Chương 35: The True Hero's Reflection

The crimson and gold canopy of the Forever Fall Forest drifted silently under a gentle breeze, casting long, fractured shadows across the blood-red earth. It was a serene landscape, or at least it would have been if it weren't currently serving as a giant, accidental graveyard for the Creatures of Grimm. Saitama shuffled down a winding dirt path, completely unbothered by the eerie, oppressive atmosphere of the dark woods.

He was dressed in his signature, brightly colored hero suit, the yellow jumpsuit, the white cape fluttering slightly against his calves, and the thick red boots scuffing along the trail. In his left hand, he carried a plastic grocery bag filled with discounted udon noodles, green onions, and a few slightly bruised apples. Under his right arm, he tightly hugged a bundle of crisply folded, dark green fabrics and a brand-new, industrial-grade mop.

Behind him, extending for nearly half a mile down the trail, the forest was thick with a heavy, billowing black smoke. The evaporating remains of dozens of high-tier Grimm, massive Ursai, armored Beringels, colossal King Taijitus, jagged Death Stalkers, and very large Nevermores, were dissolving into nothingness, turning into harmless ash before they could even let out a final roar. Saitama hadn't even dropped his groceries to deal with them.

He had just swatted them aside with his free hand whenever they jumped out of the bushes, his face maintaining its trademark, completely blank expression.

"Damn, this is a disaster," Saitama muttered, his nasal voice echoing flatly in the quiet woods. He stopped, adjusting his grip on the new janitorial suits.

"I knew I should've memorized the map. I've been in this world for four months... More, I think. And I still can't tell one forest from another. Everything just looks like red leaves." The only reason he was even out here alone was a matter of pure, desperate timing. Earlier that morning, the entire campus of Beacon Academy had been a ghost town. Every single student was locked away in mid-day lectures or field practicals, leaving absolutely no one available to serve as his mandated "escort."

Normally, he wouldn't dare test Headmistress Glynda's strict restrictions, but he had opened the morning paper to find a terrifying reality: the local department store in Vale was holding a massive, one-day-only clearance sale on industrial cleaning supplies, and he still possessed a few precious store coupons Glynda had begrudgingly given him weeks ago. His current dorm mop was practically falling apart, and his backup janitorial suits were heavily stained from his daily sweeping duties.

It was an emergency that transcended school rules. To make matters worse, he had deliberately taken every empty back-alley, mountain pass, and abandoned trail he could find just to get back to the school. The last thing he wanted was to be spotted by the citizens of Vale again. The mere thought of another mob of people screaming"The Hero of Vale!" while shoving baguettes in his face made his stomach turn.

"And of course, I forgot the little glowing brick thing on my nightstand," Saitama groaned, tapping his empty hip where the scroll Glynda gave him usually sat.

"Stupid smartphone map apps... Back home, a sun was enough to tell direction." Saitama stopped walking. His small, dotted eyes shifted toward a steep, rocky ravine just a few yards off the main trail. The heavy, rhythmic sound of metal crashing against bone and the desperate, familiar shouting of a teenager cut through the wind. Poking his head over a rocky ledge, Saitama looked down into the cratered clearing. It was Jaune Arc.

The boy was covered in dirt and blood, desperately wielding his sword and shield to stand between a massive, snarling horde of Grimm and a deeply wounded Pyrrha Nikos, who was clutching her ribs against the canyon wall. Saitama didn't call out. He just stood there, casually resting his new mop against his shoulder, watching the entire scene unfold with a quiet, observant silence.

He saw the exact moment an Ursa Major caught Jaune across the chest, launching the boy violently through the air and sending his sword clattering across the stones. He saw the raw, agonizing pain etched into Jaune's face as his Aura flickered and faded. A towering, silver-backed Beringel stepped forward, its red eyes locked onto the helpless Pyrrha, raising its massive clawed hands to execute her. Saitama's expression shifted, his brow furrowing slightly. Guess I have to step in. He thought.

His knees bending just a fraction of an inch as he prepared to drop his groceries and vanish into the ravine. But before his boots could leave the ledge, a brilliant, blinding white light erupted from the dirt below. Saitama paused, his eyes widening just a fraction. Through the dust, Jaune Arc forced himself back onto his feet, his body completely enveloped in a towering, roaring pillar of pure, amplified Aura.

In a flash of white light, the boy intercepted the strike, slamming his shield into the Beringel's downward swing with a deafening CLANG that cratered the earth.

"Stay... Away... From her!!!" Jaune's voice boomed, vibrating with an entirely new, resonant power. With a roaring arc, Jaune drew his bare right hand back, his fist swirling with a massive concentration of white energy, and delivered a straight, devastating punch directly into the Beringel's chest plate. The multi-ton monster was lifted clean off its feet, launched backward like a projectile through the air before plowing violently into the front ranks of the surrounding horde.

