When the Gate of Truth swung open, an absolute, equivalent exchange unfolded before Mufasa.
In trade for the incomprehensible mass of divine biomass he offered, he claimed the coveted Philosopher's Stone.
Because the true energetic value of the hundred-mile Otsutsuki flesh exceeded the raw cost of the stone, the Gate of Truth bestowed an additional revelation upon him.
Visions of a harrowing, apocalyptic future flashed through his consciousness.
The elemental planet hung in orbit, besieged by an overwhelming armada of extraterrestrial conquerors from another dimensional plane.
Leading the vanguard was none other than the galactic tyrant, Lord Frieza, accompanied by his cosmic conquerors.
In that fractured vision of tomorrow, the shinobi world barely managed to repel Frieza's legions, only for an endless swarm of Perfect Cell bio-clones to descend immediately afterward, plunging the world into absolute despair.
The sheer scale of the looming catastrophe spurred Mufasa into relentless motion.
The journey accelerated straight into the Devil Fruit arc.
Unifying the Five Great Shinobi Nations under a single banner, Mufasa forged a revitalized, interdimensional defense alliance to prepare for the coming invasion.
Before he could turn his sights outward, however, internal corruption fractured the peace.
A catastrophic flaw within the Reanimation Jutsu caused the lingering souls of the deceased Kage to mutate into rampaging, demonic entities that tore across the continent.
Mobilizing his full power, Mufasa systematically dismantled the corrupted legends, purifying their souls and guiding them back to rest in the Pure Land.
Yet the fragile underworld could no longer sustain the spiritual strain, rupturing at the seams as interdimensional fiends poured through the planar rift.
Even the Shinigami cried out for intervention.
Acting swiftly, Mufasa deployed Sunagakure's peak bio-technological breakthrough, planting an engineered Divine Tree seed directly into the planar rift to seal the breach.
In gratitude for saving the spiritual order, the Reaper bestowed an infinite cycle of reincarnation upon Mufasa.
Nourished by the dark souls of the invaders, the sapling mutated into a sovereign Devil Tree, bearing mythical Devil Fruits across its boughs.
Mufasa harvested the very first fruit and integrated it into the vessel he had prepared, bringing the silver-haired Saber, Altair, into the mortal world.
The remaining fruits scattered across the elemental nations like falling stars.
A new generation of superhumans awakened throughout the land.
To keep these empowered outliers in check, Mufasa met their self-proclaimed champion in single combat, ruthlessly subduing their leader and integrating the faction into the global order.
Then came the Wandering Shinobi Planet arc.
A vengeful detachment of surviving Otsutsuki arrived to raid the world, only to be utterly crushed by the unified shinobi military.
By capturing and dissecting the celestial invaders, Mufasa, Orochimaru, and the research corps reverse-engineered the clan's divine genetics, formulating the breakthrough Otsutsuki 2.0 serum.
Under rigorous interrogation, Mufasa extracted the galactic coordinates to the Otsutsuki home world—a celestial super-planet brimming with thousands of times the natural resources of their own world.
A radical movement quickly gained traction within the shinobi ranks.
Many argued they should conquer the Otsutsuki home world and migrate humanity en masse, escaping the dimensional convergence while securing endless resources.
Almost the entire population rallied behind the grand migration.
Mufasa found himself trapped at a crucial crossroads.
He refused to blindly abandon their ancestral home without knowing the consequences.
Utilizing an ancient Otsutsuki temporal relic brought forward by Altair, Mufasa resolved to travel into the future to verify their destiny.
Alongside Altair, he stepped through the time-space vortex.
Mid-transit, the delicate temporal artifact violently destabilized and shattered.
The two were torn apart in the churning temporal storm, and Altair vanished into the void as Mufasa lost consciousness.
When Mufasa finally opened his eyes, he was lying on a desolate, dying wasteland.
The planet beneath him had been punched clean through, leaving its molten planetary core exposed to the vacuum.
Oceans, forests, and civilized cities were entirely gone.
Only twisted spiritual aberrations and towering, petrified trees littered the barren crust like mountain ranges.
Scaling the highest peak overlooking the planetary fracture, he found a figure waiting at the summit.
It was an older version of himself, permanently fused with the towering roots of a dead Divine Tree that dwarfed Mount Everest.
The withered duplicate slowly opened his eyes.
"So you're finally here," the future self murmured, his voice dry and raspy. "I've roasted in this planetary core for ten thousand years just waiting for your arrival."
"I held onto this breath of life to pass on a warning and a single gift."
"What happened here?" Mufasa asked, surveying the ruins.
"Do not wander," his duplicate answered firmly. "Hold your ground and protect the homeland."
"The dead world beneath our boots is the true Otsutsuki home planet."
"The Otsutsuki were never ancient gods—they were weapons born in our own laboratory."
"To combat the androids and biological clones of the Dragon Ball universe, I engineered the clan using the ninja world's genetic ninjutsu, designing them as organic war engines."
"I gave them the directive to harvest energy by consuming planetary cores across the stars."
"I transformed this resource-rich fortress world into our frontline against the Dragon Ball realm, naming it the Otsutsuki Star."
