Goku's words hung in the fractured air, a simple statement that carried the weight of a dying star. "You're strong."
Asta's head snapped towards the bald man. The new guy, the orange-clad one, had an energy he'd never felt before. Not magic. Something else. Something pure and overwhelming, like a physical pressure. But the bald guy? Nothing. He felt like a normal person. Annoyingly normal. And yet this powerhouse was pointing right at him.
Tanjiro flinched. The scent of the man in orange was… astonishing. It was the scent of a boundless sky, of an endlessly burning sun, pure fighting spirit with no malice. But the bald one… his scent was a void. A quiet, perfectly calm, bottomless lake. An absence so complete it was a presence in itself. Terrifying.
Saitama blinked. He pointed a red-gloved finger at himself. "Me?"
He then gestured sadly at the single crab leg lying in the dust. "He was strong. Now he's just... sandy."
Goku's battle-honed senses, capable of detecting the shifting ki of gods across universes, were momentarily confused. This person's power was a paradox—both zero and infinite. It didn't flare or surge; it just was. An absolute fact of existence, like gravity.
"Yeah, you!" Goku's grin widened. He bounced on the balls of his feet, his body thrumming. "Wow! This is amazing! I was fighting this super tough guy named Jiren, and then your punch came through the sky, and now I'm here! And you're here! Let's fight!"
He dropped into a low fighting stance, a gesture as natural to him as breathing.
Saitama just stared. A long, soul-crushingly empty stare. "No."
Asta's jaw dropped. "NO?! DUDE, HE'S SUPER STRONG! I CAN FEEL IT! YOU GOTTA FIGHT HIM! THIS IS AMAZING!"
"I lost a crab leg," Saitama said, his tone flat with the grief of a thousand murdered bargains. "The sale ends in," he checked a non-existent watch on his wrist, "less than an hour. Probably. Time's all weird now."
Before Goku could press the issue, the very ground beneath them shuddered. Not an earthquake. The ground was… rendering. Fusing. The twisted cobblestone of the Clover Kingdom merged violently with the sterile asphalt of City Z, pixels of reality glitching at the seams. A few dozen meters away, a patch of lush, alien-looking forest with glowing mushrooms sprouted from the concrete.
This place wasn't one world. It was a blender of worlds, and the power was still on.
"I want my money back," Kazuma muttered, huddled behind a miraculously intact tavern wall. Pieces of a Japanese high school were embedded in the building across the street. A massive, scaly tail lay twitching in the town square.
"This is no time for your cheapskate tendencies!" Aqua wailed, clutching her head. "The world has been defiled! It needs a goddess's purification!"
"You'll probably just flood the one piece of dry land we're standing on," Kazuma shot back.
Suddenly, Darkness stiffened, her breath hitching. "Kazuma… Look."
He followed her gaze. Standing at the edge of the chaotic new clearing were four figures. One was a tall young man with a fierce expression, carrying a large, ornate shield. Beside him, a small girl with raccoon ears and a tail, holding a sword. A blonde girl who looked like an angel. And another girl with bird wings.
They looked like a proper, high-fantasy adventure party. It was disgusting.
Naofumi Iwatani's eyes scanned Kazuma's group with deep suspicion. His shield-fed senses screamed warnings. The blue-haired woman reeked of holy power—dangerous. The blonde crusader radiated a bizarre, masochistic aura—unstable. And the man in the green tracksuit? His stats were pathetically low. Except for one. A single, bafflingly high number that broke the system's logic.
[Luck: EX+]
"Enemies?" Raphtalia asked, her hand resting on her katana's hilt.
"Don't know yet," Naofumi growled, the Shield of Rage pulsing faintly in his mind. His trust in other humans, especially other so-called heroes, was less than zero. "Stay back."
Kazuma saw the shield-guy's hostile glare and threw his hands up. "Whoa, hey, we're just innocent bystanders in whatever the hell this is. Don't go getting all main-character on us." He pointed a thumb at Aqua. "She's a healer. A mostly useless one, but still."
"I am a GODDESS!"
Naofumi's eyes narrowed. Another person claiming to be a god. Great. Last time that happened, he'd almost been burned at the stake.
Analysis complete, Raphael's voice, now evolved from the Great Sage, reported coolly in Rimuru's mind. The phenomenon is a forced conceptual merging. Multiple universal constructs are being layered on top of each other. The Axiom is the catalyst—a metaphysical constant that enforces the merger.
Rimuru stood on a balcony overlooking his city. A swirling vortex of impossible colors now hung where the moon should be. Shion and Benimaru stood ready at his back, their auras blazing.
