Planet of the God of Destruction.
That casual-looking tap from Beerus had slammed Son Gohan harder than anything he'd felt before.
"Damn… that freaking hurt!" Gohan spat out a mouthful of blood.
"Yaaah!!"
He transformed again straight into his Mystic Death Form.
A gray, hazy aura shot into the sky. Desolation and despair spread across Beerus' planet.
Within the range of his ki, all things withered. Trees shriveled, life force rotted away, and the power of death gnawed at everything along the ground.
Gohan's wounds closed in an instant as all that dying life was sucked into his body, converted into terrifying death energy.
The ground turned a flat gray, as if even the soil itself had lost all vitality stripped of the power to nurture grass, flowers, or trees.
"Rules…? This suffocating aura of despair…!" Beerus stared at Gohan, eyes wide.
He could clearly feel it this oppressive force was in no way inferior to his own Destruction Energy. It might still lag slightly in total quantity, but in quality… it even edged past his destruction by a tiny bit.
"Lord Beerus, the fight's only just begun," Gohan said.
In his Death Form, his expression was unnervingly calm. There was a cold indifference on his face a sense of looking down on everything.
He stepped forward.
The ground caved in beneath his foot, and his body blurred, charging at Beerus at a speed almost invisible to the naked eye.
"Good, good, good… This feels roughly like the Third Stage of the Great God Realm," Beerus said, eyes full of approval.
The divine realm wasn't just a matter of multiplying battle power.
Sure, Gohan's multiplier had doubled to 4,000-fold in this form but his overall strength now barely touched the Third Stage of the Great God Realm.
Within the Nine Stages of the Great God Realm, each step up was a monstrous leap.
Someone one stage higher could outclass someone one stage lower by several times over.
Unless you had a true divine technique like Ultra Instinct or Perfected Ultra Instinct you generally couldn't fight above your realm.
And even then, victory wasn't guaranteed.
Of course, Beerus wasn't using anywhere near his full power.
If he did, Gohan probably wouldn't even survive a single clean hit.
Bang! Bang! Bang!!
Gohan's speed spiked again, just barely managing to match Beerus' earlier movement.
He hammered a heavy punch forward, wrapped in tendrils of gray death aura, and drove it straight at Beerus.
Beerus raised his palm to block, a thin layer of purple Destruction Energy coating his hand.
Destruction and Death collided and canceled one another out.
Beerus didn't budge.
Gohan didn't let up. His fists roared down like bullets, each one carrying the power of death.
Bang bang bang bang!!
"He moved! Lord Beerus actually moved!!" Goku shouted.
Everyone focused their eyes.
Beerus' feet had slid back half a meter.
Those iron fists laced with Death Energy had exceeded even Beerus' expectations.
He could feel his Destruction Energy burning away quickly.
Every time it erased a strand of Death Energy, his destruction power was consumed at one and a half times the cost.
The unnaturally calm Gohan noticed that immediately.
So he simply kept attacking, refusing to give Beerus even the slightest chance to counter.
Beerus' expression darkened.
"Enough already! Destruction!!"
As he slid back another three meters, a purple energy ball gathered in his palm.
Seeing that, Gohan also raised his hand.
"Endbringer!"
A gray sphere of energy shot out to meet the Destruction Energy ball.
The two football-sized energy orbs smashed into each other mutually eroding, devouring, and finally canceling each other out.
No huge explosion.
No devastating shockwave.
From the outside, it didn't look like much. But everyone on scene knew: if that clash had gone out of control, none of them would have survived.
…Well. Except Whis. Whis didn't count as "people."
"That weird, terrifying energy ball… that wasn't just regular ki. I don't think I could've stopped it at all," Krillin said, swallowing hard.
"No kidding. That was high-dimensional divine power. Forget you no one here could block that," Piccolo said solemnly, then added, "Aside from Whis."
As a former Guardian of Earth, his sensitivity to higher-dimensional forces was far sharper than Goku's or Krillin's.
"Hehe. That was a Rule on the same level as Destruction Death," Whis explained with a smile. "It's a brand-new Rule Power appearing in the universe for the first time since Lord Chronoa of Time and Dragon God Salama. Or, in your terms… a new kind of divine power."
