Chapter 820: Musō Tensei + Serious Punch
A streak of radiant light ignited beyond the boundaries of the world, punching clean through the dimensional crystal wall in an instant and plunging straight into the realm. Scarcely anyone possessed the senses to notice this disturbance.
Standing on the far side of the colossal island, Yoko Ekaterina raised a hand. A stream of twisted data shifted restlessly within her palm.
The substance resembled a cluster of spiraling tethers, boring relentlessly into the void. Beneath its touch, something within the dimensional fabric began to liquefy.
Traces of an aura entirely foreign to this world started leaking inward.
[Warning: Anomalous Information Surveillance Node detected]
[Warning: Hostile faction's third wave of deployment has commenced]
Across the firmament, two crisscrossing streams of light spanned the heavens like falling stars.
The next second, the data streams dissolved. Space buckled in a violent heave, and an immense fleet broke through the void.
The third wave of the Machina Court made its entrance with overwhelming spectacle.
Without the slightest pretense of stealth, over a hundred aerospace battleships materialized across the sky merely dozens of miles from the island.
Countless specialized mechanized frames poured from the hulls, advancing directly toward the island.
Simultaneously, from the opposing flank, a blazing sun and a luminous moon rose together in the sky, trailing a canopy of violent thunder.
Celestial Alignment. When truly formidable deities manifest, the natural weather bends automatically to their will. As natural masters of elements and astronomical phenomena, they effortlessly claim the battlefield as their absolute domain.
[Warning: Special Unit Apollo has entered the battlefield]
[Warning: Special Unit Luna has entered the battlefield]
[Warning: Special Unit Odin has entered the battlefield]
[Warning: Special Unit Planet-Buster Singularity has entered the battlefield]
[Warning: Special Unit Planet-Buster Crucible has entered the battlefield]
[Warning: Special Unit Planet-Buster Swarm has entered the battlefield]
Fenrir and Snow shot to their feet, completely thrown into disarray by Yoko's absence.
"This is..."
Though they had anticipated that the Void Paradise and Machina Court would never accept such a crushing defeat, this was beyond standard bounds.
In every prior large-scale faction war within primary worlds, the Infinite Dimensional Space had only ever engaged during the lower-intensity early phases of the plot.
The Space typically issued extraction missions the second its Reincarnators secured baseline profits, strictly avoiding head-on collisions with mature, established Spaces.
That was the foundational survival logic for Reincarnators in primary worlds.
Even when an anomalous vanguard like Yoko carved out localized dominance, the Space never allowed Reincarnators to overextend; it promptly severed the mission parameters to guarantee the extraction of top-tier assets.
In short, the Space—notoriously ruthless in derivative and secondary worlds—acted almost like a doting overseer within high-tier secondary and primary worlds.
Every calculated maneuver was aimed at preventing its top-tier Reincarnators from being systematically wiped out by hostile Spaces.
Hostile Spaces, equally accustomed to the Infinite Space's frailty, had always prioritized purging these weaker units during Stage One to force a swift surrender.
Yet in this world, the Infinite Dimensional Space had defied all precedent by deploying both Yoko and Mercenary Tao right from the outset.
Worse for their enemies, the actual combat prowess of Mercenary Tao and Yoko far exceeded every predictive model. With overwhelming dominance, they had dismantled the True Gods of the Void Paradise and the Monarchs of the Machina Court deployed in the prior waves.
That inevitable pushback had guaranteed that the third wave would feature Third Sequence adversaries.
Yet neither Fenrir nor Snow could have envisioned both Spaces concurrently committing so many Third Sequence entities to the field.
The Fourth Sequence was already the ceiling for top-tier Reincarnators and certain current Sovereign Monarchs. Those True Gods and Monarchs possessed the firepower to single-handedly eradicate mid-to-low-tier stellar civilizations.
Theoretically, the Fourth Sequence represented the highest echelon the Infinite Dimensional Space could field.
The Third Sequence stood entirely beyond the Sovereign Monarchs.
Prior to witnessing the sheer, crushing power of Mercenary Tao and Yoko, Fenrir wouldn't have dared to claim that their Space even possessed a Third Sequence Reincarnator.
After all, the legendary Supreme Three Kings had virtually no recorded history of engaging Third Sequence threats from foreign Spaces.
Yet now, it was plain as day: Reincarnators capable of obliterating the Fourth Sequence with such casual ease undoubtedly belonged to the Third Sequence.
Even accounting for that, the hostile Spaces' reaction was unnervingly disproportionate.
To deploy so many Third Sequence units all at once...
Six against two?
Or three against one...
Aka furrowed his brow deeply. He refused to believe these two hostile Spaces were stupid enough to brawl with one another before wiping out the Reincarnators; there would be no opportunity for Mercenary Tao and Yoko to reap the rewards of a mutual collapse.
In a Dimensional War, ruthlessly purging the weakest party first was absolute doctrine.
"How are we supposed to fight this..."
"Why hasn't the Space issued an extraction mission yet?! This difficulty has blown past anything we can influence. Does the Space intend to watch Yoko and Mercenary Tao get slaughtered in this world?!"
