A/N: Long and epic chapter just as promised, hope you all like it.
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The descent had become a grimly efficient procession. King moved through the pulsating tunnels of the Monster Association's territory with the steady, unstoppable momentum of a depth charge sinking into dark water. His new Dragon-Level Physical Constitution made every movement feel preternaturally effortless. The lesser monsters—the skittering horrors, the slithering ambushers, the shrieking flyers—were now less than obstacles. They were environmental hazards, like falling rocks in a landslide, and he was the landslide.
He no longer needed grand techniques. The King Engine, amplified to Level 5, did most of the work. He simply allowed its deepest, most resonant frequencies to radiate ahead of him, a prow-wave of absolute authority. Tiger-level monsters hiding in wall crevices would go rigid, their primitive nervous systems overloading, before collapsing into unconsciousness or having their hearts seize entirely. Those that stumbled into his path and managed a desperate lunge met a fate that was swift and clinical. A backhand swipe, moving faster than their eyes could track and backed by strength that could crumple battle tank armor, would reduce them to bursting sacks of viscera. He didn't break stride; he just walked through the aftermath, the golden glow of his King's Eyes a passive scanner in the gloom, his enhanced perception noting every drip of ichor and shudder of the dying.
The system's chimes were soft, constant punctuations in the silence between the beats of his heart.
[Tiger-Level Threats Neutralized x4]
BP Awarded: +6,000.
[Tiger-Level Threats Neutralized x3]
BP Awarded: +4,500.
[Total BP: 55,000.]
The points accrued, but his focus was elsewhere. The numbers were an abstraction now. His entire being was tuned to the pressure in the air, the increasing density of malice that thrummed through the stone. Any moment now, he thought, the anticipation a cold, electric current alongside the warmth of his new power. An Executive. A chance to measure this investment not against fodder, but against a calamity.
He was visualizing it—the confrontation, the initial exchange of blows, the strategic application of his King's Authority—when a sharp, tinny chirping fractured his concentration.
He halted. The sound was jarringly mundane amidst the organic horror of the lair. It took him a second to place it. Reaching into the pocket of his stained trousers, his fingers closed around a small, cool disc of metal and polymer: the compact communicator Child Emperor had distributed to all S-Class participants. A tool for coordination in the chaotic dark.
He activated it, holding it to his ear. Static crackled, then resolved into the young genius's voice, strained but brimming with professional triumph.
"—repeat, primary objective secured. This is Child Emperor. I have successfully extracted and stabilized the hostage, Waganma. He is frightened but unharmed. The rescue phase of Operation Labyrinth is complete. All units, acknowledge and begin tactical withdrawal to designated extraction points. Prioritize disengagement from ongoing fights. The mission is a success."
The words hung in the thick, foul air.
King stood perfectly still for a long moment. The low thrum of the King Engine softened, its aggressive edge blunting into something quieter, more pensive. He slowly lowered the communicator, staring at its tiny, blinking light.
A success. The child was safe. Logically, it was the optimal outcome. The Hero Association's credibility would be preserved, a life was saved, and the monsters had been denied their bargaining chip.
And yet, a profound, unexpected emptiness opened up inside him. It was not disappointment for the boy's sake, but a warrior's frustration. He had just transformed himself into a weapon of historic potential, had honed his spirit and body for the ultimate challenge at the heart of this hell, and now… he was being told to turn around. To leave. The grand, terrifying test he had steeled himself for was being called off before the first question could be asked.
So that's it, he mused, the thought dry and flavorless. He let out a long, slow sigh, a cloud of vapor in the cool air. The sound was not one of relief, but of deflated purpose. He had been prepared for a war, and was instead being handed an administrative closure.
With a faint shake of his head, he moved to return the communicator to his pocket. The order was clear. Withdraw. The strategic mind in him, the part that had always survived by avoiding fights, agreed. But the part of him that had grown to relish the certainty of his own power, that thirsted to know what he was now capable of, chafed against it.
Just as his fingers brushed the fabric of his pocket, the communicator crackled to life again. But this voice was different—sharp, edged with focused intensity and the faint ring of steel.
