Chapter 816: You're Dead
Why?!
Why was it that the dimensional space where Mercenary Tao and Kakarot were located happened to reveal the characteristics of the Door? Why did it have to be Mercenary Tao?!
As one of the individuals with the absolute strongest actual combat power among the three major factions in this world right now, happening to be closest to the objective gave the Infinite Dimensional Space a massive advantage.
Ultron's supercomputing units continuously replayed the results of the previous simulated draw.
In the digital world, the so-called destiny side was merely a type of probability; even interference from the destiny side should leave traces in the numbers.
Ultron suspected whether the Infinite Dimensional Space had exerted some form of interference.
He was not in a hurry to commit resources to this battlefield. Trusting only data, he was actually the one among the three major factions who truly respected the combat prowess of the over-spec unit, Mercenary Tao, the most.
Directly designating Mercenary Tao as a Third Sequence unit proved that in his calculations, Mercenary Tao possessed combat power above his own, and even above Heaven's Pilgrimage.
Therefore, even with the unfavorable situation, Ultron would not fall into piecemeal tactics. Committing a portion of his forces at this moment would merely pad Mercenary Tao's kill count.
While checking whether there was an issue in the previous drawing phase, he calculated how many resources would be required to wrest the privilege of the Door from the hands of someone like Mercenary Tao.
Suddenly, Ultron realized where the crux lay.
The Door did not choose Mercenary Tao; it chose Son Goku!
He had only manipulated Mercenary Tao's drawing result; Son Goku's draw was generated naturally.
In other words, the space where the privilege of the Door was hidden originally corresponded to that terrifying Super Saiyan!
Ultron immediately scanned the entire world and discovered that Kakarot's presence had consecutively appeared across several non-adjacent cities.
In merely a fraction of a second, Ultron realized that the Reincarnator faction was exploiting Kakarot's overwhelming power, his ability to perceive crises across the world, and his nature of proactively showing up to save people, using ordinary humans to pin him down.
By doing so, they created a time advantage for Mercenary Tao.
In this manner, once Mercenary Tao successfully slew his prey, he would not only secure first place in Group 8 to advance and eliminate a formidable enemy like Kakarot, but would even secure the privilege of the Door.
This was completely unacceptable to Ultron.
Ultron immediately altered his commands. A large army of machines deployed from aerospace battleships, descending toward human cities.
Although this action caused immense panic, with the assistance of the International IGO, order was quickly restored.
Ultron intended to use the military might and information technology of the mechanical race to locate every hidden entity sent by the Reincarnators to stir up trouble.
Soon, Madara Uchiha, seated cross-legged atop a skyscraper, and Artoria, sitting upright in a city restaurant waiting for food to be served, were discovered one by one.
Even more pitch-black Yin Spirits, negative energy lifeforms, were detected by the specialized sensors of the Machina Court.
A large-scale extermination operation commenced immediately.
BOOM!
A missile shot diagonally toward the top of the skyscraper. Madara Uchiha merely turned his head, and his Susanoo materialized in an instant, the smoke and flames of the missile explosion completely repelled by it.
He slowly rose to his feet, watching the robots descending like rain from the sky, gaining an initial understanding of the combat style of the Machina Court.
"A type that relies on military numbers to fight, huh..."
"Hmph. Mere grains of sand cannot match..."
A sharp hum and a loud crash!
A potent concussive impact hit, knocking Susanoo a few paces back. In the sky, a robot's eyes blazed with intense blue-white light.
Clearly, the data life of an Authority-level unit had inhabited this chassis.
"Commencing suppression of Infinite Dimensional Space pseudo-summoned lifeform: Madara Uchiha. Anti-spirit tactics, commence armaments swap."
A hum and a click.
In the sky, the weapons in the hands of all robots inverted instantly, revealing certain inscribed runes.
Although a purely tech-side faction, the Machina Court was by no means helpless against negative energy creatures. In fact, they had developed dedicated operational protocols for every race and form of life.
Rat-tat-tat-tat!
Countless bullets infused with psionic energy rained down. Below, powerful force fields erected from every corner.
A vast swarm of nanobots, working in tandem with the robots, deployed force fields. This was a stance they had to display to convince Kakarot that their race could resolve an incident of this magnitude.
Otherwise, if it appeared to be merely two powerful alien factions fighting each other, Kakarot would highly likely choose to defeat both sides together.