Several Reincarnators, buckled under the immense psychological weight, began cursing openly. The boundless courage sparked while bathed under Yoko's Fire of the Heart had guttered out.
Looking around only to find Empress Yoko had vanished entirely, their dread deepened by the second.
Curiously, the native plot characters seemed entirely blind to the bizarre spectacle unfolding above. The colossal fleet blotting out the sun and the supernatural celestial alignment overhead drew not a single glance from Midora, Ichiryu, or Jirou.
Their eyes remained riveted to the tournament ring.
Ichiryu stared in disbelief, while Midora let his crossed arms drop to his sides. The strands of their hair twitched and rippled involuntarily as bio-electric charges sparked across their skin.
A suffocating sense of mortal crisis flared instinctively within them.
The aged Jirou shuddered, nearly dropping his frail guise to release his true form.
It wasn't that they failed to perceive the wider shifts—the immense flying dreadnoughts or the entities radiating immense auras across the horizon.
Rather... none of that mattered.
Compared to the duel igniting directly before their eyes, foreign fleets were utterly inconsequential.
Like a hunted wolf abruptly transforming into a world-devouring leviathan, the martial artist known as Mercenary Tao had tapped into an unfathomable well of power.
Pillars of golden Ki erupted from his skin, shockwaves rippling out in punishing concussions that hammered against the spectators' flesh.
Hum!
As extreme acceleration inverted into absolute stillness, the surrounding magnetic field tore violently into chaotic flux.
Materializing directly above Son Goku's crown, Mercenary Tao's fist moved with unvarnished purity—the crystallization of a million strikes honed into effortless simplicity.
Every layer of energy circulation and kinetic manipulation collapsed into a single, unadorned physical strike: a punch.
The system warnings flashing incessantly before Kaito Shirogane's eyes might as well have been nonexistent. His vision had narrowed until the rest of the cosmos fell away.
Ichiryu, Jirou, Midora, Yoko, the spatial rifts, the anomalous data cascades, and even the bizarre, resonance of spiral power humming behind the island—none of it held any meaning.
He cast everything behind him. In his sight, only one objective remained.
Son Goku!
"Hah!"
Son Goku's eyes ignited with pure delight. He had never witnessed a martial form like this: devoid of superficial embellishment, moving with the pristine honesty of a novice's very first strike.
Yet the man moved as a seamless whole. Closing one's eyes, his motion was completely imperceptible, his internal kinetic circulation having surpassed the realm of total physical mastery.
It exceeded even the state of "mind like water" taught by Master Roshi.
It was a realm of martial arts that even he had yet to master or fully comprehend.
It was as though every martial truth had been pulverized and reforged into an entirely new doctrine.
Even if the absolute magnitude of the man's Ki was comparatively frail—falling drastically short of the cosmic foes he typically faced...
This pure martial elevation, this unprecedented fist, pulled back the curtain on a brand-new world.
Goku dropped his center of gravity, muscles locking taut as his Ki flooded his entire frame. The world around him ground to an absolute halt.
Suspended above him, the otherwise swift martial artist appeared entirely frozen in time.
If he wished, a single retaliatory punch right now could swat the man out of the sky before that strike ever landed.
Granted, given the man's fragile Ki baseline, failing to calibrate his output carefully might just kill him outright...
Suppressing the urge to strike, Goku crossed his forearms before him. He wanted to feel the weight of this punch for himself!
Kaito Shirogane's pupils shifted into radiant, shifting prisms. When holding back, he fought with strict economy, relying entirely on the Martial God's Ultimate Intent. But once his trump cards were drawn, all hesitation ceased.
The Key of Miracles had a strict duration. Within this narrow window, he had to drag Son Goku's genuine power into the light!
Limit-Break Spiral: Engaged!
Activating his mystic eyes and the Limit-Break Spiral in unison, a torrential deluge of data flooded his cognition: the microscopic vibration of atmospheric particles, the flux of elemental currents, the warping of planetary physics under divine Authority.
Everything was laid bare to his heightened perception, processed and absorbed by his brain through the machinery of the Limit-Break Spiral.
His physical frame underwent an instant metamorphosis. As if tracing the templates of the three True Gods descending through the void behind him, his Authority of Ki and Force blazed with blinding intensity.
Divine power surged across his flesh like liquid fire, rapidly solidifying into an ornate mantle of armor before swelling outward into a colossal phantom avatar.
In that single heartbeat, his Authority of Ki and Force surged straight into the Tier 7 threshold. His Divine Body materialized spontaneously, the surplus Ki and force bleeding from his back to form a pristine, circular halo of divine light.
Watching this from afar, Apollo, his golden hair billowing behind him, narrowed his eyes as solar fire raged within his pupils, burning through all illusions.
"The Eyes of the Lord? Or the Master of Combat?!"
No answer came. It resembled both, yet was neither.
BOOM!
The second his Ki and force eclipsed the critical threshold, all ambient matter was forcibly repelled.
