Their toughness and sacrifices were worth it.
Caught between the main body's forced commands and their own instinctive struggle, the monster swarm plunged into even greater chaos.
Saitama's blood-red lightning streak – carried along the path his teammates had carved open with flesh and fire – shot through the briefly exposed crack in the defenses at a speed beyond understanding, successfully piercing that fleeting gap!
Boom!!!
With a deep, muffled roar, Saitama's gleaming bald head smashed aside the last tangled mass of loosened mycelium. "Zero-Zero-Seven" set foot for the first time on the pulsing, colossal "skin" of the mushroom cap's core – a grotesque surface swollen with diseased, slick pustules and folds.
It was like stepping into the eye of a nightmare vortex.
Beneath his feet was a nauseating, soft, yielding sensation, as if he were standing on living, rotting flesh. He was now far, far too close to that gigantic core.
Buzz!!!!
A mental shockwave at least ten times stronger than before crashed down on him without restraint, like a titanic, solidified tsunami.
This was no longer a barrage of piercing needles. It was a world-ending warhammer, powerful enough to grind even the firmest steel-like will into dust.
Along with this psychic tsunami, a dense, suffocating cloud of corrosive mist erupted from countless cracks and pustules all over the main body, each plume shining with a blinding, eerie purple light.
This was no longer the green spores from earlier. It was more like concentrated death-miasma.
Wherever it passed, even the air itself screamed in agony, the ground beneath boiling and roiling under its corrosion.
Yet at the center of this storm, Saitama merely tilted his bald head a fraction.
In those trademark dead-fish eyes of his, there wasn't the slightest trace of fear or pain – not even a ripple.
Supreme willpower? An absolute mental bulwark born from pure physical strength? Or was he simply… immune to all this fancy psychic nonsense?
There was no way to be sure.
He stood there like a reef in a raging sea. The roaring waves of spiritual assault crashed against him, but they didn't even have the qualifications to make him blink.
The lethal purple mist that surged outward next likewise found itself unable to cross the invisible boundary. It was stopped cold by the ultra-high-density force field that naturally surrounded his body, unable to approach within a meter of him.
"Oh… as expected," Saitama muttered. "Noisy again… and now you're spraying poison gas too. So rude."
He idly dug at an ear with his pinky, the high-frequency vibrations making it itch a little. Then he bent his knees slightly, lowering his waist.
His right fist clenched.
The muscles of his arm compressed to their limit like the most precise spring in existence – no energy flares, no light effects, no space distortion.
Only the purest, most stripped-down physical power, silently roaring through his body.
"Normal Punch…"
His voice was extremely calm, and only slipped out at the very instant his fist drove toward the gigantic core.
The punch traced an utterly ordinary, unadorned arc.
But when that seemingly simple fist – carrying what he called his "normal" level of power – crashed into the point of greatest concentration on the core, the place where its structure was toughest and its energy turbulence most intense—
Rumble-rumble-rumble-rumble-rumble!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A heaven-shaking, earth-splitting detonation answered him.
The instant the punch landed, an indescribable, terrifying impact force exploded outward. At the point of contact, the mushroom cap's tissue – tough enough to withstand heavy artillery bombardment – crumbled like soft tofu, collapsing and shattering inch by inch!
A massive pit, several meters in diameter, appeared out of thin air.
Around the edges of the crater, everything was being ripped apart and hurled away by an inexpressible shockwave.
Thick, dark-purple pus-blood mixed with shredded internal organs sprayed skyward like a breached dam of filth, erupting tens of meters into the air.
The entire vast mushroom cap – along with the street block into which its mycelium had sunk its roots – convulsed violently under that irresistible might, trembling like a dying giant letting out its final, anguished wail.
(End of Chapter)
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