Saitama stood at the edge of the pit, looking down into the roiling purple light below.
His face was as blank as ever, but his gaze was a little more focused than usual.
"It's down there."
Without a hint of hesitation, he stepped off the ledge and dropped into the bottomless, purple-lit abyss.
The descent felt like passing through a layer of thick, viscous energy.
When Saitama broke through that dense curtain of light and his feet once again found solid ground, the scene before him actually made him lift his eyebrows a fraction.
He was standing in a relatively enclosed chamber at the very bottom of the vast pit.
The ceiling arched high overhead, studded with mineral formations that gave off a faint phosphorescent glow.
At the center of the space, there was no energy core, no altar—
But a living thing.
It was enormous, occupying nearly half the chamber on its own.
Its form defied normal description, as if some mad god had forcibly fused together countless twisted, semi-transparent purple crystals with writhing shadows.
The main body rose like a small mountain, its surface covered in constantly shifting energy channels that resembled circuit patterns.
Those pulsing lines of power glowed with an ominous violet light.
Several limbs, formed entirely of condensed energy, extended out from the core like the tentacles of a titanic octopus.
They waved aimlessly in the air, and every motion set off ripples in the surrounding space accompanied by a piercing psychic shriek.
Most unnerving of all was its "head"—if that word even applied.
There were no facial features, no mouth, no nose.
Only a single, deep, endlessly rotating purple vortex.
At the center of that vortex, two points of scarlet light flicked on, like a demon opening its eyes.
They locked unerringly onto the sudden intruder—Saitama.
In that red gaze, there was none of the mindless frenzy or bestial instinct typical of the monsters outside.
Instead, it held a cold, cruel, nearly surgical intelligence… and a pure, undiluted, absolute malice.
It did not seem surprised by Saitama's arrival.
If anything… there was a trace of scrutiny in that stare. A hint of mockery.
A roar exploded—not in the air, but directly inside Saitama's mind.
It was a sound that blended rage with a brutal psychic impact, as if someone had slammed a gong against his thoughts.
At the same moment, every energy vein on the creature's body flared to their brightest.
One of its energy tentacles whipped upward, and at its tip, violet radiance condensed into a blinding point.
Without warning, it fired a beam of purple light so fast it almost didn't exist between "there" and "here."
But the attack wasn't a simple straight-line shot.
The instant it launched, the beam split and refracted, scattering into at least seven separate lances that changed direction midair.
From seven different, impossibly tricky angles, they streaked toward all of Saitama's vital points at once.
The battle had begun.
Faced with that bizarre, unpredictable attack that fractured and bent mid-flight, Saitama did not choose to take it head-on.
His body made the slightest movement.
In that instant, several afterimages of him remained standing in place as he slipped through the gaps between the beams.
The purple rays punched through the fading afterimages and struck the rock wall behind him.
They melted silently into the stone, carving out several perfectly smooth, mirror-edged holes that plunged into darkness, giving a clear impression of just how terrifying their penetrating and erasing power was.
"Oh? They curve?"
Saitama actually sounded a little surprised—
but more than that, he seemed amused.
Seeing its first strike fail, the monster's swirling "head" flared brighter.
The scarlet lights in its vortex-eyes burned more intensely, like coals stoked by a bellows.
Its massive core tilted forward, and all of its energy tentacles began to move at once.
Some cracked through the air like colossal whips, their swings tearing shrill screams from the atmosphere itself as space rippled where they passed.
Some of the tentacle tips spat out tracking bolts of violet energy, dozens at a time, which curved mid-flight and rained down on Saitama like a storm of guided shells.
Other tendrils drove themselves straight into the ground.
In the next heartbeat, the earth at Saitama's feet erupted into fountains of surging energy and twisting force fields, forming deadly traps that tried to crush, distort, or pin him in place.
The entire cavern pulsed in response to the creature's will, as though Saitama had stepped into the beating heart of some alien nightmare.
(End of Chapter)
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