Chapter 34: The winner of the race
The vast minefield was a chaotic battleground of detonating earth and flying debris.
At the absolute front of the pack, Shoto Todoroki and Katsuki Bakugo were locked in a vicious, unyielding struggle for first place. They traded blows and blocked each other's paths, entirely consumed by their personal rivalry. Several paces behind them, Sakazuki navigated the treacherous dirt with calculated, mechanical precision. The relentless physical exertion was beginning to show; heavy beads of sweat trailed down his stern face as he carefully avoided the buried pink triggers.
Far behind the vanguard, at the very edge of the minefield, Izuku Midoriya was falling dangerously behind.
He knew running normally would never be enough to close the gap. Gripping the heavy, jagged piece of metal armor he had ripped from the ruined robot, Midoriya dropped to his knees. He began digging frantically into the loose dirt with his bare hands, intentionally unearthing the buried explosives and piling them together in a tight, concentrated crater.
Kyoka Jirou sprinted past him, carefully weaving around a triggered blast. She glanced at the green-haired boy on her right, her eyes widening in sheer bewilderment as she watched him hoarding the explosives.
What is he doing? Jirou thought to herself, not breaking her stride. She assumed the immense pressure of the race had finally broken his mind.
Midoriya did not care how absurd he looked. Once the pile was large enough, he gripped the edges of the heavy steel plate, took a deep breath, and leaped directly onto the mountain of mines.
A colossal, blinding column of pink dust and kinetic force erupted into the sky.
The shockwave rattled the entire stadium. Above the billowing pink cloud, Midoriya was launched through the air like a human cannonball. He soared over the entire minefield with breathtaking speed, completely bypassing the struggling students below. The soaring shadow eclipsed Todoroki and Bakugo, snatching the lead from them in a single, spectacular gambit.
The two rivals immediately stopped fighting each other. Outraged by the sudden usurpation, they turned their fierce competitive drive entirely toward the boy in the sky. Bakugo unleashed a furious barrage of explosions from his palms, rocketing through the air after him, while Todoroki rapidly froze the ground, gliding forward with terrifying velocity.
Midoriya began to lose altitude as he neared the edge of the minefield, directly in front of the dark, cavernous tunnel that led back into the main stadium. Having no safe way to break his fall, he slammed the front edge of his metal plate into the dirt, intentionally triggering one last mine. The kinetic blast threw him completely off balance, but he aggressively tucked his shoulder, rolling violently across the harsh dirt before instantly springing back to his feet.
He sprinted desperately into the shadows of the final tunnel. Bakugo and Todoroki were right on his heels, their footsteps echoing loudly against the concrete walls. The three boys charged toward the bright, rectangular light of the stadium exit at the far end of the corridor, the finish line merely seconds away.
Far behind their frantic sprint, the pacing of the world seemed to suddenly halt.
Sakazuki arrived at the entrance of the dark tunnel. The top three were already nearing the distant exit, their silhouettes illuminated by the stadium light.
He did not run after them. He stopped completely.
Standing tall at the threshold of the shadows, Sakazuki closed his eyes. He forcefully tuned out the echoing footsteps of his rivals. He blocked out Present Mic's booming voice over the distant speakers. He silenced the roaring anticipation of the tens of thousands of spectators waiting in the sunlight.
In that absolute stillness, a sharp, unyielding reel of memories sliced through his mind.
He saw the worn, heavily calculated debt ledgers scattered across their scratched kitchen table. He saw the weary, agonizingly strained smile his mother wore every morning, desperately trying to hide the physical toll of her failing health. He heard the cheerful, relieving voice of nurse Akane from the night before, confirming that the exorbitantly priced medication had finally arrived.
For Bakugo, Todoroki, and Midoriya, this festival was a stage to prove their strength. It was an arena to shout their heroic ambitions to the world.
For Sakazuki, this was not a game. It was a matter of absolute, uncompromising survival. First place meant financial security. It meant medicine. It meant his mother's life.
Sakazuki opened his eyes.
The calm, disciplined demeanor of a military soldier vanished entirely, replaced by the terrifying, predatory glare of a cornered beast. His internal body temperature spiked to an unprecedented, catastrophic level. The physical manifestation of his desperation was horrifying; droplets of glowing, liquid magma began to seep from his forehead in place of human sweat. The molten tears of heat dripped down his face, hitting the concrete floor and vaporizing instantly with a lethal, hissing spit.
Deep inside the tunnel, just paces away from the exit, the vanguard trio froze.
Despite the frantic adrenaline pumping through their veins, a sudden, paralyzing chill seized their spines. The ambient temperature in the corridor had just skyrocketed, yet their primal, evolutionary survival instincts screamed at them with a singular, deafening warning: Death is coming.
At the tunnel's entrance, Sakazuki bent his knees slightly, focusing a volatile, pressurized core of volcanic energy entirely into the soles of his bare feet.
With an earth-shattering thermal detonation, he vanished.
He did not run. He became a blinding crimson flash. Sakazuki tore through the dark tunnel in a perfectly straight line, a living projectile of superheated magma moving at a speed that shattered the sound barrier. The kinetic force of his dash sucked the oxygen from the air, turning the corridor into a vacuum of searing heat.
Near the exit, the instinct to live forcefully overrode the desire to win.
In a fraction of a second, the top three abandoned the center path to save their own lives. Midoriya threw his body violently to the right, slamming his shoulder hard against the concrete wall. Bakugo fired a desperate, reversed explosion from both palms, propelling himself upward and pinning his back completely flat against the ceiling. Todoroki threw his right hand down, instantly erecting a thick, curved dome of reinforced glacier around himself like a bomb shelter.
They cleared the path just in time.
Sakazuki blew past them like a fiery hurricane, not sparing them a single glance. The terrifying shockwave of his passage cracked Todoroki's ice, singed Midoriya's uniform, and violently ruffled Bakugo's hair.
The magma dreadnought burst out of the tunnel and into the blinding sunlight of the stadium.
He lunged toward the finish line. The sheer, radiating ambient heat emitting from his dense frame was so overwhelming that the white ceremonial ribbon stretched across the track spontaneously ignited. It vaporized into a cloud of fine gray ash before his broad chest even touched it.
Having crossed the threshold, Sakazuki fiercely dug his bare feet into the pristine stadium grass. He skidded forward like the heavy brakes of a derailed freight train, his immense weight and heat carving two deep, smoldering trenches of burning magma into the lush green turf.
He came to a complete, towering halt. Steam rolled off his broad, scorched shoulders as he stood firmly in the center of the arena, panting quietly.
Then, the world stopped.
No one cheered. Present Mic did not utter a single syllable into his microphone. The pro heroes in the stands sat entirely frozen in their seats. For two agonizingly long seconds, an absolute, deathly silence smothered the colossal stadium. Tens of thousands of people could only stare in breathtaking, speechless shock at the crimson monster who had just stolen the sky.