"In the end, our creations were utterly outmatched by the endless legions of Cell clones. I realized total defeat was inevitable."
"Before the end, I wiped their memories and cast the Otsutsuki clan backward through time to preserve the seed."
Mufasa let out a hollow breath. "No wonder they spent millennia devouring planets and worshipping me as their Progenitor God."
"Godhood means nothing against absolute firepower," the dying self warned. "You must seek the true source of strength within their world."
He pushed a weathered metallic container into Mufasa's hands.
"What is this?" Mufasa asked, taking the case.
"A genuine combat suit from their universe," the future self replied. "It will mask your signature and allow you to infiltrate their reality."
At that moment, a colossal warship radiating apocalyptic power breached orbit, bearing the emblem of the Cell Legion.
Sacrificing the last ember of his life, the future Mufasa launched his past self directly into the enemy vessel.
Deep within the hangar bay, Commander Cell No. 6666 intercepted the intruder.
A brutal, close-quarters brawl erupted instantly.
Outmatched by the absurd power scaling, Mufasa suffered a crushing defeat, his physical body pulverized into microscopic dust by an overwhelming Ki blast that scattered across the surface of Earth.
Yet deep within his shattered cellular structure, the Reaper's blessing of infinite reincarnation took hold.
A brand-new Mufasa regenerated on the soil of the Dragon Ball universe.
Having been reborn through native energy, his soul bore the spiritual signature of the local dimension, blending in without alarming reality's immune system.
He was reduced to an unremarkable background civilian—a generic NPC on a strange planet.
He promptly enrolled in a local martial arts dojo as an entry-level disciple.
Mufasa spent his days sweeping the mats and training alongside ordinary disciples.
Losing his status was manageable, but losing his system interface entirely was a massive blow.
Whether caused by the dimensional transition or the complete cellular rebirth, the interface had vanished without a trace.
Fortunately, his legendary work ethic remained fully intact.
For two and a half grueling years, he ground through basic martial arts conditioning.
Through sheer determination and tactical finesse, he defeated his senior disciples and earned the right to represent the dojo in the 9,527th World Martial Arts Tournament.
In this reality, placing in the World Martial Arts Tournament was the highest honor a fighter could achieve.
Top rankers were scouted directly by the Red Ribbon Army, recruited to serve on the front lines of cosmic conquest.
This world was entirely under the iron rule of the Red Ribbon Army.
Digging through historical records, Mufasa pieced together the altered timeline.
The Red Ribbon Army was an authoritarian military syndicate driven by global conquest, running massive mechanical divisions and subjugating populations under brutal forced labor.
They possessed limitless capital, advanced laser weaponry, and an armada of bio-mechanical androids.
In the original timeline, Commander Red had tasked the entire organization with gathering the Dragon Balls solely to make himself taller, only to be executed by Officer Black before Goku demolished their headquarters.
Yet the true mastermind behind their science division, Dr. Gero, had survived in the shadows.
Originally, Dr. Gero had spent decades developing androids to kill Goku, turning himself into Android 20 before being dismantled by Piccolo and finished off by Androids 17 and 18.
Here, a catastrophic temporal anomaly had warped history.
During the lengthy incubation cycle of the ultimate bio-android, an erratic space-time rupture swept through the laboratory.
The embryonic Cell hatched prematurely, forcibly assimilating Dr. Gero into its neural network.
The fusion created a terrifying abomination—possessing the limitless cellular adaptability of Cell and the ruthless, pragmatic intellect of Dr. Gero.
This new entity discarded a martial artist's pride in fair combat, operating with zero moral boundaries.
He prioritized mass-production technology, mass-producing bio-clones and fielding overwhelming armies rather than engaging in honorable duels.
By the time the Z Fighters realized the threat, the situation had escalated beyond control.
A single warrior had to face an army of a hundred Perfect Cells.
Even the mighty Super Saiyans were systematically overwhelmed by the swarm.
Goku, Vegeta, Piccolo, and every legendary master on the planet were wiped out, their biomass absorbed and integrated into the clone factory.
After conquering Earth, the Red Ribbon Army expanded into the stars, wiping out Frieza's empire and exterminating the Namekians before turning their sights on dimensional rifts.
That was how Conan's reality had been erased.
That was how the future ninja world had been turned to ash.
When Mufasa arrived in this era, the Red Ribbon Army was still solidifying its cosmic control, leaving a narrow window to act.
Even after two and a half years of intense physical conditioning, his combat power hovered around a modest 2,000.
While vastly superior to an ordinary human with a power level of 5, it was a drop in the ocean compared to the army's vanguard.
His dojo master clapped him on the shoulder with encouraging words.
"Do your best out there, Mufasa! Secure a placement and you might land a stable guard job at the Red Ribbon regional gate!"
Mufasa could only offer a deadpan smirk. 'Between playing security guard and running an industrial dry cleaner, I'd rather do laundry.'
Fate, however, had not abandoned him.
In the waiting room of the World Martial Arts Tournament, he locked eyes with a familiar silver-haired swordswoman.