Saitama's eyebrows raised a bit, though his face remained comically flat. A tiny, nearly imperceptible smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth.

"Huh," he muttered quietly under his breath.

"Look at that. He actually stopped trying to copy me." Down in the ravine, the fight was far from over. The Beringel and the crushed Ursai rolled across the stones, screeching in agony. Their bone plates weren't shattered yet, but they were deeply weakened, clutching their bruised chests as they struggled to rise. The remaining dozens of Beowolves and Creeps, momentarily stunned by the display of raw force, quickly recovered their bloodlust and began to encircle the young captain again. Jaune didn't have his sword.

His breathing was a ragged, wheezing gasp, his muscles burning from the tiny, microscopic fragments of strength his body had managed to retain from his brutal, daily physical training. Imbued with the overwhelming, surging reserve of his newly awakened Aura, his physical limits were being forcefully pushed past their breaking point. A Beowulf lunged, its jaws snapping. Jaune lunged forward, weaving under the strike with a raw instinct he hadn't possessed a week ago.

He drove his bare right fist directly into the creature's ribs. WHAM. The Beowulf let out a high-pitched yelp, its body thrown forcefully across the clearing into a jagged rock face. It didn't evaporate instantly. The strike was still only a tiny, fractional percent of true power. But it was clearly in immense, debilitating pain. Behind him, Pyrrha watched from the dirt, her green eyes wide with absolute, breathless bewilderment. Her lips parted, but no sound came out.

She had spent months training Jaune, mapping out his forms, watching him struggle to properly hold a shield. After the Battle of Beacon, since Saitama came to this world, Jaune shifted his training to be entirely non-Aura physical. Every morning and evening, she had always see him doing that hellish push-ups, sit-ups, squats, and a hundred kilometer running.

To see him now, standing bare-fisted against a nightmare, throwing punches that sent massive alpha predators flying, filled her with a mixture of profound awe and terrifying worry.

"Jaune..." she whispered, her voice trembling. ROAR! Two Creeps rushed him simultaneously from the left. Jaune raised his shield, catching the first one on the iron rim, using the momentum to spin around and deliver a brutal, Aura-loaded left hook to the second Creep's jaw. CRACK. The sound of breaking bone echoed through the ravine. This time, the sheer, repetitive force of his concentrated strikes broke through the monster's natural defenses.

The Creep crumpled into the dirt, its body instantly beginning to dissolve into a dark, swirling smoke. Jaune turned back to the first one, bringing his fist down in a heavy, overhead hammer-fist that shattered its skull plate, sending it into the same evaporating void. But the numbers were simply too high. For every two Grimm Jaune managed to batter into submission, three more stepped out from the crimson brush.

His white Aura began to flicker erratically, the immense drain of amplifying his raw physical strikes taking a massive toll on his stamina. His shoulders slouched, his vision swimming as sweat and blood poured down his face. He was exhausted, his body screaming at him to collapse, but his legs remained firmly dug into the red dirt. He refused to take a single step backward. Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

"Come on!" Jaune screamed at the encroaching darkness, his fists raised in an imperfect, defensive posture.

"Is that all you've got?!" A massive Ursa Major lunged, its claws ready to tear through his exposed armor.

"Leave them alone!" A high-pitched, furious battle cry tore through the canyon air. A crimson blur shot over the rocky ledge as Ruby Rose descended like a falling star, the heavy blade of Crescent Rose slicing clean through the Ursa's neck in a single, fluid motion.

"Nora! Clear the flank!" Weiss Schnee's voice barked from the ridge as she slid down a newly summoned ice glyph, her rapier flashing as she drove a piercing strike into a trailing Beowulf.

"I'm on it!" Nora yelled, dropping from the sky like a meteor, her hammer slamming into the dirt with a massive explosion of pink electricity that lifted a half-dozen Creeps into the air. Blake Belladonna and Lie Ren blurred through the remaining stragglers, their weapons moving with practiced, synchronized lethality alongside Doctor Oobleck, who was darting between targets like a green streak of lightning, his flaming thermos torching the remaining Grimm into ash.

Within two minutes, the overwhelming tactical counter-attack completely decimated the rest of the horde. The heavy, oppressive silence of the forest returned, broken only by the crackle of burning brush.

"Ruby! Over here!" Yang called out, running toward the center of the clearing. The members of Team RWBY, Ren, and Nora ran as fast as their legs could carry them toward the center of the ravine, their faces flushed with relief.

"Jaune! Pyrrha! Oh my gosh, are you guys okay?!" Ruby cried out, tossing her scythe to the side as she reached them. Jaune stood perfectly still for a second. He looked at Ruby, then at Nora and Ren, a faint, tired smile crossing his blood-stained face.

