Despair.
Despair as thick as asphalt.
Clogging everyone’s throats, making even breathing feel like a luxury.
The purple energy ball held aloft by Vaccine Man continued to expand.
Like the malicious eye of the Grim Reaper, it stared fixedly at the ants below.
The surrounding air warped from the high heat.
The asphalt road began to melt, becoming sticky.
Under this terrifying energy radiation, the ornamental trees by the roadside withered instantly and even spontaneously combusted.
“Be destroyed!” Vaccine Man grinned hideously, his purple face becoming somewhat distorted with excitement.
His arm muscles suddenly bulged.
Those lines filled with destructive power showed that he was definitely not joking.
He truly intended to take this entire area, along with the screaming chunks of flesh below…
…and vaporize them all!
The little girl closed her eyes.
The teddy bear in her arms was squeezed out of shape.
This second of waiting for death to arrive felt longer than a lifetime.
However.
At the very instant before that purple light, capable of destroying everything, was about to fall.
A golden light.
Appeared abruptly.
Without warning.
Without a sound.
Because it was simply too fast.
That was…
Light!
An extremely pure, extremely dazzling golden light, free of any Impurities!
Like a thick layer of dark clouds suddenly split open by a golden sword.
This golden light fell straight down from the clouds on the horizon.
Its target was not the Vaccine Man suspended in mid-air.
But rather the helpless little girl in the middle of the road.
At this moment, it was as if someone had pressed the pause button on time.
Or as if it had been forcibly stretched by some power.
If viewed through a lens slowed down ten thousand times…
You would see that the moment the golden light hit the ground, it didn’t just strike it head-on.
Instead…
it refracted!
“Yata Mirror.” An indifferent, flat, yet inexplicably majestic voice…
…traveled rapidly through the air.
The moment the golden light touched the ground, it was as if it hit countless invisible mirrors.
The beam split into dozens of strands.
Like golden tassels, they instantly filled the entire intersection.
The little girl only felt a blur before her eyes.
There was no imagined pain.
No sensation of being torn apart.
Just a warm breeze.
Then.
That suffocating heat vanished.
She opened her eyes in confusion.
And found she was no longer in the middle of that terrifying road.
She was standing next to a park bench several hundred meters away.
Surrounding her were people just as dazed as she was.
There was the young mother who couldn’t find her child.
There was the heavily injured and unconscious Lightning Max.
And Smiling Superman, who had been coughing up blood on the ground just a moment ago.
In just these few tenths of a second…
…everyone in the core blast zone, whether alive or injured…
…had actually all been “teleported” to safety!
No.
It wasn’t teleportation.
It was speed.
Extreme speed!
Because in the air, visual afterimages of those golden light trails still lingered.
Those golden lines interlaced in the sky, sketching out a complex rescue route map.
It was breathtakingly beautiful.
And back at the original center of the explosion…
…in that death zone shrouded in purple light…
…a slender figure was slowly coalescing from the light.
First, golden points of light gathered to form legs.
Then the torso.
And finally, that well-defined face.
Sage.
He stood there in mid-air, with nothing beneath his feet, as if the air itself were his staircase.
His black suit didn’t have a single wrinkle.
His tie, fluttering gently in the wind, exuded an indescribable dash of style.
But his entire body was emitting visible golden photons.
Like a deity who had just stepped out of mythology.
“Hey, big guy.” Sage, with his hands in his pockets, looked up at Vaccine Man, who was floating even higher in the air, still holding that massive energy bomb, looking somewhat stunned by the sudden disappearance of his targets.
His tone was casual.
“Littering such dangerous items is quite unhygienic.” Vaccine Man finally snapped back to his senses.
He looked down at this “glowing man” who had appeared out of nowhere.
A flash of annoyance crossed his purple face.
“What are you?” “Another accomplice of those bugs from the Hero Association?” There was a hint of wariness in Vaccine Man’s voice.
What happened in that instant was something even he, a Dragon-level Monster, hadn’t quite seen clearly.
These humans who should have been turned to ash had all vanished in an instant?
This kind of speed…
…even those so-called S-Class Heroes couldn’t achieve it, right?
“Hero?” The corners of Sage’s mouth curled up slightly into a playful arc.
“No, no, no, you’ve misunderstood.” “I’m just a game developer.” “Just…
passing through to see the sights.” A game developer?
Seeing the sights?
The veins on Vaccine Man’s forehead throbbed.
This was an insult!
A blatant insult!
In front of him, the messenger representing the will of the Earth, someone actually dared to be so nonchalant?
“Very well, regardless of what you are.” “Since you want to stand out, then vanish along with this city!” Vaccine Man roared.
He swung his arm down violently.
That massive purple light ball, charged to its limit, crashed down toward Sage with world-destroying Aura!
Rumble—!!
Before the energy ball even landed, the wind pressure it generated shattered all the surrounding glass.
The ground began to crack and crumble.
The pressure was as if a mountain were crushing down from above.
In the safe zone in the distance…
Smiling Superman struggled to get up, shouting at the solitary figure standing in mid-air, enveloped in golden light: “Run!!!” “You can’t take that thing head-on!
It’s pure energy!
You’ll be vaporized!” He knew the physical strength of an A-Class Hero was dozens of times that of an ordinary person.
But in the face of that energy, they were still as fragile as paper.
Sage didn’t run.
He didn’t even show any intention of dodging.
He simply raised his head slightly, his pupils—now pure gold—reflecting the growing purple light ball.
“Vaporized?” Sage chuckled.
The photons within his body surged wildly at this moment.
But not for defense.
But…
assimilation.
“Pity, I’m an energy body too.” In the millisecond before the massive purple light ball was about to swallow him…
Sage’s body suddenly burst apart.
Not from being blown apart.
But by actively disintegrating into countless light particles barely visible to the naked eye!
Whoosh— The massive purple light ball passed through Sage’s original position without any resistance.
As if passing through a layer of air.
It slammed violently into the street below.
Boom—!!!
An earth-shattering explosion.
A massive mushroom cloud rose into the air in the center of A-City.
The shockwave swept through several surrounding blocks.
But this time, no one died.
Because everyone had been moved away in advance.
In the center of the ruins…
The flames were still burning.
Vaccine Man panted heavily, staring fixedly at the rolling thick smoke.
“Is it over?” The sensation of a direct hit told him the opponent hadn’t dodged.
Even a body made of iron should have vaporized under such an attack.
“This level of power…” That flat voice that made Vaccine Man’s scalp tingle came once again from the air behind him.
And it was even closer than before.
“…is only enough to be considered setting off fireworks.” Countless golden points of light converged rapidly behind him.
Reforming into Sage, who was completely unharmed, with not even a hair out of place.
Elementalization.
Immunity to physical attacks.
In this One Punch Man world dominated by pure physical and energy wave attacks…
This is…
An unsolvable BUG!