Chapter 129 (Online)

Garou presses his beating of Superalloy Darkshine, weaving past a punch and landing a strike that leaves the hero coughing up blood. As Garou mocks him, Darkshine can only look back in fear, and the narration turns to his past. As a boy he was a sickly weakling, shut out of sports and unable to find any confidence in himself. For his fifteenth birthday his parents gave him a set of three-kilogram dumbbells, which he lifted daily, adding weight over time until what he could raise grew beyond measure. That progress finally gave him the self-belief he had lacked, and he went on to join the Hero Association, forever hunting an opponent who could test him to his absolute limit.

Under Garou's relentless attack, Darkshine grasps a hard truth: he never truly wanted a genuine fight, only one that would hand him a satisfying win. The moment the thought of being hurt enters his mind, the long-buried fear rushes back and swallows him. He flails out in panic and knocks Garou away, but dark spirals seal the wound and Garou is up again at once. A kick to the gut drops Darkshine, a follow-up pins him down, and when Garou moves to strike his ears the hero yelps in terror, so Garou pulls back, dismissing the beating as mere bullying, a small and pathetic cruelty beneath what he means to become.

Then Garou's joints begin to crack and the dark markings on his body creep toward his face. A psychic shield from Tatsumaki wraps around Darkshine and hoists him upward just as the ceiling caves in, leaving Garou below among the falling debris. Rising away, Darkshine tells him to run, and as Garou vanishes from view he bows his head in shame.

Garou dominates Superalloy Darkshine and reduces him to fear, prompting a recap of the hero's rise from a frail child to an immeasurably strong fighter. Darkshine realizes he only ever sought easy victories, and his revived terror lets Garou overwhelm him before Garou dismisses the fight as bullying. Tatsumaki's barrier rescues Darkshine as the ceiling collapses, and he urges Garou to flee.

This online chapter belongs to the Monster Association Arc and released on March 24, 2020, drawing partly on webcomic chapters 70 and 76. Garou and Superalloy Darkshine appear on the cover, and the chapter corresponds to Tonari serialization number 173.