Victory in the Arena: The Barbecue Sauce Defense

The fist swung out.

There was no flash, no sound, not even the whistle of air being torn apart.

Saitama's right fist was aimed neither at Salas nor at the swarm of mosquitoes filling the sky—he slammed it into the granite beneath his feet.

Boom.

A dull thud.

It was not an explosion, but something deeper, more thorough—a tremor. Centered on his fist, the hard granite arena split into spiderweb cracks. The fractures spread outward like mad, covering the entire platform in an instant, and invisible shockwaves erupted from every crack.

The shockwaves spread upward from the ground in a ring—like an inverted bowl of compressed air, squeezing toward the center from every direction.

The mosquitoes in the sky collided with that wall of air.

Not one or two of them. All of them.

But the mosquitoes did not shatter.

A second before the air wall closed in, those dark green Nen mosquitoes scattered upward in unison—they had evaded it. It was not an ordinary dodge, but an almost instinctive avoidance that had anticipated the path of the fist's wind. Every mosquito found the sole path to survival through gaps in the airflow, like a storm-torn black cloud that never dispersed.

Blood still hung at the corner of Salas's mouth, but he was smiling.

"It's useless..."

His voice was hoarse, yet filled with near-mad delight.

"My Nen ability isn't an ordinary Manipulation-type ability. When I sensed the killing intent in that punch of yours, Absolute Evasion awakened amid ultimate terror—so long as I'm afraid, so long as I don't want to die, they'll never be touched!"

Saitama stood in the middle of the arena, looking up at the mosquitoes weaving through the gaps in the shockwaves.

They flew even faster, an eerie glow spreading over their dark green shells—it was not the light of Nen, but fear itself burning. Salas's pupils shrank to pinpoints. His entire body trembled, cold sweat soaking his back. The more afraid he was, the more agile the mosquitoes became; the more agile they became, the more certain he was that he could survive.

It was a perpetual evasion cycle driven by fear.

Saitama tilted his head.

"Oh."

He looked down at his fist, then at the cracks spreading beneath his feet.

Then he stepped forward.

One step.

Cracks spread out from beneath his foot, wider and deeper than before. The ring-shaped shockwaves no longer erupted from a single fissure, but burst simultaneously from the foundations of the entire arena—the ground was collapsing, granite crumbling into powder. The air walls were no longer one, but countless, squeezing inward from every angle and every inch of space.

There were no gaps left.

There were no predictable paths for the airflow left.

The entire arena had become a sealed container filled with absolute pressure.

The mosquitoes were still evading—they tried to find that one path to survival, but this time, it did not exist. Air walls pressed in from above, below, left, right, front, and back. Their dark green Nen shells shattered like foam under the absolute vibrations, their wings torn into dust finer than dust itself, their bodies forcibly dismantled and annihilated into countless flecks of black ash.

But this time, it was not only the mosquitoes that shattered.

The smile on Salas's face froze.

He looked down at his hands—the hands controlling his Nen. His fingertips were trembling, not from fear, but because the Nen was being forcibly stripped from his body. He felt the tremor coming from the ground. It was not aimed at him; it blanketed the entire space, including every inch of ground beneath his feet.

The shockwave touched the sole of his shoe.

For just an instant.

Just a negligible aftershock spilling from a crack in the ground lightly brushed his ankle.

But his Nen cycle collapsed.

The foundation of "Absolute Evasion" was fear—the fear that being touched meant death. And now, he had been touched. Not directly by the fist, but grazed by the aftershock of its wind. But that was enough. The cycle of fear had been broken, the foundation of his Nen torn away, and the aura channels within his body leaked wildly like a punctured balloon.

"No... impossible..."

Salas's pupils contracted violently, bloodshot veins crawling across the whites of his eyes. He tried to gather Nen again, tried to summon even a single mosquito from the air, but his aura channels were empty—not forcibly interrupted, but completely gone. The Nen of Absolute Evasion, awakened in ultimate terror, had annihilated itself the instant that fear was proven true.

His legs gave out, and he fell to his knees on the arena floor.

A mouthful of dark red blood sprayed across the white tiles, splashing into a glaring flower.

"My Nen ability..."

His voice shook, on the verge of tears.

"My Nen... my Nen is gone..."

Saitama slowly straightened up.

He stood amid the black ash drifting down from the sky, a few specks of dust on his yellow T-shirt and his hair a mess. He looked down at his right fist—it was perfectly clean, with no blood and no slime, only a thin layer of ash. Then he raised his head and looked around.

Black ash drifted slowly down from the sky, like snow falling in reverse.

"Oh," he muttered flatly. "I hit them."

He was completely different from the man who had been running around in a panic just moments ago, slapping himself hard across the nose.

Salas knelt on the ground, trembling from head to toe, his forehead pressed against the cold tiles.

He did not dare look up.

He was afraid that if he did, he would see that bald man standing before him, looking at him with eyes that had been red with urgency moments ago but were now as still as dead water. That calmness was more terrifying than anger—anger meant there was still emotional fluctuation, while calmness meant... his opponent had never considered him worthy of taking seriously.

"You lost."

Saitama's voice came from above.

It was not a question, but a statement. His tone was exactly the same as when he had described discounted supermarket eggs.

Salas opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but the blood rising in his throat only allowed him to make a hoarse gurgling sound. With difficulty, he lifted his head and saw Saitama holding that bottle of barbecue sauce, wiping the dust from it with his sleeve.

He had spent an entire chapter using millions of mosquitoes to harass, toy with, and provoke an invincible man. He had thought he was playing with his opponent, proving that "speed could defeat strength."

But the real reason that man had become furious, from beginning to end, was not because he could not hit him—it was because he was afraid the mosquitoes would crash into the barbecue sauce bottle.

Even more ironically, the Absolute Evasion he had been so proud of had not been broken in a direct confrontation. A stray aftershock from Saitama striking the ground had merely brushed his ankle, and it had completely collapsed.

"So that's it..."

Salas suddenly laughed.

His laugh looked uglier than crying, tears and blood dripping from his chin.

"So my Absolute Evasion... wasn't evading fists... it was evading fear itself..."

He lowered his head, pressing his forehead against the tile again. His voice was as hoarse as sandpaper scraping against stone.

"Once I'm touched... there's nothing left..."

Salas lay sprawled on the ground, gasping heavily.

Saitama's footsteps landed one after another on his shattered heart.

He slowly closed his eyes, letting the slaughter, glory, and ambition of his past burn to ash before him.

So this was how it ended, after spending his whole life pursuing strength.

He tugged at the corner of his mouth, his voice as soft as a sigh.

"Am I still going to die?"