The world had devolved into a maelstrom of chaos, screams, and the shriek of steel. Saitama stood at the epicenter of the storm, yet utterly detached from it, a calm, bewildered island in a sea of misplaced fury. The illusory purple energy, a masterful piece of arcane theatre, continued to swirl around him, painting him as the source of all the terror, a dark god revealed.
The Royal Knights, men he had trained with (or at least, offered unsolicited and unhelpful advice to), now looked at him with a mixture of terror and grim, betrayed duty. The Oriana Guards, sworn to protect their princess, saw him as the monster who had corrupted her. And the crowd, the tens of thousands of people who had chanted his name in adoration just moments before, now screamed for his head, their faces twisted into masks of hatred and fear.
"Traitor!"
"Demon!"
"He tricked us all!"
"Kill the monster!"
The weight of their collective hatred was a palpable force, a psychic assault more potent than any of the Phantasm Weavers' illusions. Saitama felt it, not as a pain or a pressure, but as a profound, hollow sense of… confusion. He had saved a village. He had eaten their pancakes. He had stopped a bunch of bad guys. And now… they hated him? It didn't make any sense.
Meanwhile, the true source of the chaos, the Fallen Princess Rose, continued her rampage. Her movements were a terrifying dance of death, her swordsmanship, now fueled by the artifact's dark power, was a whirlwind of destruction. She cut down her own guards with a chilling, detached grace, her glowing eyes showing no recognition, only a burning, directionless rage. She was a puppet, and her strings were being pulled by an unseen master.
"Stop him!" Duke Valois shrieked, scrambling behind the protection of his remaining guards, his face purple with rage and fear. "The Tempest must be slain! Avenge the princess!"
Commander Alaric, his face grim behind his visor, stood with his knights, forming a wall between Saitama and the Royal Box. He looked at Saitama, then at the rampaging princess, then back again. His training, his instincts, the evidence of his own eyes – it all screamed that Saitama was the threat. But a small, logical part of his mind, a part that remembered the reports of Saitama's almost childlike simplicity, whispered that something was profoundly, terribly wrong.
Saitama just stood there, letting the chaos swirl around him. The knights were advancing, their swords and spears forming a glittering ring of death. He could end this in a fraction of a second. A single "Normal Punch," a casual wave of his hand, would be enough to shatter their weapons, their armor, their bodies. But… they weren't monsters. They weren't villains. They were just… scared. And wrong.
"Hey, guys, hold on," he said, holding up his hands in a placating gesture. "You've got the wrong guy! It's the princess! She's the one who's all… glowy and angry!"
His words were lost in the roar of the crowd and the clash of steel. A young, determined knight, his face a mask of righteous fury, lunged, his spear aimed at Saitama's chest.
Saitama didn't move. He just watched the spearpoint approach.
Ting.
The enchanted steel tip of the spear struck his yellow jumpsuit and simply… flattened. The force of the knight's charge was completely, utterly, absorbed. The spear shaft shuddered and cracked in the knight's hands. The knight stared, his eyes wide with disbelief, as Saitama stood there, completely unmoved, a look of profound disappointment on his face.
"See? This is pointless," Saitama said, his voice quiet but carrying clearly to the knights nearest him. "You can't hurt me. And I don't want to hurt you. So can we all just calm down and focus on the real problem?" He pointed a thumb over his shoulder towards Rose, who had just sent three more guards flying with a single, powerful sweep of her dark-energy-wreathed blade.
His invulnerability, his calm refusal to fight back, only seemed to enrage the knights further. It was unnatural. Demonic. It was proof of his dark power. "He is protected by fell magic!" another knight yelled. "Press the attack! Overwhelm him!"
The circle tightened. More spears, more swords, rained down upon him, all of them bending, cracking, or simply stopping dead against his impassive form. It was like watching a hailstorm try to damage a mountain.
In the Royal Box, the King watched in agony. "What do we do?!" he roared to his advisors. "Do I give the order to stand down? They will call it cowardice! Do I let them fight? They will be slaughtered! Or worse, he will finally lose his patience!"
