Sacred World of the Kai
After leaving the Other World, Gohan came straight here.
He laid out everything about Yamcha to the Elder Kai.
The Elder Kai's face went hard and cold. "Gohan, leave this matter be. I doubt a god from another universe intervened."
"What do you mean, sir?" It was the first time Gohan had seen the old man this grim.
"I can't say too much. But there are powers in the cosmos no one speaks of. Of the six universes erased by the Omni-King, some fell because they angered him others because an outside force invaded the entire macrocosm, forcing the Omni-King to wipe the slate clean."
He left the rest unsaid.
"Understood. Still, Yamcha's a human of Universe 7. If anything changes, please tell me," Gohan replied.
"I know. By the way, brat did you stumble into something lately? You're leaking the faintest whiff of godly ki."
You had to hand it to the Elder Kai his eye never missed much.
"You're sharp as ever. Yes, not long ago I…"
As Gohan spoke on, the Elder Kai grew more and more animated.
"It's true by the gods, it's true! You actually met the legendary Time King, and even our first-generation Supreme Kai ancestor, Kassins!"
"You know the Time King?" Gohan blinked.
"Gohan, it seems you don't realize this: the Time Rings the Supreme Kais use to traverse timelines exist because of you," the Elder Kai said, dropping a bombshell.
"What? Because of me? That's impossible!" Gohan nearly jumped out of his skin.
"Ancestor, how do I not know any of this?" Supreme Kai Shin blurted out.
"In our lineage there's a record: near the end of the Time King's era, Ancestor Kassins brought a strange young boy to an audience with him. Afterward, the Time King granted all Supreme Kais the ability to traverse time. But time travel is a capital offense we are not to do it unless absolutely necessary. To think that 'boy' was you." The Elder Kai could only marvel at the strangeness of fate.
"The Time King really was that overwhelming…" Gohan breathed.
"Since his disappearance, the cosmos lost its lynchpin. With no Time King to suppress them, countless parallel timelines sprouted and outside forces began slipping in wherever they found slack. Kassins left a memory: while the Time King reigned, no foreign power could breach the single axis of time that he occupied."
He caught himself and waved it off. "Ahem off topic. Brat, show me what you've got. I'm dying to see."
"Alright."
Boom.
Gohan first rose into Super Saiyan One a dusky, dark-gold blaze erupting around him.
Then Super Saiyan Two the aura tightening into roaring jets, hair going the same dark gold, black lightning skittering and crackling over his skin.
The feral malice that forever seeped from his tail tried to flood his mind but he stood easy inside it, utterly unharmed. In three years he'd made the rage his own; even the once-wild aura now lay quiet and obedient.
He also sensed that if he loosed the leash, he'd turn into a rampaging beast.
"There it is there it is! Your ki has a thread of god in it!" the Elder Kai cried.
"By 'godly ki,' you mean this?" Gohan's face cooled. From his forefinger unfurled a needle of dark-gold light destruction itself braided through it like a rule.
"Too strong… its dimension outstrips that destroyer's crude Hakai," the Elder Kai said, trembling with excitement.
"Now the other one," he urged. "That mysterious form."
"Don't rush me, sir. That form's… changed. This'll be my first time since then. You two should stand back."
Gohan slid a foot, shoulder angling. A feral, tyrannical pressure erupted out of him; dark-gold radiance swaddled his frame.
"Yaaaaaah!"
The Sacred World of the Kai shuddered. The shockwave hurled both the Elder Kai and Shin tumbling.
Since that recent bout of confusion, the Primordial Qi and the Eerie Qi in Gohan's body had clashed again, cracking yet another bottleneck. He had the sense he could push through to…
Super Saiyan Three.
It was his first time; control would be rough. Hence the warning.
"Yaaaaah !"
His hair surged longer in a rush dark gold cascading down his back. Brows vanished; brow ridge thrust forward.
Even this form had mutated under the Eerie Qi's influence just as his Ones and Twos had.
The classic ×400 amplification doubled on the spot to ×800.
A base of 500 million… times eight hundred… 40 billion.
Dark-gold sparks winked all over him; even his standard gi suddenly looked regal, veiled in mystery. A net of fine dark-gold lightning crawled across his skin.
"Elder Kai, this is Super Saiyan Three. Normally it multiplies power by four hundred. Thanks to my… encounter, that multiplier has doubled to eight hundred," Gohan said, admiring the form's edge.
But the drain was brutal. Even in seconds his body felt the tug of fatigue. He knew: in a real fight, this would never last as long as
the Mysterious Form.
Its multiplier wasn't as obscene, but death-aspect laws coiled through it, the cost was tiny, and it excelled at wars of attrition. Super Three was for finishing fast.
"Brat, this is impressive, but it still isn't as fitting as the form I helped draw out of you," the Elder Kai said, almost lazily.
"You're right. This one's best kept as a trump card." Gohan let the golden storm collapse
and the world went cold.
A pressure of despair, of lifeless stillness, spread over the Sacred World of the Kai.
Ash-grey ki boiled up from Gohan's core. His hair stood high, leeched of color; his pupils became glassy grey. The sight alone froze the heart a Reaper walking the mortal plane.
The brow ridge rose; the eyebrows were gone. Where Super Saiyan read as wicked, violent, blood-hot
the Mysterious Form read as a pall of nihil that smothered everything.
Under his feet the grass withered to husks in a breath. The death crept outward ten meters, a hundred, a thousand. At this rate, everything under his aura would become a wasteland.
"Enough stop! Stop it, now!" the Elder Kai shouted, urgent and raw.
Gohan's death-dim eyes slid toward him.
A chill raced down the old god's spine. Death laid a hand across his heart.
Gohan closed his eyes.
The grey atmosphere flowed in reverse, streaming back into him like time rewinding.
He dropped to normal.
"…Weird. I feel like I just got stronger," he said, flexing his hands the flesh subtly denser than before.
"Absorption," the Elder Kai said at once. "The turf under you died. When you released the form, that pall carried the stolen vitality back into your body. That's why your flesh toughened."
"So the moment I open my eyes I'm a devil now?" Gohan blanched.
"Power isn't righteous or wicked it's the wielder who is. Gohan, guard your heart. Do not let this strength lure you into the depths," the Elder Kai warned.
"I understand, sir," Gohan answered, clear and steady.
This was his first time using the mutated Mysterious Form outside the Time King's realm. Back there, he'd never noticed an absorption trait at all no doubt suppressed under the Time King's gaze.
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