Crimson flames wreathed the tops of the Pillars of Baiwosu.
Most places might have a single fire pillar of that scale inside a great city, used for illumination. But when Towa led Ino into a mountain valley, she found herself looking at seven of them all at once.
These creations, like pillars holding up heaven itself, had stood in the Demon Realm for an unknowable number of years. Ino probed them briefly with her senses — ancient. These pillars seemed to have been weathered by an incalculable span of time. The last thing that had given her this same feeling of primordial age was the Super Dragon Balls.
It was unlikely that anyone from the Dragon Ball world had laid down a formation like this just to deal with her — but even so, she stopped in her tracks. No matter how much Towa sneered and goaded, she refused to take another step forward.
The illumination in this valley was, by Demon Realm standards, extraordinary.
The atmosphere here was solemn and severe, the air saturated with a killing aura — subtly different from the Demon Realm's usual quality of chaos and unpredictability.
As Ino surveyed her surroundings, she spotted a massive Demon Clan army, clad head to toe in black.
These were not bloodthirsty brutes in tattered leather armor, clutching crude weapons. These soldiers moved with absolute precision, were equipped with the finest gear, and stood in perfect, eerie silence.
"Are these your subordinates?" Ino asked.
Towa smiled. "They are."
Ino scoffed. "You? Ha. I don't buy it. Let's cut to the chase — where are your brother and that wizard Babidi?"
"Over there." Towa pointed in another direction.
Demon Realm King Dabura — whom Ino had met once before — was utterly transformed.
Where the Demon Realm King had once had only two small, unimpressive horns at his temples — roughly the length of a pinky finger — he now sported two sweeping, demonic curved horns. Dark red shadows had appeared around both eyes. His already formidably muscled frame was now encased in a red-and-black combat suit, the blue robes and long cape of old entirely discarded.
If he had once carried a certain kingly bearing, that was gone now. What stood before her was a mass of coiling muscle, built so powerfully he looked capable of slapping both Ino and Tonton flat with a single palm — more like a high-grade enforcer than any kind of king.
Contrary to what Ino had expected, there was no twisted "M" branded on Dabura's forehead.
"Didn't you say your brother was under Babidi's control?" Ino said, studying him. "He doesn't look controlled to me."
Towa wore the expression of someone who had already won. "That's because I granted him the power of a Demon God."
"What wonderful sibling affection," Ino said dryly. "A Demon God — sounds marginally better than Demon Realm King, I suppose. Though I doubt Dabura actually appreciates your arrangements."
"Supreme Kai — Supreme Kai!" Whatever the so-called Demon God power had done to Dabura's mind, it had clearly done a number on it. The moment he laid eyes on Ino's unmistakable Supreme Kai attire, his pupils flooded red.
He thrust out one hand. A jagged longsword materialized in the void. With an inarticulate, guttural roar, he brought it swinging down at her neck in a single-handed cleave.
Ino's body resembled a holographic projection — as the blade swept through, it stirred nothing but a faint ripple.
Dabura's left hand ignited with a searing fireball. He seized it and drove it straight at her face like a Rasengan.
That attack missed, too.
Ino simply held one hand up in front of him.
The former Demon Realm King — now self-styled Demon God — felt a warmth spread through his body. The sensation nourished his flesh, saturating every inch of muscle and blood. Before he could dwell on how pleasant it felt, one tenth of a second later, he understood his mistake. It was not warmth at all. It was fire. Ice. Lightning. Something operating at a concept far beyond any of those.
With a single cry of pain, a cloud of dark red blood mist erupted from every inch of Dabura's body. He flew backward like a kite with its string cut, sailing far into the distance.
Ino made a show of wiping her hand. "Whether you call yourself a Demon Realm King or a Demon God — before Time, none of it amounts to anything."
Towa suddenly stepped back, retreating several hundred meters in an instant. She leveled a finger at Ino.
"Dark Demon Realm Army — hear my command! This woman is the Demon Realm's greatest enemy! Kill her — at any cost!"
Clank. Clank. Like tens of thousands of iron cans clattering in unison, the ridiculously edgy-named Dark Demon Realm Army raised their weapons toward Ino as one.
They arranged themselves into tight battle formations without a word. In units of one hundred, they pooled their energy together, shaping it into crude forms and loading it into siege crossbow-like weapons. The demonic energy of each unit flowed directly into the crossbows. At the officer's signal — a single hammer-blow on the trigger — a dense volley of sharp black bolts was loosed directly at Ino.
Judging from the material, the bolts appeared to be forged from some kind of special Demon Realm metal, and carried a thick, clinging stench of corruption.
These Demon Clan soldiers were genuinely capable — most of them operating at roughly the level of Zarbon or Dodoria from the old days, and some of the captain-class combatants were comparable to Ginyu. This was, without question, an elite force by Demon Clan standards.
But still...
"Towa," Ino said, somewhere between amused and exasperated. "You're not seriously telling me this is all you've got?"
A single thought. An obscure, suffocating energy condensed out of thin air and bore down like 100 times gravity.
The crossbow bolts were crushed instantly. What followed were the Demon Clan soldiers themselves, still encased in their full plate armor.
One by one, they compressed like tomatoes under a hydraulic press — a dull, wet crunch from within, and then blood and viscera sprayed out through the warping, buckling gaps in their armor. The scene was spectacularly gory.
"Lord Supreme Kai, you've severely underestimated my Dark Demon Realm Army." There was not a trace of panic in Towa's voice.
Following Towa's gaze, Ino looked — and found that the soldiers she had just turned to pulp were, one by one, pulling themselves back to their feet.
Some kind of substance was flowing out from the seven Pillars of Baiwosu, flooding into the bodies of the Demon Clan warriors as filler, reconstituting them.
Watching the soldiers in their black armor rise again, Ino frowned in genuine puzzlement. "I can sense a specific quality in that energy. What exactly is bringing them back? Is it the so-called Dark Power?"
Towa smiled — slow, sultry, and deeply unsettling. "Lord Supreme Kai is welcome to come to my chambers and we can discuss it in detail. At length. Preferably without cloth—"
Before the war with the Demon Realm, this witch had been able to trade a few rounds with Ino. After Vados's training, however, she was no longer in the same league. Not even close.
Towa's words died halfway through her sentence. Sound ceased to leave her lips. Ino slowly withdrew two fingers from her throat.
The witch's shock lasted only an instant. Even as blood gurgled freely from the wound, within less than two seconds the black energy flowing from the Pillars of Baiwosu surfaced throughout her body — and what should have been a severe wound to her neck sealed itself as if it had never existed.
"I am unkillable. Come now, join us — I can offer you pleasures far beyond what you've ever imagined." Towa's voice carried that unmistakable, honeyed note of seduction.
Ino didn't look at her. She looked at the space around her.
Unmistakable hostility was closing in from all sides.
Dabura — whom she had just blown apart with a single strike — was standing again.
More figures were stepping out of the air itself, one after another.
Tall and short. Fat and lean. Some with horns, some with tails, some composed entirely of pure energy, some encased in chitinous exoskeletons. Every conceivable variety of "person" was represented.
And none of them were weak. A handful, by Ino's assessment, were actually stronger than Dabura — already approaching the combat power of Super Perfect Cell from the original timeline.
"Are all of these Demon Realm beings?" Ino asked, genuinely bewildered. "What's going on? When did the Demon Realm suddenly produce this many powerhouses?"
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