Inside Grand Zeno's Palace, where the discussion about the Martial Arts Tournament was still underway, Ino's shoulder flickered — and a Time Clone materialized instantly back in the Time Nest.
"What happened? Take it slow."
Like Kuronoa's Super Space-Time Patrol before them, Future Trunks, Future Gohan, No. 17, and No. 18 weren't officially part of the Time Nest — they were Ino's private mercenaries. They worked for pay, and between jobs they returned to their respective timelines to rest. This time, Future Trunks had gone back expecting nothing more than an ordinary vacation. He never could have imagined what he'd find.
It wasn't dancing and celebration. It was devastation. Rubble and broken walls stretched as far as the eye could see. The population that had only recently begun to boom after the Androids were destroyed had been reduced to less than a tenth of what it had been. Every household had its dead. That timeline's Earth was blanketed in flames and the sound of weeping — it looked exactly like hell on earth.
"At first I thought it was evil Androids — like No. 19 and No. 20 from the main timeline. But when Gohan and I went to investigate, it was nothing like that… The one responsible was… was…" Future Trunks trailed off, hesitating over his own words.
Future Gohan, standing beside him, finished the answer for him: "I saw a man in black slaughtering people across our timeline's Earth without mercy. His face… looked a lot like my father's. Well — it looked like him."
Having competed in the Super Space-Time Championship and crossed swords with other Son Gokus and Son Gohans in battle, Future Gohan took it in stride without much shock. As far as he was concerned, his father was the Son Goku who had died of heart disease — not the Son Goku of the Seventh Universe, and not the one from the Super Space-Time Patrol. His best guess was that this particular Son Goku was likewise someone from a parallel timeline.
Ino let out a quiet sigh. "All of it piling up at once… Son Goku? All right. I'll go take a look. You two stay here — don't make any moves."
After a brief word of instruction, she went alone to investigate Future Trunks's and Future Gohan's timeline.
...
Three months earlier — back when the Seventh Universe was buzzing with excitement over preparations for the eating contest — the Demon Realm War had made something perfectly clear to Zamasu. He could not tolerate evil in any form, to any degree.
After the war ended, Zamasu and Toppo — the Eleventh Universe's Apprentice God of Destruction — made their way to the temple where Ino and the other two Supreme Kais of Time had fought their great battle against the Demon Realm Supreme Kai.
The three Supreme Kais of Time had worked together to erase every trace connected to the Demon Realm Supreme Kai, but the temple itself was another matter entirely — like the old paradox of whether God can create a stone too heavy for himself to lift. Because it had served as the battlefield, the temple was deeply bound to all three of them. To erase the temple would, by that same logic, mean they themselves should not exist; and if they didn't exist, who would have been there to destroy the Demon Realm Supreme Kai? You couldn't exactly pass that particular buck to Grand Zeno.
And so the temple that had served as the pivotal battlefield was left standing.
"What a terrifying power of Time this place must have witnessed… But all I see here is a worthless ruin. There are no Demon Clan members left." Toppo, broad-shouldered and white-bearded, found the atmosphere around the temple ruins deeply unsettling. His voice came out low and hollow as he tried to discourage Zamasu from going any further.
Zamasu's mind was made up: "You're right — there are no Demon Clan members here. But I feel as though something in this place is calling out to me."
Toppo's eyes went wide. "Have you been bewitched by some Demon Clan magic? That trick — hearing a voice calling to you — is exactly the kind of thing they use."
Zamasu shook his head. "Toppo, my friend — do you really think the Demon Clan's tricks have any power to shake my sense of justice?"
Toppo shook his head without thinking. Among every Supreme Kai he had ever encountered, Zamasu possessed the strongest sense of justice and the lowest tolerance for evil — bar none.
"Don't worry. I'm not that fragile."
At Zamasu's insistence, Toppo followed him deeper into the temple ruins.
Ino and the other two had been confident that everything outside the temple itself had been thoroughly erased — but in truth, because Aeos had been influenced by the vision the Demon Realm Supreme Kai had shown her — the one foretelling the inevitable collapse of the multiverse — a small crack had slipped through on her end.
The vision the Demon Realm Supreme Kai had shown Aeos was not fabricated, not distorted. It was an objective reality. Even Ino herself acknowledged it — she simply chose not to dwell on it.
That authentic vision had survived the Demon Realm Supreme Kai's destruction, lingering now in the deepest reaches of the temple ruins.
The temple ruins, having served as the battlefield, had absorbed so much Time Power that they had long since decayed to an extreme state. An ordinary Demon Clan member who came within a hundred meters of the temple would have the vast majority of their remaining lifespan scoured away by the residual Time Power still seething within — some would even drop dead on the spot.
Zamasu was a Supreme Kai with a lifespan measured in aeons; that particular danger did not apply to him. He wrapped himself in divine power and walked at a leisurely pace through the ruined temple, searching for any trace the battle might have left behind.
"That must be what was calling to me." Zamasu pointed suddenly toward something high up ahead.
Toppo followed the line of his finger and looked.
A large, shapeless mass of blue — irregular, tangled forms wound around one another — floated silently in the air.
The broad, white-bearded Toppo gave a start. "What in the world is that thing? I have a very bad feeling about this."
Zamasu focused his gaze on it for a long moment, then his body rose into the air — he seemed about to reach out and touch the strange, drifting mass.
Toppo moved to stop him. "That's dangerous — we have absolutely no idea what that thing is. Hey!"
Heedless of his companion's warning, Zamasu stepped around Toppo, extended one finger, and read the information preserved within the strange shapes.
In that single instant, he witnessed hundreds upon thousands of visions of the apocalypse — the futures of countless timelines, all converging on one shared end.
He saw intelligent life extracting and consuming without restraint, until the bearing capacity of the universe was pushed beyond its limit, and universe after universe was destroyed in the fires of war. No ideology. No purpose. Sometimes a great war broke out over nothing more than a single loaf of bread, a single mouthful of water.
In the apocalypse he witnessed, the Supreme Kais were powerless, one after another — and among them was Zamasu's own master, Gowasu, the Old Kai of the Tenth Universe.
Gowasu had always believed that one should trust in intelligent life — that life would find its own way, and that the gods should not intervene too heavily.
The appearance of countless apocalyptic visions made it undeniable: his teacher's view was wrong.
The intelligent life of the universe — humanity included — could find no path forward. They were base, ignorant, savage, and violent, utterly without reason. Left to act on their own, left to evolve on their own, they would spread like cancer cells and destroy the entire universe — and in doing so, destroy themselves along with it.
Zamasu concluded that these intelligent beings were themselves a form of "evil." His ideal was to eradicate evil without exception — and so these mortals too should be eliminated. Not one left. Kill them all. With no more intelligent life, that apocalyptic vision would simply never come to pass.
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