Chapter 831: Ultimate Great Sin: King of Wrath
Even with the Martial God's Ultimate Intent pushed to its absolute ceiling, Kaito Shirogane would not dare claim his sensory perception surpassed Son Goku in Super Saiyan 3.
Yet in that singular fraction of a millisecond, the sensation welling up from the Sovereign's Left Arm—a presence simultaneously familiar and alien—allowed Kaito, with his Limit-Break Spiral and the Unknown Art firing at full bore, to grasp the truth in an instant.
The other Black King, Luffy, was about to tear through spatial coordinates and manifest!
Kaito Shirogane's body moved in lockstep with his consciousness. The [Dragon Fist], simulated and replayed millions of times within his mental landscape, detonated naturally from his frame.
Ki amplified sixteen-fold via the Kaio-Ken erupted at the most geometrically flawless trajectory. That swelling, blood-red energy condensed into the physical shape of a celestial dragon, ripping outward through the residual blast waves of Son Goku's flaring aura.
Space unsealed like a massive set of double doors. Missing an arm as well, Black King Luffy stepped directly out of the dimensional void.
A lethal mastery of Observation Haki suppression locked down all foreign perception. The very instant Luffy appeared, an eruption of Conqueror's Haki flooded the area, stripping all color from heaven and earth.
Crimson and pitch-black intent of conquest bored through physical reality.
Son Goku's pupils contracted sharply. Though the silhouette before him bore scarred, weathered alterations, that face was unmistakably the very same Luffy with whom he had hit it off so warmly just hours before!
Black King Luffy wore a face of iron resolve. Taking a heavy stride forward, his ink-black right arm punched straight into the atmosphere. A crimson lotus flared open as volcanic magma erupted violently; spacetime shuddered under the blunt impact, turning the firmament a blinding, chalky white riddled with fine, spiderwebbing fractures.
Upon Luffy's knuckles, an immense convergence of varied forces began to implode. Countless Devil Fruit powers harmonized with absolute Haki, releasing an offensive output leagues beyond what he had used to slaughter the Hand of God operatives in the One Piece realm.
At this juncture, Son Goku had already committed to his Kamehameha. The opposing waves of the Special Beam Cannon and the golden beam were already tearing through the open sky.
Out of the corner of his eye, Goku registered this unfamiliar Luffy throwing a mountain-cleaving strike directly toward his flank. For a split second, his mind struggled to process the sudden betrayal.
Yet mid-air, One-Armed Gohan grasped the situation instantly.
Within the Black King Association, members hailed from wildly divergent timelines and backgrounds, holding fundamentally irreconcilable views on fate, the Observers, and the Reincarnators.
The Shadow World where they drifted offered no forum for mutual understanding or casual discourse.
They were closer to bound specters trapped in an unformed abyss, capable of riding the currents of deployed data streams into external worlds only when a precise karmic anchor presented itself.
Between most Black Kings, genuine empathy and affection did not exist.
Yet perhaps because both had lost an arm, or perhaps because their respective realities shared narrative echoes across the wider multiverse, the bond between Black King Luffy and Black King Gohan ran slightly deeper than the rest.
Was Luffy genuinely throwing himself into the crossfire to shatter Gohan's plan, simply for the sake of that fragile thread of kinship?
At this moment, Son Gohan could not tell whether he felt deeper moved or consumed by greater fury.
[Dragon Fist]!
A violent draconic force tore out from the golden sea of Ki behind Son Goku's back, resembling a lone spark in an abyss, a single leaf tossed atop an oceanic squall.
Before the catastrophic majesty of the three titans, the raw scale of this strike seemed utterly unremarkable.
Yet the timing, momentum, and angle of the blow were terrifyingly, impossibly flawless.
As if transcending the sensory limits of both Gohan and Goku, Kaito had foreseen Luffy's exact emergence point, while Luffy had failed to perceive the incoming strike from behind.
Just as the Tremor-Tremor Fruit's seismic shock cracked the atmosphere and ocean, Kaito Shirogane's Dragon Fist drove directly into Luffy's shoulder from behind!
The Sovereign's Left Arm struck brutally against the exact socket where it had once been severed.
Crack—BOOM!
Before Kaito's Sovereign's Left Arm, Conqueror's Haki infusion twisted physical space, slamming into the suffocating, pitch-black kinetic force coating Black King Luffy's frame. Thousands of physical attribute points detonated in an instant.
The [Authority of Ki and Force] blazed with blinding brilliance. Divine power cycled rapidly across Kaito's skin, naturally manifesting the towering phantom of a Divine Body.
The halo behind his back smoothed into a near-perfect circle—a sign that his mimicry of the God Kings' divine frameworks had advanced another step. Yet neither Kaito, nor the battling Saiyans and Black Kings, spared a glance for the transformation.
Even Saga and Yoko, watching from the isolated pocket of deep space, held no bandwidth to process the sight.
