Sensing living intruders, the black-robed mage abruptly turned around. His face was withered, his eye sockets sunken deep—only his pupils burned with insane dark flames. When he saw Saitama and the others rush in, he didn't panic at all. Instead, he let out a hoarse, icy laugh.
"Heh… hehehe… too late! Even though you stopped the descent of the great darkness, the energy that scattered is more than enough to complete this final masterpiece! More children will descend, and this city—this world—will be dragged into…"
His words cut off abruptly as he slammed his staff into the ground.
The magic circle flared, light surging. Three reinforced shadow beasts—far larger than the street monsters, their armored shells covered in dark energy patterns—roared as they burst out of the formation. Thick shadow aura rolled off them as they pounced straight at Saitama in front, jaws wide with shadow-fang teeth, tearing in to bite.
These shadow beasts could rip through a tank's armor, and the shadow energy they radiated could corrode life and gnaw at the mind.
But Saitama didn't even look at the three vicious enhanced monsters.
His gaze never left the mage.
Their bites landed on him, yet they couldn't even tear his tracksuit. The shadow energy that was supposed to erode souls couldn't invade him in the slightest—like a breeze brushing across stone.
Ignoring every obstacle, Saitama charged straight at the mage, so fast he left an afterimage behind.
The cold smile on the black-robed mage's face froze, twisting into shock. He hurriedly raised his staff and poured in all his magic, instantly forming a thick black energy shield before him—layered with multiple runes. Its strength far exceeded any defense from before. This was his life-saving trump card.
Saitama reached the shield and used no technique at all—just a simple straight punch, planted dead center.
"Pa—————KRAK!!"
That seemingly unbreakable barrier infused with powerful dark magic was as fragile as a glass mirror struck by a hammer. It couldn't stop him for even an instant, exploding into countless shards of dark energy that scattered in every direction.
Saitama's punch didn't slow much at all. It surged forward and precisely smashed into the skull staff in the mage's hands.
Bang!
That staff—clearly made of extraordinary material and serving as the core of his spellcasting—began to crack from the point of impact, fracturing inch by inch, until it finally turned into a pinch of dull, lifeless powder that drifted from between the mage's stunned, splayed fingers.
The terrifying leftover shockwave of the punch slammed into the mage's chest.
"PFF!" The mage spat a mouthful of black blood. His body was launched off the ground like he'd been hit by a speeding truck, crashing hard into the tunnel's reinforced concrete wall. A teeth-grinding crack of bone followed, and he slid down like a heap of mud—his life completely snuffed out.
The three reinforced shadow beasts let out a mournful cry. With the caster dead and the staff destroyed, their bodies rapidly turned translucent, melting away like snow under sunlight until they vanished into the air.
The black-robed mage was eliminated. The summoning circle's glow quickly dimmed.
But the crisis wasn't over.
Beside the mage's corpse, at the core of the formation, a complex device made of unknown metal and crystals began flashing with faster and faster, more unstable, blinding red light!
The compressed dark energy inside—having lost its controller and affected by the circle's damaged structure—became wildly violent, on the verge of detonating completely. If it exploded, the blast would be strong enough to collapse the entire subway tunnel system, even impacting the surface and causing catastrophic consequences.
(End of Chapter)
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