"Hey guys..." he whispered. The white light around his body completely vanished. His knees gave out beneath him, his eyes rolling back into his head as the absolute, crushing fatigue of the battle finally claimed his consciousness. He fell forward, crashing heavily into the dirt, completely passed out.

"Jaune..." Pyrrha reached out a trembling hand, her fingers barely brushing against his cape. Her own vision was turning dark around the edges, her voice a weak, exhausted breath.

"You... you did it..." Before she could say anything else, her strength failed her entirely, and she slumped sideways against the stone wall, passing out right beside her captain. Up on the ridge, Doctor Oobleck snapped into action, his glasses catching the pale light as he pointed his flaming thermos toward the center of the ravine.

"Team RWBY, Team JNPR, remain vigilant but prioritize medical extraction! Mr. Lie Ren, secure Mr. Arc immediately! Miss Schnee, assist Miss Rose with Miss Nikos! We must transport them back to the airship coordinates post-haste! Go, go, go!" Oobleck ordered, his voice rapid-fire and commanding as he surveyed the perimeter for any lingering threats.

"On it!" Ren said, rushing forward to carefully lift the unconscious captain, while Weiss and Ruby knelt by Pyrrha's side to stabilize her. Up on the rocky ridge, hidden behind the thick trunk of a crimson tree, Saitama slowly stood up straight. He adjusted the grocery bag in his left hand, ensuring the apples hadn't shifted, and pulled his new mop back over his shoulder. He stared down at the unconscious boy in the dirt, a genuine, quiet smile gracing his face.

"Well, look at that," Saitama said softly to himself, turning his back on the ravine and shuffling back onto the hidden trail.

"He's still got a long way to go. But at least he's finally training for the right reasons." Leaping casually over a three-hundred-foot ravine to resume his quest for the academy dorms, Saitama groaned aloud.

"Now... if I can just find the kitchen before Glynda realizes I used her coupons."

High above the blood-red ravine, concealed within the twisting, autumn-colored canopy of a massive tree, a translucent, ethereal shape drifted silently. It was a Seer, a jellyfish-like Grimm whose trailing, pale tentacles pulsed with a faint, unholy black aura. It had been floating in the shadows of the Forever Fall Forest for hours, its dark eye capturing every movement below.

Initially, its single, glowing red orb had been tracking the yellow jumpsuit of the anomalous human who had casually wiped out entire packs of apex predators without dropping his groceries. But when that anomaly stopped to watch the battle in the ravine, the Seer's gaze had shifted to follow his line of sight, capturing the desperate, white-hot awakening of Jaune Arc. Thousands of miles away, in the dark, jagged wastes of the Land of Darkness, Evernight Castle stood like a black needle against a purple sky.

Inside the central chamber, Salem stood perfectly still before a floating pools of dark seer-magic. Her pale, vein-lined face was illuminated by the reflection of the crimson forest. For hours, she had watched in cold, calculating silence as the bald man systematically deleted every single high-tier nightmare she had dispatched to the sector, treating her grand army like common household pests.

But when the anomaly stopped, she too had focused her Seer's vision onto the spectacular, explosive final stand of the young knight below. Her obsidian eyes narrowed, tracing the brilliant, amplified white light that had violently repelled the Beringel. Fascinating... She thought, her pale fingers curling slightly in the air. An extraordinary reservoir of power... yet entirely undisciplined. Back in the forest, the battle was thoroughly over. Down in the canyon, the recovery effort was in full swing.

Doctor Oobleck was barking rapid-fire medical protocols while Ren and Weiss carefully stabilized the unconscious Jaune and Pyrrha. The first year students also arrived, and helped carry the stretchers out toward the waiting airship coordinates. Satisfied that the data on the young knight had been collected, Salem willed the Seer to shift its gaze back to the main threat. She needed to know where the yellow-suited anomaly was heading.

The jellyfish-like Grimm turned its primary eye toward the rocky ridge where Saitama had been standing just moments ago. It was empty. Salem's brow furrowed in the dark chamber of Evernight. The Seer darted its eye left, then right, scanning the crimson brush, the high branches, and the open trails. The bald man had completely vanished from the immediate vicinity. There were no rustling leaves, no heavy footsteps, no displaced air. Where did he go?

Salem thought, a flicker of genuine confusion crossing her ancient features. Suddenly, the Seer's vision jerked violently. Two thick, bright red-gloved hands shot out from the absolute blind spot directly behind the floating Grimm, clamping down around its gelatinous, translucent head with a wet, rubbery smack.

"Gotcha," a casual, thoroughly bored voice muttered from right behind it. In the throne room of Evernight, Salem sharply gasped, her eyes widening in pure, unadulterated shock. The sheer, impossible speed of the approach had bypassed her sensory link entirely. The Seer panicked, its trailing tentacles thrashing wildly in the air as it attempted to break free. It began to hum violently, channeling a dense, crackling surge of dark, corrupting Grimm energy directly into the hands holding it.