"Can you stop it?" Rimuru asked.
Negative. The Axiom operates on a logical plane higher than this reality. Direct opposition is inadvisable. However, localized stabilization is possible.
His city was a sanctuary. For monsters. For his friends. His family. He wouldn't let it be erased by some cosmic glitch.
Raphael. Calculate the energy needed to create a stable dimensional barrier around the entire Jura Forest.
Calculating… The required energy output would necessitate the full release of both Veldora and Beelzebuth's power, synchronized with a spatial domination Art. Probability of success: 87.4%. Risk of personal soul-core collapse: 12.6%.
Only 12.6%? Better odds than his old corporate job.
"Do it," Rimuru ordered. "Everyone! Hold on to something!"
He raised his hand. Black-purple energy erupted from his small form, a storm of pure, devouring magic. He wasn't just casting a spell. He was eating the chaos itself.
In the Great Tomb of Nazarick, now settled precariously on a newly formed mountain range overlooking a burning medieval city, Ainz reviewed the initial reports. Every Floor Guardian had confirmed their status. The Tomb's integrity was absolute. But the world outside was an unknown. A threat. An opportunity.
(Okay, stay calm, Suzuki! This is fine! It's just like a surprise server-wide event! Except it's probably not an event and we're all going to die! NO, get it together!)
He turned to Sebas Tian and the Pleiades Battle Maids, who knelt before him.
"Sebas. You and the Pleiades are to begin reconnaissance. Priority one: locate any hostile entities of significant power. Priority two: identify any sources of information. Priority three: secure anything of value." He leaned forward, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial, all-knowing whisper. "It seems some unknown player has rearranged the board. We must discover their identity. Do not engage recklessly, but eliminate any vermin who dare to stand in your way."
"By your name, Ainz-sama," Sebas said, his voice dripping with loyalty. They vanished in a flicker of spatial magic.
Yuri Alpha led her sisters through the warped landscape. The air hummed with energies their Yggdrasil-based systems couldn't properly classify.
"Nabe," Yuri said, her voice crisp. "Your detection spells. What do you see?"
Narberal Gamma's eyes glowed faintly. "Multiple signatures ahead. Two are insignificant, human trash. Another two are… strange. Very strong, but their energy type is unreadable. One of them is the source of the spatial distortion we witnessed earlier. His power level… it's a glitch. It reads as immeasurable."
They crested a shattered hill. Below, they saw the group. A man in a tracksuit with a cape. A kid in a checkered haori. A boy screaming about his anti-magic. A grinning man in an orange gi. All of them looked… pathetic. Human.
But Nazarick's children were taught to trust data over appearances. And the data said the bald one was a problem.
Worse, Solution Epsilon wrinkled her nose. "What is that scent? One of them… smells of Demon."
Asta's connection to Liebe.
"And the other," Shizu Delta added, her magical eye scanning Tanjiro, "He smells like he kills them."
Conflicting data. Hostile energies. Immeasurable power. It was enough.
Yuri Alpha adjusted her glasses. Her iron gauntlets clicked. Orders were orders. Eliminate any vermin. And these beings, standing where they shouldn't, radiating power they shouldn't possess, fit the definition perfectly.
"Threats to Nazarick," she declared.
Goku was the first to sense the shift. His smile vanished, replaced by a razor-sharp focus. He looked up the hill. "Someone's coming. They don't seem friendly."
Six figures in maid outfits landed before them in perfect formation. The one in the lead, with the glasses, exuded an aura of cold, brutal efficiency.
Tanjiro's hand flew to his sword. The smell coming off these new arrivals… it was not human. It was cold. Undead. The scent of a place where life was not welcome. The same scent he associated with Muzan's strongest demons.
Yuri Alpha stared at Asta and his swirling anti-magic. Then at Tanjiro, hand on his blade. Then at Saitama, who was still looking at the ground, trying to decide if the five-second-rule applied to multiversal collapses.
"You have ten seconds," Yuri stated, her voice as cold as a tomb, "to explain your presence in the Great Tomb of Nazarick's territory."
"Naza-what now?" Asta asked.
Five seconds.
Tanjiro took a step forward, his instincts screaming. "Wait! We don't mean any harm—"
"Time's up," Yuri Alpha said. Her fist glowed with violent ki.
She lunged. Not at Goku, the obvious powerhouse. Not at Asta, the demonic variable.
She lunged at Tanjiro Kamado, the one whose very nature was to slay beings like her. A pre-emptive strike. The first blow of a war between worlds that had begun less than an hour ago.