"—shing— damn things keep multiplying! Child Emperor, This is Atomic Samurai. Your extraction is clean, but the mission is not over. I've got visual on another kid down here, A boy, saw him as i was fighting some kind of vile, splitting black monster! I'm engaging, but this thing is… persistent!
King's hand froze. His fingers tightened around the communicator, the polymer casing creaking under the unconscious pressure of his new strength.
The emptiness vanished, filled in an instant by a cold, razor-sharp focus. His King's Eyes, which had dimmed slightly, blazed anew with golden light, actively scanning the psychic imprint of the transmission, as if he could trace the path through the stone.
A second child. It seems like the mission wasn't over yet. It had simply changed its shape.
A slow, deliberate breath filled his lungs. The King Engine, which had settled into a background murmur, awoke once more. Its rhythm shifted, deepening, accelerating from a walk to a marching cadence. Thud-thud. Thud-thud.
He slipped the communicator back into his pocket, not as an act of dismissal, but of preservation. The link to the outside world, to the shifting battlefield, was now vital.
The order to withdraw was obsolete. A new objective had presented itself, one that carried the same moral weight as the first but something more: a undeniable justification. He wasn't disobeying orders to chase a selfish fight. He was advancing to support a comrade-in-arms and rescue an innocent. And along the way… the path to that boy would undoubtedly be guarded. The Monster Association would not give up a second prize easily.
The cold frustration melted away, replaced by a simmering readiness. He looked down the tunnel, not as a corridor leading to an aborted climax, but as a road that had just regained its purpose.
He began to walk again, but his pace was different. Before, it had been a hunter's stalk. Now, it was the assured stride of a force being deployed. The King Engine beat a steady, rising war drum against his ribs, a sound that promised not a retreat, but a renewed, and far more personal, advance.
The test, it seemed, was still very much on. And the points counter, frozen at 55,000, was ready to climb again.
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The directive from Atomic Samurai had reshaped the mission from a withdrawal into a targeted hunt. King moved with renewed, focused intent. His King's Eyes, operating at the heightened acuity of Level 5, scoured the labyrinth. They filtered out the distant, chaotic signatures of other battles—the psychic tempest of Tatsumaki, the singular, void-like calm that denoted Saitama's path of nonchalant obliteration. He was looking for a specific cluster: a powerful monster signature intertwined with the faint, flickering spark of a terrified human child.
But the sector he'd entered was unnervingly quiet. The usual background chatter of bestial minds, the skittering of lesser horrors, was absent. It was a silence born not of emptiness, but of exclusion. This territory had been cleared. Not by heroes, but by something that had made itself the apex predator of this particular corner of hell.
His enhanced perception finally caught it. A signature ahead, massive and complex, burning in his vision like a corrupted star. It was a single biological entity, yet his King's Eyes parsed it as a knot of three overlapping, dominant auras, tangled together in a constant, low-grade psychic resonance of misery. And tangled within that knot, almost smothered by it, were two other presences. They were not weak in the way a Tiger-level was weak; they were faded, like echoes clinging to a tomb. Two more auras, dull and dissipating, were physically part of the mass but psychically… gone.
[System Alert: High-Yield Threat Detected. Scanning…]
[Analysis Complete: Singular entity. Biological fusion. Psychic profile indicates extreme emotional dissonance. Energy output: Dragon-Level (Low-Mid). Designation: Unknown. Proceed with extreme caution.]
A Dragon-level. Here, alone in a silent hall. King's King Engine, which had been a steady march, deepened into a vigilant, resonant thrum. Not fear, but intense focus. This is it. The test.
He followed the signature to its source—a broader, cathedral-like cavern within the rock. There, slumped against the far wall in a nest of shattered stone and its own melancholic aura, was the monster.
It was a grotesque monument to loss. A humanoid torso, thick and powerful with gray, elephantine skin, supported four massively muscular arms. But it was the shoulders and neck that were the stuff of nightmares. From a distended, fused mass of flesh and bone sprouted five necks, each culminating in a distinct, monstrous head. Only three showed signs of life. The other two hung limp, their eyes milky and sunken, their mouths slack, patches of their scaly skin peeling away in a slow, morbid decay. The stench of deep rot, old and sorrowful, permeated the air.