The dark magic hissed against the red leather, trying to rot the flesh beneath. Saitama didn't even blink. He didn't squeeze his hands, nor did he flinch from the dark energy. His grip remained an immovable, vice-like ring of solid iron. He casually lifted the floating creature up to eye level, squinting at its pulsing, rhythmic body.

"You know, I've had this weird feeling for a while now," Saitama said, adjusting the grocery bag hanging from his crook of his elbow as he turned the creature around.

"Whenever I'm sweeping up or taking a walk in the woods, like that Emerald Forest place, or out here, I keep seeing this floating squiggly thing out of the corner of my eye. You're pretty good at hiding, but you stick out like a sore thumb against the red leaves." The Seer continued to writhe, but its dark magic simply rolled off Saitama's gloves like water off a duck's back. Saitama tilted his head, bringing his face dangerously close to the main orb of the Grimm.

"After looking at you up close... you kinda look like a regular jellyfish. I wonder if you taste good with hot pot? Or maybe shredded with some sesame oil..." He leaned in closer, his small, dotted eyes narrowing as he stared directly into the swirling, crystalline center of the Seer's main eye. For a few seconds, the translucent layers of the Grimm's head shifted under the sunlight.

"Huh?" Saitama muttered, his expression turning slightly confused. Through the refracting, magical properties of the Seer's core, the image didn't reflect the forest. Instead, Saitama caught a brief, flickering glimpse of a room made of dark stone, and within it, a pale white face with pitch-black sclera and piercing, blood-red pupils staring directly back at him. Saitama said aloud, blinking down at the image.

"A woman?" In Evernight Castle, a bolt of cold, primal panic shot straight down Salem's spine. The ancient, dark queen of Remnant found herself looking completely eye-to-eye with the very force that defied all logic. His giant, comical face filling her entire field of vision. The sheer proximity felt like a physical weight pressing against her chest. Without a second thought, Salem forcefully severed the magical connection. POP. The Seer in Saitama's hands instantly stiffened.

The translucent tissue turned pitch black, dissolving into a rapid cloud of dark, evaporating mist that slipped right through his red fingers, leaving behind absolutely nothing but the faint smell of charcoal. Back in her dark palace, Salem stood frozen, her hands trembling slightly as the pools of dark magic dissolved into useless black water.

"He saw me..." Her heart hammered against her ribs. A sensation she hadn't felt in centuries.

"It cannot be!" She stared at the empty space in her hall, her mind racing, desperately hoping that the creature remained entirely oblivious to her true nature, her location, and her designs on this world. Meanwhile, in the quiet depths of the Forever Fall Forest, Saitama stood on the ridge, his hands still shaped like he was holding a basketball. He stared at the empty air, blinking twice.

"Well... that was weird," he said, dropping his hands and picking his brand-new industrial mop back up. He shrugged his shoulders, completely dismissing the cosmic horror he had just stared in the face.

"Must be one of those magic projection things. Oh well. Back to the dorms before the ice cream melts."

"Mr. Saitama?!" A sharp, incredibly rapid voice shattered the peace of the ridge. Saitama froze, a cold sweat instantly breaking out across his bald head. He slowly, mechanically turned his neck around. Emerging from the brush at the top of the ravine trail was Doctor Oobleck, his glasses reflecting the sunlight, alongside Ruby, Yang, and Blake, who were helping guide the rear guard of the evacuation.

They had stopped dead in their tracks, staring at the lone man in the bright yellow hero suit holding a bag of groceries and a cleaning implement in the middle of a restricted combat zone.

"Saitama?" Ruby's her silver eyes wide with surprise.

"What are you doing here?" Oobleck zipped across the path in a fraction of a second, stopping directly in front of Saitama, his eyes scanning the new janitorial suits and the mop.

"Mr. Saitama! An extraordinary coincidence! What pray tell are you doing traversing the dangerous sectors of the Forever Fall Forest completely unassisted? The campus protocol explicitly stated you were to remain within the residential perimeter unless accompanied by a licensed faculty member! Does Deputy Headmistress Goodwitch possess prior knowledge of this excursion?!" Saitama's face twisted into an expression of pure, comedic horror.

His mouth opened in a silent scream, his eyes shrinking to tiny pinpricks as he clutched his grocery bag like a shield.

"Uh, no! Wait! I can explain!" Saitama stammered, his voice dropping into a panicked, defensive whine as he backed away.

"There was a sale! A one-day clearance! The mop handles were eighty percent off! You can't just let a coupon like that expire, it's against my religion! Please don't tell the lady with the crop! She'll make me sweep the stadium roof again!" Yang and Blake exchanged a look of pure, amused disbelief.

"Man," Yang chuckled, crossing her arms, "the guy can walk through a mountain of Grimm without a scratch, but mention Glynda's name and he looks like he's about to faint."