The existential dread of the previous day—the blank-faced mimic, the stolen form of Saitama, the chilling name God—lingered in King's mind like a stubborn stain. He had turned the concepts over and over, his High Combat Instincts finding no purchase on a threat so abstract. Finally, with the discipline of a soldier, he compartmentalized it. A mystery for another day. A shadow on a far horizon. Today had a different, simpler purpose.
Today, Saitama was coming over to play video games.
The mundane normality of it was a balm. King had tidied his apartment, not that Saitama would notice. He had prepared a selection of snacks—quality potato chips, a good brand of soda, some fresh onigiri from the convenience store. It was a ritual, a reaffirmation of the quiet life he was fighting to protect.
The knock on the door was firm and unceremonious. King opened it to find Saitama in his standard casual wear, his expression its default state of mild disinterest.
"King. Hey."
"Saitama. Come in."
They settled onto the floor before the TV, the glow of the console menu lighting their faces. The first few matches were warm-ups, King explaining the mechanics of a new fighting game with his low, rumbling commentary. Saitama listened, his brow slightly furrowed in concentration that was more about finding a path to victory than understanding artistry.
"So if I hit this sequence after a block, it's a guaranteed combo?"
"Correct. A ten-frame punish window."
"Huh."
The matches began. And King, as he always did in this arena, became untouchable. His thumbs danced across the controller, a maestro conducting a symphony of pixelated pain. He wasn't just playing; he was solving the game in real-time, his King's Eyes (unactivated but no less perceptive) reading Saitama's budding patterns before they fully formed.
Saitama's character was knocked down. Again. And again.
"Tch." The sound escaped Saitama's lips after a particularly brutal perfect round. His usual placid face began to tighten. A tiny, almost imperceptible vein appeared near his temple. He leaned forward, grip tightening on his controller. "This guy's move is cheap."
"It's minus seven on block. You can punish it," King offered, his voice calm.
"I'm trying to punish it," Saitama grumbled, his character getting caught in the same vortex of attacks for the third time. The "K.O." banner flashed with mocking cheer.
Another match. Another loss. King, ever the strategist, switched characters to one with complex, graceful zoning tools, keeping Saitama's brawler at bay with a hail of projectiles before teleporting behind him for a flashy finisher.
There was a long silence after that one. Saitama didn't speak. He simply placed his controller down with deliberate care, then slowly leaned back until he was sprawled flat on King's floor, staring at the ceiling. The vein on his forehead was prominent now. The aura of profound, petty annoyance radiating from him was almost comical.
"This is worse than the supermarket sale when they're out of beef," Saitama declared to the ceiling.
A small, genuine smile touched King's lips. This was the Saitama he knew. Not the universe-breaking force, but the man who found genuine, human frustration in losing at video games. It was grounding.
"The instinct is different," King rumbled, taking a sip of his soda. "In a real fight, you simply overcome. Here, you must adhere to rules created by others. It is a puzzle of limitations."
"Limitations are boring," Saitama stated, still horizontal. "Just hit the thing until it stops moving. That's how it should work."
"Yet, you keep playing."
"...Yeah. 'Cause one of these times, I'm gonna win." He said it with the absolute, unshakeable conviction he usually reserved for claiming the last pack of discounted noodles.
Their conversation drifted then, away from the game. They talked about the price of groceries, a new movie trailer Saitama had seen on a billboard, the peculiar brand of existential boredom that settled in on a Tuesday afternoon. It was profoundly, beautifully ordinary. King felt the last coils of tension from the "Blank Sheet" unwinding. This was his anchor.
The piercing, priority ringtone of King's Hero Association phone shattered the calm like a gunshot.
Both men looked at the device vibrating on the low table. The caller ID wasn't just the dispatch center; it was the Crisis Command line.
"You should get that," Saitama said, still on the floor.
King answered, his voice shifting seamlessly from relaxed friend to formidable S-Class hero. "King."
