his suit anyway, and a faint sizzling corrosion sound immediately followed.
Doctor Strange drew circles with both hands. A massive magic shield unfolded in an instant, blocking most of the black poison being sprayed toward the team. Magic energy collided with the dark venom, hissing as it neutralized and dispersed it.
"This won't work—there are too many of them!"
Right then, Saitama moved.
He didn't even take a running start. He simply bent his knees… and jumped.
Thud!
The ground beneath his feet cracked slightly. And his body shot upward like a rocket, instantly plunging into the dense bat swarm.
What followed made even teammates who'd already witnessed his power feel shocked all over again.
Inside that pitch-black cloud of bats, Saitama's figure was almost impossible to see. The only thing anyone could hear was a rapid chain of dull, explosive impacts—
"Pa! Pa! Pa! Pa!—"
Every single pop meant at least one dark bat-creature had been erased into a mist of blood by absolute force.
Up in midair, Saitama threw punches at incredible speed, seemingly without any pattern. His arms moved so fast they produced countless afterimages—like he'd sprouted hundreds, thousands of arms in a single instant. The punch winds churned into a miniature tornado vortex, forcibly dragging nearby bats inward… and shredding them into nothing.
In just two or three seconds, the maddeningly dense bat swarm was wiped out completely!
Only a few stragglers remained—and Hawkeye and Spider-Man finished them off in quick, clean shots.
Saitama drifted back down to the ground lightly. A bit of dust had landed on his bald head, and he casually patted it off.
"Alright. Let's keep going."
Everyone looked at each other.
In the end, they chose silence and followed.
Having a "human-shaped ultimate weapon" in the team did give an overwhelming sense of security… but every once in a while, it also made people question the value of their own existence—if only for a fleeting moment.
With the bat swarm cleared, the team advanced again. But everyone understood: this was only the beginning.
The tunnel still stretched downward. The dark energy grew thicker and thicker, as if something far more terrifying was waiting ahead. Keeping a cautious formation, they pressed on—slowly, but firmly—through this suffocating darkness.
…
The tunnel felt endless—downward, always downward.
The surrounding dark energy had become so dense it was almost impossible to disperse. The air was freezing to the bone, and every breath carried a rotting, sweet, fishy stench deep into the lungs. If Doctor Strange hadn't been continuously filtering the air with magic while providing faint light, an ordinary person likely couldn't have lasted even a minute in this environment.
Finally, after squeezing through an especially narrow choke point—covered in nauseating black, vein-like matter—the passage opened up.
Everyone was stunned by what they saw.
They seemed to have entered an enormous underground cavern system, far broader than anything they'd imagined. The ceiling rose high above, stretching beyond sight. But this wasn't a natural cavern.
The walls and floor were carved with countless complex, eerie black runes. Those runes looked almost alive—slowly writhing as they continuously absorbed and emitted dense dark energy.
(End of Chapter)
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