Steve, Natasha, the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents and Clint had all reached their limit.
They were drenched in blood, combat suits torn to shreds, minds and bodies both pushed to the brink of collapse.
Yet every one of them could clearly hear those thunderous booms, like war drums beaten by the gods themselves.
They could all see the mushroom-cap main body withering, caving in, and losing its brilliance under Saitama's merciless iron fists.
The number of monsters was dropping like a receding tide.
The remaining attacks were no longer an endless, overwhelming flood. They had become scattered, sluggish, weak.
A few of the bats even miscalculated their angle of attack and slammed headfirst into nearby walls. The spider creatures crawled noticeably slower, their mandibles opening and closing with obvious fatigue and listlessness.
"T-They… they're weaker!"
A S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who was practically spent, forced to lean against a wall just to stay standing as he fired, gasped for breath and shouted in disbelief.
"The mushroom core… it's almost done!"
Steve's voice was hoarse but full of excitement.
He drove his shield down with all his remaining strength, crushing the last, slow-moving bat that had tried to pounce on him into the broken ground at his feet. Then he lifted his head and looked toward the figure hammering away atop the main body's remains.
For the first time, his face showed an expression of genuine relief.
"It's… Saitama," Natasha said.
Her voice carried a faint, exhausted laugh.
She, too, lowered her weapon and stopped firing, staring at that gigantic core which no longer throbbed with overwhelming power, but convulsed instead like some dying beast in its final spasms—
And at the bald man standing at the very top, still throwing punch after punch without a hint of fatigue.
Clint let his longbow drop, the bowstring so hot from overuse it felt like it might start smoking. His quiver was empty. He slumped back against a shattered wall, eyes fixed on the distant storm that was finally calming, on the fading purple glow in the air.
He let out a long, blood-tinged breath.
"It's… almost over…"
Yes.
The dawn of victory had finally pierced the choking darkness and filth that had blotted out the sky, shining down clearly upon the ruins of this ravaged district.
And that dawn was born from the figure standing atop the mushroom-cap main body—
The figure whose endlessly swinging fists were grinding despair itself into dust.
Deafening booms echoed within the massive interior of the mushroom-cap main body. Every impact came with violent structural distortion and wild surges of purple energy blowing loose.
Saitama, the bald man in the iconic yellow jumpsuit and white cape, stood before that throbbing core that resembled a gigantic heart and punched without a trace of emotion on his face.
His movements were simple and direct, devoid of any fancy technique—only power, distilled to its purest extreme.
Every punch that fell was like a ten-thousand-ton hammer smashing down on fragile glass.
The tough layer of bio-armor on the core's surface, coursing with purple light, crumpled and cracked like paper-mâché under Saitama's fists.
"Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!"
The dull impacts blended into one continuous rhythm, like the drumbeat of death itself.
The core's pulsations grew weaker and weaker. The purple glow covering it flickered like a candle in the wind, its light wavering and dying.
The countless mycelium tendrils that made up the main body writhed and shriveled, desperately trying to repair the damage to the core—but Saitama's punches were too fast, too dense.
The rate at which he destroyed exceeded the limits of its regeneration many times over.
The enormous structure of the main body began to groan under the strain, a sound full of unbearable weight.
The energy pillars that supported this colossal monstrosity snapped and collapsed one after another under Saitama's relentless barrage.
Purple energy currents, like blood vessels gone berserk, rampaged through the creature's interior, setting off localized explosions and energy storms that further ravaged an environment already on the brink of total devastation.
(End of Chapter)
[Check Out My P@treon For 20+ Extra Chapters On All My Fanfics!!]
[[email protected]/Draumel]
[Thank You For Your Support!]