Inside Saitama's apartment.
A man with slicked-back blond hair and a scar over his eye was locked in mortal combat with Jovian's bald chosen champion.
Saitama—Jovian's chosen champion—was frowning hard, eyes deadly serious, fingers dancing across the buttons like his life depended on it. Meanwhile, the blond man looked like he was lounging on a couch at a spa, relaxed to the point of disrespect.
"KO!"
A virtual electronic voice rang out, and Saitama collapsed to his knees on the floor, drenched in sweat.
"Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!!" Saitama shouted, his voice packed with pure unwillingness to accept reality.
"Um… Saitama," the blond man said calmly, looking at him. "You lost again. That makes our record… five hundred to zero."
"Again!" Saitama barked.
His fighting spirit flared up like a bonfire. He hadn't felt this in a long time—this burning, infuriating, desperate need to win.
"Uh… it's getting late," the blond man said, checking the time as he stood up. "I should probably head home."
Tap.
Saitama lightly knocked the floor with a finger—just a dull thump, but it carried authority.
"Again," he said in a low voice. "You're not leaving right after you win."
"Look, I'm not trying to run," the blond man sighed. "But Saitama, whether it's strategy games, RPGs, or fighting games… you are absolutely never going to beat me."
As he spoke, he reached into his bag and pulled out a ridiculous stack of game discs.
"Pick any one of these."
"I'll bet my spot as the world's number one gamer. You're not beating me."
"So many games?" Saitama stared at the pile, eyes lighting up.
"Then we'll go one by one," Saitama said—and in the next second, his gaze sharpened like a blade.
"But I really do need to go home…" the blond man hesitated.
"Come on," Saitama insisted, unwavering. "Nobody else lives in this building anyway. Just pick an empty unit and crash there. I've got extra bedding."
His attitude made it painfully clear: unless he settled this properly, he wasn't letting the blond guy walk out.
"…Fine." The blond man sighed, sat back down, and resigned himself to continuing this dull, brutal, soul-crushing slaughter. He picked up the controller.
Behind King and Saitama…
On a plain wooden table sat a few cheap snacks and three cups of tea so weak they were basically hot water pretending. Next to the table, three people sat together—yet the mood was stiff and quiet.
"This is so awkward…"
One of them—a woman with a breathtaking face and a body that could turn heads anywhere, someone whose looks, figure, and bearing all screamed "beautiful"—was tense to the point of trembling as she watched everyone in the room.
"S-Class Rank One Jovian… S-Class Rank Eight King… and Genos, the insanely fast-rising newcomer…"
"All S-Class heroes…" her thoughts spiraled. "So does someone like me—just a B-Class hero—really belong here with these real monsters?"
She glanced at the man beside her: a muscular, sharp-featured powerhouse wearing a white fur-lined coat. Then she looked at the quiet blond man casually destroying Saitama. Finally, she looked at the cyborg across from the muscular man—short blond hair, proper-looking face, metal body.
She couldn't help questioning herself.
"No," she told herself firmly. "Fubuki—get it together. You have to build relationships with people like this. Maybe with their help, I can finally make my ridiculously arrogant sister look at me differently."
"No… maybe… maybe surpassing her isn't impossible."
This woman—Fubuki, the Hellish Blizzard—was the younger sister of Tatsumaki, the world's strongest esper and the Hero Association's S-Class Rank Three. Right now, she was pumping herself up internally like she was about to walk onto a stage.
"…Nope. Still terrified."
She had just managed to calm down enough to try speaking, when the muscular man beside her slightly furrowed his brows.
"Is he mad?"
"Damn it—my heart was finally slowing down and now it's racing again. I'm nervous again!"
The words she was about to say jammed in her throat. She couldn't force out a single sentence.
"King…" the muscular man murmured.
The man beside her was Jovian—the current top-ranked hero, known as Godslayer. At this moment, his eyes were completely locked onto the blond man playing video games with his chosen champion.
King—the so-called strongest man on Earth… whose strength, in reality, was powered entirely by enemy imagination and teammate hype.
A few days had passed since Jovian arrived in this world. During those days, he hadn't kept chasing the Monster Association personally. He'd handed every investigation task over to the Hero Association.
Jovian himself had spent his time either resting with his eyes closed—or grinding affinity with the chosen champion he'd personally "picked."
Over those days, Saitama—just like in the story—had met King, the walking Saitama-summoner in human form, and finally learned that aside from being absurdly lucky, King didn't actually have superpowers.
Well… if you wanted to be technical, King wasn't completely powerless.
At minimum, he could use two fingers to control a character in a video game and absolutely humiliate Saitama in a virtual world.
Which meant King had accomplished something no one else in this world could claim:
He had defeated Saitama head-on.
He was, without question, Saitama's strongest enemy in the entire story…
Even if it was only inside a video game.
"This guy…" Jovian watched King gently stroke the controller with two fingers while casually juggling Saitama and beating him into the ground, as if thinking through something.
