Chapter 114: One-Hit Kill (Patreon)

It was only because his transformed body was the biggest thing out here — the most conspicuous target on the entire sea — that he had drawn the giant's attention first. But as long as the other party was a Mysterious Being too, this could still be turned around.

Mysterious Beings were born of the same source, standing in a camp utterly opposed to humanity. They were natural comrades on the same battle line. Mysterious Beings were supposed to help one another, to survive together, to fight humankind side by side!

We sprang from the same root — why be so eager to burn one another!

With death hanging a hair's breadth away, the Deep Sea King had already thrown away every scrap of pride and posture. The dignity of a king of the Seafolk meant nothing now. All he wanted was to seize this one chance at survival.

He kept explaining, his voice growing faster, more earnest, straining to move this mysterious giant.

Perhaps his words worked. The enormous palm, which had been descending with unstoppable, steady certainty, faltered — the barest hitch in its motion.

The pause was so slight that any ordinary expert would never have caught it. But the Deep Sea King stood at the edge of the abyss, his mind wound to its sharpest pitch, and he caught that fleeting detail in an instant.

Hope flared in his clouded eyes, and wild joy surged through him.

It was working! The giant had actually listened!

Clutching that sliver of a chance, the Deep Sea King rushed on faster, holding out the olive branch himself, laying his sincerity bare.

"We can join forces! I'm willing to serve at your side — we'll strike the human lands together!"

"I have no interest in human territory or human resources. All I want is revenge on humanity, to wash away a thousand years of oppression heaped on my Seafolk!"

Every word was earnest, every sentence heartfelt. He would have torn open his chest to show his sincerity, if only it would break this deadlock.

But even as he babbled on, pouring out his overtures, the vast shape beneath the water was slowly rising toward the surface.

An arm thick as a mountain range broke free of the ocean, hauling up waves ten thousand feet high. Then came shoulders broad beyond measure — and at last a colossal head, rising through layer after layer of seawater to look down upon the ocean, revealed under the open sky.

The moment he saw that face clearly, every drop of blood in the Deep Sea King's body seemed to freeze.

His words cut off mid-breath. His throat locked as though bound by invisible chains, and not another sound would come out. All the hope and pleading that had filled him a heartbeat ago turned to bone-deep cold and disbelief.

"Go on. Why did you stop talking?"

The cool, level voice rolled across sea and sky. There was no crushing aura behind it, yet the wind and waves across the whole ocean seemed to seize up.

Alex rose slowly out of the endless deep.

Tens of thousands of tons of seawater poured off a body as vast and towering as a divine mountain, cascading down in layer upon layer, forming countless colossal waterfalls that spanned the ocean. The sheer sound of it was overwhelming.

He did not stand up quickly, but the motion carried enough power to shake the sea itself. The churning waves were flattened outright, then heaved up again into swells dozens of feet high that swept outward in every direction.

Over a thousand meters tall — and once he stood fully upright, the boundless, bottomless ocean looked absurdly small beneath his feet, no more than an outdoor swimming pool built for splashing around in.

The Deep Sea King, who moments ago had been certain he was dealing with a fellow Mysterious Being, who had been so eager to join forces and march on humanity, now sat in Alex's palm as small and helpless as a newly hatched chick.

"You..."

The Deep Sea King's body trembled. The color drained from his green skin until it was pale and rigid, every inch of muscle shivering beyond his control.

He could feel the terrifying strength in that palm with perfect clarity — an absolute dominance that towered over everything in this world. All the other man had to do was curl his fingers, and his body would be pulped, his life ended, in an instant.

Shock and terror at their most extreme swept through him, and his mind went blank.

"No, that's impossible!"

"A mere human — how could a human turn into a giant that touches the heavens!"

"This isn't real... this absolutely cannot be real!"

The Deep Sea King's eyes bulged, his pupils shaking violently, filled with sheer absurdity and incomprehension as he fought with everything he had to deny what stood before him.

Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined it. The mysterious giant he had glimpsed from afar in the deep sea, the one he had regarded with awe and wariness, the terrifying presence he had never dared to provoke — was the very human he had sneered at not long ago.

