Crimson magma scattered in all directions like fireworks. The beast's rocky body could no longer hold its shape—amid a chain of explosive booms, it completely disintegrated into a heap of rubble that smoked as it gradually cooled. Only a few spots still held faint, dark-red glimmers.
Those two punches were completed in almost the same second.
The threat of the Frost Giants, and the remaining remnants of the lava beast, both collapsed at once beneath those seemingly casual but utterly crushing blows.
The steam blanketing the valley was blown away by the punch wind from Saitama's left fist, and the scene quickly became clear again. On one side lay a wrecked glacier and Frost Giants scattered across the ground. On the other was the lava giant's cooling remains.
And in the center of this battlefield of ice and fire, Saitama stood there, lowering his head to look at his hands. A few flecks of ice and some volcanic ash clung to them.
He clapped his hands together, knocking off the dust, then flicked at his cape as if smoothing wrinkles that weren't even there.
"Alright. Finally quiet."
As the steam thinned, Tony Stark descended in his armor. He stared at the valley, still a mess, but now completely calm—and at Saitama, who wore an expression that said, "So… I can go home now, right?"
Tony fell silent again. He'd just finished switching armor modes to handle an "ice and fire" nightmare scenario, and the battle was already over in the blink of an eye.
"Saitama…" Tony started to speak.
But Saitama glanced at the sky and cut him off. "Mr. Stark, I'm done here, right? I remember beef is half off at the supermarket today. If I don't go now, I'll miss it."
With that, without waiting for a reply, he stepped away—strolling out of the park like he'd merely cleaned up some trash in the road.
Tony watched his back, then looked again at the valley that had just endured ice and fire—only to be forcibly "physically calmed down." He shook his head helplessly and began handling the far more complicated aftermath: calming any panicked civilians, studying the lava beast's remains, and searching for any surviving Frost Giant stragglers who'd been blasted away.
He knew that with Saitama around, many disasters ended in a brutally simple way.
But the root cause of disasters were never simple.
United States, California, San Francisco.
The coastal city was now drowning in chaos. The busy streets were no longer packed with cars and tourists, but filled with shrieking alarms, terrified screams, and an eerie sound like slick slime writhing across the ground.
An alien black, viscous lifeform known as a "symbiote" had somehow lost control and begun spreading through the city on a massive scale. They could attach to hosts, drastically enhancing strength and speed while forming all sorts of weapons.
But the cost was amplifying the host's negative emotions—until the symbiote eventually swallowed the host's consciousness entirely.
Worse still, these symbiotes were sensitive to sonic waves and extreme heat, but showed terrifying resistance to ordinary physical attacks.
"Hey! Big guy, over here!" A nimble red-and-blue figure swung between the skyscrapers—it was Spider-Man, Peter Parker, wearing an upgraded suit. He kept firing tough webbing, trying to temporarily bind citizens who'd been taken over by symbiotes and turned into rampaging monsters, sticking them to walls and streetlamps.
But the effect was minimal. Once a symbiote got caught by the webs, it would quickly liquefy, slip free, and re-form—sometimes even flowing back along the web line toward Peter.
It scared him so badly he had to cut the web off immediately.
(End of Chapter)
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