Saitama opened his personal account to check.
"This month's bonus: -50%. Reason: Severe collateral damage caused by the battle in central Manhattan, New York… total deduction XXXX dollars."
His face immediately fell.
"They… they docked my pay again?!"
He squeezed his phone in outraged misery, steam practically about to jet off his bald head. "That crater wasn't even on purpose! They were the ones yelling their heads off and getting in the way when I was just trying to find a place to eat… uh, the hotpot place?"
He suddenly remembered his original destination—
Fragrant Pot Hotpot!
A wave of enormous grievance crashed over him: he'd missed out on a discount feast and gotten his bonus cut on top of it. "The hotpot place… went out of business. And I ended up eating fake beef instant noodles for dinner! And then they cut my pay! Today is just… the worst!"
He scratched his scalp in frustration, rubbing his already shiny head until it turned a little red.
"No way! If this keeps up, next month's rent is gonna be a problem again!"
His survival instinct (mainly his terror of being broke) instantly overwhelmed all complaints about his terrible luck.
"I've gotta find somewhere cheaper to sleep… cheaper… right!"
His eyes lit up as he suddenly remembered those empty cardboard boxes he'd seen under an abandoned railway bridge earlier. The environment was a bit rough, sure, but it blocked the wind and rain, and most importantly—
it didn't cost a cent.
Once he'd decided, he acted. He immediately opened the map app on his phone and typed in "Brooklyn abandoned railway bridge underpass." The signal didn't seem great; after a long load, the map only showed a vague area. Saitama just relied on his memory and headed deeper toward the warehouse district.
"I remember… it was above some old subway station, right? What was it called again… Sunken Tunnel?"
As he walked and strained to recall the name, he drifted further and further off the main streets. The surrounding warehouses were more and more run-down, the streetlights sparser and the darkness thicker. He remained completely unaware that he was heading straight toward the very patch of deep underground that Jarvis had specially flagged—the place where the Mind Scepter's energy signal had last vanished—
that sunken web of tunnels.
Ahead in the darkness, he could vaguely make out the outline of a rusted iron gate: the distinctive entrance of an abandoned subway station.
The moisture in the air felt as thick as congealed grease, carrying the acrid scent of century-old dust and corroded steel. The emergency lights had long since gone out; deep within the Sunken Tunnel, only timeless stillness and the darkness nesting there remained.
A few stubborn patches of bioluminescent moss clung to the corners, casting a dim green halo. Rather than adding any sense of life, they only made this sinkhole of a world feel even more eerie, like the rotted heart of some buried wooden corpse.
Only at this moment—
In the depths of this relic of bygone days, where even time itself seemed frozen, something that should not exist was stirring: a low, rhythmic hum, pulsing like a heartbeat, stubbornly reverberating through the strata as it seeped up from some unknown depth below.
BZZZ… BZZZ… BZZZ…
(End of Chapter)
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