Most people think flying feels like freedom. For Kazuma Satou, currently dangling from Darkness's armored leg while falling at terminal velocity toward a slime monster, flying felt like a prelude to a closed-casket funeral.
"Stop enjoying the G-force, Darkness!" Kazuma screamed against the wind. "Acknowledge the danger!"
"But the wind resistance!" Darkness gasped, face flushed red. "It's pressing against me... like a giant invisible hand of judgment!"
Below them, the battle had already started.
Or rather, the demolition had started.
Goku reached the Void Creature first. He didn't attack immediately. He just stopped in mid-air, inches from the creature's oozing black face.
"Hi!" Goku chirped. "You look strong. Can you talk?"
The Void Creature answered by firing a beam of condensed purple static from its mouth.
Point-blank range. Enough energy to vaporize a moon.
Goku slapped it away.
Literally backhanded the death-beam like it was a nagging fly. The beam veered off, slicing a skyscraper-sized mushroom in half.
"Guess not," Goku laughed. "Okay! Here I come!"
WHOOSH.
Goku's fist buried itself in the creature's gut. The impact shockwave blew out windows three miles away.
The monster folded. Its back exploded outward in a spray of black ichor.
But it didn't die.
The sludge whipped around, grabbing Goku's arm. It bubbled, turning spikes into teeth.
"Get back!" Asta roared, dropping from the sky like a yelling anvil. "Black Meteorite!"
The anti-magic boy didn't bother with brakes. He slammed into the creature's arm, the Demon-Slayer sword carving a clean line through the slime.
The sludge hissed. It recoiled, letting go of Goku.
"Nice!" Goku gave a thumbs up. "That sword feels weird. Is it made of emptiness?"
"It's made of not giving up!" Asta shouted, veins popping in his neck.
"Is he always that loud?" Naofumi landed with a heavy metallic thud nearby. He raised his shield as the creature shrieked and reorganized itself.
"Air Strike Shield!"
A green energy barrier manifested mid-air, just as the monster lashed out with a whip-like tentacle. The impact shuddered through Naofumi's bones.
Heavy, Naofumi thought, gritting his teeth. Heavier than the Spirit Tortoise. What is this thing?
"It's eating kinetic energy."
Rimuru landed softly on top of Naofumi's floating shield. The blue-haired slime-boy looked analytical, his golden eyes tracking the flow of magic.
"Raphael says every time we hit it with magic or energy, it gets denser," Rimuru explained fast. "Physical attacks work best. Or pure anti-magic."
"Physical attacks?"
A mushroom-headed shadow fell over them.
Mash Burnedead walked calmly toward the screeching beast. He cracked his knuckles. He cracked his neck. He rolled his shoulders.
"Hey," Mash said to the monster. "Do you have a permit for that noise?"
The Void Creature lunged. It was fifty feet tall now, looming like a tidal wave of oil.
Mash stepped in. He planted his foot. He threw a straight right.
CRACK.
It wasn't a squelch. It sounded like a gunshot.
Mash's fist didn't pierce the slime—it compressed the air in front of it so violently that the monster's entire upper torso evaporated. A tunnel of nothingness appeared through the creature's chest.
"Whoa," Asta's jaw dropped. "NO MAGIC?"
"Triceps," Mash muttered.
But the sludge wiggled. The hole began to close. The creature shrieked again, drawing debris from the ground into its body—rebuilding itself with concrete, steel, and trash.
"Don't kill him!"
The roar came from the rubble pile behind them.
Vegeta clawed his way out of the Daily Bugle billboard wreckage. His armor was scuffed. His pride was shattered.
And he was absolutely furious.
"That trash is mine!" Vegeta ascended, blue aura flaring. "You circus freaks stay out of this! GALLICK GUN!"
"Wait!" Rimuru yelled. "Vegeta, don't feed it energ—"
Too late.
A massive purple beam of destruction poured from Vegeta's hands. It engulfed the monster. The ground melted into glass.
For a second, it looked like victory.
Then the purple light swirled. The beam didn't push the monster back—it was sucked in.
