The One-Shot

"Die!"

A piercing roar was wrenched from his throat.

He moved at an absurd speed, leaving ripples of black in his wake, like a real demon.

But his moment of glory lasted less than 0.0003 seconds. He hadn't even reached Son Gohan.

Boom!

The churning, dark green aura of Legendary Super Saiyan energy around Son Gohan abruptly faltered. A terrifying pressure burst outward from him, as if it had become tangible.

Every sound in the world fell silent.

A blinding crimson light flared from his chest, then erupted outward like a galaxy exploding!

Roar—!

With a deep, ancient ape's cry, a red, violent aura shot into the sky, tearing right through the dark crimson firmament.

Wild black hair fell to his waist. The upper half of his torn Battle Suit was shredded in an instant by the terrifying air currents, replaced by coarse red fur covering his solid chest and broad back.

On his long-empty left shoulder, a mass of dense red light began to churn furiously.

Ki took physical form; his severed arm grew back!

In his Super Saiyan 4 state, he no longer had to fight Vegeta one-handed.

The force of his aura alone was enough to send Vegeta reeling.

Bang—!

Demon Vegeta had slammed into an impassable divine barrier. His body flew backward at an even more devastating speed than he'd charged forward, crushing dozens of miles of steel fortress below into dust.

"Is this the last of your strength?" Son Gohan shook his head, his eyes full of disappointment.

"I'm truly sorry, but you're so weak I can't muster even the slightest interest."

Son Gohan examined the left hand his Super Saiyan 4 transformation had restored, then flexed his joints. His neck cracked sharply.

"Since you've run out of tricks, it's time for you to make your exit."

After his battle with Vegeta, his base battle power had already reached the terrifying height of 1.5 trillion.

Now, amplified by the absurd multiplier of Super Saiyan 4, his power shot through the roof.

"Six hundred quintillion!"

Behind the ruins of the defensive line, the Saiyan soldiers who had just barely survived couldn't even manage expressions of terror.

They couldn't believe the number displayed on the scouter was real!

"Here it comes."

Trunks stood in the distance, bracing against the red storm with both arms raised in front of him. His eyes blazed with fervor.

This was Gohan's strongest form!

The palace hall.

Kakarot, who had been half-reclining on his throne with the air of someone looking down on ants, suddenly sat upright.

The smile vanished from his face.

What was this form?

The energy readings transmitted by the white screen hanging in midair made the lofty Saiyan king experience something he had never felt before: a loss of control.

Creak—

The supposedly indestructible armrest of special metal was crushed into a lump of scrap iron in his palm.

He stared coldly at the merciless man in the screen, cloaked in red ape fur. The killing intent in his eyes began to boil.

On the battlefield.

Demon Vegeta struggled up from deep within the ruins. His pitch-black eyes showed no emotion. He let out another mindless roar and charged fearlessly at Son Gohan in midair.

Son Gohan watched the oncoming black figure expressionlessly. He had no intention of holding back any longer.

Whoosh.

He vanished from sight, moving at incredible speed.

In an instant, he appeared in front of Vegeta without warning and casually thrust out his right arm.

Splurt.

There was no earth-shattering clash of energy, no world-shaking explosion.

Son Gohan's right hand pierced straight through the layer of black aura, like a finger through fragile paper. It entered Vegeta's chest and emerged from his back.

Vegeta's body froze in place.

The demonic aura enveloping him vanished in an instant, like air escaping a punctured balloon.

A one-shot kill.

Faced with such an overwhelming gap in power, there was no room to fight back.

Son Gohan couldn't be bothered to spare him another glance. He slowly withdrew his right hand, then raised his head. His sharp gaze cut through the layers of smoke and steel, locking precisely onto the palace hall.

As though they were millions of miles apart, his eyes met Kakarot's across the distance.

"Still not planning to show yourself?"

Vegeta's body fell backward, limp.

A horrific hole had been torn through his chest. His heart had been utterly crushed, and his life was slipping away fast.

But in this moment between life and death, the demonic power that had consumed his reason also collapsed, briefly restoring a sliver of clarity.

"I can't die... I can't die..."

Everything King Kakarot had given him, his obsession with defeating the Legendary Super Saiyan, his pride as the strongest Saiyan beneath the king—all of it had been trampled into the dirt by this lowborn bastard.

He had lost completely.

But he was Vegeta! The former prince of the Saiyans!

"I can't... die yet..." Vegeta's cracked lips moved as blood poured from his mouth.

Summoning the last scrap of strength in his body, he raised his blood-soaked left hand.

A ball of highly concentrated white energy, infused with all the demonic power remaining in his body, rested in his palm. He hurled it into the sky with all his might.

"I won't lose!"

The white light pierced the clouds and detonated beyond Planet Vegeta's artificial atmosphere, becoming an enormous, blinding full moon.

More than seventeen thousand trillion units of Blutz Waves bathed the planet in light.

At the same time, the black demonic energy rode the waves like a sticky black downpour, blanketing the countless Saiyan soldiers below.

Vegeta's pupils finally went slack.

"It's a full moon!"

"That's Lord Vegeta's power!"

The Saiyan soldiers and officers struck by both the moonlight and the black raindrops began to convulse uncontrollably.

Crack, crack, crack—!

The dull sounds of muscles tearing and bones swelling echoed along the entire defensive line.

Instinctively, they looked up at the artificial full moon. The Saiyans' most primal instinct to undergo Great Ape Transformation had been awakened. But this time, infused with Vegeta's remaining demonic power, the effect was even more terrifying!

The Saiyans' bodies ballooned like inflating spheres. In the blink of an eye, tens of thousands of Great Apes, each dozens of meters tall, rose from the ground.

And their fur wasn't ordinary brown. It was a blinding dark gold!

Golden Great Apes in Super Saiyan form!

That wasn't all. Each Golden Great Ape was also wreathed in a strange black demonic aura that writhed like a venomous snake.

"Roar—!!!"

Tens of thousands of Demonized Golden Great Apes roared at the sky in unison.

The terrifying sound waves tore away hundreds of meters of bedrock. The entire Planet Vegeta shuddered violently under the rampaging energy of the horde, as though it might fall apart at any moment.

Son Gohan frowned slightly.

If they were merely ten thousand ordinary Golden Great Apes, he wouldn't even need to look at them.

But these monsters, tainted by demonic power, had lost all reason and fixed their sights on him as one.

Worse, Vegeta's Great Ape form could gather that strange black energy and forcibly link the massive power of more than ten thousand Great Apes together!

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom—!

Without a moment's hesitation, the Demonized Golden Great Apes opened their gaping mouths in unison.

Ten thousand beams of ultra-compressed energy, black as ink and powerful enough to destroy the world, blasted toward Son Gohan in a sweeping barrage.

They could no longer be called beams of energy.

They were a black tide of death, splitting the sky and the earth in two!

Son Gohan's gaze sharpened.

He could easily charge through the tide of energy, or even vaporize the Great Apes along with half the planet in a single strike.

But he couldn't dodge. And he couldn't ignore it.

Trunks was right behind him!

If that linked energy crashed down, nothing would remain of Trunks—not even his ashes.

"Damn it!"

Son Gohan immediately abandoned his charge toward the palace and flashed back in front of Trunks.

He thrust both arms forward.

His aura erupted wildly, forming a huge hemispherical shield of energy that enclosed and protected him and Trunks.

"Rumble—!!!"

Ten thousand black beams poured down like the Milky Way, crashing squarely into the shield. A blinding flash instantly swallowed everything in existence.