As King stepped into the chamber, the system updated, the name appearing in his vision like a grim epitaph.
[Threat Identified: 'Five Grief Tyrant'. Status: Degraded. Active Heads: 3/5.]
The three living heads were in constant, low dialogue, a council of despair.
The head on the far left, with sagging features and tears of viscous, oily fluid carving tracks down its cheeks, was sobbing. "…miss them… Bargain always knew what to say… Acceptance could make the pain feel quiet… now it's just noise, all the time…"
The central head, its brow permanently furrowed, veins throbbing with black blood, was snarling at the empty air. "—curse that squirming, arrogant colony! Black Sperm! A glorified stain! He stole what was OURS! I'll tear every last one of his cells apart! I'LL DROWN HIM IN HIS OWN—"
The head on the right, its eyes half-lidded, staring into nothing with profound exhaustion, simply sighed, cutting off the angry one. "What's the use? He outmaneuvered us. He was stronger. We are here. They are not. The math is simple."
King's approach was silent, but the weight of his presence was not. The King Engine filled the silent cavern. The three heads stopped their quarrel and turned as one, the six eyes fixing on the golden-eyed man standing at the entrance.
The weeping head Denial, though its stage had long passed into sorrow gasped, its tears flowing faster. "Oh… oh no… it's him. The King. The one even the bosses whisper about. Please… we don't want any more trouble… just leave us to our mourning…"
The depressed head Depression let out another, longer sigh. "See? Inevitable. We sit in our tomb, and the world's strongest arrives. Maybe it's for the best. An end to the committee."
The angry head Anger, burning eternally whipped around to snarl at its siblings. "IDIOTS! Both of you! He's not here to chat! He's here to turn kill us!" It then locked its blazing gaze on King. "Well? Come to finish the job Black Sperm started? To wipe out the last remnants of the true elite?"
King didn't answer immediately. He assessed. A Dragon-level entity, yes, but a broken one. A fused being where three conscious minds battled two voids of absence. Its power was palpable—the dense muscles on its arms, the Dragon-level energy coiling around it—but its spirit was fractured, its will divided. It was the perfect test: ultimate power, but with a critical flaw.
"You... you were an Executive," King assumed, his voice a low rumble that vibrated in the chamber.
Anger laughed, a sharp, bitter sound. "Were? We ARE! We were the FIVE GRIEF TYRANT! The embodiment of mortal despair! I was Rage! My brothers…" For the first time, its voice hitched, gesturing with two of their shared arms to the dead heads. "That was Bargain. Always trying to make deals, to find a way out. And that… was Acceptance. He found a peace we never could." The head nodded to the depressed one and the crying one. "This mopey lump is Depression. The crybaby is Denial, though he's just plain Sad now. And I… I am all that's left of our glory!"
Depression mumbled. "Glory is a story we told ourselves. Black Sperm didn't believe it."
Denial wailed. "He was so mean! He didn't even listen to Bargain's offers! He just… swarmed them…"
Anger roared, silencing them. "He AMBUSHED US! While we were distracted! He targeted Bargain and Acceptance first, knowing they were our voice of reason and our anchor! Left us with this… this useless parliament of misery!" The head swiveled back to King, hatred burning bright. "And now you, the mighty King, arrive to put down the wounded beast. How heroic."
King listened to the tragic, infighting narrative. A being of immense power, crippled not by an external wound, but by an internal, metaphysical assassination. Black Sperm hadn't just beaten them; he had unraveled the very concept of them by removing key emotional components. What remained was a unstable, suffering weapon.
"You are a liability to them now," King observed, his golden eyes seeing the seething, misdirected energy. "A failed weapon. They left you here to die."
The words struck a nerve. Depression just nodded, as if receiving a long-expected diagnosis. Denial cried harder. But Anger erupted.
"A LIABILITY?! WE ARE A TYRANT! AND YOU… you will be the relief we need! The vessel for our pain! KILLING THE LEGENDARY KING… maybe that will fill the holes they left! Maybe that will make the voices of our dead brothers stop screaming in our silence!"
The massive body, previously slumped, began to rise. The four arms pushed against the ground, the cavern floor cracking under the pressure. The aura of Dragon-level might, previously dampened by sorrow, began to flare—chaotic, grief-stricken, and violently desperate.
