The stone steps seemed to multiply with every landing.
Saitama stopped halfway up, hands on his thighs, and looked up at the mountain peaks dissolving into low cloud. He couldn't see the top from here—just more steps, more old pine, more slope. He straightened up and pounded his thighs like he was trying to beat the soreness out of them.
"So the place you've been talking about, Jordan," he said, breathing harder than he'd admit, "is Mr. Bang's dojo."
"Yes." Jordan stood at the landing above him, hands in his pockets, not particularly winded. He'd made this kind of climb in worse conditions, in worlds with worse gravity, and he wasn't going to say that out loud. He looked out over the treeline at the view spreading below them—the kind of scenery that only appeared when you'd actually earned the altitude. "If we're talking about refined combat technique, who in this world comes close to him?"
Saitama considered this seriously. "Uh. I don't really know much about martial arts specifically. It's basically the complicated and cool kind of fighting, right?"
Jordan turned to look at him. "Is it okay if you think of it that way?"
...I suppose it's not wrong.
Behind both of them, Genos climbed at a steady mechanical pace that hadn't varied since the base of the mountain. He carried a bag in one hand—a presentation box of luxury tea, gift-wrapped and ribboned, heavy enough that any normal person would have switched arms twice by now. His golden eyes tracked the dojo buildings coming into view above the treeline, faint shapes against the overcast sky.
He'd already assembled a profile on their destination through the conversation. "Silver Fang" Bang. S-Class hero. Flowing Water Rock Smashing Fist grandmaster.
At his current level, Genos's primary combat output was his incineration cannons—different power levels, different ranges, the origin of the nickname that certain colleagues found funnier than he did. CQC Proficiency was a different question. He knew what the answer looked like when he checked it honestly.
When Jordan had suggested this visit, framing it as something that might improve Genos's CQC Proficiency, Genos had found himself not resistant to the idea. He'd even found, somewhere in the analysis, something that might have been anticipation.
The three of them crested the last rise and walked to the entrance of the Flowing Water Dojo.
The front door was closed.
Jordan stepped forward and knocked—three measured taps, the kind that didn't pretend to be casual. "Is anyone home? We'd appreciate you opening up."
Footsteps from inside. A pause. The door creaked open wide enough for one eye and a prominent chin, attached to a broad-shouldered man with the expression of someone who'd been interrupted mid-important thing.
"Who are you?" The man's gaze swept the three of them with visible impatience. "Master Bang is conducting a lesson. I wouldn't have answered the door for anyone if it weren't my duty rotation today. Oh, and you—"
Jordan offered his most politely neutral expression, operating on the assumption that a man this age would recognize him from news coverage.
The man's eyes landed on the ribbon-tied gift box in Genos's hand. His expression completed a rapid journey from irritation to calculation to something noticeably warmer.
"You've come to become disciples, haven't you?" He straightened up with new authority, pushing the door open further. "I am Master Bang's eldest disciple. They call me Mukuro." He squared his shoulders like this was a title worth squaring shoulders for. "You can hand over the gifts and the enrollment fees directly to me. I'll make sure they reach the right place."
The right place being wherever Mukuro keeps his personal savings, presumably.
Jordan studied him for one second. Then he stepped forward.
"We haven't come to enroll." His tone was pleasant. "We're friends of Master Bang's. We came to visit."
Mukuro moved to block the doorway. His arm came up—
An invisible pressure settled over him like a second skin. His arm stopped. His feet relocated themselves three steps back with no input from his legs. He went, because he didn't have a choice, his whole body responding to something that wasn't his own muscle.
Telekinesis. Low-output, surgical. Just enough to relocate one overeager disciple.
Mukuro stared at the tall man walking past him. I've seen that face somewhere. The news. Yes—the news, several times, that one.
He opened his mouth.
Jordan glanced back. A quick, gentle gesture—and the ability sealed his mouth shut as neatly as if someone had pressed the mute button.
"Since Master Bang is in the middle of a lesson, we'll wait in the side hall." Jordan beckoned over his shoulder. "Come on. Let's go in and rest for a while."
"Okay..." Saitama followed, somewhat deflated by the stairs.
"Yes!" Genos's response came with the full energy of someone who had not found the climb deflating at all.
The three of them walked inside like they owned the place. Mukuro stood in the doorway behind them, restrained and muted, watching them go with the expression of a man who wanted very much to cry about this but couldn't even do that.