He had even been quietly plotting to use that mysterious giant's power for himself, letting the giant make landfall first to test humanity's true strength, while he waited to reap the spoils.

Looking back now, the idea was laughable beyond words. It had never had the slightest chance of working.

And at last he understood why his subordinates, on making landfall, had seen no ruined cities, no routed humans. Why the whole continent had seemed so calm.

Because that terrifying giant had been humanity itself, from beginning to end.

"And why is it impossible?"

Alex opened the palm holding the Deep Sea King, the movement lazy and offhand, as though he were balancing a single insignificant speck of dust.

He raised his other hand, extended two long fingers, and with one light pinch caught the Deep Sea King by the head, lifting him steadily into the air.

The gulf in size made every struggle utterly pointless.

"What do you think let you break past your own limits and become a giant Mysterious Being?" Alex asked, a faint mockery in his voice as he looked down at the dazed creature in his hand.

"I..."

The Deep Sea King's expression froze. Every strange image from before flashed through his churning mind — the details he had ignored, the questions he could not answer — and all of it strung itself together at once.

His body warping. His power exploding upward. His size surging. Every breakthrough had come too abruptly, too bizarrely.

"Could... could it be..."

An ice-cold suspicion crept up on him, and the chill spread through his whole body.

"That's right," Alex said mildly, shattering his last shred of wishful thinking.

"That power you were so proud of, that remade you from the bone out — the serum you drank — was nothing but defective waste that our human research institute dumped out and threw away."

"What I command right now is the true final version of that serum. Complete, flawless power."

He lowered his eyes slightly, a trace of scorn passing through them.

"Now that you look back on it, don't you feel ridiculous? You poured out everything you had, the peak strength you were so proud of — and in front of me it can't take a single hit. It's child's play."

Alex's words were spoken gently, but they went through the last of the Deep Sea King's dignity and nerve like a cold blade.

The Deep Sea King fell into a silence as still as death. Even his trembling gradually subsided, leaving nothing but despair sunk into his marrow.

Fifty meters of body, against a towering colossus over a thousand meters tall.

A hundredfold difference in size. A chasm in strength as wide as heaven and earth. There was no path to a reversal — none at all.

He had felt the serum's power in his own flesh, and so he knew better than anyone how monstrous its effects were.

Beyond the extreme boost to strength and the transformation of his body, the serum also massively reinforced physical defense, leaving flesh unbreakable and unafraid of ordinary artillery or superpowered attacks.

And that was only from discarded human waste, a defective reject — enough to make his power skyrocket.

How absurdly strong the true final version had to be, he did not even have the right to imagine.

Despair closed over him like cold seawater, and the suffocation swallowed him whole.

All his ambition, all his obsession with revenge, all his hope of rising again — every bit of it dissolved into froth.

He had believed the Seafolk had finally been handed a once-in-a-thousand-years chance to rise, that they could finally escape a millennium of humiliation under human oppression, of living space squeezed smaller and smaller. That they could storm the land in force and take back the glory owed to the sea clan.

Cruel reality had smashed every one of those fantasies.

This age looked like an age of mutant Mysterious Beings springing up everywhere, with humanity teetering on the brink. But the ones who truly held the core power, who held the pulse of the era, were still humans.

These creatures who had ruled the earth for thousands of years had depths and dominance far more terrifying, far more unfathomable, than any Mysterious Being had ever guessed.

The Alex standing before him was proof enough.

If this man ever decided to kill, he alone could sweep the entire deep sea clean and wipe out the whole Seafolk, ending a lineage ten thousand years old.

Even he, king of the sea clan, could pour out every ounce of his strength and probably fail to leave so much as a mark on that body — let alone put up a fight.

The gap had long since grown wide enough to break a soul.

"Why so quiet all of a sudden?"

Alex gave his hand a small shake, tossing the tiny Deep Sea King back and forth a couple of times, a glint of idle interest in his eyes. "Your Seafolk has held the ocean for ten thousand years. Are you telling me there isn't a single other top-tier expert worth mentioning?"

In a world where monsters and prodigies kept crawling out of the woodwork, apart from freaks like Saitama who had broken clean through the limits of life itself and shattered the rules, the strength of nearly every living thing was tied to sheer body mass.

