The darkness was absolute now, a thick, tangible presence that pressed in from all sides, broken only by the faint starlight filtering through the highest, thinnest parts of the canopy far above. The Valgothian Deepwood at night was a different entity entirely. The familiar shapes of trees dissolved into monolithic, featureless columns. The ground became a treacherous landscape of unseen roots and sudden dips. Every sound was magnified, distorted – the sigh of the wind through unseen leaves sounded like a drawn-out whisper, the snap of a distant twig like a cracking bone.
For Gregor, Lyra, and Renn, the night was a suffocating blanket woven with exhaustion and fear. Their steps were heavy, stumbling, guided more by proximity to each other and the faint outline of Saitama ahead than by any clear sight of the path. Gregor, despite his fatigue, forced himself to stay alert, his sword held low, his head constantly turning, trying to pierce the oppressive gloom. Every rustle, every shadow seemed to pulse with potential menace. His earlier bravado had eroded into grim, weary vigilance.
Lyra shivered, pulling her thin, tattered tunic tighter around herself, though the chill was as much from fear as the night air. She kept glancing nervously into the impenetrable darkness flanking their path. She imagined eyes watching them, cold and hungry, from just beyond the edge of perception. Were the Shadow Stalkers truly gone? Had Saitama's impossible stomp truly annihilated them, or just dispersed them? Did other, worse things stir in this primordial darkness?
Renn was jumpier still, starting violently at every nocturnal noise. He kept imagining he heard whispers carried on the wind, faint and indistinct, sounding almost like voices from the Labyrinth, voices of the dead, or the chilling, emotionless tones of the Shadow Walkers. He shook his head repeatedly, trying to dismiss it as exhaustion playing tricks on his mind, but the feeling persisted, a cold dread coiling in his stomach.
Saitama, however, seemed less concerned with existential dread and more with practical matters. He yawned, a wide, audible gesture that sounded unnaturally loud in the stillness.
"Man, I'm getting sleepy," he announced. "All this walking and no food makes you tired. Can we stop now? Find a nice flat rock? Maybe build a fire? Toast some marshmallows?"
Gregor almost stumbled. "Stop? Saitama, we can't stop! Not here! Night is when the worst things in this forest hunt. We need to keep moving, find somewhere defensible, or at least put more distance between us and the Labyrinth!"
"But walking in the dark is boring," Saitama countered, his tone bordering on petulant. "You can't see anything interesting. And you might trip. Tripping is annoying." He paused. "Also, still no snacks."
"Survival is slightly more important than snacks right now!" Gregor hissed, frustration lending his voice a sharp edge despite his exhaustion.
"Hmm," Saitama considered this. "Debatable."
Suddenly, Renn gasped, stumbling to a halt. He clutched his head, his eyes wide with confusion and fear, staring intently into a particularly dark patch of woods off to their left. "Mama? Is… is that you?"
Lyra grabbed his arm. "Renn? What are you talking about? There's nothing there!"
"But I heard her!" Renn insisted, his voice trembling. "She… she called my name. Said she was waiting…" He took a tentative step towards the darkness, his expression torn between disbelief and a desperate longing.
"Renn, stop!" Gregor barked, pulling him back forcefully. "It's the forest! It plays tricks! Your mind is tired!"
But then Lyra stiffened, her head snapping towards the right side of the path. A different voice, this one sounding like her younger brother who had been taken by the Shadow Walkers months ago, seemed to whisper from the shadows. "Lyra… help me… it's so cold…" Tears sprang to her eyes. "Fen? Is that you? Where are you?"
"It's not real!" Gregor shouted, shaking Renn, trying to get Lyra's attention. "It's an illusion! Something is messing with us!" He looked around wildly, his sword held defensively, trying to pinpoint the source of the insidious whispers. The air felt wrong, thick with a subtle psychic pressure that crawled under his skin, amplifying his own exhaustion and fear.
