Savage Beast and Divine Punishment

But this wasn't over.

A knee strike slammed into the abdomen like a battering ram, a sweeping kick whipped up a violent gale, and a headbutt carried the primal savagery of a colossal beast.

Every blow made the protective energy around Beerus's body tremble violently.

Bang bang bang bang bang—!!!

The barrage of strikes was like countless bolts of thunder exploding at once. Emerald-green and purple energy fragments rained down like a storm, each shard triggering an eruption of lava when it struck the ground.

At first, Beerus could still handle it with his deft footwork.

His hands moved like afterimages, deflecting Broly's fists and kicks one by one, redirecting their force and bouncing them away.

But Broly only grew faster, and his strength became increasingly ferocious.

Within that emerald-green aura, dark-red lightning began to flash—an indication that the Great Ape bloodline had completely boiled over.

"Not bad! Not bad!"

Beerus laughed amid the savage onslaught, battle intent blazing in his eyes.

He fought as he retreated, and every time his foot touched empty air, a ring of shockwaves exploded beneath it.

How long had it been?

Since his serious sparring match with Son Goku and Vegeta, no one had been able to force him back step by step in close combat through sheer power and speed.

"But a beast is still a beast—"

Beerus's voice suddenly turned cold.

Broly threw a punch, and Beerus vanished like a bubble—not through high-speed movement, but by directly merging into a fold in space.

In the blink of an eye, he appeared three meters behind Broly. His right leg rose high, entirely wrapped in dense purple destruction energy, its surface crawling with fine black runes.

"Brute strength alone can't even touch the hem of a god's robes!"

The moment he spoke, his right leg lashed down like a whip of divine punishment.

There was no sound of wind, no flash of light—only pure "destruction" itself taking the form of a slash and cleaving viciously into Broly's back.

Rumble—!!!

Only then did the sound of the impact spread, dull and heavy as though the heart of the entire planet had been crushed.

Broly became an emerald meteor, crashing toward the ground at a speed beyond the third cosmic velocity.

The instant he struck, Vampa trembled violently. A crater more than fifty kilometers across erupted from the earth, the crust shattering layer by layer like a biscuit. Crimson lava surged from the abyss, turning everything within hundreds of miles into a roiling sea of fire.

Volcanic ash and dust twisted into an enormous mushroom cloud, slowly rising tens of thousands of meters into the sky.

Beerus did not relax in the slightest.

He stared fixedly at the churning sea of lava below.

Sure enough—before even three heartbeats had passed, a figure burst through the magma and smoke, standing in the sky once more.

More than half of Broly's battle suit had been destroyed, revealing a chest covered in wounds. Yet those injuries were healing visibly before the eye.

Not only had his emerald-green aura not weakened, it had become even more violent, with dark-golden sparks bursting from its edges.

Most chilling of all were his eyes—his pupils had turned into molten-gold slits. The rationality belonging to a human was fading, while the savagery of the Great Ape roared awake.

"Roar... Aaaaaah—!!!"

Broly threw back his head and roared, the sound waves spreading outward in rings of shockwaves.

His hands rapidly formed seals before his chest, all ten fingers shifting like afterimages. Every movement tugged at the flow of energy throughout heaven and earth.

The remaining energy in the planet's atmosphere, the heat currents deep within its core, even the radiation drifting through outer space—all of it was drawn toward his palms, compressed, then compressed again.

A dark-green energy sphere was born between his hands. At first, it was only the size of a fist, but with every rotation, it doubled in size.

Its surface flowed like liquid metal, countless bolts of lightning dancing wildly within it. Deeper inside, the faint phantom of a Great Ape could be seen pounding its chest toward the heavens.

Whis sighed softly, and the crystal atop his staff glowed red.

"Lord Beerus,"

he warned in a low voice, "the energy level of this attack has already crossed the threshold."

Beerus did not turn around. He merely slowly clenched his fists.

The purple destruction energy no longer drifted around him like mist. Instead, it condensed over his body like armor, forming a menacing suit of spiked battle armor.

The halo behind him instantly expanded, shining as though a purple sun had risen at his back.

"Perfect."

The God of Destruction licked his lips, smiling like a demon.

"Let me personally... break the beast's fangs."

"Meteor Split Shot!"

Broly growled, throwing his arms wide as the muscles beneath his emerald-green aura swelled violently.

The ground beneath his feet instantly collapsed into a massive crater dozens of meters wide. Rubble and dust were swept into the air by his fury as shockwaves spread outward in rings.

As he forcefully brought his hands together, a colossal emerald-green energy sphere over a hundred meters in diameter instantly took shape. Electricity crackled wildly across its surface, producing a piercing noise like the shrill chorus of a thousand birds.

Twisting his waist, he poured all his strength into his arms and violently thrust the planet-destroying energy sphere at Beerus as though he were hurling a mountain.

The instant the energy sphere left his hands, the air was compressed into a visible ring of white shockwaves, with a long emerald trail streaming behind it.

Midflight, the enormous energy sphere suddenly trembled, then burst apart like a flower of death, splitting into hundreds of smaller energy blasts wreathed in blazing flames.

They did not fly at random. As if alive, they carved hundreds of intersecting emerald trails through the sky, like a meteor shower pouring down from the depths of space. With piercing shrieks, they densely blanketed every inch around Beerus, leaving him no room to evade.

At the core of every streaking energy blast was power enough to blow an asteroid into cosmic dust.

Wherever they passed, Vampa's already thin atmosphere was ignited again, leaving behind brief trails of burning fire.

The barrage formed by hundreds of such destructive energy blasts possessed enough combined power to overturn Vampa's entire crust, blast the three-thousand-kilometer-wide planet apart from within, and erase its existence from the universe entirely.

Beerus stood where he was without moving so much as a foot.

His purple eyes reflected the emerald death-light flooding toward him from all directions, yet the corner of his mouth slowly curled into an utterly contemptuous, almost lazy smile.

"Nothing but flashy tricks."