The air in the training yard went thin and sharp.
Every member of the Black Bulls, even Yami, straightened up. The casual slouch, the inherent chaos of their squad, evaporated under the sheer weight of the man who stood before them. The Wizard King's presence wasn't oppressive like a devil's; it was absolute, like the sky or the sea. It was a fundamental law of their world made manifest.
Yami was the first to move, stepping between Julius and Saitama, his posture relaxed but his Ki a coiled viper.
"Julius," he said, the lack of a formal title a deliberate act of defiance. "Bit far from your dusty old office, aren't you?"
Julius Novachrono's eyes didn't leave Saitama. It was as if Yami were nothing more than a piece of furniture.
"I felt it from the capital, Yami," the Wizard King said, his voice brimming with a breathless, infectious enthusiasm. "A causality break. A moment in time that was not merely altered, but fundamentally… overwritten. I see now I was not mistaken."
He beamed at Saitama. "It was you, wasn't it?"
Saitama, who had been trying to piece the shards of Asta's wooden sword back together, looked up. "Me? I just punched a bug."
"A bug," Julius repeated, his smile widening. He looked like a scholar who had just discovered a new species of cosmic fauna. "Marvelous."
He took a step closer, his gaze so intense it felt physical. Marx, his attendant, shifted nervously. "Lord Julius, perhaps a more formal setting—"
"Nonsense, Marx! This is the raw data!" Julius exclaimed. He was now just a few feet from Saitama, practically vibrating with excitement. "No mana. Not a trace. Not low mana like this boy," he gestured to Asta, "but a perfect, total, conceptual zero. And yet your existence is so… dense. So undeniable. How is it possible?"
Saitama shrugged. "Hard training."
The answer was so simple, so mundane, that Julius actually laughed. A bright, ringing sound that held no malice, only pure delight.
"Incredible! Yami, your ability to find the truly bizarre never ceases to amaze me." He finally looked at his captain. "But I must see it for myself."
He raised a hand. Time slowed to a crawl. The floating dust motes froze in the air. The expressions on the Black Bulls' faces became statues. Yami's hand, moving towards his katana, was locked in place.
"Chrono Stasis."
A sphere of glittering, clockwork light enveloped Saitama, trapping him in a bubble of isolated time. To everyone else, he simply vanished inside a ball of golden energy.
Julius stepped inside the bubble with him. Here, time was his plaything. He was its absolute master. He approached the frozen form of Saitama, his curiosity reaching a fever pitch.
"Now," he whispered, reaching out with his magic. "Let's see your history."
He tried to grasp Saitama's temporal thread—the ribbon of past, present, and future that every living being possessed. He expected to see a life. Training. Struggle. The moment of his power's birth.
He found nothing.
It wasn't that the thread was hidden or protected. It simply wasn't there. He was touching a void. A point of existence that had no temporal dimension. There was no 'before' to this power, no 'after.' Only the searing, absolute 'is.'
Julius recoiled as if burned. What he saw in that void, just for a second, was not a person's past, but that shimmering, golden cage again. A metaphysical prison built not of bars, but of pure, unbreakable law. It contained a power so vast and violent that it actively broke the flow of time around it.
This man wasn't just living outside the rules of magic. He was living outside the rules of causality.
He was an effect with no discernible cause. An answer to a question the universe had never asked.
Julius let the spell collapse.
To Saitama, no time had passed at all. One moment, the fancy-robed man was looking at him intently. The next, a few gold sparkles seemed to pop into existence and then fade.
"Hey, don't do that," Saitama said, brushing a speck of residual magic off his shoulder. "That stuff gets everywhere."
Julius was breathing heavily, his smile gone, replaced by an expression of profound, soul-shaking awe. He looked at Yami, and his eyes held a new, fearsome respect.
"You knew," Julius stated. It wasn't a question. "You knew he was an impossibility, and you hid him."
Yami grunted. "Founders keepers."
The Wizard King looked back at Saitama, his mind reeling. A power that broke time itself. A weapon that could overwrite reality without even knowing it. The implications were staggering. The danger was immense.
The potential was intoxicating.
His cheerful, scholarly demeanor returned, but now it held a sharp, calculating edge.
"Yami," he said, his voice crisp and clear, "The quarterly Magic Knight Captains' meeting is in three days. This year, I think we'll add a special event."
He gave Saitama one last, meaningful look.
"A demonstration. It's time the pillars of our kingdom saw what true strength looks like. Bring your new recruit." His smile was wide and terrifying. "I want to see what happens when he fights all nine of you at once."