A dull, heavy boom echoed through the passageway. The gargoyle's overwhelmingly powerful fist slammed into Saitama's arm—only to feel like it had struck the hardest substance in the universe. The massive rebound force shattered the gargoyle's entire arm inch by inch, exploding it into countless chunks of stone. Saitama's arm didn't move an inch, and there wasn't even the slightest crack in the ground beneath his feet.
Another dark ray shot in. Saitama didn't dodge. The beam struck the bare top of his head—making a faint "sizzle," like a water droplet hitting a red-hot iron—then instantly annihilated itself. Not even a trace remained.
"So… so hard…" Peter blurted out without thinking.
"The attack power… seems okay?" Saitama tilted his head, sizing up the dark ray's strength. Then his eyes sharpened. "But it's too slow."
Before the words even finished, his figure vanished again. The next moment, everyone only saw a white afterimage flashing through the cluster of gargoyles at extreme speed, accompanied by a string of short, violent explosions.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
Each sonic boom meant one gargoyle had been erased by absolute power, detonating into a sky of stone dust and shattered fragments. In the span of a single breath, the four gargoyles in the front were completely gone, as if they had never existed.
"Nice one, Saitama!" Hawkeye praised, loosing an arrow at the same time. The explosive tip made a gargoyle that had pounced down from the side ceiling stagger hard.
Wanda's hands moved in a rapid dance. Scarlet chaos magic surged out like a raging tide—not to strike directly, but to coil around the gargoyles' joints and energy cores. Their movements slowed drastically, their dark magic circulation was thrown off, and they turned clumsy, their aim falling apart.
Doctor Strange chanted. The Crimson Bands of Cyttorak appeared out of thin air, binding several gargoyles tightly in place. The Sword of the Vishanti shone with golden radiance, cleaving with precision toward the energy cores in their eye sockets or the rune nodes on their bodies—often with a single hit, leaving a gargoyle completely paralyzed.
However, the deeper they pushed toward the ruins' center, the number of gargoyles didn't decrease—it kept rising. They poured out from every opening and corridor in all directions. Dark rays and brute-force strikes lashed in like a storm.
The cramped passages and halls became increasingly unfavorable for dodging. Walls and floors were continuously smashed apart and corroded by the terrifying attacks.
"Damn it! How many of these things are there?!" Peter shouted, firing webbing to mess with the gargoyles' vision while barely rolling away from a sweeping dark ray.
"They're driven by the ruins' core dark energy," Doctor Strange said, raising a massive magic shield to block a dense volley of beams. Ripples spread across the shield's surface—it was clearly under heavy pressure. "As long as that energy doesn't run out, they can be rebuilt and reactivated endlessly!"
Sweat also beaded at Wanda's temple. Controlling such a massive amount of chaos magic for suppression and interference was a serious burden, even for her.
Saitama was still the most stable output point. Any gargoyle that got close to him would turn to dust in the very next second. But his elimination speed didn't seem to keep up with the rate they were pouring in—and the enemy completely ignored casualties, surging forward wave after wave.
The battle fell into a brief stalemate and a grinding struggle. With the gargoyle swarm's overwhelming numbers, the group was temporarily pinned down inside a relatively open, shattered hall.
(End of Chapter)
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