The silence in the colosseum was heavier than gravity magic.
Fuegoleon stared at the perfectly circular hole his spirit's fire had failed to fill, then at the man standing calmly in the center of the arena. The sheer, casual physics violation was more shocking than any grand spell.
Nozel Silva was the first to recover, his pride stung by the commoner's display. Contempt hardened into cold fury.
"Such crude parlor tricks," he sneered, his grimoire flipping open. "Allow me to demonstrate the power of a true royal. Mercury Magic: Silver Spear!"
A dozen lances of gleaming, liquid metal materialized around him, impossibly sharp and fast. They didn't fly; they simply appeared, crossing the distance in an instant, aimed to skewer Saitama from every angle. It was an attack that valued inescapable speed over raw power.
Saitama watched the spears converge. He didn't jump. He didn't punch.
He started doing side-hops.
Hop. Hop. Hop-hop. Hop.
He moved in short, jerky, almost comical leaps, left and right, back and forth. Each hop was just a few feet. But his timing was perfect. The silver spears, moving at near-instantaneous speed, stabbed into the empty spaces where he had been fractions of a second before, kicking up plumes of dust.
It looked less like a battle and more like a child playing a playground game. He wasn't even breathing hard.
Nozel's eyes widened in disbelief. "Impossible! No one can react that fast!"
"My turn to cut!" Jack the Ripper shrieked with glee, his arm blades extending. "Severing Magic: Death Scythe!" He vanished in a blur, reappearing behind Saitama, his blades scything through the air in an arc designed to sever anything it touched.
Just as the blades were about to make contact with Saitama's neck, the bald man bent down.
To tie his boot.
Jack's attack sliced through the air an inch above Saitama's head. The force of it continued on, carving a clean, fifty-foot-long gash in the colosseum floor on the other side of the arena.
Saitama finished tying his boot and stood up. "Sorry. It was coming loose."
Jack froze, his manic grin gone, replaced by a look of utter bafflement. He was a predator. His entire fighting style was based on the instinct of the hunt, the feel of the kill. This man had no presence. No killing intent. No fear. He was like a stone. How do you hunt a stone?
From the stands, the nobles were no longer laughing. They were watching with a growing, horrified fascination. The captains, the very symbols of their nation's might, were being made to look like fools without a single blow being thrown in return.
"Enough of this absurdity!" bellowed Kaiser Granvortex of the Purple Orcas. "Vortex Magic: Absolute Whirlwind!"
A massive, spiraling vortex of magical energy formed, its gravitational pull tearing up the arena floor, aiming to shred Saitama to pieces. At the same time, Dorothy Unsworth of the Coral Peacocks, who had been sleeping on her floating dream-cloud, suddenly opened her eyes.
"Glamour World."
Saitama, the vortex, and Dorothy all vanished, pulled into her personal dream dimension, a bizarre, candy-colored landscape where Dorothy was an omnipotent god.
The crowd gasped. They had vanished.
"Trapping him in her dream world!" someone yelled. "He has no mana, he'll be helpless in there!"
A second later, the air rippled.
Dorothy Unsworth reappeared in the arena, thrown out of her own dimension. She landed in a heap, her eyes wide with sheer, unadulterated terror. "He… he just punched the exit," she stammered, before fainting dead away.
Right after, Saitama reappeared, dusting off his hands. He looked slightly annoyed. "That place was weird. Everything smelled like sugar."
The vortex spell, its caster's concentration broken, dissipated harmlessly. Four captains—Charlotte, Gueldre, Dorothy, and Kaiser—were now effectively out of the fight, beaten by evasion, indifference, and a punch that broke dimensions.
Five remained. And they were no longer testing him. They were staring at him with the dawning horror of men who have just realized they are trapped in a cage with a monster that doesn't obey the laws of reality.
Fuegoleon and Nozel exchanged a look. Their family rivalry, their personal pride—it all vanished. There was only the threat.
William Vangeance, captain of the Golden Dawn, finally moved. His grimoire opened, and the air filled with the scent of mistletoe and oak. "World Tree Magic…"
A colossal, sky-piercing tree erupted from the ground, its roots and branches a massive, living prison designed to hold gods.
At the same time, Fuegoleon's flames roared to life, and Nozel's mercury swirled into a defensive storm. Jack the Ripper prepared to strike from the shadows, and Rill Boismortier of the Aqua Deer began to paint, his Picture Magic preparing a spell to counter any possible concept.
It was the coordinated assault of the five strongest captains, a display of power that could end a war.
The World Tree's branches thundered down.
Saitama watched the continent-sized attack descend upon him.
He sighed. This was getting boring. He still hadn't gotten to throw a real punch.
He did another one of his little jumps.
This one, however, had slightly more force behind it.
He shot upward like a missile, crashing headfirst through the canopy of the World Tree. Wood, bark, and magic energy exploded outwards. He didn't just break a hole in it; he shattered the entire upper half of the colossal spell like it was made of glass.
He emerged from the top, unscathed, and looked down at the five stunned captains.
"Okay," he said, his voice carrying clearly across the silent arena. "My turn."