It was Lyraelle who finally acted. She stood, her serene face now a mask of cold fury, her silver eyes blazing with an ancient, holy light. "This farce has gone on long enough," she declared, her voice ringing with a power that cut through the chaos, silencing the knights and the crowd in her immediate vicinity. "You are all blind! You fight a shadow, a lie, while the true darkness dances before you!"
She pointed a slender, accusatory finger at the rampaging Rose Oriana. "The corruption is there! In the princess! In the artifact she wields! Can you not see it?!"
Her words, spoken with such absolute, otherworldly conviction, gave a few of the more senior knights pause. They looked from the impassive, unresisting Saitama to the genuinely monstrous, berserk princess. Doubt, for the first time, began to seed in their hearts.
Saitama, seeing a momentary opening, sighed. "Okay, this is taking too long." He had decided what he needed to do. He couldn't fight the knights. He couldn't reason with the crowd. But he could stop the princess. And if he stopped her, maybe everyone would finally calm down.
He moved.
He didn't punch. He didn't attack. He just… stepped. One moment he was surrounded by a forest of steel. The next, he was standing directly in front of the Fallen Princess Rose, having moved through the astonished ranks of knights as if they were made of smoke.
Rose, her mind lost in a haze of artifact-induced rage, saw only a new target. She let out a shriek and brought her sword, wreathed in dark, corrosive energy, down in a vicious, cleaving blow aimed at Saitama's head.
Saitama didn't dodge. He didn't block. He just raised his hand, open-palmed.
Just as he had done with Krog's axe, he caught the blade.
Ting-Screeeee.
The dark energy surrounding the sword sizzled and dissipated against his palm, like water on a superheated surface. The blade itself stopped dead, inches from his face. Rose stared, her glowing eyes wide with a mixture of animal fury and a tiny, terrified spark of her true self, buried deep within. She struggled, trying to force the blade down, but it was held fast, caught in an unyielding, unbreakable grip.
"Okay," Saitama said, his voice calm, speaking not to the monster, but to the girl trapped inside. "That's enough of that."
He looked into her furious, glowing eyes, and then, he did something utterly unexpected. He didn't break her sword. He didn't knock her out. He gently, with his other hand, bopped her on the nose. A light, playful boop.
"Boop," he said simply.
The effect was profound. The sheer, mundane, almost silly absurdity of the action, a "boop" delivered in the midst of a terrifying, berserk rage, seemed to create a momentary short-circuit in the artifact's control. Rose's glowing eyes flickered. The dark markings on her skin wavered. A single, clear tear traced a path down her cheek. "…help… me…" she whispered, her own voice, faint and terrified, emerging for a fraction of a second.
And in that moment of hesitation, Saitama acted. He wasn't a mage. He wasn't an exorcist. But he was, in his own way, the ultimate purifier. His hand, still holding her sword, clenched into a fist. Not to shatter it. He focused, not on the sword itself, but on the pommel, on the 'Tear of Diablos' hidden within.
He sent a tiny, infinitesimally small, perfectly controlled vibration from his fist, through the sword, and directly into the artifact.
CRACK.
The sound was almost inaudible, like a single grain of sand breaking. Deep within the pommel of Rose's sword, the Tear of Diablos, an artifact of immense, ancient power, shattered into a million useless, inert fragments.
The dark energy aournd Rose vanished instantly. The glowing light in her eyes faded, replaced by her normal, terrified violet. The dark markings on her skin receded. The borrowed power, its source destroyed, fled her body. The backlash was instantaneous. Her eyes rolled back into her head, and she collapsed, boneless and unconscious, into Saitama's arms.
Saitama easily caught her, holding her gently. He looked down at the unconscious, but now peaceful-looking, princess. "See? All better."
He then looked up at the silent, stunned arena. The illusory purple energy that had been swirling around him, its source (the Tear of Diablos) now destroyed, flickered and vanished completely. He stood there, in the clear, honest light of day, holding the unconscious princess, surrounded by a ring of knights whose swords were still pointed at him, under the weight of a million now deeply, profoundly, confused eyes.
The lie had been revealed. The illusion was broken. But the truth… the truth was almost too strange, too unbelievable, to accept. The hero they had cursed, the monster they had tried to slay, had just, in the space of a few seconds, saved them all. Again. The silence in the arena was now the silence of a kingdom collectively realizing it had made a very, very big, and very, very embarrassing, mistake.