The voice on the other end was strained, a professional calm stretched to its breaking point. "King, sir! Code Dragon! The monster designated Elder Centipede has reappeared, emerging in City Z's Sector 7! It's on a direct collision course with the residential district! All other available S-Class heroes are engaged or out of position! We need you to intercept and hold it until backup can arrive! Civilians are in immediate danger!"
The image flashed in King's mind: the news footage of the gargantuan creature, a living calamity that dwarfed buildings. A Dragon-level threat. The real thing.
"Understood. I am en route." He ended the call and looked at Saitama, who had finally sat up, a glint of interest in his eyes for the first time that afternoon.
"Trouble?"
"Elder Centipede. Dragon-level. It's heading for a populated sector."
"The big centipede from the news?" Saitama asked, and then something remarkable happened. The boredom, the frustration, the petty annoyance melted away from his face. It was replaced by a simple, focused alertness. He got to his feet in one smooth motion. "Alright. Let's go."
The transformation was startling. The man who had been defeated by a video game seconds ago was now electric with purpose. King realized that for Saitama, this wasn't a terrifying crisis; it was a change of pace. A real problem he could actually solve with his fists, unlike the elusive rules of a digital fighter.
King stood as well, the King Engine giving a low, preparatory thrum that was all business. "I will get ready."
Minutes later, they stood by King's door. King was in his full, imposing hero attire, the high collar framing his stern face. Saitama had simply donned his plain white cape and yellow suit. The contrast was almost laughable: the legend and the bargain-bin bargain hunter.
"You seem… eager," King observed as they stepped into the hallway.
Saitama cracked his neck, a faint, almost eager smile on his lips. "A Dragon-level sounds like it might actually be a little tough. Beats losing to fireballs, anyway."
As they descended the stairs, a strange camaraderie settled over them. The quiet gamer was gone. The frustrated friend was gone. They were two heroes, one a living legend finally living up to his name, the other a force of nature in a cheap costume, heading out to face a disaster.
The game controller was forgotten on the floor. A far bigger, and for Saitama, far more interesting, game was about to begin.
The journey to the battleground was a blur of Royal Acceleration. King arrived at the devastation's edge, the scene of apocalyptic conflict unfolding before his King's Eyes. The Elder Centipede was not a monster; it was a force of geology given hateful life, its segmented body plowing through city blocks like a tsunami of chitin. Its shadow alone was a valley of darkness.
Before it, three figures embodied a desperate last stand. Genos, the Demon Cyborg, lay half-embedded in a crater of his own making, his impressive arsenal spent, internal systems flickering with critical alerts. Silver Fang, the legendary Bang, stood protectively before him, his breath coming in ragged gasps, his gi torn, his fluid movements reduced to a weary, rooted stance. Beside him, his brother Bomb mirrored his exhaustion, their combined martial arts might having barely chipped the creature's ancient armor.
King's mind instantly mapped the tactical nightmare. A direct assault was suicide. Evacuation was impossible with the centipede's speed and size. The only viable strategy was a holding action—a desperate, bloody delay.
He turned to speak to Saitama, to formulate a plan around the one weapon he knew could end this instantly.
Saitama was gone.
A bewildered second passed before King's phone buzzed. Saitama's flat, slightly annoyed voice came through. "Hey. Which way again? I think I passed a really good-looking ramen place and then got turned around."
Of course. The universe's ultimate counterbalance was susceptible to bad directions and noodle-based distractions.
"Head towards the largest monster you've ever seen," King rumbled, fighting to keep the urgency from his voice. "You cannot miss it. I will engage."
He hung up. Time was now a resource measured in screams and collapsing buildings. The centipede, sensing the weakening of its immediate opponents, reared its mountainous head, massive mandibles poised to scissor down upon Bang and the defenseless Genos.
No more time for strategy. Only intervention.