Streams of multi-colored light trailed from Kaito's eyes like comets. His expression was warped with manic bloodlust. Flashing through his vision were memories from the One Piece world: the clash where his all-out strike was destined to collide with Black King Luffy's casual backhand.
Back then, compelled by the mortal danger threatening Cindy, Kaito had instinctively diverted that blow toward the astral demon instead.
Now, at long last, he could throw an unconstrained fist into the jaw of an authentic Black King.
Snap!
Spatial fissures splintered into being. Struck by two catastrophic, compounding forces wrapped in Conqueror's Haki infusion, the local fabric of reality sheared wide open.
A pitch-black rift cleaved open directly beside Luffy's ribs.
ROAR!
The crimson draconic shockwave drove forward with untamed savagery, slamming dead-on into the unguarded Black King Luffy.
Beneath the impact, Luffy merely turned his head, his dark eyes meeting those of the manic martial artist Mercenary Tao.
Within the crimson phantom draped over the man, not a single trace of Roland's lingering presence remained.
Did the Morning Star of Hope ultimately give birth to an evil deity like this?
Luffy was uncertain whether backing this Reincarnator had been the correct choice. The Law of Causality was a treacherous, terrifying mechanism occupying an apex tier even among destiny-side systems.
Deep down, Roland's causality could never truly override the Abyssal God. The unfolding tragedy was likely less the design of Roland, and far more the calculated script of the Abyssal God and causality itself.
Yet Luffy still remembered Roland's dying conviction—that final, burning pulse of the heart!
Roland had wagered his dying hope upon this bloodthirsty Reincarnator because he had glimpsed a future where this very monster raised a blade against the Abyssal God.
Luffy's gaze softened with sorrow, looking straight through Kaito's soul as though seeking out Roland, who had been devoured to serve as a stepping stone on this man's ascent toward godhood.
BOOM!
Luffy staggered, forced several paces back by the momentum of the draconic shockwave.
The devastating punch aimed toward Son Goku was knocked off-axis, its kinetic payload scattering harmlessly into the void.
RUMBLE!
Like a supernova detonation, crimson and pitch-black Conqueror's Haki erupted alongside a cataclysm of unbound elements.
The sea of golden and black Ki in the upper atmosphere was blown apart. The ocean floor caved in instantly, carving an abyss thousands of meters wide that plunged beyond the reach of human sight.
The next second, the infused Conqueror's Haki exploded from its epicenter, sweeping out as an omnidirectional, spherical shockwave across the planet.
Hum!
Caught at point-blank range, Kaito Shirogane's cellular framework vibrated violently. Tossed backward like a ragdoll at the center of a hurricane, he slid continuously across the sky.
Yet this world-shattering shockwave lost all relevance the very next instant.
Two attacks capable of extinguishing the planet several times over collided mid-air.
The pitch-black Special Beam Cannon—a dense, concentrated pillar of Ki wrapped in screaming, spiraling currents of energy—plunged straight down from One-Armed Gohan's fingertip, its terminus aimed squarely at the planetary core.
Opposite him, Son Goku thrust both palms forward. A golden beam as thick as a towering pillar tore through heaven and earth, driving with enough kinetic recoil to push even Goku's footing back an inch.
"Hah!"
Father and son exhaled in unison. The cataclysmic Ki blasts crashed together mid-air.
Light and heat vanished entirely from the world.
Kaito Shirogane's eyes stretched wide. Allowing his battered frame to be hurled through the gale, he looked upon the cataclysm with pure, unadulterated rapture.
BANG!
Pushed past its biological tolerance, Kaito's physical vessel detonated into a cloud of blood mist once more. The golden shockwave swept past, carrying the residual Conqueror's Haki with it, shaking Kaito's soul to its foundational roots.
Within the inner landscape of his Sea of Consciousness, Satoru Gojo pulled down his blindfold from his perch in the Underworld, watching the white jade throne tremble violently as the colossal Broccoli Divine Kingdom tilted on its axis.
He sensed clearly that his host was weathering an unprecedented kinetic baptism.
Given the man's unhinged obsession with raw might, he was likely intoxicated past the point of reason right now.
Across the dimensional rift, Saga gazed calmly at the shockwaves churning the void—Ki dense enough to devour entire star systems.
Ki, an energetic currency that sat at a modest qualitative baseline, had been elevated by these two Saiyans to a magnitude capable of shaking galaxies.
Saga began to comprehend One-Armed Gohan's despair. With a sweep of his hand, a Cosmo capable of shattering stars dispersed the stray Ki washing through the rift.
He shielded the woman behind him—the mortal who, according to Ryo, carried the destiny of the King of Humanity.
