Chương 39: Chapter 38: The Rhythm of the Pavement (Part 2)

The afternoon sun filtered through the massive, arched stained-glass windows of the Beacon Academy library, casting long, geometric prisms of amber, sapphire, and violet across the endless rows of towering mahogany bookshelves. The air inside was heavy with the comforting, quiet scent of aged parchment, leather bindings, and standard floor wax. It was a sacred sanctuary of absolute silence, broken only by the faint, rhythmic tick-tick-tick of the wall clock and the soft, occasional rustle of turning pages.

At one of the heavy oak study tables nestled deep in the historical fiction alcove, Blake Belladonna sat with her chin resting in her palm. Her amber eyes darted rapidly across the dense lines of a thick, politically charged memoir regarding the early days of the Faunus Rights Revolution. Her feline ears, carefully concealed beneath her signature black bow, twitched slightly at every microscopic sound. Across from her, Lie Ren sat in absolute, meditative stillness.

A stack of advanced tactical theory books rested neatly by his elbow, but his current focus was a singular, hand-copied scroll detailing the ancient philosophy of Aura flow and mindfulness. His posture was perfectly rigid, his breathing shallow and deliberate, embodying the very essence of Zen. High above them, shattering the serene intellectual atmosphere, a metallic clack-clack-clack echoed from a rolling aluminum library ladder.

Saitama was currently balancing precariously on the top rung, dressed in his standard, oversized green janitorial suit. He held a feather duster under one arm while using his free hand to lazily sort through the academy's collection of localized cultural fiction. His dotted eyes drifted over the foreign, overly dramatic titles with a look of profound, soul-crushing boredom.

"Geez, everything here is so heavy," Saitama muttered under his breath, his flat voice barely carrying down the aisle.

"Tragedy this, revolution that... don't these people have anything where a guy just gets hit by a horse carriage and turns into a magical chef?" As he reached for a dusty corner, his sleeve caught the spine of a brightly colored, paperback light novel that a student had hidden behind the historical archives. The book slipped from the shelf, tumbling through the air in a clumsy, fluttering arc before dropping straight down. Thwack.

The paperback landed squarely on the center of Blake and Ren's table, right between the memoir and the philosophy scroll. Blake flinched, her bow jumping violently as her eyes snapped down to the intrusion. Ren didn't move a muscle, but his sharp eyes instantly tracked the colorful, somewhat trashy cover art.

The illustration depicted a stylized, cartoonish Huntsman wielding a ridiculously oversized glowing sword, surrounded by a harem of adoring, brightly colored maidens beneath a title written in bombastic, glittering font:"Reincarnated as a High-Tier Atlesian Specialist with S-Rank Dust Capacity!"

"Ah, oops. My bad," Saitama's voice drifted down as he casually slid down the ladder rails with a screeching sound that made Blake's ears wince beneath her bow. He stepped up to the table, rubbing the back of his bald head.

"Dropped my trashy reading. Don't mind me." Blake slowly picked up the book, her eyebrows furrowing in deep, analytical confusion as she scanned the back cover synopsis.

"S-Rank Dust capacity? Reincarnated? Saitama... what exactly is the structural narrative of this piece? It says here the protagonist dies from a runaway cargo airship accident in Vale, meets a divine entity in a white void, and is instantly granted absolute mastery over all four elemental elements without a day of combat school training."

"Oh, it's a Remnant knock-off of an Earth genre," Saitama explained flatly, pulling out a chair and slumping into it with a heavy sigh, completely ignoring the strict library rule against socializing.

"Back home, we call it Isekai. It means 'Another World.' Basically, some normal, miserable guy who hates his job gets flattened by a truck, meets a god, gets a bunch of cheat codes, and becomes the strongest guy in a fantasy kingdom instantly. Although... there are also stories where the guy got transported in different ways, and didn't have to die and being reincarnated." Ren slowly looked up from his scroll, his voice dropping into a deep, clinical cadence as he processed the concept.

"A structural narrative built entirely around unearned omnipotence? That sounds... psychologically regressive. If a soul does not endure the forge of tribulation, how can it possess the emotional maturity to wield such power? In the study of Aura, power without discipline invariably leads to the corruption of the self."

"Exactly!" Blake chimed in, her voice rising in a passionate, literary heat before she remembered where she was and dropped it back to a harsh whisper. She leaned forward, her amber eyes burning with the intensity of a dedicated critic.

"It completely assassinates the concept of empathy. If a protagonist receives everything through a cosmic handout, they can't possibly understand the systemic struggles of the people they are protecting. True literature requires conflict, tragedy, and the agonizing weight of pushing through oppression. This just feels like... like intellectual poison." Saitama blinked his small, dotted eyes, staring at Blake's passionate display with an empty, deadpan expression.

He rested his cheek in his hand, looking incredibly tired. This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

"Well, yeah, you're not wrong," Saitama shrugged, his voice a dull drone.

"Having a cheat code existence actually sucks. Trust me. The first chapter is kinda cool because you beat up the bad guy who was mean to you, but then chapter two hits, and you realize... there's nothing else to do. You just walk around, drop a fist, and everything dies. It's incredibly boring. You lose the thrill of the fight. These main characters never show the actual worst part: the soul-crushing boredom of sitting around waiting for a proper challenge while everyone treats you like a freak."

The table went completely, utterly still. Blake's breath caught in her throat. She stared at Saitama, the trashy paperback suddenly feeling incredibly heavy in her hands. She looked past his blank exterior, suddenly remembering the terrifying reports from the breach, how this man had literally shattered a street by accidentally tripping over a cobblestone. He wasn't just critiquing a book genre. He was describing the heavy, isolated reality of his own existence.