Royal Acceleration ignited. King became a line of golden light bisecting the battlefield. He didn't aim for the body—an impossible task. He aimed for the trajectory of the descending head. As he shot forward, he focused every ounce of his will: King's Armor didn't just cover his fist; it super-compressed around it, layering into a single, dense point of shimmering, solid light. Beneath it, his Demonic Super Human Condition muscles coiled, fibers screaming with newfound, terrifying power. And from his chest, the King Engine exploded, not its usual rhythmic thrum, but a single, sustained, deafening BOOOOOOM of pure, unadulterated authority.
He didn't punch. He impacted.
The sound was a clap of God's own thunder. King's fist, a meteor of concentrated energy and demonic strength, connected with the centipede's jaw just as it descended. The force did not knock the head aside; it arrested its momentum entirely and drove it straight down.
KR-SHAAAAA!
The centipede's head was smashed into the floor with cataclysmic force. A shockwave radiated out, flattening the already ruined place for blocks. A massive crater erupted, and at its epicenter, a web of deep, devastating fractures radiated across the monster's armored cranial plating. For the first time, the invincible carapace was breached, not by heat or piercing force, but by world-shattering concussive power.
The creature recoiled, a seismic shudder of surprise and pain running down its mile-long body.
King landed in the crater, smoke rising from his shimmering fist. He didn't pause. He knew a stunned beast was a vulnerable one. He raised both hands before his chest, drawing not just on his aura, but on the very fear he had just instilled, on the legend of the man who could halt a Dragon's charge with a single blow. The air around him warped, heatless gold energy coalescing into a swirling, unstable sphere of pure Intent—King's Authority, focused to its absolute, self-destructive limit.
He thrust his hands forward. "Authority: Execute."
The golden sphere lanced out, not as a wave, but as a concentrated beam of annihilating will. It struck the exact nexus of the fractured armor on the centipede's face.
The effect was silent and horrifying. The armored plating, along with the underlying tissue and one of the great glowing eyes, simply disassembled. It ceased to be part of a creature and became dust and dissipating energy, leaving a ghastly, smoldering cavity in the centipede's head.
The titan slumped, its forward section collapsing into the ruins with an earth-quaking moan.
Silence, for a heartbeat.
Then, King's system chimed. Not a victory notification.
[Warning: Target Biological Integrity at 99.7%. Regenerative Capabilities: Maximum. Threat Level Unchanged.]
Horror, colder than any he had felt, drenched him. He had poured his most powerful, coordinated attack—a blow that would have vaporized any Demon—and it had done less than superficial damage. The headless, frontless horror before him began to move. New, wet chitin bubbled from the wound, faster than his eyes could track. A new, blind head began to form from the ruin.
He was not strong enough. Not yet.
"Silver Fang!" King's voice was a whip-crack of command, cutting through Bang's stunned reverence. "Extract Genos! Fall back to the secondary perimeter! NOW!"
Bang, the old master, heard the truth in the command—not arrogance, but a tactical order from a commander buying time. He nodded once, a look of profound respect and shared dread in his eyes, and moved with Bomb to haul Genos from the crater.
King turned back to the regenerating abomination. The King Engine shifted its tune. No longer an aggressive roar, it became a deep, pervasive, oppressive drone, a sonic anchor of dread meant to confuse, disorient, and slow the creature's senses. He didn't need to win. He just needed to be the most interesting, most threatening, most annoying speck in its perception.
He activated Royal Acceleration, not to attack, but to evade. As a new, angry maw formed and lunged, King was a golden ghost, dancing just out of reach, firing Kinetic Blasts at its other eyes, using Seismic Claps against the ground to collapse structures into its path. He was a gnat harrying a god, each sting a distraction, each evasion a minor victory.
'Just a little longer,' he thought, weaving between strikes that could erase city blocks. 'Just until the cavalry arrives. Just until the one real weapon gets here.'
He was no longer the Strongest Man on Earth in that moment. He was the Stalling Man. The Bait. The Wall. And he would stand until he was shattered, or until the world's most bored hero finally found his way.
