Ruins. Chaos.
Lin Mo forced his eyes open.
Everywhere he looked were broken walls and shattered eaves. Enormous slabs of concrete lay heaped together in grotesque hills of rubble—a scene straight out of the apocalypse.
Not far off, explosions still rumbled.
"What… is going on…" The voice that came out of him was so rough it felt unfamiliar. Then memory surged in like a tide.
"I… transmigrated into KING?" Lin Mo felt like crying without tears.
Good news: KING is the strongest man on the surface. Bad news: that "strongest" was all hype—he's just an ordinary guy who can't even truss a chicken.
He shook his groggy head.
"Mm… if I go by the memories—KING… no, I was about to buy Heartbeat Sisters and play to my heart's content, but that sudden explosion and shockwave must've blasted it who knows where…"
"Wait… this seems like when Vaccine Man first shows up…"
Suddenly, the sky went dark. A violent sense of danger surged up from the pit of Lin Mo's stomach.
He looked back. In the low air, a pure, despair-inducing surge of deep-violet energy, reeking of annihilation, was rolling and converging.
Its source hovered atop the spire of a not-yet-collapsed building a hundred meters away. A figure stood there.
Lin Mo's pupils slammed shut; his heart pounded like a drum—King Engine!
He was about ready to cry. So this is what KING felt like in the original story.
Luckily, Vaccine Man seemed to be admiring his handiwork and hadn't noticed Lin Mo.
Letting out a long breath, Lin Mo decided to slip away. As for Heartbeat Sisters… sorry! My life comes first!
Abruptly, the explosions ceased. Silence fell.
Puzzled, Lin Mo glanced back and saw Vaccine Man striding straight toward a spot in the ruins. A child's crying reached his ears.
"Daddy! Mommy!"
The little girl's sobs made Lin Mo slow to a halt. He watched Vaccine Man stroll toward her as if he'd already passed sentence.
"It'll be fine… Saitama will get here and save her…" he told himself.
By then Vaccine Man had reached the girl's back. His arm, plated in purple chitin, swelled as he reached for her.
"Stop!" Lin Mo shouted.
The King Engine, which had quieted, thundered back to life like beating drums. Coupled with the three scars that took up half his face, he really did look terrifying.
Vaccine Man turned at the sound.
"Who are you?"
His cold gaze swept over the devastated city and locked with surgical precision on the lone, tiny figure amid the wreckage—a man in casual clothes with three scars on his face: Lin Mo.
All he had to do was stall until Saitama arrived. With that in mind, Lin Mo drew a deep breath and said to Vaccine Man:
"Just… the strongest ordinary man on the surface."
"What? What kind of ridiculous setup is that?" Veins bulged across Vaccine Man's face.
"I am Vaccine Man—born from mankind's relentless pollution of the environment! The Earth is a living being, and humans are the pathogens corroding its life! To wipe out humanity and the toxic civilization you've created, I have manifested here by the Earth's will."
Watching Vaccine Man's features twist and his body swell ever larger, Lin Mo went slack.
Seriously… he tossed off one random line and Vaccine Man popped his ultimate?!
"Wait—"
He tried to walk it back, but Vaccine Man cut him off with a snarl.
"And you—calling yourself the strongest, yet ordinary? What a joke! What do you take me for?! This is what you bring against the Earth's emissary?! Humans really are…"
Facing a monster three stories tall, Lin Mo was crushed rigid under the pressure.
Run. I have to run!
His soul shrieked, but KING's burly body felt shackled by invisible chains. His legs rooted into the cold concrete, his muscles locked so tight he couldn't lift a finger.
Time stretched to the limit, one heartbeat before death.
At the instant those two hands, each larger than a man, were about to close on Lin Mo—
A yellow blur—like lightning tearing the air—abruptly swept him out from between Vaccine Man's palms. The figure turned its back to Lin Mo and faced Vaccine Man.
The gleaming bald head and ordinary height weren't impressive at all.
No energy blast. No rising aura. He just stood there—plain as a middle-aged uncle on his way to catch a sale at the supermarket.
"And who are you?" Vaccine Man was puzzled enough not to strike at once.
"Just a hero for fun." Saitama's dead-fish eyes fixed on him.
Behind him, Lin Mo finally exhaled. With Teacher Saitama here, there was nothing to worry about. That reassuring back—Lin Mo found himself staring, entranced, at the shine of his bald head.
Saitama, sensing the stare, tilted his head slightly.
"Hmm? Don't gawk at people. It's rude, you know."
Before Lin Mo could answer, Vaccine Man flew into a rage.
"A hero for fun? With such a casual setup you dare strike at the Earth's emissary, and even chat as if no one else exists—both of you—I'll… kill you!"
A gigantic orb of light gathered in his hands to obliterate them in one blow.
Then the shining bald head moved.
The motion was simple—draw back the arm, clench the fist—and toward Vaccine Man hanging in the air, toward that world-ending orb, toward that Dragon-level monster radiating terror, he threw an utterly ordinary punch.
No charge-up. No shout. No dazzling special effects.
Just a straight, almost lazy punch, like swatting a troublesome fly.
"Normal Punch."
Time itself seemed to shatter the instant the fist went out.
Lin Mo barely caught a translucent arc in the air—pure force tearing the atmosphere—which lashed across the hovering sphere.
The deep-violet ball of annihilation didn't even have time to show what it could do. Faced with that unreasonable, absolute power, it simply dispersed.
An energy blast that could level a hill vanished without leaving a ripple, as if it had never existed.
Vaccine Man's hulking, terror-inducing body was reduced to chunks of meat in the blink of an eye.
One punch. Enemy executed.
-------
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