The grand finals began as the crowd roared in anticipation of the upcoming battle: their very own Senior Sakuma versus a surprising newcomer who had proven his strength and character in the few battles he had appeared in—Moretsuna!
Standing in the center of the scorched arena sands, Sakuma held his signature weapon loosely at his side. For a few long seconds, neither fighter moved. Then, the thick fabric wrapped around Sakuma's weapon began to smolder, hissing loudly as lines of bright orange heat bled through the cloth. With a sudden whoosh, the wrappings caught fire, instantly burning away into floating black ash to reveal a colossal crystal greatsword.
It was still a terrifying hybrid of a weapon. One side featured a razor-sharp edge glowing with a faint, dangerous orange hue, while the spine was a thick, jagged, mace-like blunt edge designed to crush bones through heavy armor. The core of the blade itself was made of a hollow, reinforced crystal structure, pulsing visibly with volatile, swirling liquid flame trapped within.
Sakuma's massive frame cast a long, dark shadow over Merun, the heat radiating from his blade blurring the air between them.
"If you had faced me in the first round, you wouldn't have made it this far," Sakuma said, his voice deep and rumbling like tectonic plates shifting beneath the earth. He didn't lift his sword, letting the tip rest casually on the sand.
"Let's put it this way—if I am forced to use my Martial Heart against a mere squirt like you, I lose."
Merun, his right eye now completely healed and flashing with dangerous clarity, let out a low, echoing chuckle. He adjusted his stance slightly, dropping his center of gravity.
"Hmmm... you sure?"
Before Sakuma could even bark back, Merun planted his boots deep into the stone and sand and threw his head back.
A deep, immensely powerful aura suddenly erupted around him, unleashing a violent gale that instantly blew the loose arena dust and heavy sand away in a dramatic, expanding ring.
"RRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!"
His voice echoed fiercely throughout the massive stadium. As he continued to scream, his surging aura grew steadily more oppressive, producing even stronger, howling winds that whipped through the spectator stands.
In the world of DBZ, it was known as a Kiai—a specialized martial shout designed to violently converge a warrior's energy into a single, explosive moment of focus, shattering any mental blocks to unlock maximum potential.
It was an iconic, terrifying (and cool) display of presence.
The sudden, roaring shockwave of the shout rattled ears and cleared the ground around Merun in a perfect, wide circle, even causing the massive defensive barriers surrounding the entire arena to vibrate under the sheer pressure.
The crowd gasped in unison, shielding their eyes from the sudden, artificial storm.
Sakuma smirked, his eyes widening with dangerous excitement. "HAHA! TWO CAN PLAY AT THAT GAME!"
Deciding he would return the favor, Sakuma tightened his grip and yelled at the top of his lungs.
"UUUUUUUUUURRRRRAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!"
Unlike Merun, no visible aura or howling winds exploded outward from his body. Instead, the air around him grew intensely heavy, his presence becoming deeply oppressive and suffocating, like a colossal war engine revving up and preparing for battle.
The sheer intensity of their combined battle spirit completely froze the colosseum.
Finally, the referee snapped out of his trance, raised his hand, and bellowed the official start.
"BEGIN!"
WOOOSH!
The instant the word left the referee's mouth, Merun propelled himself violently backward.
He used his ki to fly across the sand, intentionally maximizing the distance between them until he was hovering near the opposite edge of the ring.
"What?" Sakuma blinked, fully expecting the same all-out, aggressive rush Merun had used in his previous fights.
Grumbling, he adjusted his stance.
"MOLTEN MOONS!"
Sakuma unleashed a series of direct ranged attacks, pivoting on his heel to throw crescent-shaped waves of molten magma toward the retreating youth. Merun easily weaved in and out of the molten crescent blades. Although they were incredibly destructive, they proved too slow to hit him.
It made sense, too. Sakuma's techniques were designed for open warfare—to crush fortresses and shatter slow, marching battalions. Against a single, hyper-mobile target who could literally dance through the air, they were far too slow. Merun drifted through the gaps in the flying heat with ease.
All of a sudden, Merun outstretched both arms, his palms facing forward, locking his target in his sights.
Sakuma raised a brow. "What now?"
In an instant, Merun's fully replenished ki reserves erupted through his palms.
Sakuma's eyes widened as the palms began to glow.
VWIP! VWIP! VWIP! VWIP! VWIP! VWIP! VWIP! VWIP! VWIP! VWIP! VWIP! VWIP! VWIP! VWIP! VWIP!