It was a profound, tragic confession delivered with the casual indifference of someone complaining about a bad weather forecast. Ren's eyes softened, a deep, empathetic solemnity settling over his features. He recognized the invisible weight Saitama carried. A profound isolation that no amount of martial arts or meditation could ever truly soothe. Trying to break the heavy atmosphere, Blake cleared her throat, her eyes tracking the vibrant illustrations of the book.

"Saitama... you mentioned this is based on Earth stories. How do our books even compare to the ones from your world?"

"Oh, Earth books are way different," Saitama said, his eyes lighting up slightly with a faint glimmer of nostalgia.

"We don't have all this grim, depressing stuff about kingdoms falling to dark monsters because, well, we have actual heroes handling that stuff. Our fiction is way more varied. We have science fiction about giant robots, massive historical dramas, and stories that stretch across entire universes."

"Universes?" Ren questioned, his interest genuinely piqued as he leaned forward, his hands resting flat on his philosophy scroll.

"Remnant's astronomical archives indicate that our world is surrounded by a vast, cold expanse of dead space. Our dust technology fails if we attempt to leave the atmosphere. Are you implying your Earth is not alone?"

"Oh, yeah, not even close," Saitama said casually, waving a dismissive hand.

"Our Earth is just one tiny rock in a giant galaxy. And there are billions of other galaxies out there, filled with different planets, stars, and... well, aliens."

"Aliens?!" Blake's feline ears practically strained against the fabric of her bow, her eyes widening in sheer, unadulterated shock.

"Actual civilizations living in the stars?"

"Yeah, though most of them are total jerks," Saitama muttered, his face twisting into a slight grimace as a specific memory drifted through his mind.

"A few years ago, this giant spaceship showed up over A-City. This big, cyclical warlord guy, called himself the...

'Dominator of the Universe' kind of thing. He brought an entire invading army of weird creatures. He travelled across the dark space for twenty years just because he was bored and wanted a good fight. Blew up the whole city in a second." Blake's jaw dropped slightly, a cold sweat breaking out along her neck. The sheer scale of the threat Saitama was describing casually bypassed anything Remnant had ever faced.

"And... what happened to him?"

"I punched him," Saitama said simply.

"He was quiet tough, though. Took a couple of hits. But yeah, the universe is huge. Remnant feels kind of like a tiny, isolated fishbowl compared to it." Blake swallowed hard, her mind racing with the cosmic implications. She looked down at her hands, her thoughts naturally drifting to the deeply rooted struggles of her own people. She looked up, her gaze searching Saitama's face with a sudden, intense vulnerability.

"Saitama... on your Earth... with all those different worlds and civilizations... how do the people treat each other?" She paused, her voice dropping into a strained, emotional whisper.

"Are there... Faunus? Or any other races living alongside humans? How do you handle the divide?" Saitama tilted his head, looking at her with a straightforward, unblinking clarity.

"Faunus? Like, people with animal ears and tails? Nah, never seen 'em. On my Earth, there's pretty much only humans. Well, if you don't count the monsters."

"Monsters?" Ren murmured.

"Those 'Mysterious Beings' you told about back then?"

"Yeah," Saitama said, his tone shifting into a matter-of-fact explanation.

"They aren't a race or anything. Like what I told you, they're just unnatural disasters. Like, a guy eats too much crab and turns into a giant crab monster, or some crazy science experiment goes wrong. They aren't a society. They just pop up, destroy a city block, and get dealt with." Blake leaned back in her chair, a complex, swirling mixture of relief and profound curiosity gripping her chest.

"So... there is no institutional divide? No systemic hatred based on how you are born?" Saitama rubbed his chin, thinking back to the chaotic structure of the Hero Association and the crowded cities of his world.

"Hmm... I mean, people can be jerks. People argue over money, popularity, and what rank a hero is. Rich people live in luxury while normal people struggle to buy groceries on sale. But hating someone just because of the way they look or where they were born? Nah, we don't really have time for that. When a giant subterranean sea monster is trying to flood your apartment complex, nobody cares what your background is. You're just all humans trying not to get stepped on."

A heavy, introspective silence settled over the table once more. Blake looked down at her book on the Faunus revolution, a bittersweet smile touching her lips. The idea of a world so violently chaotic that humanity simply forgot how to be racist was both terrifying and strangely beautiful. It was a crude, brutal form of unity, but a unity nonetheless.

"It sounds... exhausting," Ren observed softly, his green eyes reflecting a deep respect.

"But fundamentally honest."

"Yeah, well, it's just home," Saitama said, suddenly standing up and grabbing his feather duster, his brief moment of philosophical depth instantly vanishing as he looked at the library clock.

"Ah, crap, look at the time. If I don't finish dusting these high shelves before four o'clock, Glynda is gonna cancel my evening ration of instant ramen." He scrambled back toward the rolling ladder, his movements instantly returning to a comically frantic blur. Blake watched him go, then slowly reached across the table and pulled the trashy Atlesian Isekai novel toward her memoir. Ren caught the movement, a subtle, highly amused smirk tugging at the corner of his lips.

"I thought you considered that genre to be 'intellectual poison,' Blake." Blake's face instantly flushed a faint pink, her bow twitching defensively as she hastily shoved the paperback into her bag.

"I... I am merely conducting a cross-cultural comparative analysis between Earth's escapist tropes and Remnant's socio-political prose. It is strictly for academic research, Ren!"

"Of course," Ren said smoothly, closing his philosophy scroll with a soft click.

"Just ensure Saitama doesn't see any tea stains on the pages. For the sake of the roof."