Roses Fall

He strolled through the void with effortless ease.

"In this world, I am the sole master." Kakarot spread his arms, a faint white glimmer swirling at his fingertips. "Those ants you fought so hard to kill? With a single thought, I can turn back time and drag them out of hell whenever I please. It all depends on whether I feel like it or not."

Son Gohan's eye twitched, but he did not respond.

With a flick of his hand, a gentle yet irresistible mass of green energy forcibly shoved Trunks back several thousand meters.

The next instant, a violent aura exploded outward.

BOOM!

In his Super Saiyan 4 state, his speed far exceeded the speed of light. A terrifying combat power on the scale of five hundred quadrillion gathered in his right fist, carrying a violent gale that shredded space as it bore down on Kakarot's face.

There was no need for testing. When facing a freak like this, one had to strike with a thunderous, lethal blow from the very start.

Facing a punch capable of piercing through a galaxy, Kakarot didn't even blink, a confident smile still hanging on his lips.

He didn't even bother to adopt a defensive stance.

Hum.

The moment Son Gohan's fist was a mere half-inch from Kakarot's brow, an invisible resistance abruptly descended.

There was no shockwave from a collision, no earth-shattering roar. Son Gohan's unimaginably vast power simply vanished, as if it had been smashed into a bottomless pool of stagnant water, erased from existence.

Son Gohan immediately sensed that something was wrong.

His fist hadn't touched any solid object, yet it couldn't advance even a fraction further. The kinetic energy and destructive force of his charge were forcibly nullified by a completely unreasonable rule the moment they touched the flickering white light on Kakarot's skin.

"Decent speed, and the power is barely acceptable," Kakarot smiled, his gaze fixed on Son Gohan's fist, which remained suspended in mid-air. "But before a god, all of it is just futile, meaningless struggle."

Son Gohan reacted with lightning speed. Without a moment's hesitation, he kicked off the void with his left leg and retreated rapidly to put some distance between them.

Mid-air, he waved his hand in a rapid blur.

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!

Dozens of highly compressed energy spheres, trailing blinding tails of fire, wove into a dense web of death, completely sealing off every possible escape route for Kakarot. Each one contained terrifying destructive power.

"Useless."

Kakarot didn't even glance at the energy spheres; he simply gave a casual wave in the air.

An incredible scene unfolded.

As those violent energy spheres touched the white trail left by Kakarot's hand, they didn't explode, nor were they deflected. The energy spheres instantly dissipated, their structures forcibly reorganized.

A sky full of light particles drifted down.

The energy spheres, which had been powerful enough to destroy a galaxy, had transformed into hundreds of delicate, vibrant red rose petals in mid-air.

On the silent, ruined battlefield, Kakarot stood where he was, surrounded by the drifting, shattered rose petals. The white glimmer intertwined with the vivid red roses, creating an extremely bizarre and absurd contrast.

"What is this?!"

Watching from afar, Trunks felt his scalp tingle. Turning pure ki directly into... flowers? This had completely transcended the boundaries of martial arts!

Son Gohan hovered high in the sky, his brow furrowed.

He hadn't expected this Kakarot to be capable of utilizing the Miracle Power to such an extent.

"So, this is what you're relying on?" Son Gohan asked coldly.

"That's right." Kakarot stepped through the void, walking toward him step by step. "I possess the power to dictate everything. As long as I deem your attacks ineffective, they will never be able to touch me. As long as I want these crude energies to turn into petals, they can only turn into petals."

As his voice faded, Kakarot's figure flickered and suddenly appeared above Son Gohan's head.

"Now, it's my turn."

Kakarot raised his right leg, and with a sharp, piercing whistle through the air, he brought it down in a powerful axe kick aimed at Son Gohan's shoulder. The movement was wide and sweeping.

Son Gohan dodged to the side.

BOOM! Kakarot's kick missed, slicing a black fissure ten thousand kilometers long directly into the void below.

