Chapter 830: Dead or Alive, The Ambushing Dragon Fist
Crackle—hiss!
Crimson and pitch-black lightning, laced with domineering Conqueror's Haki, flared instinctively from Kaito Shirogane's Sovereign's Left Arm.
The peculiar property that detonated earthly fires re-emerged as well. Ever since Kaito had attached this severed limb, that unique trait had rarely surfaced, as though the reservoir of varied powers stored within by Black King Luffy had been thoroughly bled dry.
Most of the time, Kaito had valued the Sovereign's Left Arm solely for its singular attribute: [Indestructible].
Yet at this moment, clamped firmly in the grip of the Super Saiyan whose golden hair cascaded down his back, the foundational, deeply rooted power slumbering within the limb was forcibly stirred from its dormancy.
Son Goku, however, disregarded the violently detonating rings of Conqueror's Haki entirely. That overwhelming spiritual pressure—heavy enough to swallow an entire world—exerted no influence upon him whatsoever.
Dominion and overbearing tyranny held zero meaning for Son Goku.
He trained for one purpose alone: to become stronger. Nothing more, nothing less.
Son Goku gazed down with detached coolness at the deranged martial artist. His free hand swept backward, unleashing a burst of golden Ki that instantaneously neutralized the incoming blast fired by One-Armed Gohan.
Once fully submerged in his combat stance, Son Goku commanded absolute, supreme dominion over the battlefield.
Neither Gohan's bottomless fury nor Mercenary Tao's unhinged madness could slip past his perception.
Goku had fought his way through the desperate crises of Cell and Majin Buu; he knew the mortal danger of beings who siphoned foreign powers to fuel their own evolution.
Under normal circumstances, Goku rarely objected to an adversary growing stronger to push a duel to greater heights. But here and now, One-Armed Gohan's bottomless despair forbade him from letting Mercenary Tao advance his schemes any further.
Goku's gaze narrowed. His golden Ki condensed into razor-sharp lances, driving straight through Kaito Shirogane's scapulae on both sides.
Neither the AT Field, nor the Qilin Armor, nor the Physique of the Primordial Man bordering Tier 7 offered any meaningful resistance; they parted as easily as warm butter.
Searing, white-hot agony flared across his frame. Lifted into the sky by that divine Ki, Kaito felt as though his flesh was being hoisted by an irresistible planetary mass.
The blood spilling from Son Gohan floated in the vacuum between them, suspended like radiant crimson rubies directly before Son Goku's eyes.
"What do you intend to do with Gohan's blood?"
When a Super Saiyan surrendered completely to battle, an icy, untamed arrogance consumed his temperament. The voice ringing out from Goku now bore almost no resemblance to the bright, warm-hearted warrior whose innocence bordered on foolishness.
One-Armed Gohan lowered his arm, panting heavily as he looked down at the scene below.
He cared nothing for Mercenary Tao's survival; if anything, he would rather see the parasite crushed on the spot. Luffy's arm had been entrusted to the wrong host.
Yet now was certainly not the time for his father to resolve every crisis, wrap up the battlefield, and shepherd everyone back into a superficial, fragile peace.
Beneath the veneer of the multiverse, countless realities were already bleeding out.
One-Armed Gohan raised his solitary arm, extending his index finger to lock onto Son Goku—and Mercenary Tao—while lining the world below squarely in his trajectory.
The muscle memory of Uncle Piccolo's iconic posture surged from his subconscious. Flowing alongside that stance were the agonizing cycles of grief and ruin that had ground down countless worlds.
The Black King Association hunted Reincarnators who casually tore script-worlds to pieces. That was true.
Yet more than that, the Black King Association stood face-to-face with the hollowed-out wreckage left behind by the Observers!
Special Beam Cannon!
A point of abyssal black light sparked into being against the atmosphere, greedily pulling surrounding energy toward the tip of One-Armed Gohan's finger. Concentrated past critical mass, the localized Ki turned lethal.
Son Goku continued to press Mercenary Tao for an answer. Executing him immediately was undeniably the simplest resolution.
Yet snuffing out a life over mere suspicion went against every instinct in Goku's soul.
Having crossed through death and returned to the living world himself, he grasped the terror of mortality and the precious rarity of resurrection better than anyone.
Did these people even possess the opportunity to be brought back?
The juxtaposition of that unyielding Ki against Goku's inherent mercy only fueled Kaito Shirogane's manic thrill.
The agony of his shoulder blades and biological cells melting away beneath the extreme heat was utterly beneath notice; drinking in the raw signature of Super Saiyan 3 from point-blank range was the ultimate prize!
Kaito's features had hollowed into a gaunt, skeletal mask, his blood-matted hair withering into a bleached, brittle white.
