Vegeta stood frozen, maintaining his thrust-forward attack stance in the sky.
He abandoned all sense of royal image, gasping heavily for breath, his chest heaving wildly beneath his shattered armor. That desperate, all-out strike had instantly drained more than half of his stamina. His arms shook from the recoil.
But a look of extreme satisfaction and crazed, manic joy surfaced on his bruised face.
"Is he dead...? He has to be dead this time!" Vegeta panted, his eyes wide as he stared into the swirling vortex of destruction. "That was my absolute, unrestrained full-power attack... nothing survives that!"
The chaotic battlefield abruptly fell silent for a few agonizing seconds.
A slow breeze carrying the acrid stench of scorched earth and vaporized ozone swept across the clearing. The billowing dust and smoke began to slowly dissipate, peeling away like a dark curtain.
The triumphant smile on Vegeta's lips began to stiffen.
Finally, it froze completely. The blood drained from his face, leaving him a ghastly pale.
Frieza was actually still floating quietly at the exact same altitude in midair.
It looked as though his posture hadn't shifted by even a fraction of an inch. He still maintained that elegant, aristocratic appearance, his tail swaying in the exact same rhythmic tempo as before.
He had merely casually extended his pale, youthful right hand forward.
Right in the center of his slightly extended palm, a very faint wisp of white smoke was leisurely rising, curling into the air.
This was the exact spot he had used to forcibly block the Final Flash head-on.
There wasn't even the slightest black scorch mark on his white glove!
Frieza casually flicked his hand, a gesture of absolute disregard, letting the wisp of white smoke be easily blown away by the wind.
"That power was barely acceptable," Frieza murmured, his voice cutting through the lingering ringing in Vegeta's ears. "Your strike just now was just about enough to make me begrudgingly use one hand to block it."
Dead silence.
The entire battlefield instantly sank into a deathly stillness. The only sound was the crackle of burning rock far below.
Vegeta's pupils began to shrink violently and uncontrollably in their sockets. They shrank down to a terrifying, pinprick size, completely swallowed by an abyss of absolute terror. His lips were already shivering madly out of his control.
The proud, arrogant brain of the Saiyan Prince completely short-circuited in that moment.
He had clearly exhausted every last ounce of his strength and reserves! He had even desperately overdrawn all the Saiyan ki that had surged past his limits after eating that miraculous Senzu Bean!
Yet his opponent only used a single hand to take the attack!
Frieza hadn't even been forced to shift his footing back half an inch. He hadn't even bothered to activate a defensive ki barrier to resist the critical hit!
What the fck was this?
This was a true, dimensional gap in combat power that he hadn't even dared to imagine in his most terrifying, sweat-drenched nightmares.
Kaido, who had been lingering in the ruins below, saw everything that happened above with absolute clarity.
He raised the rough back of his hand, sticky with blood and grit, and forcefully wiped the mud and gore off his face.
An old pirate's brain always turned faster than anyone else's when survival was on the line. That damn Saiyan brat had shouted so loudly just now, posturing like he owned the heavens. He kept yelling about having a terrifying battle power over 200,000.
But when that so-called ultimate 200,000 battle power strike landed in Frieza's hand... It was no fckin' different than setting off a slightly oversized firework!
Kaido was well aware of his own current physical condition. He had a broken, vital dragon horn, and his heavily damaged lungs were constantly leaking air, making every breath taste like copper. Coupled with the fact that his stamina had long been hovering at the absolute bottom of the red line.
Even if he went all-out right now, burning his very life force, he could only display the pathetic level of those so-called hundred-something thousand battle powers.
If he just stubbornly charged up there to fight alone... He would be forcibly dismantled into a broken skeleton by that terrifying monster above, two thousand percent guaranteed.
This was absolutely not a godly chasm he could bridge with sheer stubbornness and a fearless spirit!
