Vegeta could make no more sense of Ken's instructions than Goku had.
What did he mean by waiting for all the Zamasus to arrive?
The answer began crawling across the battlefield.
Chunks of flesh left behind by Vegeta's blast twitched among the rubble, then swelled and regenerated at an alarming rate. Instead of rebuilding into the two Fused Zamasus they had destroyed, every separate piece grew into a complete body of its own.
Within moments, ten identical Fused Zamasus surrounded them.
Goku stared across the newly formed group as Ken's warning finally began to make a little more sense.
"Is this what he meant by all the Zamasus?"
"How can blowing them apart create more of them?" Vegeta demanded.
There was no time to solve the mystery. Goku still had Ultra Instinct -Sign- active, and silver light swept across the battlefield as he launched himself into the ten enemies.
He passed through their formation too quickly for any of them to respond.
By the time Goku came to a stop beyond them and turned around, all ten Zamasus collapsed almost simultaneously from the strikes they had never seen coming.
"Ten isn't so bad," Goku said with a grin. "The annoying part is that none of them stay dead."
The ten Fused Zamasus rose together, every face twisted by the same hatred.
"You think there are only ten of us?" one of them asked.
Goku's confidence immediately faded.
"What does that mean?"
"Look around, Son Goku."
Energy signatures began appearing across the sky.
Hundreds became thousands, and thousands became a vast green-and-white swarm that spread across the horizon until almost no open sky remained. Fused Zamasus hung above the ruined world like an endless army, packed so densely that they resembled a cloud of insects.
Piccolo struggled to estimate the number.
"How many did they bring?"
"Thousands… maybe tens of thousands," Gohan said as he released his full potential. Whatever the exact count, there were far too many to fight normally.
Yellow-green power erupted beside him as Kale entered Legendary Super Saiyan Two, while Piccolo answered the threat by transforming into Orange Piccolo.
"If every one of them has the same immortality, they don't even need to beat us outright," Piccolo warned. "They can exhaust us until we can't fight anymore."
Even Vegeta had stopped looking for an immediate solution. Fighting one immortal enemy was irritating. Fighting an army of them was something else entirely.
Goku looked toward the nearest Fused Zamasu.
"These aren't clones, are they?"
"Of course not."
"Then where did they all come from?"
The answer came with another contemptuous smile.
"Surely you've heard that Universe 12 once developed a time machine."
Trunks understood before the others did.
"You used their technology to gather versions of yourselves from different points in time."
"Exactly. Past, future—it hardly matters. We brought them all here for a single purpose."
The countless Zamasus spread across the sky raised their arms as if welcoming the beginning of a ceremony.
"The Zero Mortals Plan begins now."
Goku had one question left.
"How many of you are there?"
"Not that many." Fused Zamasu seemed delighted by the understatement. "Only one hundred thousand."
Nobody had an answer to that.
Ten had already been troublesome because killing them accomplished nothing. One hundred thousand immortal Fused Zamasus turned the battle into something that strength alone could not solve.
Goku scratched hard at his head while searching for an idea that did not exist.
"I could probably handle ten. A hundred thousand? Yeah, no. We're leaving."
That was one decision nobody argued with.
"Everyone, get over here! We're going back to our timeline!"
Piccolo, Gohan, Kale, Vegeta, Trunks, and Mai immediately began converging on Goku.
"You're not going anywhere," the leading Zamasu said.
Then the entire army roared the same command.
"Kill them!"
A hundred thousand voices struck the planet like a physical shockwave. The ground shook beneath their feet, and Goku's group instinctively covered their ears against the deafening sound.
"Prepare to die!"
This time, only a hundred Fused Zamasus attacked.
That was already enough.
Energy rained toward Goku's group from every direction, forcing him to throw up a barrier around everyone before the first barrage landed. The combined blast crashed against it with enough force to fracture the ground for kilometers.
Cracks immediately spread through Goku's shield.
Ultra Instinct -Sign- gave him tremendous power, but even he could not casually absorb the combined attacks of a hundred Fused Zamasus—and the army above them had barely begun.
Piccolo planted both hands against the barrier and poured his own energy into it.
"Help him!"
Vegeta, Gohan, Kale, and Trunks joined him, reinforcing Goku's shield just as another group of Zamasus raised their hands.
A second barrage came down.
"There are too many!" Goku shouted as the barrier buckled under the added pressure.
The leading Fused Zamasu laughed from above.
"Give up, Son Goku! One hundred thousand of us stand before you. Even Ken would be erased if he came here!"
For once, Vegeta had no arrogant answer waiting.
"He may be right. We're not getting through this."
"We can't even get enough breathing room to leave the timeline," Goku said, struggling to maintain the barrier.
Gohan forced more energy into the shield.
"I didn't expect this place to turn into this much of a disaster."
"As much as I hate admitting it, we can't fight an army like this," Piccolo said. "Not when every one of them comes back from whatever damage we cause."
Kale poured everything she could spare into the cracking barrier while the laughter of countless Zamasus rolled over them from every direction.
Then space rippled beside Goku's group.
Someone stepped through.
The familiar presence brought immediate relief—followed by panic when Goku remembered exactly what Ken had just walked into.
"Ken! Go back!" he shouted over the bombardment. "They brought a hundred thousand versions of themselves from other points in time! Every single one is Fused Zamasu!"
Ken surveyed the army filling the sky.
Even he needed a moment to appreciate the absurdity of the number.
He remembered this part of the original story involving an army of Zamasus, but nothing on this scale. A thousand would already have been ridiculous.
