A massive impact slammed into Genos's face, the violent force rattling through his entire frame. Utterly powerless to resist, he felt himself thrown like a ragdoll and smashed deep into the adjacent wall.
Even though the terrifying burst of power lasted only an instant, error messages of varying severity began flashing all across his mechanical chassis.
How could there be a monster this strong here?!
His body had already been upgraded once; it was supposed to be vastly superior to the version that fought the Mosquito Girl. Yet here he was, rendered entirely non-functional in their very first encounter.
"Alice?! Genos?!"
Saitama paid no attention to Carnage Kabuto standing right in front of him. Instead, his eyes darted to either side of the corridor.
CRACK—
Compared to Genos's current predicament, Alice was undeniably in much better shape.
Granted, she was so light that even though she had managed to raise the Sword of Light to block, that fist—which was practically half her size—had still sent her flying into the wall.
However, she had caught the blow dead-on. Aside from being dusted with a bit of debris, she didn't look injured at all.
"Alice is okay! How is Genos?"
"Uh... he should be fine?" Saitama glanced over at Genos. While the blonde cyborg's current posture looked incredibly awkward and undignified, he didn't seem to have sustained any fatal damage.
He looked temporarily paralyzed, but his eyes were still darting around with plenty of life left in them.
"Ho~ you actually blocked my attack, and you still have the breath to worry about someone else?" Carnage Kabuto's highly expressive features twisted into a sickening grin.
He poured more strength into his fist, continuing to press down on the young girl, though it didn't seem to be doing much.
"You're not bad for a little shrimp."
"Alice is Alice, not a little shrimp!" Throwing her weight forward, Alice shoved Carnage Kabuto's massive fist aside and dropped cleanly back to the floor.
"My bad, my bad. The weak don't usually get a say around me, but I'm actually having fun right now."
His massive, heavily armored frame could barely move in the narrow confines of the tunnel.
Carnage Kabuto flashed the two of them a provocative smirk. "There's a specialized combat lab just down the way. Why don't we go play in there?"
It was phrased as a question, but his tone left absolutely no room for refusal.
Then again, neither Alice nor Saitama had any intention of backing down anyway.
"You hurt Alice's companion. Alice will definitely defeat you!"
Clearly, rather than just enjoying a chance to cut loose, the girl was far more upset about her failure to protect Genos.
Seeing this, Saitama swallowed the offer to step in for her. After all, it was a good thing for a kid to have a strong sense of justice, and it wasn't like he was itching to fight anyway.
It wasn't that he disliked fighting. To say he hated it would be a lie, even if avoiding conflict altogether was always the easiest path.
But that was exactly the problem. For him, a true 'battle' hadn't happened in a very long time.
Every time he threw a punch nowadays, it couldn't even be called a fight anymore—it was just a tedious, repetitive motion.
There was no joy or fulfillment in it for Saitama. By now, he only threw a punch when it was absolutely necessary.
Fearing that moving Genos recklessly might cause some irreversible damage to his machinery, and knowing there were no other monsters left in the facility, the two decided to leave him behind for the moment.
With Carnage Kabuto leading the way, the three of them arrived at a massive, enclosed space constructed entirely of gleaming white metal.
The entire combat simulation lab was built from a specialized shock-absorbing alloy; Genus had clearly spared no expense building this place.
Carnage Kabuto unhurriedly led Alice and Saitama toward the center of the arena.
"Spacious, isn't it? This is the largest room in the entire facility. This lab is exactly where we measure whether someone's combat capability is actually worth a damn!"
Despite his monstrous, towering physique, Carnage Kabuto feigned polite hospitality as he introduced the room. Yet, the murderous intent swirling in the depths of his eyes had already utterly betrayed his impatient, bloodthirsty nature.
Sure enough, a split second later, the sheer eagerness in his voice practically boiled over. "Now then... let's begin!"
Before the final echo of his words could even fade, his massive frame—which easily equaled four Alices stacked on top of one another—instantly vanished from the spot.
The insectoid gene splicing had granted him a level of power that defied human comprehension.
Just as an ant could lift several times its own body weight, this seemingly lumbering beetle had a speed that shattered the sound barrier.
Before the thunderous roar of the sonic boom could even register in the ear, his silhouette was already bearing down on Alice. A fist the size of a giant iron fan tore through the air, whistling with lethal force as it smashed directly toward her.
However... the expected image of a direct impact never materialized. Alice, who should have been rooted to the spot, managed to narrowly evade the heavy blow.
Her blue-black hair trailed through the air like a ribbon of fine silk as she leapt high into the sky, having read the very first twitch of Carnage Kabuto's muscles before he even moved.
Faint blue currents of electricity crackled and surged around the barrel of the Sword of Light. As a railgun, the energy beam it fired also possessed supersonic velocity.
To dodge it, one had to break free from its line of sight before the trigger was pulled—but at this coordinates in time, Carnage Kabuto clearly didn't have that luxury.
BANG—!
The energy beam slammed violently against his arm, which was heavily plated in a brown carapace. The full, explosive might of the Super Electromagnetic Cannon erupted in an instant.
This strike was entirely different from her previous uncharged, casual shots.
Alice had already deduced that Carnage Kabuto's strength far exceeded a standard Demon-level threat; even without entering his Asura Mode, his defensive capabilities were a cut above the Beast King's.
An attack that would usually incapacitate the Beast King in a single hit was clearly going to fall short against him.
And reality proved Alice exactly right.
She had begun charging her weapon before she even jumped. Though this high-altitude blast failed to inflict any critical damage on Carnage Kabuto, it still left the brown carapace on his arm scorched black, as if it had been roasted by an open furnace.
"What, are you just scratching an itch for me?!"
Carnage Kabuto let out a harsh, mocking laugh, but the underlying fury bleeding through his voice gave him away—this was definitely more than a mere "scratch." At the very least, he had felt actual pain.
But Alice had no time to dwell on it.
Before his mockery had even finished leaving his mouth, his figure suddenly leapt to match her altitude.
A massive fist, carrying the devastating momentum of a literal cannonball, came crashing down toward the mid-air girl.
Alice immediately brought the Sword of Light—which was taller than her entire body—transversely across her chest, using it as a makeshift shield to block the trajectory of the fist.
In the next fraction of a second, the girl's figure was sent hurtling toward the ground like a kite with its string cut. Yet, she possessed a physical durability that defied human logic.
Without even needing to perform a complex maneuver to break her fall, she adjusted her posture mid-air and slammed her feet firmly onto the ground, her cannon barrel already locked back onto her target before she even landed.
But Carnage Kabuto's onslaught wasn't about to stop there.
While still suspended in mid-air, several pairs of thin, insect-like wings suddenly sprouted from his back.
With a violent flutter of his wings, Carnage Kabuto descended from the sky like a meteor, wrapping himself in a tremendous shockwave as he plummeted directly toward Alice's position.
"Light, heed my call!"
Without a single shred of hesitation, Alice pulled the trigger.
The Sword of Light, which she had kept constantly charging, unleashed a massive beam of brilliant blue radiance into the sky, far vaster and more blinding than any shot she had fired before.
--+--
T/N: If you want advance chapters, you can find it at [email protected]/AspenTL