Time distended into a series of near-miss heartbeats and golden afterimages. Royal Acceleration turned King into a phantom, a streak of desperate light weaving through a forest of chitinous pillars as the Elder Centipede's body thrashed and coiled. He was a speck of pollen in a hurricane, surviving on precision alone.
He would blast upwards along its segmented flank, unleashing a focused King's Authority not to kill, but to score. Golden lances of intent carved glowing fissures into the ancient armor, spraying chips of carapace like building-sized shrapnel. The damage was cosmetic, a vandal scrawling on a mountain, but it served his purpose: it was an irritant. A distraction. Each crack was a flare, a beacon saying, I am here. Fight me.
His King's Eyes, pushed to their limit, tracked not just the centipede's world-ending movements, but the retreat of the other heroes. He saw Bang and Bomb vanish into the smoke, Genos's inert form between them. Good. The civilians were gone. The stage, a ruined city, was now cleared for the final, desperate act.
And then he saw him. A tiny, yellow-and-red dot in the impossible distance, moving with a casual jog through the apocalyptic landscape. Saitama. Finally.
Relief was instantly crushed by a tidal wave of tactical necessity. Saitama was here, but he was there. The centipede was here, a continent of rage between them. King couldn't lead the monster on a merry chase; its sheer size meant a single misguided coil could flatten the block Saitama was on before the hero even looked up from his thoughts about dinner.
He needed to make it want to go to Saitama. He needed a lure it couldn't resist.
The memory surfaced, crisp and clear from an old Hero Association bulletin: Elder Centipede. Only known defeat: Blast. Status: Fugitive.
It wasn't much. It was everything.
King disengaged, Royal Acceleration carrying him a precarious half-mile away, putting distance between himself and the centipede's immediate strike zone. He landed on the crumbled peak of a skyscraper's corpse, a lone figure against the burning sky. He let his aura drop, for just a moment, making himself a clear, solitary target.
Then, he drew a breath that tasted of smoke and ozone. He focused his entire being—the Demonic Super Human Condition vibrating in his cells, the King's Aura swelling around him like a corona—into his legendary engine. He didn't just activate the King Engine. He weaponized it. He shaped the deafening, psychic pressure into a spear of pure, taunting contempt and aimed it at the centipede's regenerating, primordial mind.
"ENOUGH!" King's voice boomed, amplified a hundredfold by his will, cutting through the chaos like the slap of a god. The centipede's new head swiveled, its faceless attention locking onto him.
"You writhe and crush these stones, but you are still just a coward!" King roared, each word a hammer blow of condescension. "I have seen your memory. I know the only name that brings you fear! You hide from the one who scarred you, who left you to fester in the dark for a century!"
He paused, pouring every ounce of his fabricated, legendary arrogance into the next sentence, pointing a dramatic, gauntleted finger past the centipede, in the general direction of the approaching yellow dot.
"HE IS HERE! BLAST HAS RETURNED! He waits for you, worm! He waits to finish what he started! Or are you too broken, too afraid, to face him again and be erased FOR GOOD?!"
The effect was instantaneous and volcanic.
The name 'Blast' was a psychic detonation in the creature's simple, hate-filled consciousness. The memory of that ancient, humiliating defeat—the only pain it had ever known that it couldn't regenerate from—erupted into rage. Its caution, its focus on the buzzing golden pest, vanished. A seismic roar of pure, unadulterated fury erupted from its new maw, a sound that shattered the remaining windows for miles.
Its single-minded purpose was now a straight line. Blast. Revenge. Erasure.
It forgot about King entirely. Its colossal body uncoiled, a continent in motion, and it lunged. Not with animalistic hunger, but with directed, apocalyptic fury. It surged directly toward the spot King had indicated, its speed trebled by hate, its body carving a new canyon through the city.