Apparently, his presence in this timeline had encouraged Zamasu to prepare for a much bigger problem.
The army recognized him immediately.
"Ken!"
Hatred rippled through the mass of identical faces.
"You finally came."
Ken lightly raised his staff.
The mountain of energy crushing Goku's barrier disappeared before it could fall any farther.
With the pressure gone, Goku and the others finally lowered their shield and caught their breath.
"That was close," Goku admitted, while Vegeta and the others looked back toward the enormous army with considerably less enthusiasm than before.
The leading Zamasu floated forward.
"You never should have come here, Ken."
Ken regarded him with mild curiosity.
"Why not?"
"No matter how powerful you are, even you cannot defeat one hundred thousand of us!"
Another Zamasu shouted from somewhere behind him.
"This is all because of you! Without you, I would have become a true God of Destruction!"
Agreement spread through the army.
"I originally wanted to become a Supreme Kai," the leader continued, pouring years of resentment into every word. "But I realized that the path of a God of Destruction suited me far better. Then you appeared and ruined everything!"
Ken gave him an encouraging nod.
"Go on. I'm listening."
"You destroyed my plans! Because of you, my dream of becoming a God of Destruction was taken from me!"
"And now that you've entered this timeline, we'll make sure you never leave," another Zamasu declared. "We've been waiting for you."
The leader spread his arms toward the endless army behind him.
"Tell me, Ken. What can you possibly do against one hundred thousand of me?"
His laughter spread through the others until a hundred thousand voices were cackling at once.
The sheer force of the sound shook the earth and sent Goku's group covering their ears again.
Ken remained suspended in the middle of it all with his staff resting casually in one hand.
Then he snapped his fingers.
Angel power swept across the battlefield without sound or spectacle.
The change was immediate.
Every Fused Zamasu caught within it began bursting apart like a soap bubble.
One after another, bodies vanished from the sky.
Entire ranks disappeared before the laughter had time to die in their throats, and the immense army that had blackened the horizon was gone almost as quickly as it had appeared.
The leading Fused Zamasu kept laughing for several seconds longer before the silence around him became impossible to ignore.
His voice faltered.
He looked behind him.
There was nobody there.
The hundred thousand allies who had made him feel invincible had vanished, leaving him alone in an empty sky.
"N-No…" His face drained of color as he searched desperately for even one survivor. "That's impossible. You couldn't have… That's impossible!"
Ken smiled.
"Any more?"
Fused Zamasu could only tremble.
Goku searched the sky as if the missing army might somehow be hiding.
"Where did all the Zamasus go?"
Piccolo had seen enough to understand what happened, even if accepting it was another matter.
"Ken erased all of them with one snap."
Vegeta looked at the empty horizon and then at Ken.
"One hundred thousand… with that?"
Gohan could barely reconcile the power he had just witnessed with the Ken he knew.
"He's already reached that level?"
Kale's eyes practically shone.
"Ken is amazing!"
Mai was no less impressed, which immediately drew a wounded look from Trunks.
"You too, Mai?"
The surviving Zamasu had stopped caring about anyone else.
"This has to be a dream," he muttered, his entire body shaking. "There's no other explanation."
"And now you're alone again," Ken said. "You turned this entire timeline into a disaster. I'm trying to decide what to do with you."
That was enough to break what remained of Zamasu's nerve.
He prepared to teleport away.
Ken was already about to stop him when another presence entered the timeline.
The newcomer's arrival made even Ken take notice.
He resembled Beerus in several ways, though the power surrounding him belonged to an entirely different order.
The Space-Time God of Destruction had arrived.
Without wasting a word, he raised one finger toward Zamasu.
Zamasu's attempted escape died immediately.
"You have repeatedly interfered with this timeline and disrupted its proper course," the Space-Time God of Destruction said.
The resemblance to Beerus only deepened Zamasu's fear.
"Who are you? What are you to Beerus?"
"You have no right to ask."
Destruction gathered at the tip of his finger.
"Hakai."
Zamasu disappeared.
There was no regeneration, no multiplication, and no desperate return from immortality. His body simply broke apart into nothingness until not a trace remained.
Ken allowed the attack to finish. Once Zamasu was gone, however, the Space-Time God of Destruction did not leave.
His gaze swept across the ruined world as though he were examining far more than the planet itself. Whatever he saw in the damaged history left him with no reason to preserve it.
"This timeline no longer needs to exist."
He raised one hand.
A terrifying amount of destruction energy formed above his palm, carrying enough power to erase far more than a single universe.
Ken understood immediately.
He intended to destroy the entire timeline.
So this was what someone at level 100 could do.
Piccolo reached the same conclusion without needing to understand the scale of the technique.
"We need to leave now. He's going to destroy this timeline."
"Everyone grab onto me!" Goku shouted.
The others rushed to make contact while the destruction energy continued building overhead.
"Ken, come on!"
"You go ahead." Ken waved him off. "I'll stay."
Goku hesitated only long enough to judge whether Ken knew what he was doing.
"Be careful."
He activated the Time Ring, and everyone holding onto him vanished from Future Trunks's timeline.
The Space-Time God of Destruction made no attempt to stop them. His attention remained on the timeline itself, and the faint curve at the corner of his mouth suggested their escape meant nothing to him.
Ken stayed behind.
Before the destruction energy could descend, he approached and bowed.
"Space-Time God of Destruction, may I ask you to wait?"
The immense power above the god's hand stopped moving.
His gaze settled on Ken.
"What do you want, little Angel?"
"Would you consider giving this timeline one more chance?"
[End of chapter]
[100 Power Stones = Extra Chapter]
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