The silence in the Grand Arena was a physical entity, a thick, heavy blanket of collective shame and dawning, horrified realization. The grand illusion had shattered, leaving behind a stark, uncomfortable tableau: Saitama, the supposed "demon," standing calmly with the unconscious, but clearly no longer possessed, Princess Rose in his arms; the finest knights of two kingdoms, their weapons still aimed at the man who had just saved them; and tens of thousands of citizens, their curses and jeers still echoing in the air, now confronted with the undeniable, gut-wrenching truth of their error.
The first to break the silence was King Olric. He rose from his throne, his face a mixture of profound relief and deep, regal shame. His voice, magically amplified, boomed across the stunned arena, not with anger, but with a weary, solemn authority.
"STAND DOWN!" he commanded. The words were a thunderclap that broke the spell. "ALL KNIGHTS! SHEATHE YOUR WEAPONS! The threat is over. The deception… has been revealed."
Commander Alaric, his face ashen behind his visor, was the first to react. He lowered his sword with a sharp, almost pained, gesture. "You heard His Majesty! Stand down!" he roared to his men. The knights, their faces a mixture of confusion, shame, and dawning awe, slowly, hesitantly, lowered their blades. The Oriana guards, seeing Duke Valois nod his stunned, reluctant assent, did the same. The forest of steel that had surrounded Saitama just moments before receded, leaving him standing alone in a circle of profound, collective guilt.
Saitama, for his part, just looked around at the now-hesitant knights and the silent, staring crowd. He looked down at the unconscious princess in his arms. "So… everyone's calmed down now?" he asked, mostly to himself. "Good. She's kinda heavy. Where should I put her?"
Healers and royal attendants, finally spurred into action, rushed onto the arena floor. They carefully took the unconscious Rose from Saitama's arms, her breathing now deep and even, and carried her towards the medical tents on a hastily summoned stretcher.
As they did, the crowd began to stir. The initial, stunned silence was replaced by a low, rising murmur of shame and confusion. They had been tricked. Played like fools. They had called for the death of their own savior, the Hero of Veridia, the man who had just, once again, protected them from a darkness they didn't even understand.
"We… we were wrong…" a woman in the crowd whispered, tears of shame in her eyes.
"He… he saved her…" a merchant stammered.
"By the gods… we tried to kill him…" a city guardsman breathed, looking at his own trembling hands.
The sentiment began to spread, a slow, powerful wave of remorse washing through the tens of thousands of spectators. The earlier hatred, born of fear and lies, was being replaced by an equally powerful, and far more uncomfortable, feeling of collective guilt.
In the Royal Box, Archmagus Theron was examining the shattered fragments of the Tear of Diablos, which had fallen from Rose's sword pommel onto the sand. "Incredible," he murmured, levitating a piece with a faint glow of magic. "The artifact's core matrix has been… nullified. Not just shattered, but its magical essence completely and utterly neutralized. He didn't just break the vessel; he erased the poison within." He looked towards Saitama, who was now stretching, yawning as if the whole ordeal had been a mild inconvenience. "His abilities continue to defy all known arcane principles."
The King descended from the Royal Box onto the arena floor, his royal guards parting the way. He walked directly towards Saitama, a procession of his most trusted advisors trailing in his wake. He stopped before the bald man, the full weight of his kingship, and his shame, evident in his posture.
"Saitama," the King began, his voice low, filled with a profound, weary sincerity. "There are… no words. To express our gratitude for your actions. And our deepest, most profound apologies for… for our blindness. For the actions of my people, my knights." He bowed. Not a shallow, formal inclination of the head, but a deep, genuine bow from the waist. A King, bowing to a commoner. An act of humility that sent another shockwave through the watching crowd.
Saitama just scratched his head, looking deeply uncomfortable. "Uh… hey, it's okay, King guy. No big deal. You can get up now. It's kinda weird." He looked at the bowing King and the ashamed faces of the knights. "Everyone makes mistakes. You guys were just scared. And that princess lady was really loud and glowy. Easy to get confused."
His simple, almost childlike, absolution was, in many ways, more shaming than any royal reprimand would have been. He wasn't angry. He wasn't holding a grudge. He just… didn't care. The hatred of the mob, the betrayal of the knights, it had all rolled off him like water off a rock, as insignificant as their physical attacks had been.
It was in this moment of profound, awkward reconciliation that a new player made his move. From a shadowed archway, a figure strode onto the arena floor, his footsteps confident, his presence commanding. It was Sid, in his unassuming "mob" persona, a simple, brown-haired student who should not have been anywhere near the arena floor.
He walked past the stunned guards, his movements so perfectly ordinary, so utterly unremarkable, that no one thought to stop him until he was halfway to the King. He held up a small, dark object – the bio-mechanical fragment recovered from the Regenerator, the one Shadow Garden had been analyzing.
"Your Majesty!" Sid called out, his voice filled with a carefully practiced note of panicked sincerity. "Forgive my intrusion, but this is a matter of utmost urgency!"
All eyes turned to him. Who was this boy?
"I am a student of arcane engineering at the Academy," Sid announced, a perfect, plausible lie. "I was studying the recent disturbances in the Merchant's District when I found… this." He held up the fragment. "It is a piece of the creature that attacked the city. But it is not just a monster. It is a machine. A bio-weapon. And its energy signature…" He looked pointedly at the Oriana delegation, at the now-pale Duke Valois. "…it bears a striking resemblance to certain… experimental technologies being developed in the Oriana Kingdom."
The accusation was a lightning bolt. Duke Valois sputtered, "Insolence! This is an outrage! A baseless accusation!"
But Sid wasn't finished. He turned to the crowd, his voice rising, projecting an air of a brave truth-teller. "And the artifact that possessed the princess! The 'Tear of Diablos'! My research suggests it can only be activated by a specific resonant frequency. A frequency that must be broadcast from a nearby source!" He pointed dramatically towards the Oriana delegation's grandstand. "Perhaps from a device hidden among their ceremonial regalia!"
It was a brilliant, audacious gambit. Using the truth (the Cult's involvement) and twisting it, pointing the blame not at a shadowy, unknown enemy, but at a clear, present, and politically convenient target: a rival kingdom. It was a move designed to sow chaos, to escalate the conflict, to ensure that the "peace" of the Goodwill Festival would shatter into a thousand pieces of suspicion and open hostility. It was the perfect move for an Eminence in Shadow.
A furious uproar erupted. The crowd, already ashamed and looking for a new target for their anger, seized on the accusation. "Oriana!" "Traitors!" The Midgar knights turned, their swords now pointed at the shocked and outraged Oriana guards.
King Olric stared at the boy, then at the sputtering Duke, his mind reeling. Could it be true? Was this all a complex Oriana plot?
Saitama watched the scene, a deep, weary sigh escaping him. "Oh, come on," he muttered to himself. "First they're fighting me, now they're fighting each other? Can't everyone just… get along? And find a good place to eat?"
The grand deception of the Cult of Diablos had unraveled, but in its place, a new, even more complex web of intrigue was being spun. Sid, as Shadow, had just hijacked the narrative. He had taken the chaos Saitama had resolved and twisted it to his own ends, turning a moment of potential reconciliation into the spark of an international incident.
The hero had won the battle. But the shadow, as always, was winning the war. And the poor, confused people of Midgar were left wondering who the real villains were, while the true hero of the day was seriously starting to consider just going home, if only he could remember which dimension he'd left it in.