King stood his ground on the crumbling perch as the mountain of chitin blotted out the sky, rushing toward him—toward the spot past him. The wind of its passage screamed, tearing at his clothes. The ground itself rippled, threatening to swallow the building's foundation. This was it. The gamble. The centipede was committed. But its path, its immense, careless bulk, would still clip the tower. It would be an afterthought, an accidental smear.
He braced, King's Armor flashing to life. He would survive the impact, but he'd be buried, out of the fight.
The shadow consumed him. The roar was the world. He could see the individual, car-sized scales of its underbelly.
Then, a flash of yellow and red.
It was so simple. Saitama didn't leap from a dramatic arc. He simply stepped off the ground, placing himself between King's tower and the onrushing continent of the Elder Centipede. He looked up, his expression one of mild, slightly annoyed focus, as if noticing a large bug on a collision course with his clean cape.
"Serious Punch."
He threw a single, straight punch.
There was no grand collision of forces. No titanic shockwave of equal powers meeting. There was only an effect.
The very front of the Elder Centipede, where its charge was most potent, simply ceased to exist. Not shattered, not vaporized in an explosion, but disintegrated into nothingness—atoms unraveled, matter erased. The effect traveled backwards along its entire, impossible length in the blink of an eye, a silent, unravelling seam of oblivion following the path of Saitama's knuckles.
One moment, there was a Dragon-level calamity dwarfing the place. The next, there was a fine, shimmering dust hanging in the air, drifting gently down like metallic snow onto the silent ruins. A faint, hollow woosh of air rushing to fill the sudden, immense vacancy was the only sound.
Saitama landed lightly on the rubble, shaking his hand slightly as if flicking off water. "Huh. Kind of crunchy."
King slowly let out the breath he'd been holding. The King Engine, which had been a scream of defiance, sputtered and settled into a slow, stunned, rhythmic thud. He looked from the settling dust—all that remained of a creature that had withstood his ultimate attack—to Saitama, who was now peering at a crack in his glove with faint disappointment.
The chime in his mind was almost an afterthought.
[Dragon-level Threat: Elder Centipede - DEFEATED (Assist)]
[BP Awarded: +85,000]
[Total BP: 189,250]
The number was astronomical, meaningless in the face of what he'd just witnessed. He hadn't won a fight. He'd set the table. He had been the strategist, the bait, the wall. And Saitama had been the hammer. The gap between them was not a canyon; it was the gap between a meticulously sharpened spear and the concept of extinction.
He stepped down from the crumbling structure, his armor fading. Saitama looked over.
"You okay, King? That was a big one."
"I am… intact," King rumbled. "Your timing was… adequate."
Adequate. The understatement of the century. They stood in the quiet aftermath, the dust of a Dragon-level calamity settling around them. King had faced a Dragon, stalled it, and outsmarted it. But the lesson was clearer than ever. There were levels to this world he was only beginning to grasp, and in the face of the deepest, darkest threats, even a demon's strength was just a louder way to ask for help.
The silence that followed the Elder Centipede's disintegration was profound, broken only by the soft hiss of settling, super-fine dust. King let out a long, slow exhale, a sound that carried the weight of the battle and the sheer, dizzying relief of survival. The King Engine, which had been a roaring turbine of defiance, settled into a deep, steady, and weary rhythm.
His tactical mind, never fully offline, immediately parsed the after-action report. The system notification glowed in his vision, a clinical summary of the apocalyptic event.
[Dragon-level Threat: Elder Centipede - DEFEATED (Assist)]
[BP Awarded: +85,000]
[Total BP: 189,250]
Eighty-five thousand. For an assist. He had strained his new demonic strength to its limit, shattered his most powerful attacks against its hide, and risked everything as bait, and the system judged his contribution as a supporting role. The sheer scale of it was staggering.
