An Easy Matter (III): Spirit Message's Cage

The air suddenly turned sweet and cloying.

It wasn't the sweetness of nectar, but the rotten fragrance of crushed iris flowers fermented with aged honey. If you breathed it in for too long, even your bone marrow would go soft.

Saitama raised his head.

Snow was falling from the night sky. Fine purple-gold dust poured down from the horizon, shimmering with an eerie glow in the moonlight. It settled on the shattered corpse of Neferpitou and the twisted remains of the Squadron Leaders, like a silent funeral.

Saitama scratched his bald head and hid the torn plastic bag clutched in his hand behind his back.

"Pollen season?"

He muttered and sneezed.

The Spirit Message dust filling the sky seemed startled by the sneeze and suddenly froze in midair for a moment. The next second, as if pulled by invisible threads, it crazily converged on Saitama, weaving a completely sealed spherical barrier around him.

The purple-gold sphere rotated slowly, beautiful as some kind of holy relic.

Outside the sphere, a white figure hovered thirty meters in the air.

Four butterfly wings beat slowly, their rhythm as precise as a Swiss watch. His white ruffled shirt was spotless, his golden hair combed to perfection. Even the strands hanging over his chest were perfectly neat.

Shaiapouf.

His gaze swept over the ground.

Pitou was dead. Leol, Meleoron, Welfin—the Nen Pressure of all those Squadron Leaders had vanished within three seconds, as if an invisible hand had snuffed out their candle flames.

Pouf's pupils contracted slightly.

But he didn't look at the corpses.

Those golden slit pupils remained fixed on Saitama from beginning to end.

Like a jeweler examining an uncut diamond, or a vampire who had hungered for a thousand years finally catching the scent of perfect blood.

"Spirit Message."

He spoke softly,