"If I gave him a controller and built him a remote-operated combat drone…" Jovian silently calculated. "What kind of strength could he bring out?"
"If the drone's performance matched Genos's, then King might output one and a half times Genos's combat effectiveness… no, with combos and execution, maybe two or three times or more."
Jovian sank into thought.
Like Ender's Game—if you never told King that the battlefield and enemies were real, and he thought they were only digital targets… could King become what his name and legend claimed?
An undefeated existence?
"Looks like this guy has his own use," Jovian concluded, watching King.
In Jovian's eyes, everyone had value.
Some people's value was microscopic.
And some people's value was enough to make even Jovian take notice.
King clearly belonged to the second category. With a little guidance, he might produce something unexpected—maybe even a pleasant surprise.
"Damn it, I have to say something… I need to break this heavy atmosphere…"
"But what do I even say?"
"I'm so nervous… I really need to use the bathroom…"
Fubuki's face felt hot. She stared at the S-Class heroes around her and couldn't speak at all.
"What is this man thinking?"
"I can't figure it out. I can't understand him at all."
"It's not just his presence—his thinking doesn't make sense to me."
"He's beyond my imagination. Completely outside the rules."
While Jovian watched King and thought, Genos was watching Jovian and thinking.
Genos was excellent at analyzing people through data, but even Genos couldn't map Jovian's patterns.
To the public, Jovian looked like a god—like a savior.
But to Genos's data-driven eyes, Jovian gave off a strange sense of wrongness, like everything he did was guided by his own purpose… and "saving the world" was almost something he did on the side.
In that tiny apartment, King and Saitama fought fiercely, Jovian weighed the value of both King and Saitama, Genos tried to analyze Jovian…
And only Fubuki—B-Class—was curled up in place, small, helpless, and suffering. She had a very real biological emergency to handle, but the pressure and aura of all these S-Class heroes made her too scared to move.
"Genos," Jovian suddenly said, breaking the heavy silence.
"Uh—yes," Genos replied, startled that Jovian chose to speak to him. He immediately nodded.
"Thank god, someone's finally talking," Fubuki thought, her tension easing just a little.
"The person who rebuilt you into what you are now," Jovian asked calmly, "his name is Dr. Kuseno, right?"
"Yes," Genos said, nodding. "Dr. Kuseno is the one who made me what I am. But it wasn't that he chose to modify me—I sought him out. I begged him to do it."
"Mm." Jovian simply nodded at the explanation.
"I've heard of Dr. Kuseno," Jovian said evenly. "If you get the chance, introduce me. There are things I want to say to him."
"You want to meet Dr. Kuseno?" Genos realized immediately why Jovian had brought it up.
"Yeah," Jovian answered, clean and simple.
"I can ask him," Genos said after a few seconds of observation. "But whether he agrees to meet you will depend on his own wishes."
Genos had tried to read Jovian—expression, pulse, intent—and got nothing. Unable to determine why Jovian wanted Dr. Kuseno, he could only agree to make contact.
"That works," Jovian said.
And then he returned to silence, turning his head to watch King and Saitama sweat and "battle" at full intensity.
Genos also went quiet, and for a moment the only sound in the room was the constant clicking of controllers.
"This is getting even more suffocating…"
Fubuki's panic rose. Her body was getting harder and harder to control.
It felt like being stuck in school, the bell already rang, you tried to sprint to the bathroom between classes—but a teacher held everyone up—and then the next class started. You don't want to get scolded if you walk out, so you try to hold it…
But your lower stomach starts to feel swollen and tight, like one slip and everything will burst out like a floodgate opening.
And the longer you wait, the worse it gets. Every minute becomes its own private disaster.
Ring, ring, ring…
Just as Fubuki's face started turning pale with desperation, several phones began ringing at the same time.
"Huh," Saitama said, looking around. "King, your phone's ringing. Genos… and Jovian too? All three of you?"
"Master Saitama," Genos said, immediately analyzing. "That's a call from the Hero Association. If King, Jovian, and I all received it at the same time, then it's likely an emergency summons specifically for S-Class heroes."
"Three phones at once… one of you answer it," Saitama said. "The ringing's annoying."
Then his eyes locked onto King with blatant expectation—like he was waiting for King to take his hands off the controller so Saitama could exploit that tiny opening and finally defeat his lifelong enemy: the Demon King, King.
"I'll take it," Jovian said.
In the end, the highest-ranked one—the one everyone subtly treated as the leader—was the one who answered.
"Hello… yeah? You found it?" Jovian's tone was calm.
"Good. I understand. I'll head to the Association first."
"And King and Genos are with me. You don't need to keep calling them. They'll come with me."
Jovian ended the call and put the phone away.
At the exact same time, King's and Genos's phones stopped ringing.
"Stop playing," Jovian said, looking at them. "We've got work."
"The Hero Association found the Monster Association."
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