"Got it!"
Natasha instantly understood and seized the opening created when the rock giant toppled.
With a few swift bounds, she leapt onto the creature's back and jammed several micro-bombs into the gaps along its thick neck.
Then she sprang away lightly.
Boom!
The giant's head was blown to pieces.
On the main front, Saitama pushed forward like a bulldozer, grinding through swarms of monsters.
From time to time, he would casually swat aside an attack coming at Steve from a blind spot, or blast a flying creature out of the air with a single punch when it tried to dive at Clint's perch.
"Hold formation. Don't let them surround us," he reminded them again.
His tone remained calm, but there was a steady weight to his voice that gave everyone around him a strange sense of reassurance.
Under Saitama's overwhelming strength and the precise coordination of the three veteran heroes, the raging monster tide was finally checked.
Though still ferocious, its impact was being methodically blunted, and the defensive line held—for the moment.
The battle was fierce, but thanks to Saitama and Steve's team working in tandem, the situation gradually came under control.
Monster corpses piled up like hills, and even the rate at which new creatures were pouring out seemed to slow.
Just as everyone thought they might finally be able to catch their breath and prepare a full counterattack to mop up the remaining enemies, a sudden change swept across the battlefield.
An indescribable pressure descended without warning—cold, heavy, suffocating.
The air itself seemed to congeal.
Even the light grew dim and distorted.
In the thick haze of gunsmoke, blood, and sulfur that blanketed the ruined park, a new scent appeared—one that made the skin crawl.
It was pure malice, raw chaos… like whispers rising from the deepest part of some unseen abyss.
"Graaah—aaAAAH!"
"ROOOOAAAR!!"
The monsters, which had begun to show hesitation under Saitama's relentless onslaught, suddenly went berserk as if injected with a cocktail of frenzy.
Their eyes turned blood-red in an instant.
Their howls rose to a maddened pitch, choked with nothing but lunatic destruction and disregard for their own lives.
Their attacks became even more vicious, even more suicidal.
One magma pangolin outright ignored the counterforce from Steve's shield, letting its armor be smashed apart just so it could vomit a torrent of molten rock straight toward the survivors.
A bone-spine monster, its forelimbs already shattered, abruptly self-destructed—its jagged spines blasting outward like shrapnel from a grenade, shredding everything around it.
"What the hell?! They've gone insane!"
Up on high, Clint had the clearest view.
From his vantage point, he could see that their entire behavioral pattern had shifted.
"Some kind of mind control? Or a buff?" Natasha barely dodged a wave of suicidal acid spray, the liquid hissing as it ate through stone where she'd just been standing.
Her brows knit tightly together.
Steve could feel the change as well.
The impacts slamming into his shield had grown noticeably heavier; the monsters' speed and strength had both ticked up a level.
"Careful! They've been enhanced!" he shouted.
"Hold the line!"
That mysterious power did not only twist the monsters—it pressed down on Steve, Natasha, and Clint as well like an invisible set of chains.
They all felt their bodies grow heavier.
Their reactions seemed a fraction of a second slower than before.
Every shield swing, every trigger pull, every evasive step demanded more effort than it had moments ago.
A bone-deep fatigue and oppressive weight crept silently up from the depths of their souls, making even their breathing feel labored.
Only Saitama seemed almost unaffected.
He was still dispatching the maddened monsters with one punch apiece, sending bodies flying and bursting with each casual blow.
But in his otherwise placid eyes, there appeared for the first time a faint glimmer of… seriousness.
He stopped advancing and stood still, no longer forcing his way forward through the horde.
Instead, he tilted his head slightly, as if listening for something.
"This feeling…"
Saitama's voice dropped to a murmur.
He ignored the frenzied creatures clawing and biting at him, his gaze cutting sharply across the chaotic battlefield.
At last, his eyes locked onto a spot deep within the ruins—
A huge, inconspicuous fissure in the ground, slanting downward into darkness.
(End of Chapter)
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