The monster horde that had been relentlessly swarming Saitama and Steve's squad, throwing themselves forward without end, suddenly froze.
It was only for a split second—
But it was visible to the naked eye.
Their movements stuttered and fell into chaos, as if they'd lost their command feed for that brief instant. They started moving purely on instinct, and the precise coordination and chain reactions between them collapsed all at once.
One bat monster even panicked and flew straight into a nearby whipping mycelium tendril.
More importantly, the mycelium wall that had been cracked and hammered—its purple light flickering wildly from the collision—visibly weakened during the moment when the overloaded main body couldn't divert extra energy to repair it in time.
The hardened outer shell around the impact point shattered completely.
The scarlet mycelium underneath hadn't fully snapped, but it was clearly withered and shriveling, its defensive strength dropping sharply.
Even more crucial—
A passage that had originally been hidden behind the main root system, much thinner than the others, was suddenly exposed.
"That's it, right there!"
Saitama himself, who had been watching his own advance while keeping an eye on the bigger picture, caught that instant of monster stiffness and the flicker in the barrier's integrity at the exact same millisecond he'd deliberately triggered the chaos.
His dead-fish eyes locked directly onto the newly revealed passage.
His combat instincts were so sharp he didn't even need to think—his body had already been coiled like a spring, ready to launch.
He didn't hesitate.
"Cover me! I'm going through!"
His shout wasn't loud, but it cracked through the battlefield like sudden thunder over flat ground, slicing cleanly through the gunfire, explosions, and psychic shockwaves to reach Steve and the others.
The moment the last syllable left his mouth—
Boom.
The ground beneath his feet erupted. The "solid" concrete shattered and sank like a layer of thin ice. Compressed air, wound tight to the limit, formed a brief vacuum shell around his body.
This time, he held absolutely nothing back.
He pushed his speed straight to the highest level he ever bothered to use in his daily life.
His body became a streak of blood-red lightning tearing the air open.
The air along his path was instantly forced aside, crushed, and ignited, forming a blazing wind tunnel. The scattered monsters that tried to throw themselves in front of him on raw instinct—still dazed by the lapse in control—never even had time to react.
They were shattered and vaporized by the shockwave of sheer speed alone, wiped out so thoroughly there wasn't even dust left of them.
His trajectory pointed straight at the fungal cap main body's enormous core, exposed behind the cracked opening with no shield in front of it.
Unstoppable. Unbreakable.
"I heard you! Full containment!"
Steve's roar was louder and more resolute than it had ever been.
The S.H.I.E.L.D. agents answered with a tidal wave of gunfire.
Grenade launchers, heavy machine guns, laser beams—
Every weapon they had roared to life.
For that one moment, no one cared about ammo counts or energy reserves.
What they unleashed was a mad, metal storm packed with the intent to annihilate everything in their way, slamming into any monster trying to regroup and block Saitama's route, or scrambling out of the confusion to rush back and reinforce the main body.
Natasha completely abandoned precise single-point shots. Both Widow's Bites were thrown wide open, torrents of energy pouring out in sheets, weaving into a dense barricade of suppressive fire.
She forced back several rapidly recoiling mycelium tendrils and a whole cluster of spider monsters trying to circle around.
Steve's vibranium shield whirled like something possessed as he hurled it out.
Carrying terrifying kinetic energy, it smashed, ricocheted, and ground its way through any monster foolish enough to step in front of it.
Clint's arrows came down like machine-gun fire.
Specialized arrowheads crisscrossed the air and exploded around the battlefield—
Sonic arrows sent shockwaves tearing through the monster packs, leaving them staggering and disoriented.
High-explosive arrows turned chokepoints into chaotic infernos.
Adhesive gel arrows glued down targets scrambling across the ground.
He was burning through his mental reserves so hard that blood nearly burst from the corner of his eyes—
All just to hold that fragile window of time open a little longer.
(End of Chapter)
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