Seizing the opening, Son Gohan spun and lashed out with a whip kick toward Kakarot's side.

Hum.

That feeling again. The moment his power touched the white glimmer, it was like a clay ox entering the sea—it vanished completely.

Kakarot let out a wild laugh and countered with a simple, unadorned heavy punch aimed at Son Gohan's face.

Son Gohan leaned his upper body back at an unnatural angle, narrowly avoiding the crude strike. At the same time, he slammed his right palm against Kakarot's wrist, used the momentum to perform a backflip, and landed steadily in the void a thousand meters away.

After only a dozen exchanges, Son Gohan had already figured out the opponent's bottom line.

This Kakarot possessed an exaggerated combat power comparable to a god and relied on that bizarre Miracle Power to be completely immune to damage. But he had absolutely no foundation in martial arts; he wasn't even as good as the most ordinary Saiyan soldier, let alone Vegeta.

All of his attacks relied on brute force, speed, and that "wish-fulfillment" rule to smash through everything.

During that last counterattack, Kakarot could have used the Miracle Power to freeze Son Gohan's movements or set his own punch to be an unavoidable hit. But he hadn't done so.

Not just because he was arrogant, but because the activation of the Miracle Power was by no means limitless. If he wanted to directly erase or completely control a powerhouse of the same level or higher, the amount of Miracle Power consumed would be astronomical.

The fact that Kakarot chose to coat his skin with the Miracle Power for defense and to neutralize energy, rather than using it to secure an instant kill, was the best proof of that.

Bang!

Kakarot pointed a finger, unleashing a white energy beam that shot straight toward Son Gohan's heart.

Relying on his tempered instincts, Son Gohan forced his body into an impossible angle mid-air. The beam grazed past his left shoulder.

However, the beam did not fly off into the depths of space; instead, it made a bizarre turn mid-flight, heading straight for Trunks in the distance!

"Dodge!" Son Gohan shouted.

But the speed of the beam was simply too fast for Trunks, and it carried the laws of tracking and guaranteed impact. He had no time to react at all.

Swish!

In the split second before the beam could strike, Son Gohan arrived in front of Trunks.

He raised one arm, concentrating his energy into his forearm, and blocked the attack head-on.

Hiss—!

The moment the beam touched the Super Saiyan 4 aura, it emitted a harsh, corrosive sound. A large patch of skin and flesh was instantly sheared off Son Gohan's arm, leaving it dripping with blood. Although he wasn't pierced through, the erasure force that ignored defenses still wounded his physical body.

"Gohan!" Trunks yelled.

"I'm fine." Son Gohan shook the blood from his arm. He ate a Senzu Bean, and the wound healed rapidly.

He glanced at Trunks behind him. If the opponent kept targeting Trunks, he wouldn't be able to fight without restraint; he was being too passive.

"Trunks, get further away," Son Gohan said, his voice low as he kept his back to him.

Without waiting for Trunks to respond, he slammed his left hand onto his shoulder.

Boom!

A massive and pure surge of Legendary Super Saiyan energy poured into Trunks' body, forming an indestructible, fully enclosed energy shield around him.

"I'm sending you out of this galaxy first. Find a safe asteroid belt and hide. Don't come back until I come for you!"

With that, he launched Trunks away as if he were firing an energy blast.

Kakarot hovered in mid-air, making no move to stop him, merely watching the direction where Trunks had disappeared with great interest. "Sent one away, have you? It doesn't matter; the entire universe is under my control anyway."

With Trunks gone, Son Gohan released his full power without any further reservations.

Rumble—!

His surging aura erupted like a supervolcano that had been dormant for billions of years.

Son Gohan cracked his neck, the crisp sound of grinding bones echoing through the air.

He looked up, his golden eyes filled with wild, violent intent, locking onto Kakarot.

"You said just now that you are a god?" Son Gohan curled his lips into an arrogant arc and pointed at Kakarot's unguarded stance.

"Then I'd like to see exactly how many of my punches a so-called god can take."