King's own aura responded. The King's Armor cascaded over him, not with a flash, but with a solid, dense solidification of the light around him, the new Level 5 density making the very air around him hum. He didn't assume a flashy stance. He merely settled his weight, his Dragon-Level Physique coiling with impossible potential. His King's Eyes tracked all three heads, their emotional frequencies, their individual tensions.
The test was no longer abstract. The parameters were clear: a psychologically shattered Dragon, fueled by rage and loss, with nothing left to lose. It was not the clean, monstrous evil he expected. It was something more complex, and perhaps, more dangerous.
[Threat Engagement Imminent: Five Grief Tyrant (Degraded).]
The rise of the Five Grief Tyrant was not a unified motion. It was a lurch, as if three separate pilots fought for control of a single colossal machine. Anger's head reared back, a bestial roar tearing from its throat that shook dust from the cavern ceiling. Denial whimpered, its eyes squeezed shut as if wishing the confrontation away. Depression simply let its head hang, a puppet with its strings cut, going along with the motion.
Then, their powers manifested, not in unison, but in a discordant symphony of despair.
Denial's head glowed with a sickly, pearlescent mist that wept from its eyes and mouth. The mist pooled on the ground before swirling outward, and from it, copies of the monstrous form began to step forth—one, then three, then six. They were perfect mirror images, each radiating the same dense, Dragon-level aura, the same tri-partite glare of grief. To King's King's Eyes, they were indistinguishable from the original; they had heat signatures, tangible mass in the infrared spectrum, and even echoed the same chaotic psychic signature. They were lies given perfect, terrifying substance.
Anger's head screamed, and crimson fire, hot enough to turn stone to glass, erupted from its shoulders and raced down four of the massive arms. The flames didn't flicker; they seethed, coiling like serpents around knuckles like anvils. The air itself wavered and cooked around them.
Depression's head sighed, and the shadows of the cavern—deep, long shadows cast by the uneven rock—seemed to liquify and deepen. The main body of the Tyrant, along with its illusory copies, began to sink into these pools of absolute darkness as if into water, their forms becoming indistinct and merging with the gloom.
King didn't wait. King's Armor solidified around him with a deep, resonant thrum, not a flash of light but the sudden presence of solidified authority. The golden sheen held a new, profound density. He could feel the Dragon-Level Physique humming within him, a reactor of limitless potential. He focused, and Royal Acceleration propelled him forward in a golden streak, aiming for the nearest copy of the Tyrant.
His fist, powered by strength that could level city blocks, passed through the monster's chest. The image didn't shatter; it puffed into the same pearlescent mist, the aura and heat signature winking out instantly. Another copy swung a fire-wreathed fist at his back. King ducked, the heat scorching the air where his head had been, and retaliated with a sweeping kick that dissolved another illusion into mist.
They're perfect facsimiles, King's mind raced, his enhanced perception analyzing the data. Psychic imprints layered over condensed mist. They can even simulate attack trajectories. But they have no core, no central nervous system to target. The real one is using the shadows as a conduit.
As if hearing his thoughts, a pool of darkness at his feet erupted. The real Five Grief Tyrant surged upward, Anger leading the charge. All four of its arms, wreathed in annihilating crimson fire, pistonned towards King in a blinding barrage. "DIE AND GIVE US PEACE!" the head screamed.
King's King's Eyes, already processing at impossible speeds, flared. And for the first time in a while, they showed him something new.
It wasn't just the present, hyper-analyzed. For a fraction of a second—less than a heartbeat—the gold in his vision overlaid a future image. He saw himself attempting to block. He saw the concussive, fiery impact connecting, his armor flaring white-hot under the Dragon-level force. He saw his own body being thrown across the cavern like a comet, smashing through a pillar, before a tidal wave of hellfire consumed the space he now occupied. The vision was crisp, absolute, and laced with the sensory echo of crushing pain and incendiary heat.
Precognition.
The shock of the revelation was swallowed by immediate instinct. The future was not set in stone—it was a warning. In the sliver of time between the vision and the reality, he moved.
