The ground pulsed with a rhythm deeper than a heartbeat, a slow, resonant thrum that vibrated up through the soles of their boots and into the very marrow of their bones. The mist didn't just swirl now; it actively recoiled, parting like a curtain before the advancing presence, revealing glimpses of something vast and utterly alien moving through the pre-dawn gloom.
Kristoph, Zenon, and Elara remained frozen behind their meager cover, their breath held tight in their chests. What emerged from the valley wasn't a beast of flesh and blood, nor a creature of shadow or spirit. It was… stone. Living stone.
Imagine a statue carved by forgotten gods during a fit of abstract rage, then scaled up to the height of the ancient trees themselves and animated by an indifferent, geological timescale consciousness. Its form was vaguely humanoid, but blocky, asymmetrical, composed of great, interlocking slabs of grey, lichen-encrusted rock that shifted and ground against each other with its ponderous movements. It had no discernible face, only a massive, slab-like head that swiveled slowly, surveying the forest with two immense, deeply recessed sockets from which burned a cold, unwavering light the color of glacial ice. Its arms were colossal pillars of stone, ending not in hands, but in blunt, craggy protrusions capable of pulverizing granite. Each step it took caused the earth to tremble, the sound not of impact, but of immense weight settling, of continents shifting on a microscopic scale. This was an Earth Titan, one of the legendary primeval entities rumored to have shaped the world in the earliest days, long before the rise of mortals or even the oldest dragons – beings thought to exist only in the most fragmented, unreliable myths. And it was awake.
The Titan seemed less angry and more… disoriented. Like someone roused abruptly from an eons-long slumber, trying to make sense of a changed world. Its glacial blue eyes swept across the forest, taking in the trees, the mist, the sky slowly lightening in the east. It moved slowly, deliberately, its great stone feet crushing undergrowth and small boulders with utter indifference. Its attention didn't seem fixed on the campsite specifically, but rather on the general disturbance, the unfamiliar energies, the simple wrongness of being awake when it should be sleeping, contained.
Elara was practically vibrating with a mixture of terror and scholarly awe. "An Earth Titan…" she whispered, her voice trembling. "Actual, living myth. The legends claimed they were sealed away by the First Gods after the Shaping Wars, deemed too powerful, too primordial for the ages that followed. The wards in the valley… they must have been Titan-seals."
"Seals that Saitama just erased with a hand-rub," Zenon added drily, though his knuckles were white where he gripped his knives. "Great."
The Titan took another ponderous step, bringing it closer to the clearing, its shadow falling over the campsite like a moving mountain. The sheer scale of it was overwhelming. Its head brushed against the lower branches of the canopy, seventy, maybe eighty feet above the ground.
Inside the hollow, the tremors finally jolted Gregor fully awake. He scrambled upright, staring out at the approaching stone colossus, his face draining of all color. Lyra and Renn woke with gasps of terror, clinging to each other, staring speechless at the impossible figure looming over them. This wasn't a monster they could fight, or even comprehend; this was a geological event given ambulatory form.
And Saitama?
He stirred. Not because of the earth tremors, or the overwhelming presence of the Titan, or the palpable fear radiating from his companions. He stirred because the fire, nearly dead now, had finally sputtered out, and the pre-dawn chill was making him uncomfortable.
He opened his eyes, blinked, and saw the lower leg and foot of the Earth Titan standing just outside the root hollow, maybe twenty feet away. The foot alone was the size of a small hut, composed of massive, grinding slabs of ancient rock.
Saitama frowned. "Huh. Big fella. Nice rocks." He then noticed the fire was out. "Aw, man! The fire went out! I knew we needed more wood." He looked back at Gregor, Lyra, and Renn, who were frozen in terror, staring at the Titan. "Hey, you guys gonna get the fire going again? It's kinda chilly."
Gregor couldn't speak. He could only point a trembling finger towards the colossal stone leg just outside their shelter.
Saitama followed his gaze. "Yeah? Big foot. So? Probably tracks mud everywhere." He yawned again. "Look, can we deal with the giant rock guy after breakfast? I'm really not a morning person. Especially without coffee. Or, you know. Food."
The Earth Titan, meanwhile, seemed to finally notice the small pocket of concentrated life energy huddled within the root hollow. Its massive head swiveled downwards with agonizing slowness, the sound like glaciers grinding together. Its cold, blue eyes fixed on the hollow's entrance. It registered the flickering life signs, the lingering Labyrinthine taint on the escapees, the dormant-but-potent anomaly of Saitama. To its ancient consciousness, these were all… irregularities. Disturbances in the quiet stasis it had known for millennia. Intrusions upon its domain, now unsealed.
It raised one of its colossal stone arms, the movement slow, deliberate, inevitable. The arm ascended, scraping against tree trunks, dislodging bark and branches, reaching a height far above the hollow. Its intent seemed clear: to simply bring its massive, craggy fist down and pulverize the hollow, the intruders, the irregularities, erasing them from its newly awakened reality with geological indifference.
"Hey!" Saitama shouted, annoyance finally cutting through his sleepiness. He stood up and walked towards the entrance of the hollow, planting his hands on his hips and looking up at the descending stone fist, which was easily large enough to crush the entire cluster of trees they sheltered beneath. "Knock it off! People are trying to sleep here! And we haven't had breakfast yet! Go find your own clearing!"