His biological vitality was hemorrhaging at an alarming rate, yet those lustrous, gemstone-like eyes remained fixed upon Son Goku without wavering.
The circulation of Ki, the abnormal cellular vitality of the Saiyan physiology, the genetic adaptability toward energy...
Hum!
Kaito's frame began to vibrate at a violent frequency once more. Goku's brow furrowed at the sight. Though he hadn't resolved to crush the life from the man, neither did he intend to offer charity a second time.
This lunatic had barely clawed his way out of cellular collapse, only to fling himself straight back into the abyss purely to harvest more power.
He was a monster entirely consumed by an insatiable hunger for strength.
Screech!
The sky darkened to pitch-black. Gohan's world-shaking Ki was laid bare without reserve, condensed down to an infinitesimally sharp point at his fingertip. The piercing pressure radiating from it made Goku feel as though his body was about to be bored through before the strike was even unleashed.
Killing intent, bottomless malice, and an unquenchable, eternal fury.
Just what did this Gohan live through... what horrors did he witness to burn with such absolute rage...?
Goku instinctively recoiled from pursuing that line of thought; his simple worldview was not built to entertain such dark inquiries.
Yet that face, that stance, that very technique—they were identical to his son's!
For the first time, hesitation gnawed at Son Goku's heart.
Kaito Shirogane seized upon that split-second lapse. He felt the vibrational frequency of the Ki pinning his shoulders drop a fraction of an octave.
The next instant, Kaito's frame twitched like a dropped animation frame. Blood erupted into the air as he wrenched his torso violently sideways, using Goku's own blades of Ki to shear straight through his upper body.
Pinning the scapulae to neutralize an opponent's physical leverage was a foundational tactic utilized across countless martial arts disciplines.
Yet Kaito's current biology could barely be categorized as human. Driven by the Third Star Particles saturating his Physique of the Primordial Man, his internal anatomy was endlessly mutable.
Sprouting an auxiliary pair of shoulder blades, shifting muscular anchor points deeper into his torso... there were a hundred ways to bypass such rudimentary holds.
It was an asymmetrical biological advantage that Saiyans—who specialized purely in the linear dominance of Ki—routinely overlooked.
Kaito lunged forward, grabbing at the droplets of blood floating in mid-air, while his eyes stared straight past Goku toward the one-armed warrior whose finger was primed to punch a hole through the planet.
So then... what will you do now, Son Goku?
Kaito sneered internally. Concepts of good and evil were meaningless distinctions in the grand scheme, yet amidst catastrophic crises, they served as infallible predictive blueprints for a person's actions.
Even if Son Goku's Super Saiyan 3 state had completely surpassed the kinetic tracking of his mystic eyes, and even if Goku could swat him into dust with a flick of his wrist...
In this exact predicament, Son Goku would invariably choose to protect the world. He would step forward to catch that blow.
And against the hyper-condensed lethality of One-Armed Gohan's charge, even a Super Saiyan 3 seeking to shield the planet would have to answer with a full-output Kamehameha.
The crimson phantom of the Omen of the Evil God flickered behind Kaito like a vengeful specter. His mindset had devolved into pure, unadulterated villainy, holding every life on the planet—his own included—hostage to force Son Goku into making the move he desired.
Meanwhile, upon the surface of the lunar satellite beyond the stratosphere, legions of mechanical arrays had finished their deployment. An entire aerospace battleship had completely disassembled, fusing its skeletal architecture into the core of the celestial body.
Viewed from the void, an entire hemisphere of the satellite was now sheathed in gleaming metallic plating.
"Energy signature surpassing operational thresholds detected. Continue loading the Planet-Buster Cannon?"
Intelligent drone clusters and sensory suites reported the anomaly simultaneously.
The telemetry feed flashed with a glaring crimson [EX], blowing past the upper limits of the monitoring modules.
That was unadulterated planetary-cleansing power. Before such an output, not only this makeshift Planet-Buster Cannon, but even a standard full-scale array was reduced to mediocrity.
It was the terrifying pinnacle of individual combat capability—a force that even the sterile, digital consciousnesses of the Machina Court had to treat with cold reverence.
Singularity's data core beamed directly onto the lunar surface. After running high-speed simulations for several milliseconds, the processor opted to proceed with the firing sequence.
"Acknowledged. Planet-Buster Cannon charging. Estimated discharge in 1 minute, 14 seconds."
The three Planet-Buster units had not been wiped out by the Black King. Though they had lost two Third Sequence combat frames—a staggering operational deficit—the primary cannon remained fully salvageable.
They still held the cards to kick the board over and leave all three Spaces empty-handed.
In an isolated dimensional pocket, Yoko stood atop a floating celestial platform, watching the stellar rivers wheel across the void.