He did not block. He didn't meet the barrage head-on. Instead, he used a micro-burst of Royal Acceleration not forward, but at a diagonal, slipping between two of the fiery fists with millimeters to spare. The heat seared the air, blistering the stone floor. As the Tyrant's massive form over-committed, King pivoted. He saw the opening in the vision—the micro-second where all four arms were extended, the monstrous torso exposed.
His own fist, devoid of flame or aura but carrying the full, focused weight of his Dragon-Level Physique, drove into the Tyrant's mid-section.
The impact made no dramatic sound. It was a deep, visceral THUD that traveled through the stone and up the legs of both combatants. The Tyrant's eyes—all six of them—bulged wide. Anger in shock, Denial in pain, Depression in resigned acknowledgement. The creature didn't crumple; it was lifted off its feet, the sheer kinetic force overcoming its massive weight, and sent crashing backwards into the cavern wall. The stone cratered around it in a web of fractures, and the monster slumped, the fire on its arms guttering out.
King stood his ground, his armored fist still extended. Inside, his mind was reeling even as his body thrummed with power.
A vision. I saw the attack before it landed. Not a prediction based on muscle twitches or energy build-up… I saw the result. Just like… just like against the Behemoth Cyclops. The memory of that desperate fight, crashed back. He had thought it was luck, a fluke of adrenaline and his King's Eyes processing speed. But this was deliberate, clear. The Level 5 Aura upgrade hadn't just sharpened his sight. It had bent it through time, granting him fleeting glimpses of the immediate future.
This changed everything.
A wet, ragged cough drew his attention. The Tyrant was pushing itself up from the crater, rubble cascading from its shoulders. The fiery aura around Anger was dimmer, replaced by smoldering rage. "How…?" it snarled, blood—black and thick—dripping from its mouth. "You moved… like you knew."
Denial was weeping openly, clutching at their stomach. "It hurts… it really hurts… he's too strong… just like Gyoro Gyoro said the top heroes would be…"
Depression mumbled, its voice barely audible. "Told you. A futile exchange. We hit nothing but air. He hits and the world shakes. The equation is unbalanced."
"SHUT UP!" Anger roared, spitting more black blood. The head turned its furious gaze back to King. "A lucky dodge! You are just using cheap tricks! We are the void left when hope dies! You cannot dodge despair itself!"
The Tyrant raised a hand, and the shadows around the cavern began to swirl violently. The remaining illusions dissolved back into mist, which then flowed into the gathering darkness. "Denial! Stop crying and FADE US! Depression, SMOTHER THIS LIGHT!"
Denial, sniffling, glowed brighter. The pearlescent mist now poured out, not to create copies, but to fill the chamber with a blinding, disorienting fog that even King's Eyes struggled to pierce, reducing the world to golden outlines in a milky void.
Depression sighed, and the liquified shadows surged, not as pools, but as tendrils and walls, cutting off avenues of movement, seeking to encase King in a dome of absolute, lightless silence.
From within this combined gloom, Anger's voice echoed, multiplied and directionless. "LET'S SEE YOU DODGE WHAT YOU CANNOT SEE, KING! BURN IN THE DARKNESS WE'VE MADE!"
King stood at the center of the swirling, blinding, silencing storm. Before, this would have been a severe tactical disadvantage. Now, he took a deep, centering breath. The King Engine beat a steady, unfaltering rhythm against the suffocating silence.
He didn't need to see the monster. He didn't need to hear it.
He just needed to see what came next. His King's Eyes glowed like twin suns in the pearlescent fog, searching not for the enemy, but for the ghost of the future about to be born from the despair around him. The real battle—a fight against a future he could now perceive—was just beginning.
The world dissolved into a nightmare chorus. Pearlescent mist stole sight, swallowing color and depth, reducing everything to shimmering, golden outlines in a void. Liquified shadows snaked through the fog, creating walls of silent darkness that deadened sound and chilled the air. And from within this sensory prison, the voice of Anger echoed, a directionless promise of incineration.
"YOU ARE NOT A KING HERE! YOU ARE A RAT IN A MAZE OF YOUR OWN FAILURE!"