No, given Kakarot's character, he might spare the humanoid Madara Uchiha, but these robots from the Machina Court that bore no resemblance to living beings would be destroyed en masse by him.
Simultaneously, Ultron coordinated the detailed dispatch across multiple battlefields.
He retracted his consciousness from the fifth selection site, leaving that Sovereign-grade combat chassis to be destroyed by Heaven's Pilgrimage.
Temporarily forfeiting immediate gains to pursue ultimate victory was the cold law of the world of zeros and ones.
Those Authority-level units deployed to the fifth selection site to purge the Reincarnators of the Infinite Dimensional Space were thus officially abandoned.
Inside a restaurant in another city, Artoria stepped away from the exquisite meal, feeling somewhat unsatisfied.
She extended her hand, and a pitch-black sword materialized alongside terrifying magical surges.
The alarms in the skyscraper had long since been triggered, and those who could evacuate had largely done so.
Artoria was in no mood to ponder why the mechanical race waited for these humans to clear out. In her understanding, they shouldn't care about the lives of these so-called plot characters either.
Reincarnators, the Machina Court, or the Void Paradise—they were all arrogant, lofty existences.
Artoria didn't bear a grudge; she simply disliked them.
Yet it was precisely because they waited this long that she had the chance to enjoy the gourmet food.
Ever since her body was reforged under the magical power of All the World's Evil, most of her past emotions and wishes had either vanished or inverted, leaving only this appetite for food preserved like something completely indelible.
"Thank you for the meal."
A sharp hum!
Artoria gripped her sword with both hands, releasing her Noble Phantasm directly, slashing horizontally across the exterior of the skyscraper.
BOOM!
Purple-crimson magical power, accompanied by a terrifying sword resonance, cleanly cleaved through several skyscrapers horizontally. Swarms of robots in the sky moved to intercept and catch the falling debris, while those directly in front of the blade were shattered by a single slash.
The blackened tyrant Artoria showed no mercy, repeatedly unleashing her Noble Phantasm as cataclysmic destructive force erupted in an instant.
This disturbance was noticed even by Satoru Gojo in the adjacent metropolitan district.
"Hey, hey, hey. Didn't our host say to keep the noise down? If Miss Saber goes wild like this... I won't hold back either~"
Toward the end, Satoru Gojo's tone shifted entirely, that rising cadence turning incomparably sinister.
Pitch-black cursed energy instantly engulfed the heavens.
Four chains extended infinitely, each bearing crimson Six Eyes. The warped cursed energy plunged downward from the sky.
That invisible power seemed to take on physical weight.
The chilling, suffocating cursed energy began directly crushing the surrounding space.
"Record: pseudo-summoned lifeform Satoru Gojo, category updated to pseudo-summoned lifeform: Cursed Spirit Satoru Gojo. Threat level elevated, classified as: Fourth Sequence."
Electric currents flickered among the robots, broadcasting continuous tactical updates, which annoyed Satoru Gojo even further.
The frailty of mortals bored him, but these lifeless automatons made him want to vomit.
Things unable to experience the terror of life and death thoroughly disgusted him.
A hum resonated as the space around Satoru Gojo blurred. Light refracted into overlapping mirages.
Satoru Gojo dropped both arms behind him at an exaggerated angle, just as he had when he was executed by the curse.
His malice and cursed energy rose in unison. The next instant, accompanied by an inhuman shriek, the warped space shattered, rippling outward in violent shockwaves.
Crack, crack, crack!
Fractures spiderwebbed across the distorted space, sweeping through the area like a tidal wave. Large numbers of robots were caught in the spatial distortion before they could react, disintegrating in an instant.
As the Yin Spirit who had accompanied Kaito Shirogane the longest and had been exposed to high-tier powers the most, Satoru Gojo stood as the pinnacle of modern jujutsu sorcerers. His Six Eyes and Limitless technique inherently granted him an extraordinarily high ceiling.
After being exposed to so many high-tier forces, he had begun learning and tapping into entirely new powers.
"All of you, die!"
Terrifying malice erupted all at once. Countless eyes broke out across Satoru Gojo's body as the true form of the King of Curses manifested.
Yet right at that moment, a figure suddenly materialized in front of him.