Saitama watched this display with a slight frown. "Huh? You guys hearing stuff? All I hear is crickets. Or maybe those are angry beetles. Hard to tell in the dark." He sniffed the air again. "And maybe… ozone? Still? Weird."
He wasn't hearing the illusory voices. The psychic tendrils attempting to prey on fear and memory seemed to slide right off his remarkably uncomplicated consciousness, finding no purchase, no resonant frequency of trauma or longing to exploit. He was, perhaps, too fundamentally grounded in the mundane realities of grocery sales and aching muscles to be susceptible to such ethereal manipulation.
However, the source of the illusions was now becoming bolder. Seeing the distress and confusion among the escapees, shimmering, almost invisible forms began to coalesce more clearly in the darkness around them. They weren't solid like the Stalkers, nor ethereal like the Whisperwillow. They looked like heat haze given faint, shifting shapes, vaguely humanoid but distorted, their forms flickering and unstable. Within these shimmering outlines, vague images sometimes flickered – faces from memory, objects of desire or fear – tailored to the minds they were probing. Phantasm Weavers. Psychic parasites that fed on emotional turmoil, luring prey into traps or driving them mad before consuming their weakened life essence.
One Weaver shimmered directly in front of Renn, its form briefly taking on the hazy likeness of his mother, beckoning him forward with silent, outstretched arms. Another flickered near Lyra, projecting the faint image of her lost brother, looking cold and scared. They moved slowly, hypnotically, trying to draw their targets away from the group, into the deeper woods.
Gregor saw them now, faint distortions in the darkness, and horror washed over him. He knew the legends – creatures that didn't just kill, but consumed your mind first. He tried to pull Renn and Lyra back, shouting warnings, but they seemed half-entranced, caught between terror and the false hope projected by the Weavers.
Saitama watched the shimmering shapes trying to lead his companions away. "Okay, now I see 'em," he said. "Kinda blurry. Like bad TV reception. Are they ghosts? Or like, mirages? Either way, they're really annoying. Making everything wavy."
He found the psychic pressure, which he hadn't consciously registered as a threat, was now making it difficult to concentrate on important things, like whether he'd remembered to put fabric softener on his grocery list for next week. This was unacceptable.
He put his hands on his hips, puffed out his cheeks slightly, and started humming. Loudly. And deliberately off-key. It was the theme song from some cheap children's cartoon he vaguely remembered watching years ago, rendered with absolutely zero musical talent.
The effect on the Phantasm Weavers was immediate and catastrophic.
Their delicate psychic manipulation relied on subtle frequencies, on tapping into the resonant emotional wavelengths of their victims. Saitama's loud, discordant, and utterly banal humming acted like a blast of white noise combined with a jackhammer solo played through a broken speaker, directly into their psychic senses.
The shimmering forms convulsed violently. The projected illusions flickered and vanished. The hazy likenesses distorted into grotesque shapes. The mental whispers became shrieks of pure, undiluted static and agony. The Weavers recoiled, their forms flickering wildly, their carefully constructed psychic net shattered by the sheer, weaponized mundanity of Saitama's terrible humming.
Renn and Lyra gasped, clutching their heads as the false voices vanished, replaced by the psychic feedback shriek and Saitama's awful noise. The illusion broke, leaving them disoriented but free.
"See?" Saitama said, pausing his humming momentarily. "Works every time. Bad singing scares away ghosts. And probably neighbors."
The Phantasm Weavers, however, were not merely scared; they were injured, enraged. Their forms solidified slightly, becoming less like heat haze and more like writhing smoke, tendrils lashing out, no longer trying to lure, but to attack directly, driven by pain and frustrated hunger. They converged on Saitama, the source of their auditory and psychic torment.
"Oh, now you wanna fight?" Saitama sighed. "Fine. But make it quick. I wanna find a place to sit down."
As the smoky tendrils lashed towards him, radiating palpable psychic distress, Saitama didn't punch. He didn't stomp. He simply clapped his hands together. Once. A single, sharp CLAP.
