"—Saitama!"
Natasha gasped. The custom handgun in her grip was already locked onto the monster's eye socket, but when the energy rounds slammed into the reinforced scales covering its skull, they only exploded into a spray of blazing sparks a few meters wide.
Not even the faintest scratch was left behind.
Steve let out a roar, every muscle in his body exploding with power as he hurled the vibranium shield in his hand like a spinning boomerang.
"CLANG————————!!!"
With a thunderous crash, the round shield smashed squarely into the monster's lower jaw, right where the purple-black exoskeleton was still spewing its beam of light.
This time, all the vibranium shield managed to do was dent that newborn layer of armor scales ever so slightly.
It didn't even knock the beam off its original course.
Clint's special arrows were just as useless.
The arrowheads shattered to dust the instant they struck the scales!
That devastating pillar of purple-black light had already swallowed Saitama whole.
"No!"
Despair flashed through Steve's eyes.
Under the escalating shockwaves of this upgraded battle, the surrounding buildings finally couldn't hold together any longer. Several low-rises nearby toppled as if pushed over by an invisible giant hand, collapsing with a hopeless roar.
Walls split apart, windows exploded outward, and load-bearing columns snapped. Massive chunks of reinforced concrete fell like a landslide crashing down from above.
Smoke and flame, mixed with purple-black energy fire, blasted into the sky.
Beneath the rubble, no one knew how many panicked civilians, who hadn't had time to evacuate, were now buried alive.
The very heart of Brooklyn had been turned into a burning apocalypse.
He was out of options. And now Saitama…
Just as that cold tide of despair was about to drown everyone, the very center of the purple-black energy cloud seemed to be stirred—
As if some gigantic invisible hand had reached in and twisted.
Whoooosh—
A powerful gust of wind suddenly blew outward from the center of the blast with no warning at all, instantly sweeping away the billowing smoke and the glowing embers of leftover energy!
In the chaotic backdrop, that shiny bald head was impossible to miss.
Saitama stood steadily at the edge of a gigantic crater. Aside from a bit of purple ash smudged on the hem of his red hero cape and the edges of his yellow gloves, he was completely unscathed.
Not a hair out of place—if he'd had any.
On his usually expressionless face, there was even a faint look of annoyance, like someone whose train of thought had just been rudely interrupted.
"Uh… so," Saitama patted at the shoulder of his suit where there was no actual dust, then looked up at the huge monster, whose entire body had gone a little stiff from its attack whiffing completely. "The supermarket sale's about to end. Can you—"
He didn't get to finish.
The monster, wrapped in purple-black bone armor, clearly had no intention of listening. After that brief hesitation, its roar grew even more savage. Its right arm swung down like a giant piling hammer, the motion kicking up a sharp sonic boom as the huge claw once more tore open the air and came crashing down toward Saitama's head.
This strike carried all its earlier rage—and even greater power.
Saitama's brows knit together. Being interrupted twice in a row was starting to get on his nerves.
He pressed his foot into the ground, ready to meet that terrifying claw head-on—
When a figure suddenly threw itself into the fray with shocking speed and courage.
"Hey! Over here, big guy!"
Captain America, Steve Rogers!
In that split second between life and death, he had already snatched his vibranium shield back into his hand. Without a hint of hesitation, all his strength, speed, and the courage that only erupts in absolute desperation were focused into one charge.
He shot in from the side like a streak of blue comet light, angling in at the monster's arm.
The star-spangled shield that carried so many people's hopes and beliefs slammed brutally into the side of the monster's massive forearm—right at the joint.
"CLANG——!!!"
The metallic crash was louder than anything before.
The shield and the giant claw, wrapped in purple-black bone armor, slammed together with explosive force, throwing off a fountain of brilliant sparks.
The counter-shock was like being hit by a battering ram.
Steve felt like both his arms were about to shatter in an instant. The ground beneath his feet blew apart with a bang, and his whole body was blasted backward, tumbling for more than ten meters before he barely managed to dig in and stop.
Two deep furrows were plowed into the pavement by his heels.
Pain from the shield arm screamed through his nerves, stealing his breath and nearly making him black out.
(End of Chapter)
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