Rose Petals Falling

He strolled leisurely through the void.

"In this world, I am the one and only ruler." Kakarot spread his hands, a faint white glow curling around his fingertips. "Those ants you went to such lengths to kill—I can turn back time with a single thought and drag them out of hell whenever I wish. It all comes down to whether I want to or not."

Son Gohan's eye twitched slightly, but he didn't reply.

With one hand, he swept backward, and a soft yet irresistible green energy wave forcibly shoved Trunks thousands of meters away.

The next instant, his raging aura erupted once more.

Boom!

In Super Saiyan 4 form, his speed far surpassed light. His terrifying power—measured in the tens of billions of billions—gathered in his right fist. With a violent gale capable of tearing space apart, he lunged straight for Kakarot's face.

There was no need to test the waters. Against such a bizarre opponent, he had to open with a thunderous killing blow.

Faced with a heavy punch powerful enough to pierce a galaxy, Kakarot didn't even blink. A confident smile remained on his lips.

He didn't even take a defensive stance.

Humm.

Just as Son Gohan's fist came within half an inch of Kakarot's brow, an invisible resistance abruptly appeared.

There was no shockwave from a collision, nor any earth-shaking boom. Son Gohan's impossibly immense strength was like a blow sinking into bottomless, stagnant water—it simply vanished into thin air.

Son Gohan immediately sensed something was wrong.

His fist hadn't touched anything solid, yet he couldn't move it forward even a fraction. The force and destructive power behind his charge were forcibly reduced to zero by some utterly unreasonable rule the moment they reached the faint white glow around Kakarot.

"Not bad speed, and your strength is just about decent." Kakarot smiled, his gaze settling on Son Gohan's fist, frozen in midair. "But in the face of a god, all resistance is futile and meaningless."

Son Gohan reacted instantly. Without the slightest hesitation, he braced his left leg against the void and retreated at high speed, opening up some distance.

Suspended in midair, he rapidly swung one hand.

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!

Dozens of tightly compressed energy blasts trailed dazzling flames, weaving a dense net of death that completely sealed off every possible escape route for Kakarot. Each one contained terrifying power.

"Pointless."

Kakarot didn't even glance at the energy blasts. He merely gave a light wave of his hand through the air.

An unbelievable sight unfolded.

The dozens of frenzied energy blasts didn't explode or get deflected when they touched the white arc Kakarot had swept through the air. Instead, they instantly unraveled, their structure forcibly rearranged.

Glowing specks drifted down from the sky.

The energy blasts, each powerful enough to destroy a galaxy, had turned into hundreds of vivid red rose petals in midair.

On the shattered battlefield, still as death, Kakarot stood in place, surrounded by drifting rose petals. The faint white glow intermingled with the bright red roses, forming a contrast that was utterly bizarre and absurd.

"What is this?!"

Watching from a distance, Trunks felt his scalp prickle. He'd directly transformed pure ki into flowers? This was completely beyond the realm of martial arts!

Son Gohan hovered high above, his brow furrowed.

He hadn't expected Kakarot to have mastered Miracle Power to such an extent.

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

"That's right." Kakarot strode toward him through the void. "I have the power to define everything. If I decide your attacks are ineffective, they won't be able to touch me. If I want this crude energy to turn into petals, then petals are all it can become."

As he finished speaking, Kakarot blurred and suddenly appeared above Son Gohan.

"Now it's my turn."

Kakarot raised his right leg and brought it down hard toward Son Gohan's shoulder, the sharp whistle of his kick tearing through the air. His movements were broad and forceful.

Son Gohan dodged sideways.

Boom! Kakarot's kick missed and split the void below into a black rift stretching for more than ten thousand kilometers.

Son Gohan seized the opening, turned, and whipped a kick toward Kakarot's side.

Humm.

That same feeling again. The moment his power touched the white glow, it vanished as if swallowed by mud.

Kakarot let out a wild laugh and swung back with a plain, unadorned punch aimed at Son Gohan's face.

Son Gohan bent his upper body backward at an impossible angle, evading the crude strike by a hair's breadth. At the same time, he slammed his right palm against Kakarot's wrist, used the momentum to flip through the air, and landed steadily in the void a thousand meters away.

After only a dozen or so exchanges, Son Gohan had already figured out his opponent.

Kakarot had absurd battle power on par with a god, and the bizarre Miracle Power he wielded made him completely immune to damage. But he had no foundation in martial arts whatsoever. He wasn't just inferior to Vegeta—even the most ordinary Saiyan soldier was better than him.

Every one of his attacks relied on overwhelming strength and speed, along with that rule that made whatever he wished come true.

During that last counterattack, Kakarot could have used Miracle Power to freeze Son Gohan's movements or make his own punch a guaranteed hit. But he hadn't.

Not only was it beneath him, but Miracle Power also clearly had its limits. Directly erasing or completely controlling a powerful opponent of equal or greater strength would consume an enormous amount of it.

Kakarot's choice to coat his body in Miracle Power to defend himself and dispel energy, rather than use it to instantly kill his opponent, was the best proof of that.

Thump!

A white beam of energy shot from Kakarot's fingertip, heading straight for Son Gohan's heart.

Relying on instincts honed through countless battles, Son Gohan forcibly twisted his body in midair at an unbelievable angle. The beam grazed his left shoulder.

But it didn't continue into the depths of space. Instead, it made a bizarre turn halfway through and headed straight for Trunks in the distance!

"Dodge!" Son Gohan shouted.

But the beam was far too fast for Trunks, and it carried the laws of tracking and guaranteed hits. He couldn't react in time.

Whoosh!

Just before the beam struck, Son Gohan rushed in front of Trunks.

He raised one arm and concentrated his energy in his forearm, forcibly blocking the attack.

Ssshh—!

The beam let out a piercing hiss as it touched the Super Saiyan 4 aura. A large patch of flesh was immediately carved away from Son Gohan's arm, leaving it drenched in blood. It hadn't pierced straight through, but this erasure power, which ignored defenses, had still wounded him.

"Gohan!" Trunks shouted.

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

He glanced at Trunks behind him. If Kakarot kept targeting Trunks, Son Gohan wouldn't be able to fight freely. It put him at too great a disadvantage.

"Trunks, get farther away." Son Gohan turned his back to him, his voice low.

Before Trunks could answer, Son Gohan slammed his left hand onto his shoulder.

Boom!

A vast, pure Legendary Super Saiyan energy poured into Trunks' body, forming an unbreakable, fully enclosed energy shield around him.

"I'll send you out of this galaxy first. Find a safe asteroid belt to hide in. Don't come back until I come find you!"

With that, he launched Trunks away like an energy blast.

Kakarot hovered in midair without trying to stop him. He merely watched with interest as Trunks disappeared into the distance. "So you sent one of them away? It doesn't matter. The entire universe is under my control anyway."

With Trunks gone, Son Gohan released himself fully, no longer holding anything back.

Rumble—!

His surging aura erupted like a supervolcano dormant for hundreds of millions of years.

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

He raised his head, his golden eyes brimming with ferocity and bloodlust, and fixed them on Kakarot.

"You said you were a god?" Son Gohan's lips curled into a defiant smile as he pointed at Kakarot's utterly unguarded stance.

"Then let's see how many punches this so-called god can take from me."