**Z-Valhalla. Apartment Unit 202.**
**Friday. 8:30 PM. Peak Traffic Time.**
King sits on the floor. His fingers blur across the controller. He is playing *World of Warfare: Ultimate Edition*. He is one match away from reaching Grandmaster Rank.
His heart—The Engine—beats a rhythm of concentrated anxiety.
*DOOM-DOOM-DOOM.*
On the screen, his character, "XX_PunyGodSlayer_XX," winds up the final attack against a Raid Boss.
The boss has 1% HP.
Suddenly.
The character freezes mid-animation.
He runs in place.
A dreaded symbol appears in the center of the screen.
A spinning white circle.
**buffering...**
King's eyes widen. "No," he whispers. "Not now. Please. Not now."
In the kitchen, Saitama is watching a streaming video titled *'Top 10 Cabbage Recipes You Need to Try.'*
The video stops.
The spinning circle appears.
"Huh?" Saitama taps the screen of his tablet. "Hey, Chef lady. Why did you stop chopping?"
Genos stands in the corner, recharging.
His amber eyes flash red.
"Alert. Master, local network connectivity has dropped to 0 kbps. I have lost contact with the Cloud."
Saitama looks at the router on the shelf. The lights are not blinking green. They are solid red.
"The red light of death," Saitama sighs. "Genos, did you unplug it to toast bread again?"
"Negative, Master. I am hard-wired into the grid. The disruption is external. Massive electromagnetic interference originating from Sector 7: The Divine Forge."
King drops the controller.
The screen fades to black. **CONNECTION LOST.**
"My rank," King whimpers, curling into a ball. "I... I de-ranked to Platinum."
Saitama stands up. The tablet cracks slightly in his grip.
"I didn't see the secret ingredient," he says. His voice is devoid of emotion, yet heavy with impending violence.
"We pay for the Fiber Optic package. This is unacceptable."
***
**Sector 7. The Forge of Hephaestus.**
The Industrial District is a nightmare of gears and magma. Smokestacks pierce the sky, venting celestial soot.
Usually, it produces enchanted swords and architectural steel.
Tonight, it produces a hum so loud it shatters windows three miles away.
In the center of the complex stands **Hephaestus**.
The Smith God is covered in grease and burns. One of his eyes is replaced with a steampunk monocle. He wears a welding mask shaped like a Greek tragedy mask.
"Flesh is weak!" Hephaestus bellows, tightening a bolt the size of a car with a wrench made of Uru metal. "Zeus failed. Thor failed. Even the Void failed. Biological limitations!"
He looks up at his creation.
Standing in the cooling lava pool is a machine.
It is 100 meters tall.
It is built from the scraps of the Metal Knight drones, fused with the remnants of Typhon's armor, melted down divine gold, and Beelzebub's leftover vibration tech.
**Talos: Mark II (Divinity OS).**
"This," Hephaestus laughs maniacally, pulling a massive lever. "This is the God that does not bleed!"
*KA-THOOM.*
The machine wakes.
Its eyes are searchlights.
It inhales—not air, but electricity.
The city lights of Z-Valhalla flicker and die. The entire power grid is sucked into the machine's chest core.
**Z-City S-Class Outpost.**
**Metal Knight (Bofoi)** watches his monitors go black.
"Someone is accessing the grid," Bofoi mutters from his bunker. "High-level access. Divine coding language."
He activates his reserve units.
"Deployment authorized. Target: The Forge."
***
**The Confrontation.**
Fifty Battle Drones descend on the Forge.
Missiles trail smoke. Lasers cut the night.
They barrage the giant machine, Talos.
*PING. PING. PING.*
The missiles hit Talos's armor.
They do nothing. The armor absorbs the kinetic energy and converts it into heat.
Talos raises a hand.
**Directive: Smelt.**
A beam of molten heat shoots from its palm.
It sweeps the sky.
The Metal Knight drones turn to liquid instantly. They rain down as molten slag, splattering on the factory floor.
"Beautiful!" Hephaestus cheers. "Superior engineering!"
**"INTRUDER ALERT."**
Talos turns its massive head.
Genos lands on a catwalk.
He looks different. He has bolted a wifi-extender dish to his shoulder.
"Target identified," Genos announces. "Origin of signal disruption. Surrender immediately and reboot your router."
"A cyborg?" Hephaestus sneers from his control platform. "You are merely a rough draft. Talos is the final edition!"
Talos attacks.
It moves impossibly fast for its size.
It doesn't punch; it **forges**.
Its fist is a hydraulic press heated to 5,000 degrees.
*WHAM.*
It strikes the catwalk.
Genos dodges, blasting the machine with his Incineration Cannon.
The green fire washes over Talos.
Talos opens its mouth.
*WOOSH.*
It eats the fire.
**[ENERGY ASSIMILATED. BATTERY AT 120%.]**
"It absorbs energy attacks?" Genos analyzes rapidly. "Physical attacks are ineffective due to Heat-Aura. It is a walking thermodynamics violation."
Talos backhands Genos.
The blow carries the weight of a mountain.
*CLANG.*
Genos flies backward, crashing through three silos and a water tower. He lands in a heap of scrap metal.
