The world was ending, and Asta knew it.
Gravity magic, thick and malevolent, pressed down from a sky torn open. The swirling vortex of the Qliphoth pulsed like a rotten heart, spitting out a miasma that choked mana and hope alike.
Below, the captains of the Clover Kingdom were broken.
Yami Sukehiro, his dark magic eaten away by the sheer pressure, was on one knee. Jack the Ripper lay in a crater, his severance magic shattered. The battlefield was a gallery of silenced heroes.
Only Asta still stood, breathing in ragged bursts. His Anti-Magic swords felt heavier than mountains. The high-ranking devil before them, a being of fused bone and sneering shadow, laughed. Its voice was the grinding of tombstones.
"Such stubborn little insects. Your reality is unwritten. Despair is the only law left."
A crushing wave of gravitational force buckled Asta's knees. His grimoire fluttered wildly, its black pages a desperate shield against a tide of cosmic certainty.
He couldn't win. He knew it.
But he wouldn't kneel.
Not yet. Not ever.
The devil raised a clawed hand, preparing the blow that would crush the last of their resistance into dust.
Then, the sky blinked.
There was no sound. No flash of light or roar of mana.
Just a perfect, silent circle punched through the chaotic Qliphoth storm.
The oppressive gravity vanished. The demonic miasma peeled back like a curtain, revealing clean, ordinary blue sky within that impossible ring.
The devil froze, its killing blow forgotten.
Every magic knight, from the broken captains to the trembling juniors, stared upward. Time itself seemed to hold its breath.
Asta followed their gaze, squinting.
A man was falling.
He wore a simple yellow jumpsuit, a white cape, and red gloves. He had no aura, no ki, no mana signature. He was just... a man.
He landed in the center of the battlefield with a soft thud.
The ground didn't crack. A plume of dust no bigger than a kicked rock rose and settled. He straightened up, looked at his fist, then scanned the hellscape around him.
The bored expression on his bald head didn't change.
"Damn. I missed the mosquito."
A heartbeat of absolute silence.
Yami spat out a broken tooth. "...The hell?"
The devil tilted its head, its dozens of eyes blinking in sequence. Its ancient mind, filled with the lore of the underworld, found no reference for this. This was not magic. This was not a spirit. This was a violation.
"Who are you, human?" it hissed, the gravitational pressure slowly beginning to rebuild.
The man patted some dust off his shoulder. "Oh. I think I made a wrong turn."
He seemed to be looking for a landmark, like a grocery store or a post office. His eyes glossed over the demonic titan and the terrified knights. "This isn't Z-City."
Suddenly, the sky ignited again.
But this was different. Not the foul purple of the underworld, but a searing white-gold. A meteor streaked from the hole in the clouds, descending with the shriek of superheated metal.
"Sensei! I have stabilized the portal's exit vector!" a voice, synthesized and urgent, boomed from the falling star.
It wasn't a meteor. It was another man, or what was left of one. His body was gleaming chrome and black carbon fiber, golden light flaring from vents along his limbs and a core in his chest.
He crashed into the ground just behind the bald man, landing on one knee in a perfect three-point stance. Golden energy shields, etched with complex patterns that looked faintly like runes, bloomed around him, deflecting the stray miasma.
He paid the devil no mind. His glowing optic sensors were locked onto the man in the jumpsuit.
"Are you unharmed, Sensei?" Genos asked, his voice a low hum of processing power and utter devotion.
Saitama just grunted. "Genos, you see a mosquito anywhere? Little buzzy thing. Got away from me during the dimensional… uh… thing."
Genos's head swiveled, his sensors scanning the battlefield at a thousand frames per second. He registered the downed captains, the unique energy signature of Anti-Magic from Asta's swords, and the overwhelming demonic pressure from the devil.
"Threat assessment: high-ranking demonic entity," Genos reported flatly. "Energy signature consistent with localized reality manipulation via gravity. Recommend immediate elimination."
The devil finally regained its composure, fury replacing its confusion. It was being ignored. It, a prince of the underworld, was being treated as part of the scenery by a shiny puppet and a bald idiot.
"INSOLENT WORMS!" it roared, and the world collapsed.
Not a wave of gravity. A singularity. The very air, light, and magic around them warped, sucked into the crushing fist of the devil.
"It's over…" Noelle Silva whispered from behind a shattered rock, her mana reserves empty.
Asta grit his teeth, preparing to lunge with his Demon-Slayer sword. He would negate what he could, even if it was just for a second.
But he never got the chance.
Genos moved, intending to shield his master. He was far too slow.
Saitama sighed.
It was a small sound, almost lost in the roar of a collapsing universe. He glanced at Genos, whose arm was already beginning to flake apart from the sheer gravitational stress.
"Hey, don't scratch up your new parts. They look expensive."
He took one step forward.
He cocked his right arm back.
He threw a punch.
Just a normal punch.
There was no boom. There was no shockwave that leveled the battlefield.
There was only a brief, impossible moment of cancellation.
The devil's singularity, the world-ending sphere of gravity, didn't explode. It didn't dissipate.
It vanished.
One moment, it was there. The next, it wasn't.
And so was the devil.
Where the monstrous being of bone and shadow had floated, there was now only clean air. The punch had continued on, traveling through the monster, through the sky, and into the dark tapestry of the Qliphoth.
The spiraling storm of demonic energy tore apart. The rift in reality unraveled like a cheap sweater.
The sun shone through.
Across the ruined Royal Capital, a silence fell. Knights and citizens stared at the sky, watching the clouds of evil dissipate into nothingness. The world felt light again.
Saitama stood there, his fist still extended. He looked at it for a second, then lowered it with a small frown.
"See, now the mosquito's definitely gone."
Genos rose to his full height, his internal scanners screaming with data he couldn't possibly comprehend. He bowed stiffly.
"A magnificent blow, Sensei."
On the ground, Asta stared.
His ki sense, the one thing that had kept him alive, told him an impossible truth. The bald man had no ki flow. No mana. Nothing. He was a hole in the world.
And yet…
He had just punched a god-tier threat out of existence.
Who… what are you?
Driven by an instinct he didn't understand, Asta staggered forward, dragging the Demon-Slayer Sword behind him. It was the only tool he had to measure the unmeasurable.
The bald man turned his blank gaze toward him. "You need a medic or something? You're leaking."
Asta ignored him. He was close now. He could feel it. The sheer wrongness of the man's presence. It wasn't evil. It was just… empty. A perfect vacuum where a soul, a power, a something should be.
He raised his blade, its edge hungry to touch the impossible.