The demonified Kuronoa let out a sharp cry and entered Liberation. The eighteen-or-nineteen-year-old girl looked impossibly delicate amid a crowd of golden-haired, red-haired, and wild-maned Saiyans.
Nobody stopped to admire her looks. The moment the fight began, the Saiyans laid every card on the table at once.
Future Trunks and Future Gohan used the Metamoran Fusion Technique to become Gohanks.
On the Time Patrol side, Trunks and Goten used the Fusion Technique, merging into an adult version of Gotenks.
Goku and Vegeta kept it simple — left Potara Earring, right Potara Earring, and just like that, they fused directly into Vegetto.
These three powerhouses fighting together were just barely enough to hold the demonified Kuronoa in check. No. 17, No. 18, and the father-daughter pair of Gohan and Xiaofang provided support, and the situation gradually stabilized.
Inside the Time Domain, Ino and Mechikabura were still probing each other's limits.
"Dark Energy Ball!" The Demon Realm Supreme Kai blended his ki with the Dark Power, producing energy balls the size of basketballs that melted seamlessly into the surrounding environment — pitch black, their flight paths completely unreadable. He swept his right hand outward, and a countless stream of those energy balls came hurtling at Ino.
Ino extended a single finger and tapped the empty air. "Time Freeze!"
Every energy ball hung suspended in midair at once. As time rushed past them, they lost the internal energy sustaining them, and collapsed from within — detonating one by one into billowing clouds of black mist that reeked of something acrid and foul.
"Nothing but castoffs from my own toybox. Let me tell you something, young Supreme Kai — all those flashy moves of yours are worthless. Only power matters. Power so pure it reaches the absolute extreme — that is the one and only truth!" A tiny mass of Dark Power, compressed to its absolute limit, materialized in the Demon Realm Supreme Kai's palm. Then that mass of energy began expanding rapidly.
The slowly rotating Dark Power detonated mid-flight. From the fist-sized vortexes of energy, countless jet-black smoky tendrils stretched outward, swarming in from every direction in a dense, smothering mass — as though intent on devouring Ino whole.
Ino raised her left hand — Yin — and her right — Yang. She held both palms upright and shoved them outward with full force.
Yin and Yang converged together, layer upon layer of energy compressed to an extreme density, rotating clockwise. A sharp crack rang through the air — space itself fractured under the blow, latticed with cracks, and the Dark Power caught at the epicenter was ground apart outright.
Ino appeared behind the Demon Realm Supreme Kai without a sound. At that mere proximity alone, he felt every cell in his body beginning to age at a slow, creeping rate.
He possessed Time Power of his own — which meant he knew, with certainty, that his Time Power was being completely suppressed.
"Get away from me!" He raised one hand and swept a house-sized black palm horizontally at whoever stood behind him. Ino drew a breath, then spat a jet of water directly at his face.
The technique followed the same principles as the Water Release: Water Severing Wave — but the water-natured chakra she'd used before had long since been replaced with Time Power. The water jet sliced through the black aura at the edge of his sweeping palm. The two energies collided like waves crashing against a reef — and this time, the waves won. The jet carved through the black aura, then cut a two-centimeter gash directly into the center of the Demon Realm Supreme Kai's palm.
The hand that had been brimming with power withered in an instant. In the blink of an eye it shed enormous amounts of moisture, turning desiccated and dim, riddled with deep wrinkles.
The Demon Realm Supreme Kai cursed under his breath, drove the energy inside his body, and restored the vitality in his palm.
His eyes were a blazing crimson. His silver hair whipped and lashed in the wind. He was, unmistakably, furious beyond all measure.
He thrust his hand into empty space and wrenched hard — and pulled free a long sword trailing brilliant, radiant light.
It was a weapon forged and shaped entirely from Light Power.
The radiance was blinding, and within it stirred an oppressive, soul-gripping pressure.
Ino couldn't help but let out a dry snort. In all those classic Western fantasy stories, the hero's enemy always had some Church of Light or God of Light lurking about — and that wasn't the authors making things up. Here was living proof: a Demon Realm Supreme Kai, a man who wielded Dark Power, and yet he could draw this pure, blazing radiance from the polar opposite of darkness. The Light attribute was nowhere near as sacred as one might imagine.
She pressed her palms together, then slowly drew them apart. Dense Yin-Yang energy gathered between her hands, with vast quantities of ambient energy adhering to it — the thicker portion solidified into a round shield, the sharp portion converged into a longsword. She split her hands apart: shield in the left, sword in the right.
A thunderous boom rang out.
The blade carrying its tremendous Light Power came crashing down onto her shield. Shards of light scattered in every direction. Ino's arm and shoulder yielded smoothly with the impact, her expression unchanged. Her Yin-Yang energy worked like a millstone, steadily grinding down his Light Power. They held the deadlock for a moment — then, seizing the instant when the radiance dimmed by just two degrees, she countered with a reverse slash.
The Demon Realm Supreme Kai was no slouch in combat. Black aura wreathed his palm as he caught her blade at an angle that reached its peak in a split second, then closed his five fingers and crushed her sword into pieces at the one-third mark.
Ino flicked her wrist — longsword shortened to a short blade — and drove it like a striking viper at the Demon Realm Supreme Kai's lower abdomen. He stumbled back to dodge. She vaulted high, slung her arm, and hurled the shield.
The high-speed spinning shield carved a ragged wound across the Demon Realm Supreme Kai's collarbone. His crisp black uniform, his deep red cape, and the two enormous stone pillars behind him were all cleaved apart by the impact. The shield trailed a streak of rainbow light and vanished from sight.
The Old Kai's Potential Unleashed had made its mark. Ino's battle power exceeded the Demon Realm Supreme Kai's by a wide margin — she could bully him around completely at will.
The Demon Realm Supreme Kai discarded his light sword and shaped his Dark Power into a long halberd. After more than ten exchanges, Ino — who had already remade her sword and shield — slashed him across the shin.
The Yin-Yang energy made him deeply uncomfortable. Those two forces were fundamentally no weaker than Light Power or Dark Power, and when a black rod made of Yin-Yang energy pierced the body, it introduced a distinct sluggishness to his internal energy flow. In the middle of combat, even the smallest sluggishness was a lethal threat.
He glared at Ino with raw fury — then, with jarring abruptness, raised his right hand and held it upright. The back of his right hand split open. There was no blood. In its place was a single eye, its gaze looking oddly clouded and murky.
The moment that eye appeared, Ino felt as though her Time Domain had been fixed in the sights of some enormous beast. An invisible, colossal hand seemed poised to crush the Time Domain — and her along with it.
In reality, there was no giant hand outside at all. There was only a crushing spiritual pressure bearing down on the mind.
Ino let out a cold laugh. You want to play eye-techniques with me? I don't care what that thing is — I'm going to pop it.
She raised her right hand high. The immense spiritual pressure pressing in from all sides was drawn entirely into her grasp. Then she aimed her left hand at the Demon Realm Supreme Kai, and through the Rinnegan's amplification ability, magnified the spiritual pressure tenfold — then released it all at once.
The staggering energy detonated her left hand on the spot. The Demon Realm Supreme Kai fared far worse. The eye on the back of his hand took the full brunt of it — under the invisible energy's impact, the blood and white crystalline lens inside the eye burst and scattered in every direction. His body then took the full force head-on: his skull caved and deformed as he was launched high into the air, then exploded mid-flight. His torso was punched through between chest and abdomen, solid muscle and dense bone reduced to pulp by the single blow.
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