It wasn't deafeningly loud to Gregor, Lyra, or Renn – just a normal, crisp clap. But the focused shockwave it generated in the air, micro-targeted and impossibly fast, struck the converging Phantasm Weavers like a physical blow multiplied a thousand times.
Their semi-corporeal forms, already destabilized, simply couldn't withstand the sudden, focused kinetic impact. They didn't explode or disintegrate; they just… came apart. Like smoke rings collapsing in a sudden gust of wind, their forms unraveled, dissipated, and vanished into the night air, leaving absolutely nothing behind, not even a lingering psychic echo.
The forest was silent again, save for the ragged breathing of the three escapees and Saitama's slightly strained sigh.
"There," he said, rubbing his hands together. "All gone. See? Clapping works too. Good for applause, good for scaring smoky ghost things." He looked around. "Okay, seriously now. Camping? S'mores? Flat rock?"
Gregor stared at the empty space where the Weavers had been. His mind felt numb. Psychic illusions, mental attacks… defeated by bad humming and a single clap. He felt laughter bubbling up again, closer to hysteria this time. He swallowed it down, leaning heavily on his sword.
"No camping," he managed, his voice hoarse. "We keep moving. Sunrise… must be hours away. We need… to keep moving." He didn't know if moving was safer, but stopping felt like surrendering, like inviting whatever else lurked out there to find them. And frankly, he wasn't sure he could handle another demonstration of Saitama's casual omnipotence right now.
"Fine," Saitama grumbled, sounding genuinely put out. "No s'mores. Worst camping trip ever." He turned and resumed walking, deeper into the blackness. Gregor, Lyra, and Renn exchanged exhausted, terrified glances before forcing their weary bodies to follow once more.
Kristoph's team moved through the oppressive night, guided by the faintest traces on the trail and Elara's subtle light enchantments. Tracking was slow, painstaking work. Every shadow seemed menacing, every sound a potential threat.
"Commander," Elara whispered suddenly, pausing, her hand raised. "A strong psychic disturbance… ahead. Just now. Intense confusion, fear… then… agony. Sharp, abrupt. Now… silence."
Kristoph signaled a halt, peering into the darkness ahead. "The Tempest's group?"
"Possibly the source of the fear," Elara conceded. "But the agony signature felt… non-human. Multiple entities. And the terminating signature…" She frowned, concentrating. "A sonic burst? No, kinetic. Extremely localized, incredibly powerful… followed by complete psychic void. Whatever caused the disturbance was… extinguished."
Zenon moved ahead slightly, testing the air. "No residual magic detected. But the air feels… clean. Too clean. Like something wiped the psychic slate." He looked back at Kristoph. "Sounds like the Tempest had another encounter."
Kristoph nodded grimly. Stomp. Wave. Clap. What mundane action would Saitama use next to unravel reality? "We're closing the distance," he said. "The disturbance was recent. Proceed with caution."
They advanced, finding the spot minutes later. Elara confirmed the lingering traces of psychic entities, now utterly nullified. Zenon found Saitama's tracks, clear and undisturbed, continuing onward, along with the more frantic, stumbling prints of the escapees.
"He neutralized a psychic attack," Kristoph observed, staring after the tracks disappearing into the night. "Without magic. Without apparent effort. How?"
"I have no theory, Commander," Elara admitted, sounding deeply unsettled. "His existence seems to operate on principles entirely alien to our understanding of power, magic, or even basic physics."
Kristoph felt a chill that had nothing to do with the night air. An enemy with overwhelming physical power was one thing. An enemy who could casually negate magic, psychic attacks, poisons, illusions… who seemed immune to the very laws of their world… that was something else entirely. Something terrifying.
"Keep moving," he ordered, his voice tight. "We must understand him. Before he inadvertently breaks something critical. Like a kingdom. Or reality."
They pressed on into the dark, the weight of the unknown pressing down harder than the night itself.