These evolutions unfolded with absolute spontaneity. Kaito Shirogane felt as though he had plugged directly into the Root itself, processing infinite streams of information simultaneously.
Yet his primary consciousness remained wholly devoted to landing this solitary blow.
A profound paradox: while his conscious mind remained laser-focused, his subconscious passively metabolized every surrounding power signature, replicating every useful technique in real time.
[Killer Move: Serious Punch]!
As Kaito Shirogane swung his fist from behind his back, Goku's expression shifted before the punch even fully extended. A pitch-black void tore open before the oncoming knuckles.
The strike was held entirely in reserve. Unlike the Z Fighters' habit of obliterating everything through massive, external discharges of Ki...
This man had compressed the boundless Ki of the Kaio-Ken down into a singular, infinitely dense point, driving it directly into the strike.
This punch... is formidable!
He felt the atmosphere and earth crushing inward simultaneously. An unseen force seemed to anchor him to the spot, physical reality itself conspiring to hold him fast.
Un-dodgeable...
Crack!
Golden Ki flared from Goku's skin, shattering the conceptual lock like fragile glass. He broke free from the Serious Punch's tracking in an instant.
Yet he held his ground. He knew with absolute certainty that if he dodged, the island behind him and the planetary crust beneath would be obliterated instantly.
The resulting tsunami would wash over every archipelago for thousands of miles.
There were no Dragon Balls in this world; he couldn't guarantee the dead could ever be brought back.
A bizarre, exhilarating hum resonated through Kaito Shirogane's bones. He had never thrown a punch that felt this profoundly unobstructed.
Unseen by his own eyes, the towering phantom of Saitama behind him practically fused into his spine, their movements mirroring each other in perfect synchrony.
Concepts of "Invincible," "Instant Kill," and "Might" flared brightly before collapsing back into his core.
Data streams flickered behind him in patterns imperceptible to mortal eyes.
In that singular moment, even the relentless warnings of the Infinite Dimensional Space ceased completely.
Power. Absolute, unadulterated power!
Kaito drove his fist straight toward Son Goku's face.
BOOM!
As if a world-serpent had violently whipped its tail across the planet, a horrifying shockwave tore through the environment before the actual fist even landed.
"What?!"
Ichiryu, Midora, and Jirou widened their eyes. The next instant, the unbridled kinetic blast scooped the three closest titans off the ground, hurling them into the far horizon until they vanished as tiny specks.
Almost simultaneously, Luffy, Toriko, and the others blanched as gale-force concussions swept through. Luffy barely managed to stretch his arms around his crew to bundle them together before the entire group was swept away by the storm.
Fenrir, Snow, Aka, and the surviving mechanical constructs were obliterated from the arena's perimeter the second the blazing white shockwave flattened the sector.
Feeling the sheer purity of that approaching fist, Goku's heart raced as pure battle lust ignited within him.
Abandoning his defensive guard, his figure blurred across Kaito's heightened vision, executing a single, decisive step forward.
[Dragon Fist]!
With eyes swirling with multi-colored light, Kaito watched Goku's motion etched into his memory in agonizingly slow detail.
Crack—BOOM!
Blinding white lightning detonated between their colliding fists.
An apocalyptic wave of kinetic energy blasted in every direction.
Spacetime twisted, incandescent shockwaves surged, and golden Ki churned alongside raw martial force!
"Raise shields! Maximum shields!"
Amidst blaring proximity alarms, the Machina Court's aerospace fleet was caught dead in the blast radius. Internal chain-reaction explosions tore through the ships before they could maneuver away.
Suddenly, Goku's expression changed. His strike had shattered the opponent's assault, yet his knuckles met nothing but dead air.
As though the man simply did not exist, Kaito slipped cleanly through the path of the Dragon Fist. Blood streamed from Kaito's eye sockets, the kaleidoscopic colors dragging behind his gaze like radiant comets.
[Musō Tensei]!
Tapping into the absolute nothingness of Musō Tensei, he phased out of existence at the precise moment of impact, entirely bypassing the Dragon Fist's primary axis and allowing the devastating blow to obliterate only his residual shockwaves and surrounding shroud of Ki.
Then, beneath Goku's startled gaze, the Serious Punch landed flush against the Saiyan's chest.
THUD!
A terrifying shockwave detonated across Goku's frame. The island split down the middle, the ocean caved into an abyssal crater, and the reinforced steel arena crumbled into iron dust.
Goku's stance dropped, his feet plunging meters into the sea as ocean water soaked through his gi.
He registered a sharp, peculiar sting as the pitch-black intent of death dissolved harmlessly against his circulating golden Ki.
Goku lifted his head, the look in his eyes fundamentally transformed.
"Mr. Mercenary Tao... what an incredible move."
"Now... it's my turn."
"Hah!"
Goku clenched his fists, and golden Ki exploded outward in a cataclysmic roar. A split second later, Kaito Shirogane's scalp burned with agony as his eyeballs burst from the sheer pressure.
Golden hair stood jagged and erect, an all-consuming aura shaking the three realms to their core.
The Super Saiyan had awakened.