King stood motionless, his King's Eyes straining. The mist and shadows weren't just physical barriers; they were metaphysical filters, dampening his new precognition into a blur of contradictory, ghostly afterimages. He saw a dozen potential fiery fists erupting from a dozen shadows at once. The future was being scrambled by Denial's illusions and smothered by Depression's gloom.
A wall of shadow to his left solidified and then exploded outward as the real Tyrant burst through, all four fire-wreathed arms leading a charge. King reacted to the sound and heat, twisting aside with Royal Acceleration. A fist grazed his armored shoulder, and the impact, even glancing, was titanic. It didn't break the Level 5 armor, but it shoved him, his boots carving trenches in the stone. The hellfire clung, sizzling against the golden energy.
"YOU SEE? YOU FLEE!" Anger crowed.
From his right, another eruption. King pivoted, but a shadow-tendril whipped around his ankle, a fraction of a second's restraint from Depression. It was enough. A fiery backhand caught him across the chest.
BOOM.
King was launched backward, a golden projectile. He smashed through a petrified stalagmite, the stone detonating into powder, and skidded to a halt. His armor glowed where the fire had struck, dissipating the energy. No damage, but the force was undeniable. The King Engine thudded hard, not in fear, but in focused acknowledgment.
They're coordinating. Denial clouds my sight and future-vision. Depression restricts movement and creates openings. Anger delivers the force. A perfect, despairing trinity.
He rose as another charge came. He dodged, but an illusion he believed was real stepped into his path, making him hesitate. A shadowy tendril from the floor grasped his wrist. The Tyrant's fiery fist slammed into his guard. The cavern shook. King blocked the next two blows, each impact sending seismic shudders through the rock, but the fourth punch, he couldn't deflect. It drove into his stomach, lifting him off his feet.
"IT HURTS, DOESN'T IT?" Anger screamed, its voice a symphony of pain and glee. "THE EMPTINESS WHERE YOUR BROTHERS ONCE WERE! THIS IS OUR PAIN! FEEL IT!"
Denial wailed. "Stop it! Hurting him just makes him angrier!"
Depression sighed. "It's the only language we have left."
King rolled with the impact, landing in a crouch. He was being reactive, playing defense in their constructed world of grief. His new strength was equal, but their synergy and the environmental control were tipping the scales. He needed to see.
He closed his eyes.
The mist and shadows vanished from his perception. The chaotic, conflicting future-images faded. In the absolute dark behind his eyelids, his other senses, heightened to Dragon-level acuity, exploded into clarity.
He heard the sizzle-crackle of the hellfire on the Tyrant's arms, a unique signature. He heard the soft, perpetual weep of mist from Denial's head, a constant spatial marker. He heard the almost silent, liquid slither of Depression's shadows moving through stone. And beneath it all, he felt the vibrations in the ground—the heavy, unbalanced tread of the massive body.
He didn't need to see the future. He could hear and feel the present being written.
"GIVING UP?" Anger taunted, its voice giving away its position. King heard the shift in the fire's crackle, the compression of air as all four arms coiled for a combined, obliterating slam.
King moved. Royal Acceleration turned him into a blur not of light, but of pure motion. He wasn't dodging where the attack was; he was moving to where the monster wouldn't be. He flashed past the descending fiery fists, feeling the heat scorch his back, and arrived at the Tyrant's flank.
His eyes snapped open, golden light blazing. "Seismic Clap."
He didn't clap at the body. He clapped his palms together, directing the concussive wave into the ground directly beneath the monster's feet.
KA-BOOOOM!
The floor erupted. Not in debris, but in a focused, upward jet of shattered stone and pure force. It hit the Tyrant like a geological uppercut, breaking its stance, lifting it, and for a crucial second, disrupting the flow of shadows and mist.
"ENOUGH!" King's voice was a command that rivaled the quake. He raised a hand, finger aimed at the flailing, fire-wreathed form. "Kinetic Blast. Barrage."
PANG-PANG-PANG-PANG!
A stream of coin-sized, hyper-condensed kinetic energy lanced out, each shot precise. They didn't aim to kill. They aimed to cripple. One severed a shadow-tendril coiling from the floor. Another punched through Denial's mist-emitting jaw, silencing the weep and causing the head to shriek in real pain. A third and fourth shot struck the joints of two fiery arms, not breaking them, but forcing a spasm.