"Stabilizers... damaged. WiFi signal... lost."
***
**The Consumer.**
Hephaestus dances a jig. "Unstoppable! Physics bent to the will of the Forge! I shall rebuild Olympus in steel!"
*Creak.*
The main blast doors of the factory open.
They don't open electronically (the power is out).
They are forced open by hand.
The metal screeches, bends, and snaps off the hinges.
Saitama walks in.
He holds his dead tablet in one hand. He holds the router in the other.
He looks at the giant robot sucking up all the electricity.
He looks at the frantic Hephaestus.
"Hey," Saitama calls out.
Hephaestus stops dancing. "Who... the Bald One?"
Saitama holds up the router.
"Is this yours?"
"No," Hephaestus scoffs. "That is primitive mortal tech."
"Then why," Saitama asks, pointing at the giant robot, "is your big toaster eating my internet?"
"It is absorbing the electromagnetic spectrum to fuel its divinity!" Hephaestus declares proudly. "Talos requires total consumption!"
Saitama sighs.
"So it's greedy. Just like my landlord."
He walks forward.
Talos detects the threat.
**[ANOMALY DETECTED.]**
**[COUNTERMEASURE: OBLITERATE.]**
Talos transforms its arm into a pile driver.
It creates a localized earthquake as it charges the strike.
**Move: The Hammer of Creation.**
It strikes Saitama.
Direct hit.
The floor beneath Saitama vaporizes, creating a hole deep into the earth's crust. Magma sprays up. The factory shakes apart.
Hephaestus grins. "Nothing survives the forge! He is—"
**Clank.**
The sound of metal hitting something hard.
The dust clears.
Saitama is standing there.
Talos's massive fist is pressed against the top of Saitama's bald head.
Saitama hasn't moved an inch.
He looks up at the fist blocking his view.
"You messed up my collar," Saitama says.
Talos applies more pressure. Hydraulics whine. The god-steel groans.
Saitama's neck remains rigid.
"Genos," Saitama calls out to the scrap pile. "Is hitting it hard a valid repair method?"
Genos drags himself upright, sparks flying from his neck. "Percussive maintenance is a recognized archaic technique, Master!"
"Cool."
Saitama grabs Talos's wrist.
His fingers dent the divine alloy like it's wet clay.
**"ERROR,"** Talos speaks. **"STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY FAILING."**
Saitama pulls the arm down. The 100-meter robot is jerked off balance. It stumbles forward.
Saitama winds up his other fist.
"Serious Move."
Hephaestus screams. "Wait! That machine cost 40 trillion yen to build!"
Saitama pauses.
"40 trillion?"
He looks at the machine.
For a second, he hesitates. That is a lot of money. Maybe he shouldn't break it?
But then he remembers the video. The Cabbage Recipe. He will never know step 4.
"It costs me zero yen," Saitama says.
**Serious Series: Serious Chop.**
*(Variant: Technical Support).*
He chops the robot.
Right down the middle.
From head to toe.
The speed of the chop generates a vacuum blade that dissects the robot cleanly in half.
The circuits sever. The reactor splits. The divinity leaks out.
*CRASH.*
The two halves of Talos fall to the left and right.
Explosions ripple through the wreckage.
Saitama stands holding the router.
"Did that fix it?"
He looks at the router. The lights flicker.
Red.
Red.
...Green.
"Oh," Saitama smiles. "It worked."
He turns to Hephaestus.
The Smith God is on his knees, staring at the perfectly bisected Magnum Opus.
"My math..." Hephaestus whispers. "My calculations... Where was the flaw?"
Saitama walks up to him. He hands Hephaestus the router.
"Here."
Hephaestus blinks. "What?"
"Since you're good with machines," Saitama says. "Install a signal booster in the apartment. The bedroom has dead zones."
Saitama turns and walks away, grabbing Genos by the ankle and dragging him home.
"Let's go, Genos. If we hurry, we can catch the end of the stream."
***
**The Aftermath.**
Hephaestus stands in the burning ruins of his forge.
He holds the cheap, plastic router.
He looks at the destruction caused by a single hand-chop.
"Signal booster..." Hephaestus mutters.
His eye—the monocle—zooms in on the router.
He sees the terrible, inefficient design of human technology.
"I can improve this," Hephaestus whispers. The obsession takes hold again. Not to destroy. But to *optimize*.
"I will build the greatest router in existence. It will stream in 84k resolution across dimension barriers!"
He runs to his workbench.
"Metal Knight! Hand me the screwdriver!"
A damaged Metal Knight drone, its AI glitching, rolls over and hands him a tool.
**Z-City Apartment.**
King stares at the black screen.
Suddenly.
**CONNECTION RESTORED.**
The game reloads.
King is standing in the lobby.
**Rank: Platinum IV.**
King screams. *DOOM-DOOM-DOOM.*
"It reconnected! But the season ended five minutes ago!"
Saitama walks in, holding a bowl of popcorn.
The recipe video resumes on his tablet.
"Ah," Saitama nods, watching. "You add vinegar. I knew it."
He sits down next to the weeping King.
"Good game?"
King stares at the ceiling.
"Saitama."
"Yeah?"
"I hate this world."