He did it.
That strike wasn't meant to deal damage at all—it was purely to deflect.
The monster's claw, packed with enough power to cleave a building in half, had its path altered by an imperceptible fraction when it smashed into the vibranium shield's unbelievable defense, backed by Captain America's full-body charge.
The blow that should have crushed Saitama's skull instead roared past his shoulder.
Boom!!!
The ground right next to Saitama was smashed into an even deeper crater, the shockwave swallowing him once more.
"Steve!" Natasha's heart jumped into her throat.
"Cap!" Clint called from above. He could see everything from his vantage point, bowstring drawn tight like a full moon.
Smoke and dust billowed again—
But this time, Steve saw it.
At the exact instant the claw hit, Saitama's figure moved like a ghost, riding the claw wind and the cover of the shockwave, skimming right along the edge of the monster's forearm against the flow!
His cheap red hero suit snapped in the wind. Through the haze, those dead-fish eyes of his were fixed firmly on the monster's main body—on the gap that had opened in its defenses around the chest and abdomen because its right arm had been knocked off-balance by the Captain's hit.
An opening. A sliver of exposed weakness.
"Now!" Steve roared inwardly, forcing himself to ignore the agony and numbness screaming through both arms.
Hawkeye Clint understood his intent in the very same heartbeat.
He didn't need to aim at Saitama or the monster's head—that would be too slow.
He just had to do what he did best—
Interfere with the enemy's movement at the decisive moment.
Twang!
The bowstring thrummed. A special arrow, its tip emitting a high-frequency buzzing whine, tore through the air. It didn't fly toward the monster's eyes or any vital point, but instead drilled in at a vicious angle—aimed at the seam in the scales around the right ankle that braced its forward-leaning stance against the ground.
Ding!
Bullseye.
The arrow struck the narrow gap between the scales. It didn't pack a huge physical punch, but in the next instant it unleashed an ear-splitting sonic blast, coupled with intense high-frequency vibration.
Awooooo——!!!
Caught off guard, the monster let out a strangled roar.
The sudden noise and the high-frequency "itch" gnawing at its ankle made its body flinch purely out of instinct.
That one involuntary twitch exaggerated its forward lean into a full-on lurch it could no longer control.
What had been a narrow crack in its chest-and-belly defenses suddenly became a much larger patch of relatively thin armor, fully exposed below!
And right at that moment—
The smoke blew clear.
Saitama's silhouette appeared cleanly in front of the monster's gaping chest, as if he had been waiting there all along.
His right hand clenched into a fist. The air around that plain-looking punch twisted violently, compressing inward, forming a visible, funnel-shaped vortex.
Bang!!!
A dull, heavy impact rang out—so deep it sounded like space itself had just been hammered.
Saitama's fist, packed with terrifying compressed power, drove straight into the monster's exposed purple-black chest. No flourish. No wasted movement. Just a single, honest, brutal punch.
For an instant, time seemed to slow to a crawl.
The monster's enormous body, wrapped in layers of thick purple-black bone armor, arched backward in an impossibly exaggerated bend.
At the very center of its mountain-like torso, a crater over a meter wide appeared, clearly visible.
The previously solid bone plates there, hard as a fortress, instantly spiderwebbed with cracks around the fist print, the sound of splintering armor—crack, crack, crack—making everyone's teeth ache as the fractures raced outward across its whole body.
"Awooooooooo——!!!"
This roar was no longer just rage.
It was saturated with raw disbelief, agony, and the shrill edge of bones being smashed apart.
The impact was so tremendous that the monster's massive frame was literally blasted off the ground for half a second.
Then, like a torn, overstuffed sack, it went flying backward, trailing a screaming gale and a rolling avalanche of thunderous crashes as it slammed away.
(End of Chapter)
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