A huge body usually meant the crudest, most absolute kind of power.

The Deep Sea King was the perfect illustration.

Even after the defective serum pushed him to the peak of the lower Dragon Level, in the face of overwhelming size and strength he could not even struggle. He could only be handled like a toy.

"Cthulhu, Outer Gods, that sort of eerie thing. The sea is deep and endless — surely there are a few unknown top-tier powers hiding down there?"

Alex kept pressing the question patiently, a careful wariness behind his eyes.

The strangeness and mystery of this world had long since outrun his original understanding. Whatever inconceivable thing showed up, he would not be all that surprised.

But the unknown horrors that might lurk beneath the deep sea were exactly why he had to be cautious.

If rule-level terrors of the Cthulhu or Outer God variety really did slumber down there, endless trouble would follow later.

And if such a being ever surfaced, he would have no choice but to head straight back to the institute and push Dr. Genus hard to speed up the research, to develop the ultimate serum that broke the Limiter of life outright, and meet the coming crisis with it.

"No... there's nothing."

The Deep Sea King's voice came out dry and hoarse, laced with bone-deep despair. He had given up every struggle, every last hope, and answered honestly.

His heart was ash. He could not summon even a flicker of defiance anymore.

"Really nothing?"

Alex raised an eyebrow, doubt showing in his eyes. Clearly he did not fully believe it.

The sea was vast and unfathomable, and humanity had yet to explore all of it. He did not believe the Seafolk had exhausted every stretch of ocean either.

"Nothing," the Deep Sea King said, his expression dull, his voice low.

"Across the entire ocean, apart from the deepest trenches that no one dares set foot in, every last sea has my Seafolk living in it year-round."

"We mapped out the creatures and the secrets of the whole sea long ago. There is no such thing as a god down there."

If some world-shaking supreme god really lay hidden in the deep, how could the Seafolk have been beaten back step by step by humans, their living space squeezed tighter and tighter, forced to swallow their pride for ten thousand years?

Those words he kept buried. He did not dare say them aloud.

Alex studied the Deep Sea King in his hand, his keen senses quietly reading the creature's heartbeat and the flow of blood and vitality.

He could tell clearly that the Deep Sea King had given up on everything, and that there was not the slightest sign of a lie.

With that answer confirmed, Alex let out a small breath of relief.

The gods native to the One Punch Man world were troublesome enough on their own. Stack the eerie Outer Gods of the Cthulhu system on top of that, and the future would only get more brutal.

Since every secret had been dragged out and there was nothing left worth asking, this standoff ought to be brought to a close.

The cold sea wind kept washing over him. Standing bare on ten thousand acres of open ocean, wrapped in damp spray, he found the whole sensation deeply uncomfortable — awkward, in fact.

Thank goodness Tornado and the others weren't around right now. If they saw him like this, it would be mortifying beyond words...

Alex thought it to himself, quietly grateful.

In truth, even in a partial transformation he could have killed the Deep Sea King in an instant. There had been no need to reveal his full form at all.

But he had a bit of a mean streak, and he had shown off the complete giant form on purpose.

Watching an enemy reach his ultimate transformation and swell with confidence, certain he had the battle in hand — and then smashing every illusion and every ounce of pride with his own two hands, grinding down all his nerve — that kind of absolute reversal was far more entertaining than simply killing.

Alex tightened his fingertips. There was no drama to it at all.

Snap.

A crisp, faint bursting sound slipped out into the sea wind.

For Alex, crushing the Deep Sea King's skull was like squashing one of those soft, fragile water beads he used to play with as a child — easy, casual, without the slightest resistance.

The Deep Sea King's massive head burst apart, spraying shredded flesh and blood mixed with seawater.

The headless body twitched twice in his palm, the last of its vitality guttering out, and then went completely still — nothing more than a cold corpse.

With a flick of his hand, Alex threw the Deep Sea King's body straight down into the vast ocean below.

The heavy corpse plunged into the deep, seized and dragged by layers of undercurrent, and vanished in a moment, absorbed entirely into the boundless sea.

Then he lowered his hands to the water and scrubbed them clean, washing the last of the blood from his fingers. The sea wind dried the moisture off his palms soon enough.