The Titan, unsurprisingly, did not respond or alter its course. The colossal stone fist continued its slow, inexorable descent.
Gregor closed his eyes, bracing for annihilation. Lyra buried her face against Renn, unable to watch. Renn just stared upwards, paralyzed by terror.
Saitama sighed dramatically. "Fine. You wanna do this the hard way?"
He didn't jump up to meet the fist. He didn't brace for impact. He just cocked his right arm back slightly, clenched his fist, and punched upwards. Straight up. Towards the descending mountain of rock.
It wasn't his strongest punch. It wasn't even a particularly serious punch by his standards. It was more of an 'annoyed swat' delivered with his fist. There was no visible energy, no shockwave emanating from his body beforehand. Just the movement – arm back, fist forward.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The sound wasn't a crack, or a crunch, or a thud. It was an explosion. A detonation that dwarfed thunder, that shook the entire Deepwood to its roots, that echoed off distant mountains miles away.
Saitama's fist connected with the underside of the descending stone limb.
For a microsecond, the inconceivable mass and inertia of the Titan's arm met the equally inconceivable, focused kinetic energy of Saitama's casual punch.
And then, the Titan's arm ceased to exist.
Not shattered. Not broken. Obliterated.
From the point of impact upwards, the entire colossal limb – hundreds of tons of ancient, magically resonant stone – instantly disintegrated into fine powder and rapidly expanding superheated gas. The explosion ripped upwards, vaporizing stone, flash-boiling ancient moisture within the rock, creating a shockwave that slammed into the Titan's main body and tore through the forest canopy above.
The Earth Titan, a being that had likely never known true injury in its entire multi-millennial existence, staggered back, its body shuddering violently. The blue light in its remaining eye socket flickered wildly, conveying not pain, perhaps, but profound, shattering shock and system failure. The explosion had blown clean through its "shoulder," leaving a gaping, cauterized hole where its arm had been, destabilizing its massive form.
It tilted, off-balance, its immense weight too much for its remaining leg to compensate for given the sudden, catastrophic loss of mass and stability. With a groan that sounded like the planet itself cracking open, the Earth Titan began to fall. Slowly, at first, then with gathering momentum, it toppled sideways, away from the hollow, crashing down into the ancient forest with an impact that registered as a minor earthquake across the entire region. Trees hundreds of feet tall snapped like twigs beneath its falling mass. The ground bucked and roared. A colossal cloud of dust, debris, and pulverized foliage erupted into the rapidly brightening dawn sky.
Then, silence. A ringing, shocked silence, broken only by the distant echo of the impact and the soft settling of dust.
Saitama lowered his fist, blowing gently on his knuckles. A wisp of steam, almost invisible, curled away. "Geez," he muttered. "Always gotta make a big production out of it. Couldn't just leave quietly." He looked at the massive cloud of dust rising where the Titan had fallen. "Hope he didn't land on anything important. Like a donut shop."
He turned back to Gregor, Lyra, and Renn. They were staring at him, faces utterly blank, dusted with fine stone powder, eyes wide with a terror that had transcended fear and entered the realm of pure, system-breaking awe. Gregor's sword lay forgotten at his feet.
"Okay," Saitama said, clapping the dust off his hands. "Giant rock guy taken care of. Now can we talk about breakfast?"
Hidden behind their now dust-covered oak, Kristoph, Zenon, and Elara slowly picked themselves up from where the earth-shattering impact of the Titan's fall had thrown them. Dust rained down around them. Trees lay broken nearby. The entire landscape felt fundamentally altered.
Kristoph stared, utterly speechless, towards the rising dust cloud where the eighty-foot stone Titan had just fallen, defeated by a single, upward punch from the man who was annoyed about missing breakfast. The sheer, casual, apocalyptic scale of the power was beyond anything he could have imagined, beyond any myth or legend he had ever heard.
Zenon mechanically brushed dust from his tunic, his face pale, his eyes darting towards Saitama, then towards the fallen Titan, then back again, as if unable to reconcile the two realities.
Elara was leaning heavily on her staff, trembling visibly. "The energy release…" she whispered, her voice hoarse. "Pure kinetic force… the scale… it didn't just break the stone; it annihilated it at a molecular level… caused a localized fusion reaction within the rock… The power… it's not planetary… it's… it's cosmic."
Kristoph finally found his voice, though it sounded distant, thin. "Report status."
"No immediate threats detected," Zenon managed, his voice strained. "The Titan… is inert. Destroyed or disabled. Saitama appears unharmed. Escapees… terrified, but physically intact."
"The consequences of this…" Kristoph murmured, looking at the devastation. "Unleashing a Titan, then destroying it… the energy backlash alone will be detected halfway across the continent. This changes everything."
He knew, with chilling certainty, that their mission of quiet observation was over. The fall of a Titan was not something that could be ignored or covered up. Forces far greater than Shadow Walkers or defectors would now turn their eyes towards the Valgothian Deepwood, drawn by the echoes of impossible power. And at the center of it all was a bald man in a cheap yellow suit, wondering about pancakes.