Universe 11 God of Destruction's World
Gohan's fist landed flush, hurling Toppo across the slate plains.
He didn't chase. He planted his feet and waited.
Belmod, Marcarita, and Whis drifted back to the spectator's ridge.
"Whis, looks like the little stray you brought won't be winning this one," Belmod said with a lofty sniff.
Gohan was still in base form no transformations, no frills.
"Oh-ho-ho… we'll see, Lord Belmod. Keep watching," Whis replied, utterly at ease. He fished a bucket of instant noodles from the pocket realm of his staff, conjured water from thin air, brought it to a boil
In under three minutes, the rich aroma had Belmod and Marcarita swallowing involuntarily.
"Whis, dear, could I have one? It smells amazing," Marcarita asked, uncharacteristically coy.
"Here," Whis said, producing two more one for Marcarita, one for Belmod.
The three divine beings ate as they watched.
On the field
"Boy, that was a disgraceful cheap shot!" Toppo burst from the rubble, righteous thunder in his voice.
"Guys like you draped in 'justice' and looking down on everyone make my skin crawl," Gohan said, disgust plain in his eyes.
"The light of justice will always banish the dark!" Toppo dropped into the Pride Troopers' stance, body tipping forward before he blasted at Gohan like a cannonball.
Boom! Bam!
Gohan sank his hips and met the blow head-on, catching Toppo's casserole-sized fist on his forearms. His heels carved two deep furrows across the stone.
"Boy, you're not my match. Show me your full power! Ha!" Toppo's fist opened into a palm, a compressed shock-cannon roaring from the center of his hand.
Gohan's braced stance slid back a hundred meters.
"Full power, hm? Let's see if you deserve it. Yaaah!" Gohan's aura detonated Super Saiyan.
But not the ordinary kind the full-power, dark-gold variant. A 160× spike in battle power.
The tidal wave of ki flipped Toppo end over end.
Two and a half years hadn't given Gohan a new form, but his base had climbed into the tens of billions. Multiplied a hundred and sixtyfold, his combat strength surged to 1.6 trillion the bare lip of the Great God Realm's lowest threshold.
Da-da-da
Toppo, now wary, stopped underestimating him. His massive frame tightened, focus razor-sharp.
Tall and short. Huge and lean. They faced off, eyes locked.
Toppo moved first one flicker and he was at Gohan's flank, a fan-sized hand clamping down on Gohan's forearm.
"Justice Crusher…!"
"Crush this, you pompous "
Crack!
Gohan rolled with the grip, body swiveling. His foot snapped up in a whip-kick toward Toppo's face.
Toppo's eyes widened; his right hand flew up to block.
The clash rang out like a thunderclap.
The moment he'd seen Toppo, scenes from Gohan's past-life memories that tournament had flashed through his mind. Justice Crusher sounded grand, but at its core it was just leverage seize an arm, lock the joint, immobilize the opponent.
Which meant there was a clean counter if your footwork and timing were right.
Dragon Ball's world might dwarf Earth's in brute force, but in terms of technique? Anyone who'd watched enough fight films knew how to use soft to overcome hard, how to turn a bigger fighter's weight against him.
"That's a rare answer to his move," Belmod murmured first time he'd seen Justice Crusher stuffed so cleanly.
"Universe Seven's body arts aren't so simple," Whis said mildly.
Especially Earth's, he added silently.
"You are qualified to be my opponent," Toppo declared, pointing at Gohan.
Boom!
A golden wave speared at Toppo; he swatted it aside without looking.
Gohan curled his lip. "Spare me the sermons from your high horse. You swagger like a clown with hair plugs in your ugh. Makes me want to puke."
Something about Toppo's holier-than-thou posture crawled under his skin.
"You…! Such insolence!" Toppo's mustache bristled like an angry broom.
"Oh, you haven't seen rude yet. Less talk, more fight. And stop posing like that honestly, it's nauseating." Gohan's face was all contempt.
Whether he meant to or not, the baiting sent Toppo's fury into the red.
"Outrageous! Justice Flash!"
Toppo rose, all five fingers spitting a storm of ki-bullets at Gohan.
Gohan simply folded his arms. A golden, circular guard blossomed around him
Papapapa
BOOM!
A towering mushroom cloud billowed where he stood.
The old rule: lots of smoke, no real damage.
Dust cleared. Gohan didn't have a mark on him.
"Children's toys. Save it," he said, needling him again.
If there was an aggro magnet in the room, it was named Son Gohan.
You could actually see the fire in Toppo's eyes now.
"You'll pay. I won't hold back."
The pressure that rolled off him wasn't mere ki. It felt like God Ki that crushing, sacred weight.
On the surface, he now seemed to exceed Gohan.
"God Ki, huh? Didn't expect you'd already stepped onto that path," Gohan said, growing serious.
Battle power and God Ki were different currencies. Anyone with God Ki never had low combat strength look at Supreme Kais, never mind a frontline brute like Toppo.
Right now, Toppo's effective power outstripped Gohan's.
And at equal numbers, a fighter with God Ki would always trump one without.
"Yaaah!" Gohan's aura flared again Super Saiyan 2.
At a 300× multiplier, his power hit 3 trillion.
Their auras seemed evenly matched; still, Toppo's God Ki tipped his dimension a notch higher.
Gohan didn't panic. Even as a dark-gold SS2, he hadn't used the Power of Destruction. With time, he'd learned how to bury that Hakai energy so it didn't leak at all.
Whis had warned him before they left: do not expose the Power of Destruction. Accidents aside, the real goal was for Gohan to awaken a God power of his own, not to lean on borrowed ruin.
"Justice end the darkness!"
Toppo's superior tone and posture made even Whis's serene expression crease.
"Marcarita," he sighed, "he's competent, but that personality… not charming."
Slurp. Marcarita inhaled a whole ribbon of noodles. "Tell me about it. That's Eleven when people go righteous, they go righteous; when they go evil, they go evil."
"It's veering into the pathological," Whis said dryly.
"No matter. The biggest fist writes the rules," Belmod said, utterly unconcerned.
Whis let it go this wasn't his jurisdiction anyway.
"Justice this, justice that enough already." Gohan moved first, driving an uppercut for Toppo's jaw.
KRAKOOM
Toppo pinwheeled backward through the sky.
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