The explanation was simple.
But the meaning behind it left everyone utterly stunned.
"Mr. Whis, you're saying… Gohan has already reached the true Great God Realm?" Tien Shinhan couldn't help asking, shocked.
With his inherited memories, he naturally understood how gods were classified.
"That's right. While his base form still hasn't reached god-level, through the unique Saiyan transformation, his overall strength has stepped into the Third Stage of the Great God Realm," Whis said, looking at his disciple with clear satisfaction.
"Ahhh, this is killing me. I don't care about all that god-realm stuff. Can you say it in a way I'll actually get?" Goku scratched his head, anxious.
"Kakarot, do you have to show off your stupidity every waking moment? To put it simply right now, even ten thousand of you wouldn't be able to beat him," Vegeta snapped.
"Ohh, that's what you mean…" Goku's eyes immediately lit up instead of dimming. His fighting spirit burned even hotter he looked like he wanted to rush over and spar with both Beerus and Gohan right away.
His attitude even made Whis glance at him in surprise.
"Your mental state is quite good. You have promise," Whis couldn't help praising.
Back on the battlefield
After Death Energy and Destruction Energy canceled each other out, Gohan rushed forward again, returning to close-quarters combat.
Beerus' greatest strengths lay in his energy and his realm.
Gohan's greatest advantage was his body.
They each had different specialties. Naturally, Gohan chose to use his own strength to hit Beerus where he was relatively weaker.
Even so, the overall gap in power was still too big.
Beerus handled everything with ease. As time passed, Gohan's aura started to grow ragged.
He swung a heavy right hook but in that moment, his guard opened wide.
Beerus twisted his waist, his arm snapping out like a spear, driving straight into Gohan's abdomen.
Bang!!
"Heh… got you, Lord Beerus," Gohan grinned through the pain, teeth clenched.
He clamped both arms around Beerus' forearm, locking him in place.
Then he started spinning faster and faster. The brutal centrifugal force made it impossible for Beerus to stabilize himself.
Whoosh whoosh whoosh!!
At max speed, Gohan released him and hurled him away.
Boom!!
Beerus smashed into a mountain, punching through several hill-sized peaks in a row.
"Lord Beerus, you'd better catch this one!" Gohan shouted.
He raised both hands high.
Above his head, an enormous energy sphere condensed in the sky.
His Primal Qi roared through his body, converting into Death Energy and pouring endlessly into the growing orb.
The once-gray ball soon darkened turning pitch black, like a clump of solidified ink.
The oppressive aura it radiated made the entire planet tremble.
To make the Realm of the God of Destruction itself shudder like that…
It was obvious how terrifying this Death Sphere truly was.
Gohan locked onto Beerus' position and hurled the energy ball down.
The air thinned instantly.
"Destruction!!"
Beerus immediately cranked his power up to the Fifth Stage of the Great God Realm, forming a deep purple orb of Destruction Energy about the size of a football.
The two energy spheres one huge, one small collided and began devouring each other. The surrounding space warped and blurred.
At the center, space itself was torn open.
Beerus pumped Destruction Energy into the purple sphere without pause.
Gohan, however, had burned through all of his Death Energy he simply couldn't feed it any more power.
"Good brat… you actually forced me to use forty percent of my strength," Beerus said as his aura flared.
He shook his body, sharply increasing his output.
The black Death Sphere vanished rapidly. The deep purple sphere also shrank and fizzled out a heartbeat later.
Of course, that was only because Beerus had held back at the very end.
"Good, good, good… very good. Son Gohan, to force out forty percent of my power no mortal has ever done that before. Just you alone is probably enough to bump the Seventh Universe's ranking up a notch," Beerus laughed, genuinely pleased.
"Hehe, Lord Beerus, I only ran out of Death Energy I never said that was my limit," Gohan replied, full of confidence.
"Oh? That wasn't your full strength…? Interesting. Then show me. I want to see just how strong you really are," Beerus said, once again shocked.
"All right!" Gohan closed his eyes, letting his aura settle as he returned to his base form.