"It can absorb and store thermal energy through its scales! Physical contact and energy attacks might both be pretty ineffective!" Reed analyzed quickly, his expression grim. Sue immediately formed a force-field shield, temporarily blocking the sand crocodile. But the shockwaves and heat surges produced when it rammed the barrier made the shield violently fluctuate—clearly, it wouldn't last long.
The site was in complete chaos. Heat and fear hung thick in the air.
Just then, a voice completely out of place in the tense atmosphere sounded out.
"Um… excuse me, is the temporary rest area for the archaeology team this way?"
Everyone turned toward the sound. A bald man in a short-sleeved T-shirt and loose shorts, wearing a sunhat, was walking over with a crumpled tourist map in hand, looking utterly lost. It was Saitama—tagging along with some cheap desert tour group, but having wandered off on his own out of curiosity and ended up here. From far away, he'd seen the pyramid and the commotion and assumed it was normal excavation work—only realizing something was wrong once he got close.
"Get out of here! It's dangerous!" Sue shouted urgently.
Saitama also spotted that massive sand crocodile radiating heat and savage menace. He blinked. "Oh. That's a big crocodile. They have those in the desert too?"
The sand crocodile seemed to sense a new target—or perhaps it was enraged by Saitama's "indifference." It turned away, abandoning its assault on the force field. Its four limbs churned the sand as it surged forward with a wave of heat, jaws yawning wide enough to swallow a small car, charging straight at Saitama! The scorching heat inside its mouth distorted the air itself, a fetid gale blasting outward.
The workers screamed. Reed and Sue's hearts jumped into their throats.
Yet Saitama stood there, as if "frozen" by the sudden attack, not making the slightest move to dodge.
At the instant the sand crocodile's gaping maw was about to swallow him whole, Saitama moved.
He didn't step back, and he didn't attack. He simply reached both hands forward.
One hand pressed down on the upper jaw.
The other hand supported the lower jaw.
That terrifying momentum vanished the moment it met Saitama's hands. The sand crocodile's massive charging body was like it had slammed into an absolutely immovable wall, stopping dead. The huge inertia even made its rear half lift slightly before it crashed back down, kicking up a sky of sand.
The sand crocodile seemed stunned too. It tried to clamp its jaws shut and crush the tiny creature in front of it.
But its upper and lower jaws were braced open by those two seemingly ordinary hands. No matter how it struggled, it was like an ant trying to shake a tree—completely unmoving.
Saitama's arms were steady as bedrock. He even lowered his head to look into the crocodile's throat at the surging orange-red glow and commented, "That's some nasty breath. Kinda hot on the hands, too."
The sand crocodile thrashed wildly, its tail slamming the ground and splashing up scorching sand and gravel.
"Don't move around. It's hot," Saitama said with a slight frown, as if mildly annoyed by the heat wave. Then he applied just a little more force with both hands—bringing them together.
"Crack—! Craaash!"
A string of teeth-grinding explosions of bone and shell fracturing rang out from the sand crocodile's head. Its incredibly hard jaws along with the skull inside, were crushed to pieces by Saitama's pure physical strength!
The sand crocodile's struggle stopped instantly. The ferocity in its eyes went out as its enormous body slumped onto the sand, motionless. The orange-red glow flowing through the gaps in its back scales rapidly dimmed and cooled at a visible speed, until it finally vanished.
(End of Chapter)
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