"Father!" Altair called out, a bright smile lighting up her face. "I finally tracked you down."
Mufasa let out a relieved breath. 'I'm glad you're safe, though I'm not that old yet.'
"Did you lose your system interface after the jump?" she asked.
Mufasa nodded quietly.
"Did you never realize that your system was an extension of my sovereign authority?" Altair asked with a knowing smile.
Her innate authority spanned the conceptual foundation of existence itself—the flow of causality, the rewriting of physical laws, and the manifestation of reality from absolute nothingness.
She held the power to alter universal constants, manipulate logic, and forge infinite possibilities from the void.
"I am your system," Altair declared softly. "It is time we merge."
Stepping forward, Altair dissolved into a pillar of pure light and fused seamlessly into Mufasa's soul.
The complete, fully unlocked system interface roared back to life.
Mufasa wasted no time dumping his accumulated points into raw attributes.
He loaded his genetic baseline with the greatest traits in the cosmos—stacking pure Saiyan adaptability, Namekian regeneration, and Frost Demon resilience.
He maxed out every apex technique in the database, mastering the Kaioken, the Kamehameha, and the complete state of Ultra Instinct.
Mufasa swept through the World Martial Arts Tournament in a matter of minutes, obliterating the competition and securing an immediate audience with Dr. Gero.
Mufasa issued a direct challenge on the spot.
Terrified of mortality, the fused doctor instantly summoned a thousand Perfect Cell clones to drown the challenger in sheer numbers.
The ensuing clash shattered the sky and cracked the continental shelf.
Through overwhelming mastery of Ultra Instinct and sheer physical supremacy, Mufasa obliterated the clone army and erased Dr. Gero from existence.
Yet the battle for survival was far from over.
Over the next two and a half years, while Mufasa commissioned Bulma to construct a localized space-time vessel, an even more terrifying threat emerged from the crust.
An entity known as the Earth Fiend awakened, possessing power that eclipsed even Dr. Gero.
Mufasa barely brought down the titan, only for a localized God of Destruction born of the planet to rise immediately after.
Wave after wave of world-ending threats descended without pause.
Even backed by a fully unlocked system, weathering the relentless onslaught pushed Mufasa to his absolute limits.
Frustration finally boiled over as he stared down at the ground beneath his boots.
'What kind of sick cosmic joke is this?'
'We can vaporize stars and blast through galaxies, yet this planet doesn't even have a scratch.'
'A galactic Ki wave hits the crust, and all it leaves behind is a smoking crater and some blue dust.'
Recognizing the anomaly, Mufasa commandeered an industrial excavator and dug thousands of leagues into the mantle, sinking his consciousness deep into the core.
Deep within the molten strata, he connected directly with the sentient will of the planet.
The truth was laid bare before him.
The ultimate threat was the planet itself.
Dragon Ball's Earth possessed an autonomous adaptation mechanism, continuously evolving to surpass the apex entity living on its surface.
When a Saiyan grew stronger, the planet evolved to exceed the Saiyan's baseline.
When Cell dominated the ecosystem, the world's latent energy adapted to dwarf the bio-android.
It was an endless cosmic crucible designed to cultivate apex predators.
The planet acted like a carnivorous pitcher plant, drawing the strongest warriors across the universe to gorge on their kinetic clash and fuel its own ascension.
While the warriors fought for supremacy, the living planet was the sole beneficiary of the bloodshed.
Mufasa could sense that an incomprehensible planetary abomination was on the verge of hatching from the mantle.
Destroying the planet directly was an impossibility.
Even with the system's authority, absolute reality constraints prevented him from erasing the world he stood upon—just as an artist cannot erase the canvas without destroying the painting itself.
Sooner or later, an apex entity born of that planetary crucible would tear into the multiverse and march on the shinobi world.
It was an inescapable dead end.
Then, the parting words of his future self echoed through his mind: 'Do not wander. Hold your ground.'
His duplicate had never meant fleeing into the stars—he meant anchoring the homeland.
To counter a living world, one had to forge a world of equal magnitude.
To battle an apex reality, one had to elevate their own background to matching heights.
His mission was to elevate the shinobi planet into a sovereign cosmic crucible.
Reaching absolute clarity, Mufasa boarded the completed space-time vessel, ignited the chronal thrusters, and warped back to his home era.
The moment he touched down upon the desert sands of Sunagakure, he broadcasted a grand decree across the cosmos:
"The Grand Interdimensional Tournament of Shinobi Arts is now officially open!"
"We welcome all extraterrestrials, galactic warriors, and dimensional travelers to test their might upon our soil."
"Fight, destroy, and unleash your absolute power without restraint."
"We accept every challenge the universe has to offer."
"Behold—the dawn of the Great Shinobi Era has arrived!"
[TN: I guess this is the end of this fanfic now... It's been almost 2 years. So much time has passed so fast. To everyone reading this note, congratulations. You've finished this fic. I hope you enjoyed reading it... I did everything I could with the little time I had because of some personal matters. So many things happened to me as I was translating this fic. I gained something, and vice versa, I lost something. I'm honored I translated this fic. Excelsior!]