A rapid-fire barrage of blazing, sphere-shaped blue lights shot from his palms in a dizzying sequence. The spectators roared in confusion—they had never witnessed such a flashy technique fired with such terrifying speed!
The relentless volley of blue spheres slammed directly into Sakuma's massive frame. Because of the machine-gun velocity of the barrage, he couldn't block them all.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
A series of rapid explosions erupted against his chest and shoulders. The sheer impact tore away chunks of his heavy armor and left bleeding, smoking cracks across his skin.
Each hit delivered a sharp, biting sting... but it wasn't fatal. Trusting his immense physical durability, Sakuma simply gritted his teeth and ignored the barrage.
He tanked the relentless onslaught head-on, letting the blasts leave superficial scorch marks across his honed, heavily scarred martial body.
However, realizing his Molten Moon projectiles were missing and that tanking the boy indefinitely was a fool's errand, Sakuma ground his teeth and changed tactics.
He needed to restrict the brat's movement.
Opting for destructive, wide-area techniques to completely devastate the arena floor, he slammed his greatsword deep into the ground and shouted, "HELL GEYSER!"
Miniature detonations of liquid flame shattered the stone slabs, causing massive columns of dark, roaring fire to erupt across the arena.
Merun kept moving, running and weaving around the arena to dodge the rising environmental hazards.
As he veered behind a massive, newly erupted column of thick black flames, his presence suddenly vanished.
Sakuma froze in confusion as Merun's presence had disappeared for a few seconds.
His eyes darted to every spot in the arena. The flaming environment made it more difficult to spot his enemy due to the sheer amount of visual clutter.
A split second later, Merun reappeared after suppressing his aura, charging straight out from Sakuma's blind spot and delivering a devastating, full-force, ki-infused punch directly into the giant's exposed flank.
BOOOOOOM!
The shockwave of the impact rattled the arena, but although the punch was incredibly powerful, Sakuma looked completely unaffected. His massive frame barely shifted.
"Tch!" Merun looked annoyed that his strike wasn't as effective as he had expected.
Before Merun could even pull his fist back, he felt a terrifyingly fast sword slash whistling through the air, aimed directly at his neck. With the sheer, colossal size of the hybrid greatsword-mace, it felt less like a blade and more like a massive stone pillar being smashed into him.
Merun immediately sank into a rock-solid Sanchin stance, locking his muscles, tucking his chin, and crossing his forearms to absorb the brutal impact.
CLAAAAANG!
Merun hadn't budged, but the strike was definitely the most powerful he had experienced so far it went so far as to move him from his supposed unbreakable posture.
But that wasn't the end of it.
"UAHAHAHA! HELL TIDE!"
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
Sakuma swung the hulking greatsword-mace as if it were completely weightless, unleashing a relentless, blinding onslaught. Each massive strike twisted the air around them, creating a powerful atmospheric vacuum that trapped Merun in place, preventing him from flying away. Every collision sounded like a violent mountain landslide echoing through the stadium.
The heavy clashes produced a brutal amount of rebound damage, sending jarring, bone-shattering vibrations back into Sakuma. And yet, Sakuma's mighty muscles never faltered.
He struck with the exact same terrifying strength without a single moment of hesitation.
Merun stopped trying to block altogether. He began simply tanking the mountain-level strikes with his Vajra Tyrant Body, using every opening to violently punch back into the giant's body.
His hands flowed like water, redirecting every other blow as they hardened like steel before striking Sakuma with full force.
But even with his counterattacks, Sakuma was overwhelmingly winning the exchange.
The raw gap between them was simply too great.
Merun had only recently reached the strength of the Senior Realm, whereas Sakuma had been a Martial Senior for centuries, using his position to gain access to esoteric potions and body enhancers.
Even without using his heart, he was many times more powerful!
After a few minutes of the brutal slugfest, surprisingly, even Merun grimaced in pain as his steel-like body was battered and purple!
For the first time, Merun truly understood the terrifying reality of fighting someone who battled with absolutely no regard for self—someone who was as tough as iron and seemed to feel no pain whatsoever. Usually, he was on the winning end of the physical battle... but this time, it was like fighting a stronger copy of himself!
"UAHAHAHA! Your defensive techniques are still incomplete!" Sakuma roared as he continued his never-ending barrage of destructive blows.
It seemed to strike a nerve with Merun, as his blows grew fiercer and fiercer, as if he were going all in.
He looked like he was slowly drowning in rage.