The Void Creature doubled in size. Then tripled. It grew armored plates. It grew four extra heads. It let out a roar that popped Naofumi's eardrums.
"It absorbed it..." Tanjiro whispered, holding his sword tight. "The smell of danger... it just spiked."
Vegeta stared. "Impossible."
"Not impossible," Kazuma whined from behind a dumpster. "Just typical. The brooding rival messes up, and now we have to clean it up. It's the circle of life."
The creature—now the size of a Kaiju—looked down at the ants. It raised a claw the size of a bus.
"Allow me," Anos stepped forward.
He didn't raise his hands. He didn't power up. He just opened his eyes a little wider, the cross-shaped pupils glowing crimson.
"Did you think absorbing power would save you?" Anos asked softly. "Silly thing. Power only works if you exist."
Bebesd. (Demon King Origin Magic).
Anos tapped his foot.
Black lightning—darker than night, deeper than the void—erupted from the ground. It didn't strike the monster. It struck the space around the monster.
The creature froze.
"I've halted its time," Anos stated boredly. "Saitama? If you would."
Saitama was dusting off his cape. He looked at the frozen, hundred-foot-tall abomination.
"Can I just punch it?" Saitama asked.
"Please," Anos gestured politely. "Be my guest."
Saitama walked up. He looked small. Just a guy in yellow pajamas standing in front of a frozen god of destruction.
He pulled his arm back. No windup. No shout. No technique name.
Just a normal punch.
WHAM.
The sound came three seconds later.
The first thing that happened was the creature vanished.
Not blown apart. Disintegrated. The force of the punch carried the molecules away so fast they ignited into plasma.
Then the wind hit.
The cloud layer above the city parted for ten miles. A trench was carved into the landscape stretching to the horizon, reshaping the geography of Vector Prime. The mountain of trash they were standing on shifted three feet to the left.
Kazuma flew backward again, screaming.
Vegeta shielded his eyes.
Tanjiro jammed his sword into the concrete to anchor himself, gripping Nezuko's box.
Silence returned.
Saitama blew on his fist. "Still got a bit of yolk on my glove."
He turned around.
Everyone was staring at him.
Goku's eyes were sparkling stars. "WOW! Hey! Hey bald guy! Fight me next! Right now! Come on!"
Mash nodded respectfully. "Good glutes."
Rimuru was staring at the empty space where the monster used to be, eyes twitching as Raphael fed him impossible numbers. "Danger value: Error. Maximum output: undefined. Note to self: Do not anger the bald one."
Anos smiled. A genuine, slightly intrigued smile. "Not bad. You might actually be entertaining."
Naofumi lowered his shield, exhaling a breath he didn't know he was holding. He looked at the dysfunctional group of overpowered freaks, muscle-heads, and idiots surrounding him.
The world had ended. Reality was broken. They were trapped in a dimension made of garbage.
"I hate this," Naofumi muttered. "I hate this so much."
"Excuse me!"
A new group was approaching from the east side of the ruins.
It was a man in a black coat with dual swords—one black, one bluish-green. Next to him was a teenage boy with white hair and a futuristic gun, and a pirate with a straw hat who was currently picking his nose.
Kirito waved his hand. "We saw the explosion. Is everyone okay? We're trying to form a raid party."
"Raid party?" The pirate grinned, stretching his arm impossibly long to snag a piece of grilled meat from debris. "I'm Luffy! Who's gonna happen to have meat?"
Kazuma sat on the ground and put his head in his hands.
"There's more of them," Kazuma whispered into the dirt. "Why are there always more of them?"
"Guys," Tanjiro sniffed the air again. His expression dropped. "The smell of fear... it's getting stronger from the city center. Something isn't right."
Above them, on the giant black ring, the laser eye opened again.
[THREAT LEVEL: SSS CONFIRMED.]
[INITIATING PHASE ONE: THE CULLING.]
Around the perimeter of the junkyard, a thousand portals opened. From them, red eyes began to glow.
Goku grinned and cracked his neck.
"Culling?" Goku laughed. "Sounds like a tournament bracket to me!"