"Wow, what strange Ki. Are you the one who summoned these monsters?"
An innocent, childlike voice asked without a shred of mockery or sarcasm.
The speaker was genuinely inquiring about the facts.
Yet every single eye on Satoru Gojo's face shifted, focusing on the newcomer simultaneously.
A loose martial arts gi, fluid and robust muscles, thick dark hair, and Ki so imperceptible he could barely register it...
Satoru Gojo knew that his Limitless technique was currently blanketing his surroundings. The man stood less than a meter away; the repulsive force here was so immense that even laser beams would be halted and frozen in place.
Yet this man whom his host referred to as Kakarot stood right inside his technique without noticing, casually asking if he had summoned the cursed spirits amidst cursed energy dense enough to submerge an entire metropolis.
This was the first time Satoru Gojo experienced such terror at close quarters. The sheer shock far exceeded the mockery he felt from that green-haired esper in the B711 world.
"You... Hah... Isn't that blindingly obvious?!"
In Satoru Gojo's mind lay his host's clear directive: do not engage this person.
However, accustomed to standing supreme above heaven and earth, his sinister nature was completely triggered. He pointed one hand to the sky and one hand to the earth.
Exuding absolute madness, the numerous Yin Spirits he had planted earlier rapidly degenerated into cursed spirits under his cursed energy, manifesting across the metropolis.
Son Goku looked at this increasingly inhuman creature exuding a bizarre aura, finally determining that this was indeed the culprit causing disasters and forcing him to run around saving people.
Although those robots had explained a great deal to him, Son Goku hadn't memorized any of those complicated details.
His world was simple, and he preferred everything to stay simple.
Free from tangled webs and convoluted schemes.
If there was a grievance, settling it in combat was enough.
If you win, you can change things; if you lose, you train until you can win.
Looking at the multi-eyed abomination suspended upside down in the sky, the silhouette of King Piccolo from his youth surfaced in Son Goku's mind.
He did not like those who slaughtered indiscriminately to achieve their ends.
Son Goku's genial expression vanished, his eyes turning dead serious. The innate arrogance of a Saiyan surfaced naturally in battle.
Son Goku tilted his head slightly.
"In that case, you must be prepared."
Son Goku delivered his final verdict. Satoru Gojo's mouth twisted into a sinister grin, foul malice overflowing.
Inside his aerospace battleship, Ultron's computing units processed data at lightning speed. The death of the King of Curses, Satoru Gojo, was a foregone conclusion.
Having triggered the battle intent of Son Goku in this situation, no one in this world could survive.
The next issue to address was how to link Satoru Gojo back to Mercenary Tao.
Son Goku was not easy to communicate with. He had deployed robots to explain that Mercenary Tao was deliberately orchestrating this to stall for time, but Son Goku either lacked the cognitive inclination or simply didn't care, showing no reaction.
"Third Sequence unit Mercenary Tao: visual lost."
"Warning: high-speed approach detected."
"Warning, warning!"
"Target Mercenary Tao approaching at ultra-high speed. Estimated intercept time—"
BANG!
The alloy blast doors of the aerospace battleship were violently breached. A long-haired martial artist radiating golden Ki stood within the corridors of the ship.
Outside, the battleship's defense weapons had only just begun their spin-up cycles.
Ultron's processing cores rapidly pulled back from every other theater of war. The final image captured was from the eighth zone: a titanic island slowly sinking into the ocean, alongside two mangled corpses drifting on the waves.
The power of the Lock of Destiny gleamed brightly.
Standing at the threshold, Kaito Shirogane surveyed the flagship of the Monarch. Aside from minor differences in interior decor, its scale and structural framework were practically identical to the vessel he had previously seized.
These mechanical entities seemed to favor uniform, standardized schematics, likely because parts were easier to replace.
"You really shouldn't have tampered with my lottery draw."
Kaito Shirogane shook his head, as though mourning the other's impending misfortune.
Any entity that interacted with him in any form became an anchorable target for the Lock of Destiny.
That was why Kaito Shirogane had smiled when he met Ultron's gaze after the explosion.
From that exact second, he had secured the ability to pinpoint Ultron's coordinates at any moment.
"Ultron, you're dead."
Just as Ultron's mechanical chassis moved to respond, every sensor across his frame detonated. A figure had already materialized behind him, holding a computational core firmly in his grip.