One Punch Man: Heroics Start with Dual Kamui

Chapter 164 164: Boros from the Past

"Ah... I do not fully understand your ideals yet, but they sound... not bad?"

That was a lie. Shinji had no choice but to say it if he wanted to get closer to Psykos.

"I can explain them to you slowly, but this is not the best place. Let us go somewhere else." With that, Psykos hurried out of the office. Shinji gave Boros a quick look, and the two followed her.

They stopped at a quiet corner of the corridor where Psykos, brimming with excitement, began to pour out her beliefs to Shinji.

"I understand you," Shinji replied simply. He did not mean that he agreed with her idea of eradicating humanity. What he meant was that he understood she had become this way because of the influence of that so-called godlike being.

"Really?!" Psykos's eyes widened, her face bright with surprise. At last, she had found someone who might understand her.

"My name is Shinji. Will you join our Monster Research Society?" He extended his hand toward her.

"I will! I am Psykos." She accepted almost instantly, without hesitation.

And so, Shinji, Boros, and Psykos became the founding members of the Monster Research Society. They completed the club application, handed it to the homeroom teacher, and within a few days, it was approved.

From then on, aside from their regular classes, their free time was dedicated entirely to the club. They never sought new members. Boros spent most of his time lazing about, while Shinji kept close to Psykos, accompanying her as she researched monsters. Over time, Shinji noticed just how deeply God's influence had warped her. Her very memories had been tampered with and reshaped by that entity.

Shinji pondered quietly, 'I wonder if Kotoamatsukami can work on the current Psykos. There's no way to know unless I try. At present, Kotoamatsukami has no other urgent use, so it should not matter if I test it now.'

"Psykos," Shinji called softly. She looked up from the book of monsters she had been studying, and their eyes met.

Kotoamatsukami.

At once, Shinji activated his illusion technique. He began with his left eye, since the left-eye Kotoamatsukami had a shorter cooldown, though it could not make permanent changes to a person's consciousness. Thanks to the Hashirama cells within him, the cooldown for both eyes was shortened even further. If this trial worked, he planned to later use the right eye to rewrite her altered memories permanently.

He attempted to cut out the corrupted memory at its root, erasing the foothold of God. As Kotoamatsukami was unleashed, Psykos's eyes dimmed faintly.

Shinji had no idea what the outcome would be. In the next moment, Psykos clutched at her temple, her expression twisting with pain.

"AARG!!"

The sight made Shinji uneasy.

Kotoamatsukami normally rewrote consciousness silently, leaving the target unaware of the change. Pain meant something else was at work. A third party. Most likely the god.

Realizing what was happening, Shinji immediately forced his power further, unleashing the right eye's Kotoamatsukami on Psykos. Yet instead of easing her suffering, the technique only intensified it. Her condition grew even worse before his eyes.

At that moment, inspiration struck him. He activated his Ten-Tails Jinchūriki form and instantly pulled Psykos into the Origin Sphere Dimension. Unlike the Kamui space, this place was completely cut off from reality itself. Shinji wanted to test whether severing her connection to the god would bring relief.

And it worked. The pain in Psykos's expression gradually faded, her twisted aura calming little by little. Until she fully recovered, Shinji resolved not to take her out of the Origin Sphere Dimension.

…

Meanwhile, Boros was nowhere near the Monster Research Society's clubroom. He was out in the void of space, piloting the very ship he had once used to reach Earth. Shinji had released it from Kamui and entrusted it to him.

Boros had taken a leave from school, spending every day roaming through the cosmos. But he was not wandering without aim. He was searching. Searching for his past self.

Drawing on memory, Boros retraced the paths he had traveled five years ago, then steered the ship at full speed toward that star system. Back then, he had zigzagged across countless worlds, hunting for Earth in an endless search. Now, with his destination certain, he could cut directly through space at maximum speed without scanning every planet along the way, saving unimaginable amounts of time.

The vessel tore across the cosmos at an impossible velocity. After an unknown length of time, Boros finally reached the system he remembered. There could be no doubt: the ship was moving far faster than light. Otherwise, reaching Earth in only twenty years would have been utterly impossible.

The reasoning was simple. A light-year measures the distance light travels in a year through the vacuum of space. If the ship's speed had only been close to light, then Earth would have needed to lie a mere handful of light-years from his starting point. But the Milky Way itself stretches 160,000 light-years across, and that is nothing compared to the vastness of the universe. The observable universe is estimated to be around 93 billion light-years wide.

At the speed of light, traveling from the edge of the observable universe to Earth would take 46.5 billion years. And that covers only what can be observed. Beyond that, no one knows how far the unobservable reaches might extend.

In short, the ship's maximum speed defied all calculations. Perhaps only ONE-sensei himself could know the answer.

At last, Boros slowed the vessel as he arrived at the target system. After a long stretch of scanning, his ship finally detected another craft, an identical vessel. And within it was none other than the Boros of this timeline.

Boros left his own ship and approached, determined to face his past self directly.

"Lord Boros! Ahead of us, there's a ship exactly like ours!" shouted Geryuganshoop from the control room.

"..."

The Boros of the past were at a loss. On the monitors, a figure appeared, a figure unmistakably familiar.

Geryuganshoop froze. His eyes darted between the Boros standing behind him and the Boros displayed on the screen.

"Lord Boros...? Why are there two of you?!"