All I was going to do, he thought at their retreating backs, was collect fees on the master's behalf.
The training ground courtyard was alive with sound.
Disciples moved through forms in the open air, bodies striking stances, feet finding the rhythm of practice. From the indoor hall came the sharper percussion of actual sparring—impact sounds with weight behind them, the kind that meant real contact.
In the side hall, Jordan set water on to boil.
He settled into stillness while he waited—the specific kind of stillness that wasn't rest, that was awareness with the noise turned down. His Mind Network spread across the dojo grounds, light as spider-silk, picking up everything within range.
"...Next. Garou."
Bang's voice, calm and measured, from the indoor hall. Jordan's right ear shifted almost imperceptibly.
Garou. Not the monster yet, at this point in the timeline. But the presence. The potential that Bang had been watching, nurturing, with the particular attention a grandmaster reserved for someone worth the investment.
Interesting.
He pressed his palm down over the flame beneath the kettle. Heat surged through it—focused, directed—and the half-cold water came to a full boil in seconds rather than minutes.
Jordan stood and looked at the other two. "Water's ready. Help yourselves to tea and rest a while." He adjusted his cuffs. "I'm going to check on what they're doing in there."
Saitama waved a hand. "Sure, go ahead~"
Genos straightened immediately. "Please rest assured, Jordan-san. I will take excellent care of the teacher."
From the corner of his eye, Jordan saw Saitama's expression at being described as something that required caretaking. He chose not to comment on it.
He raised one hand, palm out.
The air in the side hall rippled—a gentle distortion, like heat shimmer over summer asphalt, but cooler and deeper. The fabric of normal space parted around him without resistance, the way a door opens for someone who already has the key.
He stepped through.
"He... he disappeared..."
Genos had been reaching for the teapot.
His hand hung in midair. His optical sensors swept the space where Jordan had been standing three seconds ago, running at full gain, finding nothing. His internal energy detectors came online automatically—scanning, grid by grid, the full footprint of the mountain.
Nothing. No biological signature. No thermal trace. No standing wave in any frequency he could detect.
"Hey, don't make a fuss." Saitama took the teapot himself and started pouring. "Jordan already showed us something like teleportation, remember? This is the same kind of thing. Just without the blue light this time."
"That's not entirely accurate, Saitama-sensei."
Genos's eyes continued their sweep—wall to wall, floor to ceiling, extending outward through the mountain's stone in every direction.
"When Jordan-san used Teleportation before, I could still detect his vital energy while he moved. His presence reads like a star in my biocomputer receiver—that bright, that unmistakable." His detectors returned null across every band. "Right now, I cannot find any trace of him at all. Not a residual heat signature. Not a displaced air current. Nothing."
The scan returned nothing a third time. Then a fourth.
Genos lowered his hand slowly. He stared at the empty space for a long moment—the space that had, seconds ago, contained the largest life energy signature he could currently detect.
"Indeed." He exhaled through his systems. "Jordan-san's strength, like my teacher's, continues to exist beyond my current capacity to measure."
He looked at Saitama-sensei. Then back at the empty air.
"Saitama-sensei." He poured himself tea with steady hands. "Please have some."
The imaginary space had no sky—or rather, it had something in the position of sky, the same dark red that defined the upper limit of this void. Below that: silence. A dimension that overlapped with the One-Punch Man world like a second sheet of paper laid over the first, separated by a gap that no physical force could cross.
Except for Jordan, who crossed it in a single step.
The ground beneath his feet was pixelated. Mountains, plains, the full geography of the world below—all rendered in color blocks roughly one meter on each side, every terrain feature approximated in this initial-state rendering that looked like someone had generated the world seed and forgotten to install the texture packs. Minecraft, before the resource packs loaded.
Jordan turned slowly, orienting himself.
He didn't lose contact with the real world from here. That was one of the things he'd confirmed already: the imaginary space wasn't isolation. It was a different angle on the same information. Every coordinate he'd ever stood in—every street corner, rooftop, mountainside, warehouse floor, foreign city, other-world location—existed in his awareness simultaneously, a complete map that expanded every time he went somewhere new.
He looked in the direction of the indoor sparring hall, three dimensions removed from where he stood.
He could be there in one step, if he chose it.
He could be anywhere he'd ever been in one step. The imaginary space didn't have distance in the way real space did—it had relationship, and his relationship to every place he'd marked was the same: immediate, accessible, waiting.