But all of a sudden, Merun shook his head and chambered a powerful kick. When his boot struck Sakuma's broad shoulder, he didn't try to damage him.
Instead, he used Sakuma's unyielding body as a springboard, detonating a burst of ki from his sole to violently propel himself to the far end of the arena.
Sakuma did not chase.
He stood his ground, letting out a heavy, smoky breath.
He smiled grimly, returning to his original environmental strategy of using wide-area volcanic techniques to slowly heat the air and cook Merun alive. "I WIN IN CLOSE-COMBAT! UAHAHAHAHA"
High above the magma-filled floor, Merun stopped running. He dropped cleanly onto a pocket of safe stone, sank into a deep, rock-solid horse stance, and crouched low.
He brought his hands to his hip, cupping his palms together.
Suddenly, an immense, terrifying amount of power and light began to bleed through his fingers, compressing into a hyper-dense blue sphere. The sheer spiritual weight of the technique caused his voice to echo violently across the entire colosseum.
"KAAAA... MEEEEE..."
Sakuma looked at the stance and laughed out loud.
The technique was entirely too slow! A fighter sitting stationary in a horse stance was a sitting duck!
"UAHAHAHAHA! Desperate move! Burn to death, you fool!" Sakuma roared, instantly using his technique and swinging his sword through the air, releasing countless streams of molten matter.
"MOLTEN RAIN!"
The area above Merun turned a violent crimson as it began to rain hyper-heated liquid stone and molten slag directly onto his position. The torrential downpour of volcanic material completely engulfed him, hiding him from view.
Sakuma grinned, waiting for the screams of agony. But to his absolute shock—and the collective gasp of the entire crowd—the blue light at the center of the inferno didn't dim.
"HAAAAA... MEEEEEE...."
The molten material rained down, tearing his outer cloak and fabric dougi to absolute shreds... but the liquid stone simply slid off his bare skin, leaving no burns, no scars, and no injuries.
He had been entirely immune to high temperatures all this time!
Saiyans can cover their bodies with ki to withstand extreme temperatures. Molten lava was nothing!
So then... why did he bother dodging my molten attacks earlier?!
Sakuma's mind put the pieces together, and his blood ran cold.
He needed time... this... this bastard tricked me!
But it was already too late.
Merun had fully charged the technique.
"HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!"
"You rat trickster!" Sakuma roared, panic finally breaking through his pride.
Sensing a primordial danger unlike anything he had ever experienced on the battlefield, Sakuma's eyes widened in sheer horror. He raced forward at a desperate sprint, his crystal weapon igniting with every ounce of his remaining internal strength as he tried to strike the man down.
A colossal, swirling beam of superheated plasma erupted from Merun's hands, tearing the very air apart and leaving a total vacuum in its wake as it rushed toward Sakuma.
Before the beam even made physical contact, the sheer atmospheric destruction hit Sakuma like a mountain. The vacuum created by the plasma ripped the breath straight from his lungs, leaving him completely suffocating. It carried a crushing weight that flattened his massive frame, threatening to collapse his chest under pure kinetic force.
"RGGGHGHHH AAAAAAH!!!" Faced with the unstoppable torrent of blue destruction, Sakuma let out a guttural, primal scream.
The destructive energy vibrated violently through his body, rattling his bones at a frequency that felt like his skeleton was turning to dust. The raw friction generated a blinding heat that pressed against his absolute limits, threatening to vaporize his flesh on impact.
Enduring the bone-curdling pain coursing through his body, Sakuma realized his regular strength wouldn't hold the line for another second.
His pride as Kinzoku's strongest Martial Senior shattered under the crushing weight of the blue beam.
Survival took over.
With a roar that tore at his own throat, Sakuma unleashed his Martial Heart.
The restriction he had placed on himself snapped.
The core within his chest pulsed with a blinding, subterranean light, unlocking the full, terrifying depth of his tempered Martial Heart.
His skin and muscles, which had threatened to be eviscerated, suddenly became many times tougher and stronger.
His defensive techniques nearly tripled in effectiveness!
Alongside it, the liquid flame inside his crystal blade began to violently boil over, turning the massive weapon into a localized sun.
He forced this unlocked energy to its absolute limit, unleashing a blinding, continuous counter-torrent of volatile orange fire directly from the weapon's tip to meet the attack.
"UUUUUUUUUAAAAAH!!!"
The two monumental beams collided dead center in the arena, freezing the entire stadium in a flash of blinding light.
.
.
.
Extra long chap. Feeling much better. Thanks for reading!