The coordinated assault faltered. The mist thinned. The shadows recoiled.
"YOU CUT US! YOU CUT US AGAIN!" Anger howled, not in triumph, but in a fresh wave of agonizing recognition. It was Black Sperm's ambush all over again—precision strikes against their components.
The monster landed heavily, its fire burning wild and uncontrolled. It abandoned strategy for raw, grieving fury. "KILL YOU! BURN IT ALL! BURN THE MEMORIES!" It became a whirlwind of destruction, charging, swinging, unleashing waves of hellfire that melted the cavern walls and turned the floor to lava in patches. Denial, hurt and scared, pumped out mist wildly, creating a hall of funhouse mirrors that shattered with every errant blast. Depression's shadows retreated, clinging to the monster like a shroud.
King weaved through the cataclysm. He used micro-bursts of Royal Acceleration to dance between geysers of fire. He shattered illusions with glancing blows. The entire cavern was now a hellscape—a roaring, melting, shaking monument to the Tyrant's final, incoherent rage. Low-level monsters peeking from distant tunnels were vaporized by stray fire or crushed by falling, liquefied rock.
The monster was spending itself, and King was the calm in its storm.
The opening came when Anger, in a final, desperate lunge, overextended, all its focus on a single, world-ending punch. King didn't dodge. He stepped in. His King's Armor flared into its maximum density, becoming a bastion of golden light.
The fiery fist met the golden palm.
For a moment, there was a stalemate of cosmic forces—Dragon-level hellfire against Dragon-level will. The shockwave blasted out in a ring, shearing the cavern walls and collapsing the entrance.
"YOU... CANNOT... HOLD... US..." Anger grunted, pushing with all its monstrous might.
"I'm not holding you," King said amid the roar. "I'm stopping you."
With his free hand, he shot a point-blank Kinetic Blast into the monster's shoulder, not to pierce, but to unbalance. The Tyrant staggered. In that instant, King's armored hand clamped over Anger's roaring mouth, the searing flames licking harmlessly around the solidified aura.
"Your fire is hot," King rumbled, his golden eyes inches from the monster's enraged ones. "But it is fueled by sorrow. And sorrow has no weight."
With a surge of his Dragon-Level Physique, he pivoted and slammed the entire colossal form of the Five Grief Tyrant into the ground. The impact was a localized earthquake. The stone cratered five meters deep.
Before the dust could clear, King was upon it. He didn't use techniques. He used the raw, terrifying culmination of his grind.
His fists became pistons of divine retribution, each one accelerated by Royal Acceleration to hypersonic speeds and powered by strength that could recalibrate geography.
CRUNCH. A punch to Depression's head, silencing the sighs forever.
SHATTER. A blow to Denial's weeping face, ending the illusions.
OBLITERATE. A final, titanic hammer-fist to Anger's screaming visage, driving its rage into the silent earth.
Each impact was a deep, resonant THUD that sent a visible tremor through the ground, deforming the crater, cracking the bedrock of the cavern. The barrage was relentless, a physical manifestation of the King Engine's final, devastating crescendo. He wasn't just killing a monster; he was pummeling the concept of its grief into inert matter.
When he finally stopped, the silence was absolute and profound. The hellfire was gone. The mist had evaporated. The shadows had fled. In the center of a vast, newly-formed bowl of shattered stone, lay a pulverized, unrecognizable mass of what was once the Five Grief Tyrant. The two already-dead heads were dust. The three that remained were now just part of the ruin.
King stood over the remains, steam rising from his golden armor, his breath even. The King Engine slowed to its steady, sovereign rhythm.
[Dragon-Level Threat Neutralized: "Five Grief Tyrant" (Degraded).]
[BP Awarded: 500,000.]
[Total BP: 555,000.]
The number was astronomical. A fortune earned in the crucible of a Dragon's dying despair. He had been tested, pushed to adapt, and had prevailed. The future-vision, the heightened senses, the immense strength—they had all fused in the heat of battle.
He looked at his hands, then at the communicator in his pocket. Atomic Samurai's said another child was still out there.
The mission wasn't over yet.