A cold, calculating fire ignited in his mind. If an assist against a Dragon is worth eighty-five thousand… what is slaying one alone worth? The math unfolded with terrifying clarity. A Tiger-level threat gave a few thousand. A Demon-level, tens of thousands. A Dragon… the progression wasn't linear. It was exponential. Would it be two hundred thousand? Five hundred thousand? The speculative figure of one million BP didn't seem so absurd. A king's ransom for a king's kill. With that, he could purchase not just an ability, but a paradigm shift. He could buy the Ultimate Hellfire Burst Wave Motion Cannon and still have points to spare. He could transcend.
The allure was a siren song, almost drowning out the very real, very recent memory of his King's Authority doing less than nothing to the creature. To hunt a Dragon alone wasn't a battle; it was a suicide mission with a cosmic payout. He shelved the calculation, a dream for a far-distant future when his foundation was not just demonic, but draconic itself.
His reverie was broken by the crunch of footsteps on debris. Silver Fang approached, his brother Bomb at his side, together carrying a barely-conscious Genos. The old master's gi was in tatters, his body bruised, but his eyes held a keen, analytical light as they took in King and Saitama. The look wasn't just gratitude; it was reassessment.
"You have our thanks, King," Bang said, his voice gravelly but firm. "That intervention was... precisely timed. And Saitama." He bowed his head slightly, a gesture of deep respect from a martial legend to an incomprehensible force. "We are in your debt."
Genos stirred in their arms, his optical sensors flickering online. They immediately locked onto Saitama. A surge of energy, born of pure fanaticism, seemed to momentarily override his systems' critical damage alerts.
"Saitama-sensei!" he rasped, his voice-box crackling. "Your power...! To obliterate a Dragon-level threat with a single strike! I have been a fool! I sought complex upgrades, weapons, data! I see now the true path! It is not complexity, but simplicity! It is not augmentation, but pure, unmatched, absolute power like yours! I must discard my weaknesses! I must forge myself into a weapon of pure—"
"Genos," King interrupted, his low rumble cutting through the cyborg's fervent monologue. He placed a heavy, gauntleted hand on Genos's less-damaged shoulder. "Saitama is not a 'path.' He is an anomaly. An event. To use him as a template for growth is like a river trying to imitate the ocean by becoming salty. It will only destroy what makes the river itself."
He met Genos's glowing eyes. "You seek power to fulfill your purpose. Do not mistake his conclusion for your journey."
Genos stared, his processors whirring audibly as he tried to reconcile King's strategic wisdom with the blinding truth of Saitama's fist.
Saitama, for his part, just scratched his head. "Yeah, what he said. Also, you're gonna need a lot of repairs. My place is closer than a hospital or whatever."
The suggestion was so pragmatically Saitama that it broke the tension. A place to go. A next step.
And so, the most bizarre victory procession in history began its march through the ruins. Saitama led the way, his cape fluttering lightly, completely unblemished. King walked beside him, a mountain of stoic, scarred muscle, his King Engine a quiet bass note in the quiet. Behind them, the legendary martial arts brothers, Bang and Bomb, moved with weary grace, carrying between them the sparking, fervent wreckage of the Demon Cyborg, Genos, who was muttering about "core recalibration" and "paradigm shifts."
They were a mosaic of the hero world: the unfathomable, the legendary, the classical, and the futuristic, bound together by the aftermath of a shared catastrophe.
As they walked, King's mind returned to the numbers. 189,250 BP. The war with the Monster Association was not a possibility; it was the next line on the schedule. They had kidnapped a child, declared war, and now sent a Dragon to test the waters. The real assault was coming. He needed to be ready. The points were not a reward; they were ammunition. He would need to spend wisely, to find not just power, but the right power for the labyrinth of horrors that awaited.
He glanced at Saitama, who was complaining about the dust getting in his boots. He looked at Genos, being carried like a broken appliance. He thought of the blank-faced mimic, and the name God.
The walk to Saitama's apartment was a quiet one, a calm in the eye of a gathering storm. For King, it was a final moment of peace, a last chance to balance the ledger of his soul and his system before descending into the monster's den.