He, Kaido of the Beasts, hadn't yet had enough of his sacred, awe-inspiring job as a bouncer at the pub. He hadn't even brought the Dragon Balls, personally requested by Manager Blake, back to the pub intact to claim his reward.
How could he possibly die such a worthless, casual death on this godforsaken, green-headed planet?!
Pirates never cared about those illusory, honorable samurai codes of dueling to the death! If you can't beat them, find a way to team up and gang-beat them to death! Surviving by any means necessary was the only ironclad rule in the New World!
"Hey! You dead monkey in the blue suit up there!" Kaido tore open his damaged, leaking throat and roared violently.
The insult flowed out extremely smoothly and arrogantly. He had completely adopted the Frieza Force's signature slurs for Saiyans to vent his frustration.
Vegeta immediately lowered his head. The kid's eyes spewed the endless, furious irritation of being deeply humiliated by a mere native, glaring fiercely at Kaido.
"I know perfectly well that you're pissed off looking at my black skin," Kaido tilted his head and spat a large wad of thick, scarlet phlegm onto the ground. "But with that measly 200,000 battle power you're so proud of right now... I'm afraid you won't even be able to scratch the face of that white-skinned monster up there!"
"My current terrible physical state absolutely can't beat the guy up there either." Kaido heavily rested the broken half of his club on his broad, bleeding shoulder. The single intact dragon horn on his head pointed straight at the gloomy, oppressive clouds.
"If you don't want to die a miserable death here with me... Then put aside your prejudices, be obedient, and let's team up to chop that arrogant, dead midget into eight pieces first!"
"As long as we can take him down... I'll have plenty of energy later to slowly settle the score with you for that cheap kick in the back!"
Vegeta's eyes and the corners of his mouth twitched violently at the same time. His back molars ground together, making a constant, sickening creaking noise.
This was an extreme, vulgar, and utterly wanton insult to the high dignity of the Saiyan Prince! This big black lug actually hallucinated asking him to team up with an uncivilized, barbaric piece of trash who didn't even know any ki blast techniques and only knew how to swing a big club like a brainless gorilla?
But.
When his unwilling gaze swept across Frieza's terrifying right hand—the one that had just caught the Final Flash barehanded without even reddening the skin—again...
That so-called supreme pride was ruthlessly crushed to countless, pathetic pieces by the freezing, paralyzing fear of death.
He was truly too strong. That guy who called himself the Emperor of the Universe clearly hadn't even shown a single decent trump card yet.
If they really didn't team up and fight like that barbaric black gorilla suggested, he was afraid the two of them would both be reduced to unowned fertilizer on this desolate wasteland today.
Hovering in midair, having watched the entire drama unfold, Frieza naturally heard the temporary alliance pitch between the two desperate losers loud and clear without missing a word.
He didn't step in to stop it. He also didn't show any of the majestic wrath he should have at being offended by lower life forms plotting against him.
He merely felt bored to death, elegantly raising his small hand to lightly cover his mouth. He absentmindedly let out an utterly uninteresting little yawn, exposing sharp, neat teeth.
"You two ants, have you finished discussing the results of how you'll die together?"
Frieza slowly lowered the hands he had been proudly crossing over his chest. He gently raised that same right index finger that had just caught the violent Final Flash unharmed.
That incredibly familiar, fatally despairing light of pure purple destruction was rapidly gathering and contracting at his fingertip, humming with a frequency that made the air vibrate.
Although this glaring speck of purple light was extremely tiny... It imposingly contained a terrifying aura of death and destruction capable of casually splitting apart and dividing an entire living continent.
His blood-red eyes coldly looked down at the two heavily wounded, struggling losers covered in mud and blood on the ground.
That indifferent, mocking look... Was exactly like a bored human looking down at two tiny, lowly ants by the roadside trying to move together before stepping on them.
"So now." Frieza's voice echoed with chilling finality. "You two pathetic, ignorant, dying weaklings. Have you decided on the tragic posture in which you will be thoroughly killed by this Emperor?"
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