Chapter 94: Manhole

Saitama finishes brushing his teeth, pulls on his costume, and walks out into the wrecked streets. Below ground, Garou stays pinned by Gyoro Gyoro's psychic grip while the mastermind muses on his half-finished transformation, praising the raw potential yet noting how far he still falls short. Gyoro Gyoro explains that genuine monsterization comes not from psychic force but from a deliberate process in which a human is driven to the brink of death again and again, body and spirit pushed past their limits.

The method is treacherous, since many simply die and even survivors often stall out from dull wits, and the essential ingredient is that the subject endure a personal hell. Gyoro Gyoro admits to running the experiment repeatedly on humans and monsters alike, describing attempts to break the growth ceiling through cannibalism, transfusions of blood and cells, breeding, torture, and the stoking of rage and hatred. Even so, only a single dragon-level monster has ever resulted.

A flashback shows a bespectacled woman confronting a shadowed man, telling him he has forsaken humanity and slipped into madness, then gazing up at the freshly born Monster King Orochi. Gyoro Gyoro claims Garou already surpasses that creation, his bouts with Royal Ripper and Bug God having shattered yet another limit, and offers him a place at the association's head. Garou refuses, but when Gyoro Gyoro hurls stones to reassert control, the hunter spots the flaw that only one action can be performed at a time and wrenches himself free.

Orochi seizes Garou and drags him close, then fires its horns clean through his midsection. Garou counters with the Water Stream Rock Smashing Fist, felling lesser monsters and lunging at Orochi, only for the creature to warp into a hydra-and-tyrannosaur hybrid that scorches the arena with flame and hammers him into a wall. Mocking Orochi as strong yet lacking a true monster's dread, Garou resumes his stance, but Orochi copies the very same technique, having learned it mid-battle, and beats him down. Judging that the hunter still misses a monster's bloodlust, Gyoro Gyoro decides to brainwash him thoroughly. Above, Saitama peers into a manhole, certain the noises he heard have gone silent.

Under the title Manhole, this Volume 19 chapter of the Monster Association Arc released on May 24, 2018, sharing its cover between Saitama and Garou. It partially adapts webcomic chapter 59 and was shown in Episode 29. The chapter follows Rover and precedes Let's Go!