[Authority: Physique of the Primordial Man has advanced]
[Current: Tier 7]
[You may now condense Divine Body: Primordial Man]
[Anti-Life Equation has been lifted. Stairway: Stairway of Eternal Return is now accessible]
[You have made contact with Concept: Anti-Life Equation]
The concepts of earth and sky re-anchored themselves within Kaito Shirogane's awareness. The global sea level had dropped dozens of centimeters; despite Son Goku's meticulous suppression, the collision of their attacks had inflicted permanent scars upon the biosphere.
In the upper atmosphere, Goku held his forward-thrust stance in Super Saiyan 3, while Gohan pressed his downward palm.
Following the initial detonation, the twin pillars of apocalyptic Ki had locked into a dead-even standoff, the point of convergence beginning to shudder.
Kaito Shirogane reconstituted from the blood mist. Inside his frame, the high-frequency vibration of the Third Star Particles finally settled into stillness.
His physical vessel was finally dense enough to house the mass.
Simultaneously, the Anti-Life Demon Dragon roared within his core as the Furnace of Life reignited. Cellular vitality and biological regeneration scaled exponentially, surging past the ceilings of ancient dragons and cosmic titans within seconds.
He had crossed into a new realm: an anomaly forged from the melting pot of infinite lifeforms.
The pores across his skin vanished, forcing Ki and kinetic force into an unbroken, internal closed loop.
The Sixth Step of the Stairway of Eternal Return—[Perfect Organism]—reclaimed its throne within this vessel, pushed far beyond prior parameters by the Tier 7 Physique of the Primordial Man.
His biological frame, which had been on the verge of total collapse under the Sixteen-Fold Kaio-Ken, finally stabilized.
Though internal vessels and organs continued to tear beneath the strain of over-extracted Ki, the [Absolute Adaptation] of the Perfect Organism continuously reforged their tensile strength, developing an organic immunity to the friction of Ki.
The burning ache within his chest began to fade.
"Hah..."
Kaito exhaled a ragged breath of relief. Ever since Black King Clark had suppressed his core, he had not experienced this profound lightness.
The Anti-Life Demon Dragon felt the relief in kind. Originally, the dragon and the Life Furnace existed in paradoxical equilibrium, providing limitless vitality to his flesh. But Clark's Anti-Life Equation had broken that balance; following the awakening of the Primordial Man, the dragon had been revived first, turning into an exploited battery drained dry by Kaito.
Every activation of the Kaio-Ken had pushed the Anti-Life Dragon Grendel to its biological breaking point.
Now, with the Life Furnace fully restored, the vessel had returned to a state of flawless equilibrium, relieving the burden on the dragon entirely.
Savoring the awakening of his abilities, Kaito kept his eyes locked on the beam struggle across the horizon.
[You have acquired Rule-Breaking Material: Blood of Wrath (?)]
[Spend Sin Points * 100 to temper the Blood of Wrath into the Omen of the Evil God and trigger Great Sin Sublimation?]
"Yes!"
Kaito's cadence cracked with raw anticipation.
The ruby-like droplets of blood writhed in his palm before melting into the crimson phantom hovering behind him.
A scalding, white-hot agony instantly wrapped around Kaito's consciousness.
"Urgh... AARGH!"
His vision blurred into pure static, the beam struggle vanishing entirely from his perception.
Rage. Unadulterated, groundless, suffocating fury!
The world was washed in blinding crimson.
His blood felt as though it was boiling away as the Third Star Particles inside him revolted anew.
A pristine white radiance ignited behind Kaito's back. As his right hand curled, a pale sword of pure light coalesced in his grip.
[Cannot Live Under the Same Sky]!
The absolute authority he had wielded only when fused with Azi Dahaka surfaced once more within his palm.
Yet the sensation of scalding agony refused to abate.
He burned with rage at his own frailty, rage at his inability to intervene in the clash above, rage at crossing paths with these two Super Saiyans before he was ready.
Given just a little more time, he too could have stood toe-to-toe in a battle of this caliber!
The blind fury sparked deep resentment toward the deployment parameters enforced by the Space.
That towering, unquenchable wrath forced the crimson phantom behind him to collapse, fusing directly into his physical flesh.
The phantom draped over his skin like a gossamer shroud, attempting to sink through his pores.
Yet the self-contained biology of the [Perfect Organism] sealed his internal and external pathways, barring the evil spirit from integrating.
Gritting his teeth, Kaito crossed his arms, digging his claws into his own flesh as crimson Ki leaked from his fingertips.
Rip!
Kaito tore his own chest open, forcing the crimson phantom to plunge straight into his exposed heart.
BOOM!
The ultimate fury rooted itself within his soul.
At that exact fraction of a second, an unpretentious beam of light pierced the upper atmosphere.
The Planet-Buster Cannon had fired.
Kaito Shirogane arched his spine, the ocean beneath his feet shattering into mist as he transformed into a streak of blazing crimson light, hurtling straight into the heavens!
BOOM!
[Crimson Great Sin: Omen of the Evil God has advanced]
[Sequence updated. Current: Ultimate Great Sin: King of Wrath]