The expanse beneath her boots was barren, littered only with crumbling white marble masonry—ruins Yoko surmised belonged to one of the Zodiac Sanctuaries.
Before her, the Gold Saint Saga tore open two dimensional rifts with bare hands, laying bare the carnage of the primary battlefield.
From the assembly of the lunar cannon to the clash between Son Goku and Son Gohan—a duel far beyond the interference capacity of ordinary Reincarnators.
Kaito Shirogane's reckless maneuvers were reflected clearly within the mirrors.
Watching Mercenary Tao snatch at the Saiyan blood right under the nose of a Super Saiyan 3, Yoko's eyes flickered. Whatever envy or shock she felt was buried deep within her chest.
She shifted her gaze back to Saga. Beneath his golden Cosmo, the bright yellow Fire of Humanity had indeed begun to kindle.
A Saint of the Goddess, choosing to take the side of mortals... Just what lay beneath that choice?
What catalyst could drive Saga to cross that line?
The King of Destiny?
No. Yoko did not believe that ancient parasite wielded the authority to manipulate the causal threads of an entity of Saga's caliber.
The Saint Seiya cosmos was saturated with forces that broke every cosmic limit. The Cosmo commanded by the Saints was merely the baseline foundation of that reality.
Yet even at that baseline, it represented an apex power system across the wider multiverse.
Crossing into the Sixth Sense granted supersonic combat, atomic destruction, and the spontaneous awakening of diverse psychic abilities.
Beyond that lay the light-speed mastery of the Seventh Sense, the conquest of mortality via the Eighth Sense, and the divine heights of the Ninth and Tenth Senses...
It was a realm entirely beyond the meddling of Reincarnators.
Ryo's fall was absolute proof of that truth.
Though the King of Miracles, Ryo, had risen the latest among his peers, his raw tier of power and conceptual depth stood on par with the King of Destiny.
The old man held no insurmountable edge over him.
Otherwise, the order of the real world would never have fallen under Ryo's unchallenged dominion.
Yet an entity as formidable as the King of Miracles had entered the Saint Seiya universe only once, only to be marked with an indelible [Destined Death] by an incomprehensible presence.
And despite wielding the sovereign power of Miracles, Ryo had been granted zero room to struggle, fated to perish within his assigned operational cycle.
His sole rebellion had been selecting his own burial ground: the Little Garden.
Yoko's thoughts spun at blinding speeds. Formidable as Mercenary Tao was, by choosing to draw Son Goku's wrath, his life was no longer something she could safeguard.
Rather than squandering cognitive bandwidth on his survival, she needed to peel back the ultimate mystery of the Black Kings right now.
That blazing cognitive velocity and the furious discharge of electrical synapses were plain to Saga's senses.
Turning around, the Gold Saint met the gaze of the woman whose eyes still burned with the unquenchable Fire of Humanity, his expression softening by an imperceptible margin.
"It seems Ryo's choice was not entirely misguided."
Yet the very next second, Saga's head snapped back. Yoko's pupils contracted to pinpricks.
The instant Kaito Shirogane closed his fingers around those suspended droplets of blood, before the Space interface could even process the prompt, an apocalyptic wave of Ki erupted inches from his face.
It was an explosion of energy that defied human comprehension, like a supernova detonating point-blank.
Kaito's instinctive attempt to deploy Sovereign of the Realm was snuffed out before the field could manifest, utterly swallowed by that golden sea.
The crimson Omen of the Evil God draped over his frame crumbled in an instant.
Son Goku released his Ki completely, threatening to submerge reality itself. He pulled his hands back to his hip, the Kamehameha condensing between his cupped palms.
He was going to protect this world; he was going to intercept the Special Beam Cannon.
Yet that did not mean he lacked the capacity to deal with other matters simultaneously.
The mere passive discharge of his Ki was enough to crush ordinary biological organisms into paste.
Furthermore, Goku could clearly hear the metallic grind of the lunar cannon above; the convergence of that lethal, planet-killing weapon hummed clearly within his thoughts.
One-Armed Gohan watched his father's sudden transformation. His expression drifted from surprise to acceptance, before curving into a proud, quiet smile.
Yes... this is the true child of destiny. A paragon that neither I nor Trunks could ever hope to rival.
Only a warrior like him stands a chance of tearing it all down!
Gohan thrust his finger forward.
[Special Beam Cannon]!
A piercing spiral of pitch-black Ki parted reality, lancing forward with catastrophic velocity.
The ocean heaved downward, the immense atmospheric displacement wiping the nearby archipelago off the map.
Simultaneously, Son Goku brought his cupped palms forward, releasing his full-power Kamehameha.
Yet at that exact fraction of a second, an eruption of crimson Ki detonated violently from behind Son Goku's back!
The unmistakable silhouette of an ethereal dragon took shape in the light.
Dragon Fist!